March 25th 2009 | Category: In order to entice internet users to visit to your website, you must post new content frequently. Web content can consist of text, images, video, audio. Maintaining and organizing that content becomes challenging with the growth of your website.
Problem: Managing web content
Let’s be frank…Content management can be a pain in the !#$%, but it happens to be one of the most important responsibilities of a website owner, administrator, or publisher. Thankfully, web developers have constructed tools to aid in the management of your web content. I find it very important to have the right tools incorporated from the beginning to manage website content.
Solution: Web content management system
A web content management system (WCMS) will solve your content mess by separating it from visual presentation. Non-technical individuals can now easily create, edit, publish, organize, and remove web content with a user-friendly interface. Included, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor provides tools similar to a word processor which allows you to edit & format text, construct tables, insert images and video, etc.
I have selected a few open source web CMSs such as Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, Expression Engine, SilverStripe, ModXCMS to share with you. Usually Joomla! and Wordpress are sufficient enough to carry out most content management tasks right out of the box but there might be a unique requirement that will require a developer to create a custom add-on or find a more suitable WCMS.
Here is a summerized list of all the great stuff a web content management system can do for your website:
- Manage Content – add, edit, organize, remove static and dynamic content
- Manage Media – manage image, video, and audio media
- Manage Users – manage website users access and privileges
- Automated Templates – a design template will be applied automatically to new content
- Friendly UI – user friendly interface for non-technical individuals
- Regular Updates – frequently updated for security and web standards
- Document Management – edit and organize pages from creation, revision, publication, archive and deletion
- Content Visualization – see what the content looks like on the website before its published
- Highly Extensible – Integrate components, modules, and plugins with ease
- Huge Community – Maintained and developed by thousands of users
WCM systems are perfect for these types of websites and web applications:
- Social networks
- E-Commerce systems
- Product catalogs
- Reservation systems
- Property management
- Directories
- Blogs and online news
- Much more…
Integration and Customization
As a web designer, I always integrate a CMS with every website I develop for my clients. This allows them to edit content on their own without having to hire me. By using an open source solution, I have the benefit of accessing the source code and editing it at will. Most CMS solutions provide powerful application framework to customize the web CMS to meet my client’s specific functional needs. This framework will also allow me to develop any customized extension to accomplish any task.
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