CMS Origins
Web content management systems can trace their origins to the traditional management system of the print-based Document Assembly Content Systems.
With the growth of the Internet in the the mid ’90s, web sites and their content became more complex, which created the need for more sophisticated content management solutions.
One of the early online leaders, CNET are credited with building a system that used templates to assemble pages from a relational database (inspired by advances in the publishing field) in 1995.
Their system contained features like the ability to personalize the resulting sites and repurpose site content. They name their system Presentation of Real-Time Interactive Service Material, or PRISM for short.
This new template based made creating and maintaining the CNET site easier which attracted the attention of Vignette, a software services company that was attempting to develop a similar system. In 1996, Vignette purchased PRISM from CNET and merged it with their system and released it as StoryServer – one of, if not the first, online content management tool to enter the marketplace.
The remainder of the 1990’s saw a flood of proprietary content management systems enter the marketplace. Although there were feature variations, one of the commonalities these systems had was their proprietary nature.
- Clients had to pay for the system.
- Clients had to have it customized to fit their needs.
- These sites were expensive to create and maintain.
- These CMS sites were limited to the larger, enterprise-level clients.
This restrictive barrier to online entry created the open-source software boom of the 2000’s which changed everything and created the Internet as you know it.
It was the “LAMP Stack” (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) that when combined allowed individuals to create powerful general purpose web servers.
This resulted in the fast and massive growth of hosting companies, open-source software, and do-it-yourself solutions including:
- Drupal in 2000
- Moveable Type 2001
- WordPress 2003
- Joomla! in 2005
Today’s solutions range from free open source platforms like WordPress to extremely customized enterprise-level solutions with an extreme range of features and capabilities.