Content management system
A static website is built in HTML code and can only be updated by a trained web developer. In contrast, a website that uses a content management system (or CMS) can be edited, expanded and updated by regular users and administrators. There are 2 main benefits of using a CMS for your site:
• Content can be easily maintained which will help you achieve a fresher, content-rich site that ultimately delivers better results.
• Your website can be maintained by your existing staff which reduces the ongoing maintenance costs.
Most good content management systems work by organizing the text, images and files for your site within a database. Changes to your site can be made through a special database interface. Each page of your web site is then programmed to link to the CMS to retrieve the appropriate content for the page. Every time a page is visited it checks the database for its content, so any updates that are made to the CMS are immediately visible on your site. No special software is required for visitors to view a content managed web site because when the web server sends your web pages to the visitor they are sent as plain HTML, so it looks and works just like a static site.
A good CMS should not require you to install any special software on your computer and you should not need to learn HTML or other coding languages. Your CMS should allow you to use HTML (if you want to), to change fonts or layouts. Finally, but importantly, a good CMS will be fast, secure, simple and easy-to-use. |
