What is a CMS?
A content management system (CMS) is software that makes it easy for non-techies to organize and manage web content.
That’s big, because it makes maintaining and updating a website simple and affordable.
Once upon a time updating a website meant passing off your polished and perfected writing to a programmer who would convert it into a mishmash of computer lingo, often unintentionally skewering some of the finer points of style and layout (”You wanted a new paragraph where?”). The process was slow and painful for everyone involved, not to mention expensive.
Nowadays, thanks to the advent of WYSIWYG editors (”What You See Is What You Get,” like the Bold and Italic functions in Microsoft Word) and content management systems, you don’t need a degree in computer science to update a website. If you can successfully send an e-mail, you can update a web page. Of course CMS’s can range from free, open source software to enormously expensive custom-designed solutions. Of course we recommend using WordPress, which is technically a blog system but can easily be used as a CMS to run websites.
A CMS is an enormous boost to the small business or organization that doesn’t have a massive tech budget.
It simplifies the process and puts the website back into the hands of content creators, allowing you to spend more time on what really matters—your content.
What’s WordPress?
WordPress is an open source blog software package that works exceptionally well as a content management system. It makes it easy for anyone to set up, manage and maintain a website—without having an advanced degree in geekery.
- First off, since WordPress is open source, it’s free. That’s always a bonus.
- Since it’s open source it also has a thriving community of developers constantly improving the software and creating plugins to expand the software.
- WordPress lets you create pages (stand alone content) and posts (time-driven content) to build out the content of your site.
- You can also easily manage your site’s look and feel with themes. These are custom designs for your site that control how everything is laid out and organized.
- The software is highly customizable, so you can use it for just about anything.
Learn more about how to get started building a WordPress-powered content management system.
