Overview of Content Management Systems - A Laymans Guide
Below is a brief introduction to content management systems. The page you are reading now has been produced in the content management system that runs this demo web site.
Many CMS Systems
There are plenty of great content management systems out there - Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal. They can do a multitude of things very well. However, within their power lies a complexity that confuses many people.
Uploading and Resizing Images
Features of Content Management Systems You can upload your images to the web site and then insert them into a web page. Some (but not all) content management systems will automatically resize your images when your image uploads. Bluefoot, the content management system that runs this website, allows you to choose a variety of resizing options.
Auto Creation of Menu Bar / Navigation System
A content management system will automatically update your website's menu bar as you create your pages i.e After you have saved a page and "published" it, a link will appear on your menu bar and that link will go to your web page.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
One of the Holy Grails of good web design. Basically what happens here is that your web site data is optimised to be attractive to search engines. The most important search engine to consider is Google.
The areas here are many - Meta tags, heading structures, key word distribution, search engine friendly URL's, back-linking are just some of the terms you will encounter in this area. The Bluefoot Content Management System that runs this website, allows for creation of custom web addresses that are both attractive to web site visitors and to Google:
Content Management Systems - Technical Description
Web content management system as described in Wikipedia
A Web Content Management System (WCMS) is a software system which provides website authoring and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage the site's content with relative ease.
Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Content is frequently, but not universally, stored as XML, to facilitate, reuse, and enable flexible presentation options.[1][2]
A presentation layer displays the content to Web-site visitors based on a set of templates. The templates are sometimes XSLT files.[3]
Most systems use server side caching boosting performance. This works best when the WCMS is not changed often but visits happen on a regular basis.[4]
Administration is typically done through browser-based interfaces, but some systems require the use of a fat client.
Unlike Web-site builders, a WCMS allows non-technical users to make changes to a website with little training. A WCMS typically requires an experienced coder to set up and add features, but is primarily a Web-site maintenance tool for non-technical administrators.[5]