Using a CMS (Content Management System)
This page is part of Ron Mertens' web page guides.
Once you start meddling with complex sites, you need some sort of content management system, or CMS. Let's say you want to
write a blog. Obviously it makes sense that you don't need to actually write HTML for each entry, right? You just want to
type, like in a wordprocessor. The CMS is what enables you to have a web-interface (or desktop-interface) to your site,
and you can administrate your site, add new content, etc.
Do I need a CMS?
If you are designing a site that will constantly refresh, and be database driven, it makes a lot of sense to write or
use some sort of CMS. Here are some example of such sites -
- News/Blog - if your site has lot's of new content, like news or blog entries, it's useful to have a CMS. That way the
process is more simple, and you can easily get features such as comments and trackbacks.
- Forum - you just can't have a static forum, can you? So some sort of forum management is a must.
- Community - if you are building a community site, you might wish to add blogs, news, link directories, content
pages, forums, and more - The advanced CMS today can give you all that 'out of the box'.
Writing your own CMS
The first sites used to code their own CMS. Using client side and server side scripting, you can obviously create a web
interface to administrate your site, and add new content...
Ready made CMSs
Writing your CMS is time consuming, and obviously you'd need to be a programmer. Fortunately, there are a lot of ready
made CMS packages today.
From forum-CMS to community-CMS, just choose your pick, install and use.
Usually the CMS will enable you to change the visual design of the site (using some sort of templates or themes). The good
ones make a nice cut between the content and the visual part, so this is easily achieved, with just HTML/CSS writing, and
not meddling with the CMS code.
Here are some CMSs that I use and recommend -
- Wordpress - This is the leading open-source blogging software. Wordpress
takes a few seconds to install, and you can start blogging straight away. I use it for my
personal blog,
and also for the Metalgrass blog.
As you can see, you can change the look of the blog, and it is rather easy to do so. Wordpress has a large community,
and has a lot of available plug-ins for extra features.
- Drupal - This one allows you to build entire communities. With news, forums, image galleries, your
own content-types, pages, tags, users and comments, it's quite robust.
Drupal is considered one of the best CMSs, but it is rather complex to start working
with. I use Drupal for my community web sites, such as oled-info.com.
- phpBB - This is a forum software. phpBB allows you to easily configure and
launch user groups for discussions. I have used it once for forums, but now I use Drupal's own forum module.
All of these CMSs are open source, and can be easily installed. In fact, HostGator
have automatic installation for these tools (and a hoard of others as well) which saves a lot of time and
knowledge. You are 2 clicks away from your blog or community site!
What's next?
Make sure your are compatible with the main browsers, at the next section of our guide.