Content Management System CMS

A Content Management System is essential, as it is a web application that makes the authoring and delivery of content easy. You no longer need to have separate software to update your site content, as you can easily make changes in website content with an Internet connection. The system facilitates users in building, arranging and maintaining content rich websites with efficiency. Streamlining the web publishing process, content management systems eliminate the need for costly site maintenance, empowering you to manage the content by yourself. The need f or programming or HTML knowledge is nullified, as you can easily update content on the website without changing its design. Hence, a content management system is an ideal solution for businesses who wish to maintain their own websites.   CEBITCO is very experienced in providing successful web maintenance services. Our rich experience has made it possible for us to deliver a supreme quality web content management system that is par excellence. We understand your need to have control over your website. CEBITCO provides all of the administrative tools required for the maintenance of your website, and also simplifies your ability to update news, press releases, copy changes and price changes by yourself.

Challenges of developing and maintaining a static HTML website

Without the separation of code and content, many aspects of managing a static HTML site are difficult. It is complicated to establish the 'look' of a site, and not easy to change that look once set. Searching for information on a site, even one with a limited number of pages, is an inaccurate, time-consuming task. It is impractical to collaborate on pages with colleagues unless additional administrative (FTP) accounts are configured or access codes are shared;both scenarios present a security risk.

For many people, HTML editing programs like FrontPage and DreamWeaver present a better approach to website design, implementation, and maintenance. These programs offer tools for defining a site-wide 'look' using site templates, as well as additional features to make it easier to create and edit static HTML pages. However, even when using these tools, adding or modifying content still requires a combination of writing and coding, which can be tricky and time consuming difficult to accomplish for anyone with lower than moderate technical skills.

For example typical publication cycle for a static HTML site might follow this pattern: An article is written;then passed to the web maintainer who creates a new page (following the site's design) either from a template or from scratch. The article is converted to HTML code and pasted into the new page;which, depending on the maintainer's workload may take several hours or more to be posted on the website. The new page is uploaded to the website and then manually linked to other pages as necessary, with related pages updated as necessary. That's a lot of time and a lot of work.

In a limited number of contexts, static HTML may be quite suitable for a website. If the content on the site does not get updated frequently, is updated by a limited number of individuals, does not need to be searchable, does not require pleasant presentation, and if there is a technical individual who is willing to edit HTML and download &upload changes, you may not need the advanced features of a Content Management System. However, before you put this book down and walk away, understand this: on the same hardware that runs your static HTML site, you can have a full-featured, easy-to-use Content Management System that makes updating content much easier and allows a huge variety of advanced features that simply were not available with static HTML sites.

This represents a glance toward the past -- or maybe this is a look at the way you're currently doing things, and you have found yourself with too much data to manage effectively. But there is a better way. A way that will allow you create and present meaningful content on your website without downloading, coding, and uploading -- from anywhere on the Internet. A way that will allow advanced features -- features like site-wide searches, user accounts, private messages, and much more -- features that are simply not possible with static HTML.

A Content Management System could be the solution to your problems.

The answer to all the wasted time and effort of maintaining static HTML websites is to use a Content Management System. Static HTML was insufficient for the management of content on even a modest website;it was clearly too much data and too much work. Though HTML editing tools streamlined the procedure for maintaining a static HTML site, a better method of data management was necessary.

Web technology unveiled new competitive scenarios for companies: improved customer interaction, better business-to-business communication, and a more vibrant distribution of internal information. Today, many companies are turning to the web as a new playing field for innovation;tapping a wide variety of content and delivering it instantly to users around the globe. Some of the key goals of a Content Management System (CMS) are to provide users with personalized, transparent access to relevant information inside and outside of the organization;and to allow authors to easily contribute information to the knowledge base by managing content in a reliable, secure, and dependable way.

Dynamic Content Management as the way of the future

Content Management Systems allow content to be handled and updated dynamically and makes it easy for non-technical people to create and modify content. What is 'dynamic content'? Dynamic content is content that may change frequently, is separated from the display (HTML) code, and is made into an 'element' that can be manipulated by the Content Management System. Dynamic content elements are usually stored in a database which is running the website.

Good Content Management Systems are designed so that nearly anyone can publish, browse, and revise information without knowing much more than how to use a browser or a word processor. The technical details are hidden from site users, thus eliminating their need to learn about software programming, HTML, network protocols, or how and where to publish and retrieve files to work on them. With a click of a button, authorized users can contribute any content to areas of the site to which they have been granted access.

Compared with static HTML, Content Management Systems:

• Separate code from content making it easier to focus on content
• Offer a consistent, non-technical, easy-to-use interface for both users and administrators. Content contributors log into a secure area of the website, enter the date, title, and body of their news submission, and click submit, and the news article is published to the website with no hassle.
• The entire look and feel of a website can be changed very easily. Some CMS packages even allow users to customize the way they see a website -- everything from language to colors to the on-screen placement of features.
• Are feature-rich, and support additional, specialized features forums, galleries, live chat boards, private messaging, local weather, and more.
• Are searchable because they rely on a database. This feature alone makes CMS an exceptional choice when compared to static HTML.
• Allow for community involvement and collaboration. While CMS-based sites can be run effectively by one person, the community can easily comment on a website's content without requiring special access.
• Gives administrators complete control over what each user or group of users can do within a web site. Administrators can control access to sections of a site, and assign user privileges and permissions to individuals or groups as we'll see in Chapter XX.

Once users have made the transition to a CMS, they will no longer feel incapacitated and unable to contribute to the website community. Often, the availability of all the new features provided by a CMS can be intimidating at first, and the learning curve can appear rather steep when compared to a static HTML page because while a static HTML page does not allow community involvement, CMS readily welcome it. CMS managed sites are simply so much easier to maintain than static HTML sites. To update a CMS site, all you need to do is surf to it and click on links to update the site. So, if you know how to surf the 'Net, you can maintain the site;very little other work is necessary!

So far in this discussion, we have discussed only the most basic functions of a CMS, but there are hundreds of different functions available in an advanced Content Management System like VANDA Portal. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to learn the main functions, ignoring the rest of the features until you need to use them. This is another advantage of using a CMS instead of ordinary HTML pages: the advanced functionality allows users to search the site, post on forums, leave user information which is easily manageable -- in short, anything that can be done with advanced database management.

A CMS implementation provides a win-win solution for business end-users, webmasters, and business management. It provides a complete environment that brings the power of distributed content management down to the average end-user, while at the same time addressing the most important requirements of the IT department, webmasters, and business management to provide a secure, fast, and effective portal;however commercial CMS packages (like Microsoft Content Management Server, Vignette, Stellent, and Obtree) can be prohibitively expensive. A quick internet search for commercial CMS packages reveals prices ranging from less than $99 through hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fortunately, there are several Open Source Software CMS solutions that cost very little or are completely free to use. Vanda Portal is a robust, free Content Management System that runs on all platforms that support the PHP scripting language, a web server, and a relational database management system (RDBMS).

Open Source software is software which may be freely distributed and whose programming code is available and also modifiable by anyone, within the terms of a particular license.

The basic idea behind Open Source Software is very simple: When programmers can study, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, that software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, and people fix bugs. These modifications can be folded back into the development community, benefiting everyone. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slower pace of conventional software development, may seem astonishing.

And you guessed it: the CEBITCO Portal Content Management System and all the pieces of software required to make it work are Open Source!