CMS - Simple Description
Introduction
At the latest at the beginning of this millennium, the term CMS became widespread. It started in the mid-1990s with server-side scripting, which was then further developed at the beginning of the 2000s into more modern (web) CMS like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Headless CMS and Decoupled CMS and more followed later1.
Even though the term CMS is not new, there are many sub-variants (sometimes with only superficial similarities) and by no means everyone has themselves worked with a CMS (or knew that they had worked with one).
Therefore this chapter aims to explain and also define the term CMS.
Simple Description of a CMS
A Content Management System CMS is generally understood to be software in which you can set which content is displayed on other devices or in other software (such as exhibit software or websites). A usually central aspect of CMS is that they can also be used by semi-technical users without extensive training, at least after basic setup / configuration / installation (which then frequently must be done by people with significantly more expertise). As a rule, these CMS are therefore operated via graphical user interfaces.
Examples of typical CMS functionality:
- Replacing texts, images, videos that are displayed on other software / devices (e.g. on museum exhibits or websites)
- Changing translations of texts or adding further languages that are displayed on other software / devices
- Creating new media content that is displayed on other software / devices, e.g. creating a new newspaper article in an online daily newspaper or creating additional quiz questions for an online or museum exhibit quiz
- "Clicking together" complete standard websites / displays on other devices