The blog development once was a daunting task have now become much easier with the introduction of the Content Management System. The WordPress CMS is the most popular CMS used to design, develop and deploy a blog within minutes. Now even a newbie can create a perfectly designed blog with just a few clicks.
Today most blogs operate on Content Management System and one such famous CMS is the WordPress.
The core purpose of almost every site or blog is to provide value to their users and for this content is required. Content is the King, that feed many blogs success. Both people and the search engine bots love to read fresh contents. All your SEO efforts are nothing when your blog doesn’t get updated with the latest information and the news. So in this article, we will discuss the influence of the Content Management System and how it helps blogging and other businesses.
What is CMS?
CMS is abbreviated as Content Management System, which is a GUI (Graphic User Interface) software application that makes interaction with the website’s database to read and write the information. There are many kinds of CMS options available to run a blog or a website. Some of them are WordPress, Drupal, Wix, Joomla, Magento (E-commerce CMS) etc.
Among all, WordPress is the most commonly used and the SEO friendly CMS that supports various plugins also to make the environment more user-friendly.
As a layman, we can say, a CMS is a tool used by a person to design, manage and publish a website or a blog without a need for any coding knowledge.
How does content management system work?
The main elements in the CMS are an editor, a database, and the database tables to store the values. Many different types of tables are there for each function such as website menu, pages, posts, categories, tags, images etc. The CMS will take care of the part of storing the data in the respective database tables and sort them based on some criteria such as date. When the admin wants to do any change such as to publish a new blog post, the first work is to log in to the admin dashboard and to open WYSIWYG editor. We only have to write the content inside the editor and then press the publish button, and the CMS takes care of the rest of the process through MySQL queries.
It automatically stores all form of contents (text, images, links, videos) in the respective tables of the database and later it can be retrieved any time through a web Request.
Types of Content Management System:
CMS’s are classified into two categories, typically based on their functional operation. The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system and the Web Content Management (WCM) system are the two major classifications. Both the CMS are similar when compared to the operation of digital assets. They comprise of two components such as:
- The Content Management Application (CMA), which is used to control the functions such as writing, modifying, editing and the removal of the content from the database.
- The Content Delivery Application (CDA) which is used to serve the process of publishing the content across the web.
Features of CMS:
The most important reason for the launch of the Content Management Application is to make the environment more reliable and enable the ease of access. The world is moving faster so, and a developer should not waste time in typing same codes, again and again, to write, read, fetch and retrieve the information.
The core function of the CMS are often classified as, indexing, search and retrieval, formatting, revision and storing, publishing.
- Indexing features allow the user to write information and store in the database and allows the same user to search by attributes whenever required.
- Formatting features help to format the content using WYSIWYG editor that turns the document into HTML, PHP and PDF files based on the requirements.
- Revision control allows you to edit, modify and update the information anytime you wish. It also tracks the changes made to the files.
- Publishing function allows the user to create, modify and use the existing templates to publish the information on the web.
With the help of the third-party plugins, a CMS can support content marketing (SEO) also. The famous plugins that make CMS user-friendly are Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, Akismet Scam Protector, Sucuri Anti-theft etc.
What Role does a CMS Play in a Business?
Well, a CMS or Content Management System can help you build your business ahead if you can source, implement and use the right kind of CMS options and manage it properly.
To begin with, it can help you streamline the content on your blog. In fact, it can also be used to update the look and feel of your website for a better understanding and experience. A good implementation of a CMS can aid you in ensuring consistency in your website and its content.
It offers you the flexibility of updating and streamlining your website no matter where you are, and remote management of your site should ideally be one of the functionalities that you would definitely fall in love with it.
A CMS can play a major role in reducing the costs associated with the maintenance of your website. In fact, you do not need to hire experienced staff for managing the updates to your site. The non-technical staff can handle all the necessary elements of your website building, though they may need a little training in the basic functions of building and updating a site. The simple and useful CMS helps you avoid the need for appointing the webmasters and developers who may have high remuneration requirements.
CMS also helps in the proper integration of other elements like asset management and customer relationship sections of your website. You can also make use of dynamic marketing techniques for sales management and user satisfaction. Another role that a CMS can play includes the optimisation of your website for a multitude of search engines and mobile-friendliness.
The major feature that a CMS tool specialises in includes user and group management features. This would help you provide more security to the content being uploaded.
How CMS influence Web Design?
The Content Management System was specifically launched to reduce the manpower in the Data manipulation sector and make data interpretation fast and secure. In the olden days, the CMS was used inside premises and for a particular organisation. But with the enormous growth of the Internet, the data sharing has become globally possible through websites and blogs. This resulted in the launch of Global Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Drupal, and Magento etc.
Though there are many CMS available, WordPress is the most common and the most famous CMS that power nearly 60% of the websites and the blogs around the world.WordPress has completely dominated the PHP Blogging Platform and thus makes building a website or blog much easier with only a few clicks.
It’s a great platform for beginners and even for professionals and companies.
A Few Advantages of CMS
CMS or Content Management System is indeed one of the most important aspects that go a long way in enhancing the functionality of your website. Some of the advantages of implementing the CMS solution can be summed up as here below
- CMS works as a centrally located control system for your website.
- You can perform a host of activities like updating the content, implementing key SEO functions or even uploading the media content. And all that without the need for technical knowledge.
- It would need a considerably lesser number of employees in the IT arena. This can go a long way in improving your budgeting.
- The CMS can aid you in reducing the costs to a considerable level.
- Updating the data on a website with a CMS implementation should be easy and simple to work with. The process involved with the concept and functionality would be quite user-friendly.
- CMS offers you extended support for security. Owners have complete control over what pages they want to make public and which ones should be privately accessible.
- The CMS implementation is simple and easier. It helps in the quicker deployment of your site.
- A large number of plugins are supported on a CMS platform.
- The CMS tools offer you an excellent option for offering community support and help channels
The Disadvantages of CMS
Just the way a CMS tool offers you the advantages we have outlined here, it does also come with a few limitations and disadvantages. Some of these limitations can be summarised as here below –
- CMS solutions can be a little heavy on your computer resources. This can make your system go slow or crawl. You need to have access to a really faster system to work with.
- You will need to update your CMS software from time to time.
- Updates can be a huge issue at times. If you have any incompatible aspects in the update or there is something you need to address, you may find the site go haywire. Such situations may warrant the services of an expert.
- CMS implementation can be a little expensive. If your aim of starting a website or blog is to share your views and not necessarily for money-making or turning it into a business, it will make you incur huge expenses.
- Some CMS solutions may need exceptional system resources and thus would need you to upgrade your devices for handing your website or blog.
- Moving between the platforms may not be an easier task as such.
WordPress as a CMS
WordPress is a free and open-source CMS written using PHP, MySQL language. All you have to do is to purchase a domain name from Bluehost, Godaddy or through any other domain provider. Then, purchase any reliable hosting of your choice that fits within your budget. I recommend buying cPanel shared hosting from Bluehost, Godaddy or cloud hosting from Cloudways to practice if you are a beginner. Once you completed the setup process, all you have to do is install WordPress, which is a default option in almost every hosting nowadays.
It won’t take much time and in hardly 2 – 3 minutes your website will be ready for you to work on. There is a large community of faithful and trustable people behind the WordPress CMS framework. There are lots of files, documentation, and communities available online where you can find all the aspects of customising WordPress easily.
Conclusion:
The WordPress CMS has changed the Web Design and Development field completely as it makes the process much easier and faster. Even an amateur blogger can design an amazing website in just a few minutes by using any CMS. Moreover, creating a website/blog using the content management system does not even require any coding knowledge or special skill.
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