|
What is a CMS?
Content Management Systems provide a framework for managing the often complex
process of the development and delivery of content to the end users. CMS's
often include the following :
|
Customized content types
Customized content workflows
Content transformation (i.e. write once, publish in many formats)
Authorization rules (i.e. who can see and do what)
Templates (i.e. a way to control "look and feel")
|
These capabilities are particularly required by websites that have large or
growing collections of content and/or might also have multiple content
providers with varying levels of technical ability (including those who don't
know HTML). As your website grows in size or complexity, at some point you will
find that tools such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver or Notepad aren't sufficient to
manage your site - that's one indication that you might need to implement a
CMS.
When do you need a CMS?
If any or several of the following questions are true then you or your
organization might need a CMS:
|
Is your website too large for you or your web team to manage via your current
approach?
As manager of your website, are you overwhelmed by updates to your website?
Are you or your content providers overwhelmed by web authoring products or
technologies?
Would you like an automated way for your content providers to submit content to
you for review, approval and subsequent publication?
Would you like to carefully control the contextual and role-based permissions
of your content providers, editors and designers?
Does your website require dynamic content that has a limited lifetime,
automated publication and archiving and other features that are not provided by
your existing website?
Would you like to separate the design from the content of your site, so that
the two can be changed independently?
Are you having difficulties maintaining a consistent look-and-feel throughout
your website?
Would you like to write your content once, and then potentially publish it to
multiple formats? (e.g. text, PDF, XML)
|
|
