What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
A Content Management System [CMS] is a software platform that allows its users to create, edit, archive, collaborate, monitor, publish, distribute and provide information. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) makes it user friendly to communicate with the database of a website.
HTML (the Hypertext Mark-up Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are used by websites to create and design their pages. They are two of the core components necessary for developing Web pages. HTML includes the page structure, the visual and audible layout CSS.
A CMS allows users to view, modify and update content to websites without any coding experience using a WYSIWYG interface, an acronym for “what you see is what you get.” Information entered in CMS software is stored in a database that provides a prototype for the web page. The page’s CSS is then able to control the output.
It has served up an alphabet soup of sorts in recent years, which is somewhat blurry at first, and difficult to decode. Nevertheless, there are some distinct differences when separating the wheat from the chaff concerning CMS, WSMS and ECM.
WCMS vs CMS vs EMS
Once you’ve become a bigger brand or company, it can be a little trickier to find the right applications for your business use case. So the question remains: you should use a WCMS or CMS?
What is CMS?
CMS: Content management is often viewed as a branch of WCMS and ECM. As noted above, CMS is software used to create, edit, manage, and move content out. A CMS works best with organized content, such as documents or database records, but can also be used to handle content such as video and audio files.
What is ECM?
ECM: An ECM[ enterprise content management] incorporates tools, such as software, with a plan to integrate the business processes of a company into its content. Structured and unstructured content can be handled there. An Enterprise Content Management System is when a company’s content policies, applications, tools and teams come together to effectively manage marketing.
What is WCMS?
WCMS: Many industry professionals find the Web content management system to be a branch of a CMS. There’s thin line between a WCMS and ECMS. The key differentiating factor is that a WCMS relates more to web content, whereas an ECMS refers to systematic business processes.
How Does a CMS Work?
A CMS allows users to access content from a dashboard or an internal user interface. A good number of CMS applications with one-click installs are available. It promotes and simplifies the use and navigation of a non-technical marketer. Most of the top-rated CMS systems are open source and free for smaller startups.
This means that you do not need to be professional with other CMS alphabet soup elements, namely JavaScript [ programming language widely used in web development ] HTML [ Hypertext Mark-up Language ] CSS [ Cascading Style Sheets ] PHP [ Personal Home Page or hypertext processor ] and MySQL [ an open source relational database management system based on the structure query language (SQL) ].
Creating a CMS website is similar to playing the plastic bricks from our childhood with Legos. You can choose which bricks to build your site work best. It allows you to write text and insert graphics and photographs directly from a control panel.
Websites are designed with Excel spreadsheet-like databases, with a stable, easy-to-use GUI. With more recent iterations, most CMS’s are managed and updated continuously as the site evolves.
There are numerous new choices for developing web applications on CMS. The typical WordPress choice is. WordPress is open source with multifaceted features, templates, themes, and plugins and takes no time to install and build live websites. WordPress is the de facto platform that is used by about 75 million websites. At the moment, it constitutes more than a quarter of all websites.
7 Must HAVE CMS Features
1. Security
The Internet remains a challenging environment. Security threats are far too easy to jump on a regular CMS with little to protect data about your business. Today hackers may essentially take control of the look, sound and content of websites.
WordPress uncovered a major vulnerability in 2017 which compromised thousands of websites of its users. Although WordPress notified users of the security breach, they remained in jeopardy until companies took it upon themselves to make the appropriate improvements. The hazard has led users of the website to look for alternative content management systems. The right WCMS will take care of you with the security updates. Today it is more important than ever that a service be found that automatically pushes updates when vulnerabilities occur.
Content creators and publishers should also find platforms that provide their consumers with protection from DDoS attacks, and provide two-factor authentication to add additional security layers.
2. Multilingual Functionality
TranslateMedia states that more than 75 percent of Internet users do not communicate in English and need content to be translated into or ‘ localized ‘ their native language. Therefore, global companies that represent international clients need to have several versions on their websites.
So, to meet these goals, your CMS of choice should support the following multilingual capabilities:
- Site architecture for global markets and languages. This will allow you to generate country sites that need to be translate locally, regionally or globally.
- Ability to import/export text as XML or other standard formats. This will make working with your translation provider easier by allowing you to import and export text in a standardized format.
- Full Unicode support. This ensures your website can display languages that require characters versus an English alphabet, such as Japanese or Arabic.
3. Distributing Content
Addressing all digital touch-points in today’s ever-changing contact environment creates a layer of protection and omnichannel. Going beyond handheld devices, software for the Internet of Things[ IoT], Augmented Reality[ AR], Artificial Intelligence[ AI] and Virtual Reality[ VR] needs to be properly formatted.
With all these product variables continuously in effect, it is up to the brands to remain proactively ahead of the curve to provide omnichannel customer service as well. The most direct way to do this is by using headless CMS or its more user-friendly hybrid version call decouple CMS, which is prefer by marketing team companies.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
An essential component of CMS, WCMS and ECMS is Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Watch has defined the most important elements to search for when using SEO-friendly eyes to find CMS:
- Must be able to customize page titles & meta-data
- Drop-down navigation needs to built into the CSS
- Assuring SEO-friendly URL
- Consolidate duplicate URLs with a rel=canonical tag
- Should have a XML Sitemap Creation Function
- Shall not use or rely on frames for content display
- Should include 301 Redirects, not 302
- Supports pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
- Mandatory to have alt tags
- Include breadcrumb navigation
- Supports fast page load times
5. Fast Customer Support
Gartner Peer Insights is a great resource to assess whether current or past customers have enjoyed working for a software company with customer service. You can also access CMS reviews of Zesty.io on Gartner Peer Insights. The customer satisfaction decides the best Web Content Management Software products. Gartner Peer Insights lets the consumer access client analysis, job description, and ranking. Seek user reviews which will give your team peace of mind before you purchase.
6. Responsive Mobile
To be “mobile-friendly,” users don’t need a “mobile-version” of their website. The correct CMS will adapt the existing website to any computer or IoT that has responsive design. This approach addresses the need to provide, customize and tailor the viewing experience according to the device’s strengths and constraints and its screen size.
CSS3 is the technology which you use to create responsive design. This is the latest refinement of the vocabulary of the Cascading Style Sheets that built on CSS2, its preceding version. CSS3 offers much long-awaited creativity, such as rounded corners, transitions, shadows and new multi-column and grid layouts. Responsive design often optimizes a website with templates for drag-and-drop and other responsive guidelines.
7. Seamless Integrations
The content creation functioned in silos in the early days of CMS. Mobile CMS today demands seamless collaboration and WYSIWYG. It needs to component-based so that any publisher can provide every screen with a rich, touch-enabled experience. Easy integration now allows monetization to go native and reside within the CMS.
