Content management system

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## Contents

* 1 Definition
* 2 Introduction
* 3 CMS in education
* 4 Standards
* 5 Links
* 5.1 CMS Software
* 5.2 Other resources

## 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