Content Management Systems Explained
A Content Management System (CMS) is a system for allowing users with limited technical proficiency to make changes to the contents of a website. Rather than having to edit code directly, you use the CMS to manage your website through a more user friendly visual interface.
Today we’re going to do a little dive into what a CMS can do for you, your website, and your business.
How Do Content Management Systems Work?
How does this magical system work? It works by putting an easy-to-use interface between end users and the complex world of coding. Hand crafting the kind of advanced website that modern-day internet users demand, would require learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Then you would have to spend hours putting all of these different parts together.
With a CMS, you can do in minutes what would normally take hours of carefully assembling lines of code, and all while requiring little to no technical knowledge.
The secret to this lies in two important modules, the Content Management Application (CMA), and the Content Delivery Application (CDA).
The CMA is the part you as a user interact with. Using a drag and drop based interface you can add text, images, videos, links, and whatever else you want on a page. Then you drag them around until they’re in the positions you want.
Once that’s done and you hit save, everything is handed over to the CDA, which then writes all the code that’s required to turn your design into a fully functioning website.
What Can a Content Management System Do?
When it comes to managing a website, a CMS can do just about anything you could ever want it to. It can be used to publish blogs, update and create new product listings, build whole new pages, install plugins, and more!
No matter what you or your team need, a CMS can probably handle it. And if it can’t, plugins enable a massive variety of additional functions to be added to the base functions that ship with the software.
Why You Want a Content Management System
There are plenty of reasons to want a CMS for your website.
The most obvious reason is, of course, how easy they are to use. If you can operate a word processor, you have all the skills you need to make use of a CMA interface. And if you need a little help getting started, there are plenty of tutorials that can walk you through the various aspects of these systems.
The time saving benefit this software offers is another reason to get yourself a CMS. Even if you have the skills to edit web pages manually, dragging and dropping a few elements is so much faster.
Only one person can write HTML at a time, but lots of people can all work on different aspects of a page at the same time using a CMS, allowing for unmatched collaboration.
All good CMS will also allow you to set roles for different users, each with different levels of permissions for the different front and back end aspects of your website. Want to ensure people aren’t deleting things they don’t understand? This is how you do it.
And if everything a CMS can do still isn’t enough for you, plugins enable you to do even more. If you’ve thought of it, someone has most likely made it.
A CMS is an amazing way to make maintaining and updating your website quick and easy. If you’re still making edits by hand, speak to a web professional about getting started with a CMS, you’ll love it.
