CMS - Content Management Software
Visitors please note CMSinfusion Software created by Jeremy
Gislason and Simon Hodgkinson is now called MemberSpeed - To find
out more about this powerful membership and content management
software please visit
MemberSpeed.com
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May Want to Check Out:
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tired of dealing with a hodge-podge of incompatible software
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ButterflyMarketing.com
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What Is A Content Management System
According to Wikipedia, a content management system (CMS) is
“a document centric collaborative application for
managing documents and other content. A CMS is often a web
application and often it is used as a method of managing web
sites and web content.”
Content management can be viewed as the new term for
publishing. You can use content management systems to create a
simple personal homepage, or build a complex business web
application. Here are just some of the ways content management
systems are being used today:
- E-commerce sites, e.g., product catalog websites
Well, actually one could say that blogging platforms like
Blogger and Wordpress are exemplary models of what content
management systems are. If you’re a blogger, chances are
that you’re already using a content management system. If
you’ve yet to get your hands dirty with blogging, go ahead
and signup for a free account with Blogger. This will give you a
good idea of what a content management system is. Or better yet,
download the hugely popular Wordpress script to your host server
and experiment with this content management system.
A content management system provides you with web templates
and your own admin panel for the sole purpose of managing all
aspects of your blog, or website. With Wordpress or Blogger for
example, you just login to your admin panel and you’re free
to choose a design for your site, add, edit, delete and publish
content, or upload images, videos and audio for your visitors to
view, or download. But, that’s not where the real power of
a content management system lies. The real fun starts when you
begin adding modules, more popularly known as plugins to your
CMS.
Plugins are basically add-ons, or extensions that expand the
functionalities of your CMS. Say for instance, you’re
planning on launching a membership site. Having to hire a Web
designer and a software developer is going to set you back at
least a couple of thousand dollars. Enter the content management
system. You download the CMS script to your server and search
for an appropriate plugin to add membership functionalities to
your site. That’s all there is to it.
The possibilities of using a CMS to run any aspect of your
online business are endless, as long as the appropriate plugins
are available. This is probably why open source content
management systems are fast gaining traction with so many online
users. The plugins are created and made available for free by
these communities, so that everyone can benefit.
If you’re using Wordpress right now, you know what
we’re talking about. For example, Internet marketers
understand the importance of SEO, and those using Wordpress blogs
make use of plugins to rank highly in search engines.
Content management systems were created to eliminate the
laborious process of hiring Web designers and software developers
for accomplishing your everyday online business operations.
It’s a one-size-fits-all solution for small businesses and
dare we say, even large corporations. If you can work a simple
word processor, then content management systems are for you.
It’s just the smartest way to publish and manage content in
an era where content has been declared king.
History Of The Content Management System
Many Internet marketers tend to get scared off by the term
content management system as it sounds complicated and very
expensive. In a way, they are right because once upon a time, it
was very expensive to purchase a content management system. It
also required an entire IT department to manage it, but
fortunately, this is not the case anymore.
Publishing content dates back to hundreds of years ago and
content management is quite simply the new name for publishing.
If we could teleport ourselves back to the year the printing
press was first invented, you’ll probably see how
cumbersome and complex it was to have a single document
published.
Fast forward to the year Tim Berners Lee introduced the World
Wide Web to the world, and you’ll understand that
publishing has morphed into a whole new form. HTML established
itself as a language used to write web pages. In other words,
HTML is a publishing language. Web clients and web servers then
helped spread the use of HTML.
However, as the Internet continued to develop, programmers and
website developers found that HTML was too static. If they
needed to change the contents of a webpage, they had to modify
the contents on their PC and upload the changes to the server.
This was a tedious and time-consuming process, not to mention, a
very expensive process too. Imagine a business site that had
hundreds of pages of content on their site. To edit all those
pages truly required the expertise of an IT department.
It wasn’t until Java applets were introduced that
businesses were able to develop new content-based models based
around these applets. The airlines industry started using Java
applets to introduce online bookings and reservations.
Things really took a turn for the better for Web publishers
when a scripting language called PHP was introduced. It worked
really well with MySQL databases and had no problems operating on
Linux and Apache servers. The acronym LAMP was coined to mean,
Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP and it was used to run dynamic
websites and servers.
LAMP had signaled the era of online communities, e-commerce
sites and forums. Businesses were now in a creative rush to use
these latest technologies to develop interactive sites. Mind
you, these were all happening in the 90s. Because PHP had such a
wide reach of users and programmers, web developers were working
towards developing dynamic websites with PHP.
Businesses had begun to realize that PHP had a huge potential
for programming proprietary applications. Its advantages
were:
- PHP was simple to install
- PHP was independent of hardware and operating systems
Having such advantages, PHP developers and programmers were
quick to capitalize on them by developing better publishing and
content management platforms. The result of this is what we know
today to be content management systems.
We’ve come a long way since the first printing press,
and what once required an entire IT department to do, can now be
accomplished by one person sitting at home using the humble
content management system.
The Future of Content Management Systems
As you can probably already tell, content management systems
have reached the stage of being a commodity that is highly in
demand. The proof is in the number of competing products that
are on the market today and the low prices that these high-end
content management systems are currently being offered at. Not
too long ago, these systems were sold at $500,000 and above.
Today, these systems can be purchased at a much more affordable
price of around $5,000 and less.
So, why is there such a strong demand for content management
systems? There are a number of reasons for it, but mainly
because more consumers are becoming publishers and the growing
number of Web users turned online entrepreneurs who are seeking
ways to managing their content output. With so much content
being published every day and at such an accelerated pace, the
demand for content management systems continue to grow.
These consumers turned publishers, from college kids to baby
boomers, usually don’t have the budget or don’t want
to spend a dime on Web designers, or software programmers to
build their websites. They don’t want to spend an arm and
a leg just to have someone else update their websites.
What they do want is to have control over their content and
the freedom to update their sites as frequently as they wish.
They want to be able to publish their thoughts as soon as it hits
them. Online businesses share this same desire - to have control
over their content, to have freedom to update their sites
whenever needed and to publish their content in a flash. Content
management systems help them achieve this, effortlessly.
All these facts seem to point to one thing; that content
management systems are here to stay. Any tool that is
cost-effective and helps grow a business is assured of a bright
future. Content management systems fall under this category.
Think about it. By using a content management system, online
entrepreneurs can:
- Save time and expend their efforts on marketing their
business
- Exercise full authority over their content without extra
costs
Content management system developers know that demand has been
steadily rising and here’s what you can look forward to in
future content management systems:
- Reuse existing content – Content
management systems will offer features to restructure existing
content to output completely new ones. Internet marketers will
find this particularly useful, especially when using PLR
articles. Future content management systems will be smart enough
to modify existing content to create new ones that will seem as
though it had been crafted by a human.
- Integration – Future content management
systems will be compatible with more popular online applications
for a faster and better user experience. There will also be far
better integration with external applications to improve content
aggregation and syndication.
- Faster content creation – Present content
management systems still pose quite a steep learning curve for
many online publishers. Future content management systems aim to
do eradicate this problem with a quicker way to create and
publish your work.
- Improved communication – Collaboration is
huge on the Internet and future content management systems will
seek to improve business and client communications, as well as
team communications. There is potential for integration with
VOIP systems and online screen sharing applications as well.
There’s a lot to look forward to where content
management systems are concerned. If you’re running a
home-based business, using a content management system is a
must. You’ll have the power of an IT department at your
disposal, without the hefty price tag.
More information about MemberSpeed:
If you’re looking for the ultimate membership and
content management system visit the MemberSpeed site and see what
we can do for your business
MemberSpeed.com