Content Management System (CMS) - What, Why and Who

What is Content Management System (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) is any computer program which manages the content of one or more websites. Here content could refer to text, images, video, documents, digital copy of print media etc.

The below picture depicted a CMS in action:

Typically, in any CMS, Content Authors enter the content, Web Developer provides the template and these two are mixed to create a Web page presentation. This web page presentation is then published on server so as to server over internet/intranet.
The necessary Infrastructure Support is being provided by the IT department, that may be needed for installation, server configuration etc.

A CMS typically allows:

• Managing content of one or more website in a centralized System
• Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) operation on content  of website /s
• Changing content of the website/s without much technical knowledge or without understanding of the internals of infrastructure involved in deployment of website

The below picture depicted the high level tasks that a CMS in general is capable of doing

Why do we need Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS typically provide following advantages:

• The ability to add/update/delete content any time in a user friendly way
  You need not to sit on your computer, write complex code or anything of that sort, and then go through a complete deployment process of the page/code on the server to get you changes reflected. You can access the the CMS anywhere on the go typically over a Browser, change the content in it and publish it to the server directly.
• The ability to change content fast
  You are free to update the content directly on the Production  and avoid going through the process a typical release involves - Build, deployment on QA, QA Testing, deployment on Stage, UAT, deployment on Production etc.
• The ability to have a centralized control on content change
  You need not to worry about where about of various content that could have been used on multiple sites, and managing of them from different place, CMS will provide you a centralized place to manage all that at one place.
• The ability to categorized content and ability to assign it to different personnel
  The different type of content can be assigned to different type of content authors based on their permission with in the CMS system. These access rights can further be fine tune an categorized based on specific CMS package in use
• No deep technical knowledge and infrastructure details need to know
  A small training about basic tasks of CMS will enable you to manage most part of your website completely without any deep technical knowledge and without any knowledge about the infrastructure.
• Low dependency on IT department
  Since most common task related to the website management can be managed directly from the CMS; this reduces the dependency on IT department and/or web developers to a great extent. 

Who needs Content Management System (CMS)

A website needs Content Management System if:

• A same piece of content is being used repeatedly across the website
  Example: A promotional banner is being shown on multiple pages, A news is displayed on home page & news listing page etc.
• A same piece of content need to be shown on multiple media channel
  Example: A news shown on Website on PC and Mobile site in different layout
• A same piece of content need to be shown in multiple language
  Example: A news or Promotion shown in English and Hindi language
• A centralized control on content changes is needed
  Example: A news or Promotion need to be updated on all Regional Websites.
• An ever changing content, which needs to be shown on website in no time after the change
  Example: A news need to be shown immediately on website, A promotional offer need to be taken off from website etc.

Comments welcome...