DRAFT!
For now, stolen from Wikipedia and tincan
A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system used to assist its users in the process of content management. CMS facilitates the organization, control, and publication of a large body of documents and other content, such as images and multimedia resources. A CMS often facilitates the collaborative creation of documents. A web content management system is a content management system with additional features to ease the tasks required to publish web content to Web sites.
Web Content management systems are often used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. A content management system may support the following features:
- Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
- Identification of all key users and their content management roles
- The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to different content categories or types.
- Definition of the content workflow tasks, often coupled with event messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in content.
- The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a single instance of content.
- The ability to publish the content to a repository to support access to the content. Increasingly, the repository is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates enterprise search and retrieval.
- Some content management systems allow the textual aspect of content to be separated to some extent from formatting. For example the CMS may automatically set default colour, fonts, or layout.
A content management system (CMS) is used to simplify the maintenance of content-rich websites, allowing content to be directly added, updated and deleted by non-technical staff. A content management system (CMS) separates content from design, ensuring consistency in design, preservation of brand identity, and making it easier to reuse content. By storing all data in one place and controlling user access privileges and workflow you will allow a greater number of people to participate in the development of your organisations’ website solution.
As the size and complexity of websites increases, it is important that well delivered and managed content management ensures the process of updating, revising and redesigning your site does not become a burden. This gives you a strong and flexible foundation to build for the future, and allows you to consider other areas of web technology that you thought prohibitive. By freeing you from the technical responsibility of your website solution you are able to turn your attention to building audiences and attracting users by providing a greater range of functionality and features.
