What Is a Content Management System?

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what is a content management system

Nearly 27% of the entire internet is powered by a content management system, or CMS, known as WordPress.

What is a content management system, though? And why are they so popular?

Should you be managing your website and other digital assets with a CMS? Understanding what’s right for you and your organization requires an in-depth understanding of what a CMS entails.

In this ultimate guide, we’ll answer your questions about CMSs, including what they are, why they’re used, and some of the options for implementing one. We’ll also talk about how you can avoid common pitfalls associated with CMS use.

Keep reading to learn about content management systems. Keep reading to learn how you can harness the power behind your organization’s website.

What Is A Content Management System: A Definition

To understand what a CMS is, think of a content management system as a software application you use on the internet. Its purpose is to facilitate the creation, storage, and presentation of digital content.

A CMS is comprised of two parts:

  1. Content management application, or CMA
  2. Content delivery application, or CDA

The CMA’s job is to provide a way for users to add digital content, like a blog article for example, and manage it. For a blog, management might include updates, responding to comments, and customizing for search engine optimization, or SEO.

The CDA then takes that content and presents it to visitors to a website. If you’re reading a blog, you’re making use of the CDA side of the CMS.

Think of it this way: CMA is for content making and CDA is for content display.

Creating and presenting websites is one set of functions a CMS can fulfill. It can also act as an enterprise content management (ECM) system.

In this capacity, the CMS/ECM would be available only to members of an organization instead of the whole internet. Users able to access the ECM behind the company’s firewall can find documents and other digital content like videos and images.

Why Use A CMS?

Now that you know what a content management system is–the backend of a website, basically–it’s time to examine why they’re so popular.

The bottom line is a CMS allows those without programming expertise to publish digital content on the web, or to an internal ECM. But a CMS can do so much more.

Users can manage formats so content has a cohesive feel in line with their organizations’ branding. They can access changes made to content over time, republishing older versions if need be.

They can utilize indexing features. They can search for and retrieve content with ease, which is helpful when trying to fulfill an editorial calendar for social media postings, for example.

Content creation and content display (design included) are separated by the CMA and CDA processes, which prevents those without coding experience from “breaking” the site. Speaking of, you can assign different roles to different users so they have varying levels of access.

This allows users to enjoy content without aesthetic hiccups that can be costly. In fact, 55% of visitors will devote less than 15 seconds to a web page, so aesthetics and function are just as important as content.

You don’t want every blog writer to have the capability to change those elements of your site, and a CMS can help maintain those roles.

A CMS is, as we mentioned, great for SEO. This is because you can customize:

  • Footers
  • Page titles
  • Metadata
  • Sidebars

Updates to these SEO elements can be made quickly and easily. CMS websites are also easy to optimize for mobile.

When it comes to mobile SEO, 62% of B2B marketers have focused on optimizing their blogs.

Finally, many CMS platforms offer free, known also as open source, plans. These plans can be supplemented with paid add-ons for customization and added security.

CMS Cons

You understand the benefits of using a content management system, but this would hardly be an ultimate guide if we didn’t go over some of the potential drawbacks. In this section, we’ll cover the cons and what you can do to ameliorate them.

There are some functionality limitations depending on the CMS and theme you choose. But, if you have a programmer or web designer on staff–or you hire one–you can often work directly with the website code to gain those functions you want.

You can also mitigate this con by doing your research ahead of time. Determine what functions and abilities you need and find a CMS and theme which can deliver.

Security risks are another potential problem. Hackers can break into a CMS but if you implement security measures like two factor authentication or multi-factor authentication, you can keep security breaches at bay.

Finally, using a CMS can make your website lag. This is because the CMS will store different elements separately and when a visitor clicks on your link, the CMS then has to assemble all those elements.

You can keep this lag low by implementing caching. This allows your CMS to store elements together and load faster.

Types of CMS

Are you chomping at the bit to set up your website on a CMS yet? Before you do, we want to help you understand the two main types of content management systems you can use.

There are open-source CMS and closed-source CMS. Open-source means there’s a free version available, usually with paid options.

Closed-source content management systems are typically proprietary in nature. You may have to pay licensing fees and development costs.

You may also have to pay higher hosting costs. The flip-side is you can get the highest level of website design customization with your own CMS.

Both CMS types work equally well for public content and in-house content like you’d find on an ECM.

Let’s take a closer look at the top three open-source CSM options.

Open-Source CMS

There are many different open-source CMS available, but we’re going to highlight the three of them that dominate the internet. We’ll start with Drupal.

Drupal is one of the most complicated of the three. It can, therefore, be the most costly despite being open-source because you should probably hire a web designer to get your site up and running on Drupal.

There are themes, but they’re limited and the theme system isn’t easy for novices to use. That said, Drupal has a massive online community which provides support content.

In addition to an active online community, Drupal hosts several face-to-face events where you can meet with developers and swap ideas. Due to the complexity of this CMS, it may be too much for more simple sites.

Joomla is more of a middle-of-the-road CMS in that it’s not as complicated as Drupal, but not quite as novice-friendly as you’ll see our third open-source CMS is. Boasting a long history of development, Joomla can be customized with plugins and add-ons.

You won’t find as many high-quality themes, but through those add-ons, and with the help of a developer, you should be able to find a solution that meets your needs. Like the other open-source CMS on our list, Joomla is a powerful choice for both external and internal sites.

Finally, we come to our third open-source CMS, WordPress. This is the most user-friendly CMS you can find, which is one of the many reasons it powers so much of the internet.

WordPress offers a vast selection of free and premium themes, many of them optimized for SEO and mobile use. You can further customize these themes with plugins, and some may also allow you to edit the CSS.

CSS stands for cascading style sheet and allows developers to dictate how elements will appear on a website.

WordPress offers both hosted and self-hosted options depending on your needs and budget.

How Will You Manage Your Content?

Now you not only know the answer to the question, “What is a content management system?”, but you are now equipped with the knowledge necessary to choose how you’ll manage your content.

We’ve given you the CMS definition, talked about CMS software, and discussed how a CMS system can differ to meet your needs. But if you still have questions about how to implement your CMS and get your content launched–whether for visitors on the internet or for private users in your own organization–that’s only natural.