Content management system
A content management system (CMS) such as a document management system (DMS) is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text.
Types of WCMS
There are three major types of WCMS: offline processing, online processing, and hybrid systems. These terms describe the deployment pattern for the WCMS in terms of when presentation templates are applied to render Web pages from structured content.
Offline processing
- These systems pre-process all content, applying templates before publication to generate Web pages. Vignette CMS and Bricolage are examples of this type of system. Since pre-processing systems do not require a server to apply the templates at request time, they may also exist purely as design-time tools; Adobe Contribute is an example of this approach.
Online processing
- These systems apply templates on-demand. HTML may be generated when a user visits the page, or pulled from a cache. Hosted CMSs are provided by such SaaS developers as AspireCMS, Bravenet, UcoZ, Freewebs and Crownpeak.
- Some of the better known open source systems that produce pages on demand include Concrete5, Mambo, Joomla!, Drupal, TYPO3, Zikula and Plone, etc…
- DotNetNuke is a partially open source CMS that runs on asp.net and is free to download and install. DNN produces pages on demand but levels and types of caching can be set. There are also many additional “modules” that can be purchased or installed for free to extend the functionality of DNN as needed, many of which create data and content dynamically.
- Most Web application frameworks perform template processing in this way, but they do not necessarily incorporate content management features. Wikis, e.g. MediaWiki and TWiki generally follow an online model (with varying degrees of caching), but generally do not provide document workflow.
Hybrid Systems
- Some systems combine the offline and online approaches. Some systems write out executable code (e.g. JSP, ASP, PHP,ColdFusion,Perl pages) rather than just static HTML, so that the CMS itself does not need to be deployed on every Web server. Other hybrids, such as Blosxom, are capable of operating in either an online or offline mode.
Sharing data to become easier
Swapping information across content management repositories may become easier in the years to come, thanks to a newly released set of specifications authored by a legion of content management system vendors, including IBM, Microsoft, Alfresco, Open Text, Oracle, SAP and EMC.
The specification, called Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS), establishes how content management systems (CMSs) can use a set of Web services interfaces, as well as the REST and Atom protocols to link with other repositories. The vendors announced that it plans to submit the specs to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the standards body that oversees many Web services standards today.