Content management system

Definition[edit | edit source]

A content management system (CMS) is a system that permits to create and to organise the creation of content. Generally a CMS is a multiuser web based application that manages a website.

Note: CMS also may stand for course management system, but outside some restricted e-learning community, "C" stands for "Content".

Introduction[edit | edit source]

Generally all CMS have different common features:

User input

• users don't need to have HTML expertises, WYSIWYG or WiKi syntax solutions are implemented to help the users to create or to edit the content of a web page

Content management

• manage the content and easely structure it
• Content architects can configure structure and menus of the system. This is not always easy and various systems differ a lot. Some only provide minimal functionality, other a series of "mini-cms" tools.

Layout and Contents

• separate the structure of a web page from its content
• easy installation of a CMS (usually through a web-based installer)
• default templates for the graphical appearance, possibility to download other templates.
• easy change of the templates (directly via CSS files)

Administration

• easy administration of the website via a web interface
• multi language support for administration tools
• sometimes possibility to store the different versions of an edited page
• user and permission management

Groupware

• Most systems have groupware modules (like forums, and file sharing)

Extensibility

• Possibility to extend the system with modules / plugins. Usually there is a documented API

CMS in education[edit | edit source]

• To build a site with educational contents
• To engage students in project-oriented writing activities
• To present your school/organization etc.

Standards[edit | edit source]

Standards for data exchange are only slowly emerging. Up to now (feb 2011), migrating contents from one CMS to another is quite a nightmare. In other words, adopting almost any CMS means that your are stuck with it for the worse or the better ...

There are a few exceptions restricted to very specific data types, e.g. data standards for news feeds (RSS) or low-level e-learning IMS Content Packaging. See data exchange standard for more information.

Links[edit | edit source]

CMS Software[edit | edit source]

CMS systems are implemented with various kinds of portalware.

The list below only includes systems that focus on content management, i.e. allow/constrain editing of contents through some kind of structured and engineered system.

See 'portalware' for a more general list of software to build portals. (Almost any portal is a kind of CMS, since it lets users add contents ...).

Small and free CMS (in the more narrow sense)

• typo3: PHP and MySQL
• ezPublish: PHP
• SPIP: PHP and MySQL
• Plone (built on top of Zope)

Big systems

• Some enterprise portals offer CMS functionality
• Others focus on content management, but are rather difficult to configure

Other resources[edit | edit source]

• OpenSourceCMS: you can try a portalware before installing it
• cms matrix: useful to compare the features of different CMS