A content management system (CMS) is critical key for almost every website and
intranet system success, and yet many organisations are not familiar with this technology.
What is a Content Management System?
A content management system (often shortened to CMS) is a system used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation.
CMSs allow end-users (typically authors of some sort) to provide new content in the form of articles.
The articles are typically entered as plain text, perhaps with markup to indicate where other resources (such as pictures) should be placed.
The system then uses rules to style the article, which separates the display from the content, which has a number of advantages when trying to get many articles to conform to a consistent "look and feel".
The system then adds the articles to a larger collection for publishing.
More recently the term has been associated almost entirely with programs for editing web sites. Such systems span a wide variety of needs, from small systems with almost no workflow for small user-groups and such, to large database-based systems for running large, very active web sites such as those for a newspaper.
Why use a Content Management System?
The problem
You have a web site or an intranet system which has grown over time.
Probably much of the content is out-of-date or inaccurate, it's impossible to find things and to update old page as a bit of a nightmare.
Hiring an in-house Webmaster?
For a large organization a single webmaster or even few webmaster are not enough, the site changes are piling up in their in-tray and new news becomes old news.
On the other hand, small organization doesn't have the resources to hier a skilled webmaster and each change in the content is expensive.
The solution
A Content Management System supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information.
It provide tools from creating the layout till the editing the content itself.
The life cycle of content publishing is:
- Creation
- Management
- Publishing
- Archiving
A well designed CMS provide the tools to handle all phases in the content life cycle while letting the content editor focus on the content itself.
Comet and Content Management Systems
Comet Information Systems has a vast knowledge in finding the right solution for each organization.
If it's an open source application (like
Mambo or
openCMS), comercial application (like IBM WWCM) or a specially tailored application for the organization,
Comet will tailor and adjust such systems to fit the organisation requirements and business goals.
