What is a CMS (Content Management System)?

Content managers have become an essential tool, where thousands of entrepreneurs, professionals, and specialists have become dependent on them, due to their easy management, surmountable learning curve, and professional finish.

Definition of CMS

It means Content Manager System or Content Management System, it is a software application that is used for the management of creation and modification of digital content.

In these development environments, they support multiple users in a collaborative environment, whereby integrating the management of documents, digital assets (photos, videos, voices,) and functions.

A little history

Between 1997 and 2002, many companies created their own custom, homemade CMS with existing technologies. Where they included basic modules and functions.

At the end of the 1990s, different software companies began to give importance to making life easier for users, giving them more control of the content or design they wanted within a web page without having as much programming knowledge.

Some CMS that emerged in this period are FileNet, StoryBuilder, Interwoven, Documentum, FatWire, FutureTense, and Inso.

From the early to mid-2000s the rise and impact of the web world were witnessed, driving the development of CMS, but based on the web world, called WCM (Web Content Management), representing “web content management”.

Saw the arrival of open source WCM, such as Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla. These platforms have well divided the back-end and front-end side of a website, allowing to handle functions, texts, images, and other files to store, display, and download.

Benefits of a CMS

Having a CMS is incredible, as it gives users more freedom to create spaces.

• Manage content easily, without having a professional knowledge.
• It facilitates the management of profiles, where they develop several roles that allow controlling the permissions without affecting each space.
• It allows the updating of content and information in a shorter time and life.
• It has a large number of components that facilitate the functions and interaction of the page.
• By managing it by the page owners themselves, you can reduce costs in content management.
• The learning curve can be below, but it all depends on the CMS to be used.

Disadvantages of a CMS

• By using modules and functions on top of each other, you can emboss the code, so there are some occasions it can affect how fast the page loads.
• If incompatible functions are used, without checking beforehand, it can influence and damage the page.

Types of CMS

The types of CMS, I am going to divide into 2 large groups: according to their use and commercial level.

According to its use

The use that can be given within this tool is HUGE, that is why your imagination and creativity is your only limitation since every day more and more tools are being incorporated, improving their interaction.

Within the use, you can create Blogs, E-commerce, Learning Spaces also known as LMS (Learning Management System), forums, landing pages, among others.

Commercial level

This means what is the nature of the space if it is open source or commercial.

Open Source: This type of CMS allows access to the source code of the program and allows it to be used without having to pay for it. Mostly these spaces have a large community that supports each other and develops new tools and templates every day.

Commercial: they are CMS developed by companies, where you must pay a kind of license for their use, an example of this is the WIX tool.

Most popular CMS

To know the most important CMS it is important to base ourselves on studies that reflect their growth and their positioning in the current market.

Most popular content management systems by W3Techs.com

WordPress

It is the most used CMS today, as you can see in the previous table, it is a tool that has the open-source and commercial version, the open-source is known as WordPress.org and the commercial WordPress.com; where both have their benefits and functions that allow improving the interaction between the platform developed with the users.

Joomla

It is a free and open CMS, they have great features and one of its great benefits is that it allows the development of high-performance platforms.

Although it is a CMS, its learning curve can be considered medium.

Drupal

It is a free CMS, it is one of the most robust tools that exist in the market, allowing it to handle a good volume of traffic with great performance, therefore its learning curve is medium-high since it is necessary to take an important time to learn about them.

Magento

It is a free CMS, highly recognized in the world of development of digital stores or electronic stores; since it has many benefits and is robust, having high security and incredible compatibility with business tools for managing administrative information.

Although the platform is free, there are many tools or internal functions that must be paid for to increase more functionalities.

Prestashop

Another favorite for the development of stores, it is free and you can create your store in less than you imagine, it has basic functions that allow you to have a complete administration of the digital store and it has functions that must be paid for if you want to access.

Another platform that you could see in the table and has been growing is Shopify, which is also an interesting tool for the development of online stores.

Basic functions that CMS have

The main features of the CMS are publication, indexing, search, retrieval, revision control, and access by roles.

This can vary depending on the tool you want to use.

• Publish content, quickly, and without any problem.
• They index the data that is published, where it can later be searched through keywords or attributes.
• It has control of any changes that it can generate in the platform, from the publication, elimination, etc. where you can know the moment and the user who has done it.
• Role management according to the assigned one, is limited to the corresponding functions.

Features to include

• SEO optimization tools.
• Drag and drop or drag and drop tools.
• Integrated and online help, including discussion boards.
• Group-based permission systems.
• Administration panel with support for multiple languages.
• Integrated audit logs.
• Captcha for security and avoiding Spam.

CMS FAQ

FREQUENT QUESTIONS

What is a CMS?

A content management system that organizes information and various visual aspects.

HOW DOES A CMS WORK?

A user incorporates content and information into the database through a GUI, which is obtained by template code and published as a web page.

HOW TO CHOOSE A CMS?

Consider the basic requirements or needs, for this, it is necessary to evaluate the audience, your objective, your budget, your growth vision, your own hosting in front of the cloud, and the user experience of the CMS.

Suitable templates for a CMS

The presentation of your space is vital since it is the public letter where you will receive your customers, in a few words they are the showcases of your space or store.

For this reason, the selection of a good updated, compatible template that has support in the first years of your website, you must choose it with caution and select the most appropriate and adapted to your needs.

One of the places that I use daily to acquire a template is Monster Template, where they have a great diversity that adapts to the most popular CMS and the areas you want to venture into.

Conclusion,

CMS is here to stay and there are more and more options where their main objective is to facilitate management and that the learning curve is less and less, allowing to increase the level of access to them and of course more diversity to create platforms that unite the brands to users; creating new habits of consumption, acquisition, purchase, and interaction.