What is content management system & its advantages?

Many years ago, clever uncles from the US Department of Defense came up with the Internet, it happened around 1969. However, in those days, such a simple action as viewing text or images was very time-consuming.

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Content Management System by RevGlue

In 1989, a very clever Mr. Tim Burns-Lee proposed a new way of exchanging information on the web - the Hypertext Document System and called it the World Wide Web. The basis of this system is the notion of hypertext . a lot of texts linked together by links to each other. To publish such documents, a hypertext markup language HTML was created . To search, and view hypertext documents on the computer screen, have developed a special browser application.

The first sites were just a set of HTML pages linked together by hyperlinks. You could not change the contents of the page, without interfering with its HTML code. Therefore, these sites are called static .

The most important problem of such sites is the complexity of the process of publishing new documents and editing existing ones. When adding new material, you often had to change the code of several more interconnected pages to provide changes in the navigation system. And if there was a need to change the design of the site , then it was necessary to rewrite the code of all pages of the site. With such a serious matter, only a qualified programmer could cope. And the more pages the page got, the more the programmer got the headache.

With the development of the WWW appeared a large number of sites, the amount of materials on the websites grew rapidly. Traditional "manual" technologies for creating and maintaining websites no longer met the requirements of the time. And the cost of such sites was very significant. Users were more and more interested in the ability to manage the site: edit settings, add, create and edit content without resorting to the services of professional programmers.

Here, on this fertile ground, a completely new type of content management software - CMS (Content Management System) appeared. CMS is literally translated, as the Content Management System , in the common people called the "engine" of the site. These programs have revolutionized the creation and development of sites and have become a wand-bum for people far from web programming.

CMS is a program that provides tools for editing and managing content on a site, while the user does not need to have programming skills or knowledge of HTML.

The principle of the CMS is based on the separation of the design of the site and its contents. Typically, the design of the site is changed rarely, then, as content changes can occur not only every day, but even every hour. Therefore, in their work CMS uses so-called templates - special "blank" page preparations, in which the site design is already registered and it remains only to fill them with information. A user far from web design and web programming can easily change the appearance of the site, simply replacing one template with another, while keeping the content untouched. However, the privilege to develop templates remained for programmers, since this process requires certain special knowledge of programming languages.

The information content of a site can be carried out even by a teapot, this process does not require special training. If you know how to use a computer, then for sure you will be able to deal with the site management system. Using a simple and logical interface and easy-to-use editors, you can create text content for websites, add images, multimedia, news, i.e. create and develop their own project. And most importantly, when editing content, you are spared the need to write HTML-code, the program itself will take care of this.

The site working on CMS differs from the usual static site, in that it is dynamic. These kinds of sites not only easily fill with content and change their design, they are able to respond quickly to users' requests, investing in the ready-made template necessary for users to fill. Pages of dynamic sites are formed "on the fly." There was an opportunity to create online stores, Internet games, online communities, electronic payment systems and other things, without which we no longer represent the modern Internet. Mostly online stores and eCommerce websites develop on different CMS i.e Wordpress, Joomla or Magento or sometimes on customized cms by designed different agencies like Affiliate CMS Designers.

Advantages of CMS

Let's analyze the main advantages of Content Management Systems:

There is no need to know HTML to manage site content. Any teapot that can work with the Word editor is able to edit content using simple text editors integrated into the CMS. Therefore, you do not need to attract web programmers to update the content.

The content of the site and its design are separated, so when you change the design of the site, its content remains untouched. Conversely, when the site content is changed, the integrity of the design is preserved, various articles by different authors will be presented in the same predefined style.

The site design is modified in a few clicks, simply by replacing one template with another one. Many extensions built into the CMS which allow you to create a dynamic website of any complexity like affiliate site on, using forum modules, voting, site search, registration, etc.

Customizable rights for content management. The user who edits the content can only edit the area allowed by the administrator. An administrator can grant various rights to Internet users to view content, for example, only after registering and entering a login and password, or after payment, etc.

Site management can be performed from anywhere in the world using a browser. And this is far from all the benefits of working with CMS.

Let's sum up. Using CMS not only automates and speeds up the process of creating a website, but also greatly simplifies it. In fact, with the advent of CMS, technical restrictions on the creation of the site were removed. And now even an inexperienced user who does not have any special knowledge in site building, can create any type of website, whether it's a business card site, an information site, or a website portal.