Content Management describes the process of easily creating, managing and publishing online content with neither programming nor technical skills.

What is a CMS?

Content Management describes the process of easily creating, managing and publishing online content with neither programming nor technical skills.

Easy and effective content management is achieved through the deployment of a Content Management System (CMS) that is either custom built or

purchased as an off-the-shelf solution. However, without a well defined content plan, evaluating and choosing a CMS may prove disastrous.

The basic idea behind a Web Content Management System (CMS) is to separate the management of content from design. Page designs are stored

in templates while the content may be stored in a database or separate files. When a user requests a web page, the parts are combined to produce

a standard HTML page. The resultant web page may include content from multiple sources. For instance, a page describing a workshop might have,

as a sidebar, a list of all the other workshops on this year along with the standard navigation and title bar at the top.

Components of a CMS

A CMS usually has the following components:

. Document templates
. A scripting language and/or a markup language
. Integration with a database

CMS systems offer support for programming languages like Perl, Java, and Python along with integration into a backend database. The inclusion of

content is controlled by the use of special tags in pages. These tags are often unique to a CMS. There is usually support for languages such as

Python, Perl, or Java for more complex operations.

Criteria behind evaluating a CMS

Simplification of:

. Site management
. Site development
. Publication information to the website?

Scalability and Flexibility

. Ability to accept documents converted to HTML
. Ease of uploading and using images in documents
. Programming and scripting languages supported
. Support for a range of databases

These requirements and others must be identified prior to evaluating any CMS. Once these are documented, specific evaluation criteria and a

content management plan can be developed for evaluating different vendors and systems.

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