Exploring the basic capabilities that most CMS share will give you a deeper understanding of how they work and how a CMS might fit into your projects or within your organization.
CMS Workflow
The basic process of most CMSs looks like this:
1. Content creators, editors, and publishers access the CMS through a client (usually browser based). Content is entered into the CMS, edited, approved, and published based on organizational workflow. This team could range from a full team of content creators with various roles to a single individual.
2. The content is stored in a relational database, with categories and metadata included to help the CMS better understand the content’s relevance.
3. Once it’s approved, the content is then published to the site based on its category or the role that’s been assigned to it.
4. To assemble pages, the CMS uses templates, published content, and any modules such as calendars, polls, and forms that have been associated with specific pages.
5. Site navigation is typically built dynamically as pages are added to the site.
A Closer Look
Groups and Privileges
Delegation is the ability to create multiple user groups and assign privileges based on group types. Controls vary from allowing you to set up complex group permissions containing authors, editors, administrators, and publishers, to only allowing one or two privilege levels.
Most CMSs allow you to limit privileges, so it’s important to find one that has a group structure that fits your project. Some CMSs also allow you to control the approval process through managed workflows that define the process of authoring, reviewing, and publishing content.
Content Editing
Content editing is typically handled through forms, or a WYSIWYG, or What You See Is What You Get, editor. Most WYSIWYG editors resemble word processors and allow you to format text in a similar fashion.
Some systems allow in-line editing which allows users to edit the content directly on the page itself. This option is particularly useful for non-technical users needing to make quick changes.
Content Structure
How the CMS structures the content is a vital part of its functionality. Most systems will have an initial structure of sections and categories. In publishing terms, you can think of sections as pages and categories as identifying tags that help explain the content’s relevance.
Many CMSs allow you to create hierarchies that extend the basic content structure into a more complex model.
Others CMSs may limit you to a flat structure or limit the amount of categories you can use per unit of content.
Themes and Templates
They often have different names based on the CMS platforms, templates serve the same purpose from system to system.
Templates are basically HTML structures that serve as placeholders for your content and come with the associated CSS files to control the presentation. The level of customization between CMS platforms will vary widely… From minimal flexibility to full customization allowing you to create your own pages.
Editors
A Common approach to creating pages is to assemble discrete page regions (or sections) into a finished page rather than using a full-page template. This flexible approach makes it easier to build pages by swapping out regions such as headers, footers, and sidebars as needed, but can make customization more difficult as it can be hard to visualize how these elements work together in the final page.
Expanding Site Functionality
Whether the CMS is calling them plug-ins, extensions, or modules, they’re usually referring to self-contained applications that extend the functionality of your site. This includes everything from simple forms and sliders to manage image control to complex API integration with marketing automation and external services like Google Maps.
The power, flexibility, ability, and functionality of these modules varies greatly from one CMS to another and often rely on the strength of the developer community in an open-source system.
Site Navigation & Architecture
Most CMSs feature some type of menu generation to control site navigation.
This structure will vary depending on the CMS. Some systems will allow you to build your own menus and update them automatically for you, others may restrict you to the system’s default generated menus.