A Content Management System (CMS) is a kind of software that helps people, well, manage content. For our purposes, I am focusing on web CMS’s, systems that make it easy (in theory anyway) for users to post content to a website using relatively simple browser interfaces. WordPress, the system we are using for our course weblog, is a CMS.
Material users post to a CMS is collected and sorted by an online database, and it is presented using a system of templates (what WordPress and some other systems refer to as “Themes”) that control the way the website looks.
For online publishers (us), the advantages of using a web CMS include simplified posting, storage, and retrieval of information; relatively easy maintenance, and ease of access for users. In short, once set up, the CMS makes it possible for people to create, edit, or use information online without worrying too much about layout, coding, and other time- and energy-consuming details.
CMS’s range from simple to very complex and can cost anywhere from nothing to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obviously for our purposes we prefer easy and cheap. But even given that requirement, there are still lots of systems to choose from and lots of things to think about in making a choice of systems.
Free systems have their limitations, of course, but lots of people find they meet their needs. The free hosted WordPress system we use, for example, has a fair amount of features, but does not allow editing of the theme unless you are willing to pay for the privilege.
If you have a web server account (or perhaps a dedicated server), you can download WordPress software and set up your own system that is much more flexible. Of course, that costs money and takes a bit more effort.
Blogging services and software provide enough features to meet many people’s publishing needs (including many journalists and organizations). For example, look at these sites, run with WordPress software (though they are hosted elsewhere):
Mindy McAdams uses the free Blogger system for her Teaching Online Journalism weblog.
Drupal is a somewhat more complex CMS, though like WordPress it is also available for free download. Some sites using Drupal are:
Other CMS-using projects worth looking at:
When thinking what CMS to use, consider:
- What resources do you have? (Money, skills, time, etc.)
- What do you want to accomplish right now, and what are your long-term goals?
- Which systems have a good balance in terms of the resources they require and the possibilities they deliver?
- Look long and hard at other sites (look at what they do and try to find out how they do it, including the tools they use)
OpenSourceCMS is a very useful site that lets visitors “test-drive” open source (“free”) CMS’s. It is an excellent resource.
Online Journalism Review has some good articles related to CMS’s (see especially, “Time to Check: Are You Using the Right Blogging Tool?”), website design and newspaper blogs. (Browse their other resources as well.)
A more dense article is OpenAdvantage’s review of open source CMS’s.
This is just a start. There is lots more to learn about Content Management Systems. But the good news is that it is possible to begin relatively simply. Probably the best thing to do is to look around and see what other people are doing, and to try out a few systems and see what they can do.
-Frederick Emrich
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