What is a CMS Website

What is a CMS Websites

What is CMS? Simply put, it is a web-based content management system (referred to as CMS). It allows you to organize and update your website content using just a web browser - without needing to know any of the technicalities behind the scenes, such as HTML (the language used to create web pages).

How Can a CMS Website Help My Business or Organization?

A content management website is extremely popular due to its ease-of-use and enormous flexibility. CMS products are under constant development, and have consistently managed to keep abreast of improvments in technology to provide one of the most robust, secure, and feature-rich online tools in existence!

Here are just a few of the many features that help you manage a powerful and dynamic site:

Document managers
Online appointment systems
eCommerce components
Extended user profiles
Forums
Media galleries
Events calendars
Page caching mechanism to improve performance on busy sites.
Advertising management (banners, etc).
Media (images, documents) upload and management.
Content display scheduling (set start and end times for automated delivery and ending dates)
Content syndication (RSS).
Search engine friendly (SEF) URL's.
Advanced and separate system administation (multiple users share the work of maintaining a site)
Basic visitor statistics.

Can a CMS site do what I need for MY Website?

Naturally, as with any piece of software, CMS sites have limitations. However, virtually any website feature can be incorporated into your site because CMS offers a way for developers to integrate new functionality seamlessly with the core system. Many developers have already released add-ons for many of the popular CMS programs like Joomla. There are 4 main types of add-ons for our CMS delivery: Templates, Modules, Plugins (previously called 'Mambots'), and Components.

Templates are themes that control the look and feel of your website. You can completely change the way your website looks without modifying any of your content, just by installing a different template. This is a great way to implement new branding designs within hours instead of weeks as with traditional html sites.

Modules are little windows of content that are usually placed around the edges of your site's pages, while the main content goes in the middle area. For example, menus are displayed in modules - usually at the top or left of the page, but they can go anywhere. Banners, google advertisements, copyright notices, calls to action, anything really, can go in a module - if you want it displayed in a discrete box of its own outside the main content area.

Plugins are little programs that are run immediately before the content of a page is rendered and sent to the browser. They are useful for replacing parts of your content - for example, if you want all occurrences of your company name to appear in a bold typeface, a plugin could be developed that would search and replace your company name with a bold version. Any time you need some dynamic piece of functionality to appear within a content item, you need a plugin.

Components are the biggest and most complex type of extension. They generally output their content in the main area of your web page, and usually have some administration features in the CMS back end as well. Components are very versatile, and allow you to add a wide range of features to your site, such as eCommerce, forums, events calendars, forms, etc.

So in a nutshell, our CMS developed web sites will likely fulfill most every need that you may have. And if we don't have a solution, we will gladly research, and work with, the CMS community to find and develop the perfect solution for you.

Web 2.0 is here