Content Management Systems

At the risk of stating the obvious, it could be said that Content Management Systems are quite simply - a system that manages content. In another words, "A Content Management Systems are tools that enable a variety of (centralized) technical and (de-centralized) non technical staff to create, edit, manage and finally publish a variety of content (such as text, graphics, video etc), whilst being constrained by a centralized set of rules, process and workflows that ensure a coherent, validated website appearance."

If you are running a web site without Content Management Systems, you will come to the point where your eBusiness is no longer sustainable because you cannot update your site reliably or quickly enough. Many sites are operated by a team distributed between offices, companies or even countries and notifying a participant of an assigned task becomes more complicated than calling across the room. 

The Content Management Systems could notify a participant by email, by SMS (mobile phone text messaging), by fax or even by auto-generated letter. Because all the major tools have a web interface, participants can perform their task and view its results from anywhere with web access. And with sensible Content Management Systems security model, you can be sure that only authorized people can perform authorized tasks. 

With the help of Content Management Systems, you can specify dates and times for the content to go live and be archived or removed, along with the contents target audience segments. You can also impose review dates to ensure that information is not simply left on the site to rot until a new product replaces it. The responsible area will need to rubberstamp the content as still valid, commission a replacement or archive/delete it. If content is removed or archived, the Content Management Systems will ensure that the remaining content is still structurally consistent, without leaving orphaned links to the deleted asset. 

When you have a Content Management Systems, you suddenly have a tremendous advantage in the time it takes to react to market intelligence. You can write, edit and publish updates in a matter of minutes without suffering from "Web Master Bottleneck". If your product globally propagates a virus, updates at this pace could be essential. 

Content Management Systems maintain the site’s structure, content and visual presentation in separate layers and will pour your content and its structure into a few visual templates. So that, you take the decision that the visual design isn't working on a Monday morning, and can have a new design implemented by Wednesday. 

Selecting and implementing Content Management Systems (CMS) will be one of the largest IT projects tackled by many organizations. With costs running into the millions of dollars, it is vital that the right Content Management Systems package be selected. 

What content do you have, and where is it going? 
Think for a moment about all the content assets that you need to manage. On your site, you might have: 

· Your products' specifications, prices and benefits. 
· Product illustrations 
· Production information 
· Product categories 
· Special promotions 
· Terms and Conditions 
· Site navigation links 
· Availability 
· Support information 
· Developer features 
· Press releases 
· Jobs 
· Office addresses, maps and directions. 
· Logos, photographs and diagrams

Here are some features which is necessary for a good Content Management Systems:
· No more accidents
· Make sure a record is made of that submission 
· Allow editors to easily proof, publish content 
· Allow writers to easily submit content 
· Make sure content layout fits with current design 
· You want to be able to do all this without having to mess with any HTML, and as easily as possible. There are definitely packages out there already that allow you to do such functions, and much more. 
· With Content Management Systems, it becomes very difficult for content assets to be on the site accidentally. Any updates must pass through commissioning, creation and one or more predefined signoff steps before the system will publish it. The resulting audit trail provides accountability for each action.