CMS is the abbreviation of Content Management System. As per Wikipedia definition… “A content management system (CMS) is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifying content, organising, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual steps or an automated cascade.”
Why you need a CMS
If you want your business to be searched and found online, then your website needs to be content-driven. Now, what do content-driven means? It means you have to keep adding fresh and unique content to your website frequently. Adding content requires modification of the current content, and how do you do it? Depends on how you have built your website. If it is an HTML driven website, then you have to manipulate the HTML code which will require you to understand HTML basics. If you have used a freelance developer, then you’d need to contact that guy. Both have one common problem, dependency! Either you have to be knowledgeable enough, or you’ll have to depend on someone. So what should do you if you want to build and manage your online presence quickly and cost-effectively? The solution to this problem lies in a Content Management System or CMS.
Which CMS to use
There are several reliable free and open-source CMS applications available online, like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Typo3, Magento. Considering that you are from a non-technical or semi-technical background, I would suggest WordPress. Why WordPress? Because WordPress is a user-friendly, lightweight, search engine friendly CMS, supported by a community of developers that offer several free application modules known as plugins which extend the base functionality of WordPress to meet various out-of-the-box requirements. Not only that, there are many free and premium themes available to customise the design of your WordPress website or blog.
WordPress
WordPress comes in two variants; self-hosted and cloud-based. Cloud-based WordPress is available on WordPress.Com, once you register it’ll allow you to create your website/blog right away, you can use the platform for free but advanced features are paid, they also offer premium themes. In self-hosted WordPress, you’ll need to pay for the domain and server, but you have complete control over the code and database. Installing WordPress on your server is straightforward as hosting providers like Godaddy, BigRock, Hostgator, Bluehost allow one-click install option for CMS applications like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3. After WordPress installation, you have to choose a theme and required plugins. At the start, I suggest you only use free themes and plugins. Once you are confident, then you can experiment with premium themes and plugins. Very few plugins are premium, and the premium theme offerings are massive. You can also try to learn WordPress in a local PC or MacBook for that you have to install XAMPP and WordPress manually in your computer. Below I’m sharing a couple of useful links related to WordPress.
Nice information……. :)