Many times it becomes very difficult to change content of our website. There could be several factors. The designer is on leave. The design company is over charging you for every single change. The list might be endless.
To tackle such situations a CMS comes very handy. CMS is short for Content Management System. It is a piece of software embedded (mostly) in your web design pages. With the help of a login system the user can himself update his existing content. It could be addition of a new text, modification of an existing one or deletion of some text or images.
How a Content Management System works:
A CMS saves all the dynamic information in a database such as Mysql or xml file system.
When the site is requested by browser (user) the currently available text / images are pulled from database and loaded into the webpages which are rendered along with the fixed design.
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| CMS Flow |
To manage this data a login system is present which show all the information to a user in web forms in editable mode. The user (admin) can edit the text, change images, and do other stuff as per the complexity of the cms. Once done he need to save the same to the database. This updated info will now be available to be seen to the viewer of the site.
Popular Content Management Systems:
The popular cms currently available can be categorised into free and paid. The most popular free cms available are:
1. Wordpress
2. Drupal
3. Joomla
While Wordpress is blog based it is one of the most used for ease of installation and use. Drupal is thought to be more of techie oriented but its new version is more bent towards user friendliness. Joomla is more developers and designers oriented.
All of the three are freely downloadable and have a great community support. Many free and paid plugins are available for each of them. A plugin provides additional functionality like login, gallery etc.
Many companies sell monthly / yearly membership plans for their theme services for these cms platforms.
Free Wordpress themes->
http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/19/100-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes-for-2010/
http://www.artfans.info/37-the-best-and-coolest-free-wordpress-themes-2011/
Bonus: Wordpress ECommerce Themes:
http://www.webdesigndev.com/web-development/10-incredible-ecommerce-wordpress-themes
Free Drupal Themes ->
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/27-best-looking-free-drupal-6-themes/
http://creativefan.com/100-best-free-drupal-themes/
Free Joomla Themes ->
http://www.joomla24.com/
http://www.bestofjoomla.com/component/option,com_bestoftemplate/Itemid,46/
What are the other free / paid CMS solutions?
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