Content Management Tutorial

Features, Benefits and Advantages of a Content Management System (CMS)

In any Content management system, there are many basic features which should be present so that the system works efficiently and saves money. The CMS database or the central repository for corporate content must be accessible to a wide range of technical and non-technical individuals.

CMS interface must be easy to use, and its architecture must fit within the framework defined by the IT organization. It should be menu driven so that the pages can be added and linked easily. Creating, designing and deploying the web content should be automated according to the need of the organization. It should reduce the time programmers have to spend on building custom forms for content management. The programmer can spend that time on the front-end of the web site.

• The user interface design of CMS should be changed using templates. Different templates for different level of users should be present.
• The CMS Management Tool should be present which is used to manage groups, users and rights from a central point. There should be a facility to import groups and users in the domains like Windows or Unix.
• It should be powered by the latest database and internet technologies and should be used in any operating system on any computer platform.
• CMS should facilitate better content security. It should control who is allowed to publish to the website, and who is allowed to see what content.
• It should eliminate the constant and large volume of updates by redistributing the publishing work among the content authors, who can now publish and update their own content using easy-to-use, browser-based tools.
• It should reduce Web site maintenance time and costs. Most of the maintenance operations should be automatic.
• For the content authors, the facilities like, selecting different types of content from the inbuilt content library, cut & paste from other applications, set publication dates and times for finished pages in advance and have them publish automatically and easy, automatic page indexing and linking should be present.
• Content management system should provide tools for adding and managing content for administrators including Content Owners, Content Editors, Page Owners and Site Administrator.
• The system should be able to scale in terms of performance, integration with other applications and the addition of custom features.
• The system should provide multi user options for controlling the user privileges at multiple levels. The security keys should be provided to restrict the users to work according to their access rights.
• The database model should not be rigid but it should be able to analyze the database structure and build the forms for database tables accordingly.