Content management systems are all the rage right now.  What is a content management system? In a nutshell, an online content management system is a web-based graphical user interface that allows the end user who knows NOTHING about code or html to create and maintain a professional, versatile, dynamic and interactive website.  Most content management systems have a WYSIWYG (pronounced WIZZYWIG or what you see is what you get) editor with icons similar to what you would see in Microsoft Word or other word processing programs. Content can be added and formatted, media can be uploaded and linked, even multimedia such as flash movies and podcasts.

The general idea is that the website owner has control of the content of their website without endangering the design and layout that often can easily get skewed or completely destroyed using a traditional html editor. Trust me - I have repaired countless websites destroyed by well-intentioned clients trying to save a few bucks. It can be very costly and time consuming to have to pay a designer to fix what was unintentionally skewed. It is rarely a simple, easy fix.

Using a content management system, you can log in from literally anywhere in the world that has access to the internet and edit, add and delete content on a website. It allows small businesses to have truly dynamic, up-to-the-minute website content that can keep the customers coming back. The more website content is updated regularly, the more often the search engines will index the site, resulting in more hits.

In future articles I will be discussing different open source content management systems, what their pros and cons are as well as degree of difficulty in installation, upgrading and maintenance.