CMS? What is it exactly?

[Demon]

Hello all.

I recently pruchased Site5 hosting, which included Fantastico in it's range of features.

Basically it's a huge marketplace of installatiosn, with CMS's, blogs and forum software as well as shopping facilities and more.

I was pleased to see a huge amount of CMS's there, but then I installed on and was baffled.

CuteNews is a CMS, but it's a simple thing to help you add news easier and be able to let others do it too. The ones on Site5 such as Joomla and PHPNuke were like sites themselves.

So what is a CMS? This has really taken be back, is it an actual site, or just a tool?

All I want is make the news page of the website im going to build, allow my client to log in and post / edit news as he sees fit. Should I use a blog tool for this, because Wordpress is in Fantastico too.

Can someone clear my mind please. :(

Thanks.

[abz]

CMS stands for content management system. It basiclaly means that when you want to update something, you can enter it somewhere in a user friendly interface, and it automatically adds it to the design of your site. Rather than you having to truck through all the code and input all the text to the html or wherever.

[chestertb]

I also found most of the widely available Content Management tools baffling, so I wrote my own.

Now everyone who looks at it finds mine baffling!

Ah well. I guess I didn't write it for them.

[SandDancer]

You might be better of just just Wordpress yes. One of the reasons is, is that Wordpress is a CMS in its own right. A CMS is just a way of managing content. Think of it as a database front end to 'pages' that allows you to edit, delete, publish or arrange documents as you wish. The idea behind a CMS is you can change one thing and don't have to change anything else to incorporate the change.

[illume]

Hello,

A Content Management System (CMS) allows you to manage content. That can be as simple as allowing you to edit the title and body of a web page, or it could involve complex work flow abilities.

Wordpress is quite a good one for certain tasks, and there are lots of plugins, and themes.

However some times a custom designed CMS can be made in order to meet with the type of content you need to manage. Or allow you to manage content in different ways.

Cheers,

[Demon]

Thanks everyone. When it comes to it, ill just install wordpress I think.

How do I get it to look like it's 'in' my website?

[tonyh]

How do I get it to look like it's 'in' my website?
You can't, well that is not necessarily true, but all WordPress codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page) I have read doesn't recommend it. You will have to created a WordPress template (http://codex.wordpress.org/Stepping_Into_Templates) which imitates your original design.