What is a Content Management System?

A Content Management System (CMS) is software whose primary purpose is to make it easy for multiple people to add, edit and manage web content without any technical knowledge. MD marketers uses CMS for products, blogs, event pages, location pages, listing pages, news, menus, and more. 

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Benefits of using a CMS

A content management system is especially useful in organizations with custom publishing needs because:

• It allows authors and editors without any technical expertise to manage their own pages or sections of a website
• Enables websites to have a consistent look and feel
• Provides a central suite of styles, features, and functionality; reducing the need for lots of bespoke design and development
• Ensures any technical updates or changes to style or design can be made centrally and cascade throughout all sites built in the CMS
• Makes it easy for all websites built using the CMS to communicate with each other – meaning better internal search capabilities and more sophisticated cross-referencing of content between different sites
• Can be used to grant appropriate levels of editorial access to different people.

Managing “Collection Items” and “Collections” in the CMS

As a content editor, it’s important to adopt a consistent, tidy and logical approach to file management. CMS runs off a custom database that consists of fields that can include text, video, photos, reference fields, custom HTML embeds, colors, and virtually any other content you can think of. These fields together make a “Collection Item” that is part of a “Collection”. 

For Example, this week’s blog post would have data fields (Title, Post Body, Summary, Author, Banner Image, Etc.) that together would make a “Collection Item”. The folder that these collection items are in is called the “Collection”. This approach has the following benefits:

• Reduces the amount of time spent managing your site 
• Gives a quick and effective ‘snapshot’ of the structure of the site for other editors or developers who need to look at it
• Ensures a smoother transition from one Chief Editor to the next

If you are not currently on a CMS or would like to upgrade your CMS register for a no-cost website evaluation.

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