CMS stands for Content Management System. I used to think that a CMS was a company that fed you articles for your web sites, but no, you have to write those yourself (or find an article writer through a freelance site). A content management system is a program usually written in a language called PHP which will sit on your web server and feed stuff from a database into a web browser in just about any way you tell it to. How you tell it to is to use a template.

A template is the way you want your stuff to look. It might have a header, body, navigation sidebar and a footer for example. Using CSS (which stands for cascading style sheets and is another bit of code to help things look the way you want), you would tell the web browser how the page should be laid out, what colors certain elements should have and so on. You can actually get pretty complex with CSS. It's awesome.

Now, the cool thing about CMS programs like Joomla, Drupal, Xoops, and such is that someone who doesn't know much about web sites and how to maintain them can still take care of their own sites.

When I was doing a lot of web design for startup businesses, I ran into a common problem. I would design the site and hand it over to them, but they had no clue what to do with it or how to update it, add stuff or fix it. They were "stuck" with me having to help them every time they turned around. Now this may sound great for me, but I spent a lot of time with frustrated folks doing tedious work that didn't pay for my time. The time thing was not a big deal because I like to help people, but if you've ever worked with frustrated people, you know that that is NO fun.

Plus, startup companies can't afford to keep a web designer on a retainer! Perhaps you can relate. Well, using a CMS, you just have to learn how to use the administration panel. It's a matter of getting in there and playing around with it. You're not gonna mess things up too bad. And if you do, give me a call :-)

The administration panel is where it all happens. It's like Main Street. Once you log in you can change your template, add content, add different things in the form of modules, and even rearrange elements of your page. Do you want to poll your visitors? You don't have to call your web designer buddy. Most CMS's have them already loaded. Just click a button to add one. Then edit it to meet your needs.

In most cases you don't have to have FTP or even know what it means. Just upload files directly through the administration panel (remember Main Street?). In fact, you really only need to upload any pictures you might want to use because most files are created "on the fly". On the fly means that there is no real Home Page file. It's created by the CMS taking information from the CSS file, the database which holds your content, the template files, and any other little snippets it might need.

Cool, huh?