What is a CMS

CMS is an abbreviation for "Content Management System" and is an application (often online) that allows you to create, edit, and publish information via a website or intranet without any technical expertise.

There are many different types of content management systems, but they all do much the same thing and work in similar ways. The biggest advantage of a CMS lies in its ability to separate the graphical appearance of your website from the information it contains. This means that non-technical people can easily make changes to a website, confident that they will not "mess it up".

Most CMS applications separate websites into the components listed below, bringing them all together when you publish the page to the web site.

Content

The areas of your website that change most frequently. This is usually text combined with photos, movies and other media and is the part that users maintaining content have the most control over.

Database

This is where all of the data for your website resides. The database contains all the information on your page content, site templates, photos, documents, CMS users and more.

Maintenance Area

CMS users (staff within your company) will have secure access to the maintenance area, where they can make changes to the site and publish the pages.

In the EdukaCMS, the maintenance area is accessed via your web browser - meaning that you do not need special software to run the system.

Templates

Templates define how your content appears. They will often control the colours, positions of content, and various other elements.

Using templates you can make sure that even with several people updating your site it will always adhere to certain design standards relating to text sizes, images, colours and so on. Templates ensure that all new pages will have a similar look and feel to the existing ones.

More Information

How can a CMS help you?
Choosing a CMS
Common features of a CMS
Other CMS resources