Monday 26 March 2007

But what is a Content Management System?

I've just realised that I've written an entry about what I feel are the requirements for a content management system, without actually explaining what one is. I'm sure the term can mean many things to many people, but this is what I'm on about at least:

A content management system is a software system that helps us manage our content. Sounds obvious, but to expand, it helps us produce, organise, control and publish large amounts of documents, web pages, images and multimedia resources. We're interested in web content management systems, as I think there is a recognised need to address some of the shortcomings in our external and internal websites.

Here's the obligatory steal from Wikipedia:

A web content management system is a computer system used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates document control, auditing, editing, and timeline management. A Web CMS provides the following key features:

Automated templates
Create standard visual templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, creating one central place to change that look across all content on a site.
Easily editable content
Once your content is separate from the visual presentation of your site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most CMS software include WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content.
Web standards upgrades
Active CMS solutions usually receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards.
Workflow management
Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator submits a story but it's not published on the website until the copy editor cleans it up, and the editor-in-chief approves it.
Document management
CMS solutions always provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction.

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