What's a 'Content Management System?' - Part Two

Producing content for the Web, at least in terms of technology, usually entails four stages: content creation, content management, publishing and archiving.

Content Creation – Most CMS products are Web-based. To access the CMS, a user goes online and logs in to an entry screen that may look like a friendly, easy-to-use database. This database represents the “back-end” of a CMS where documents, images, information, etc., are collected and organized. Meanwhile, the “front-end” refers to the simple graphics and buttons that guide your staff as to where to enter that text, photos, etc. (The front-end is also known as the “user interface” or “UI.”) Here, text, photos, audio and video can easily be entered, edited and filed for later use. Many CMS products offer an easy-to-use WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) editor, along with buttons to enable hyperlinks, formatting and more.

In the best case, users are able to edit text just as they would in a word processing software program, such as Microsoft Word. But they are also able to easily access and edit the HTML (or other) code. Some CMS products also allow multiple users to track changes to a document and follow its workflow.

Content Management – After content has been created, it is critical that others can also access and manipulate the material. Depending on the system, that content may be labeled as a story page, a content page, a “detail” page, a story, a digital asset, etc.

Publishing – After all pages have been created and edited to satisfaction, they need to be brought out of the storage area and published to the Web. Some content management systems accomplish this automatically, while other CMS vendors rely on third-party synching applications to make your changes visible on the Internet.

In addition, many CMS vendors offer the ability to publish and synch to the Web at specified dates and times. You can publish as you go, when the last user has saved changes. Or you can publish, for example, every Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time or every weekday at 2 a.m.

Archiving – One of the most important features of a CMS solution is the automated archiving process. After a page has been published, it should be stored in a central repository for later access. Visitors to your Web site should have easy access to older pages via search within your site or via a search engine, such as Google.

You may need to archive your content based on a specific set of parameters. For example, you may want to list all of your content by date, or by topic area, or by author. Various options are available depending on the CMS vendor.

In my next column: Important things to consider when thinking about content management systems.

To read What's a 'Content Management System'? - Part 1, click here.

Amy Webb is a digital media consultant and head of Webbmedia Group, LLC. She has also launched Knowledgewebb, a new website for multimedia training. You can also follow Amy on Twitter and delicious. Webbmedia Group is a vendor-neutral company. Any opinions expressed about products or services are formed after testing, research and interviews. Neither Amy Webb nor Webbmedia Group or its employees receives any financial or other benefits from vendors. A portion of the What's a Content Management Lesson has been adapted for this column with permission. For the full article, please click here.