Articles, Information, Resources

A website content management system is used to publish a wide range of content. These can be simple pages, complex pages dynamic information sourced from databases, training materials, online manuals, and general business documents. The websites can range from large ecommerce sites to personal blogs, from school lessons to corporate sites. There can be thousands of pages with extensive linking between pages.

The first thing to do in selecting a website content management system is to ask yourself about your goals and needs. Obviously there can be no single best list of requirements which can cover everybody's needs and goals. Every organization or person is going to have unique requirements.

In order to ease the process, the prerequisites can be put in to the following categories, creating, managing, publishing and presenting content as well as contract and business. These steps show every aspect of a website content management system from building the actual content to displaying it to users.

Content creation is the functionality required by the authors who are going to create the material that is going to show up in the website. For a cms to be successful, it must be easy to create and maintain content. The core of the system is content management, which is usually a central repository, supported by a range of tools for manipulating and managing the content. The key parameters here are version control & archiving, workflow, security, integration with external systems, and reporting.

The publishing engine takes the content stored in the repository, and generates the final pages. Key requirements include stylesheets and page templates. It may be required to support multiple formats such as html, print, pdf, wap, etc. Personalization and usage statistics are going to be needed on large sites.

Content presentation is another important aspect that must not be neglected. The appearance and layout of the web pages will be dependent upon decisions made on this facet. To provide the most value to your users, the page presentation must meet certain criteria. They are as follows: usability, accessibility, cross-browser support, speed, navigation and metadata.

Contract and business is the final requirement. It covers project management and business procedures when the system is executed by a third party or vendor. When the system is turned over to another party, issue such as the use of cms, required operation and maintenance skills, documentation, hardware/software or database resource requirements, cost, scalability etc. will need to be addressed.

A website content management system is often crucial to the popularity of the website that it helps creates. Millions of dollars may depend on the website in the case of complex enterprise system. Therefore, it is imperative that the website content management system meets the neccessay needs of the website. Addressing the goals and necessities remains the most important task, and all persons involved should perform this job beforehand.