Content Management System (CMS)

While strictly speaking WordPress installed out of the box is not a Content Management  System (CMS), for all practical purposes it can be converted into one. Or, in other words, what you might have been reading about CMS generally applies to WordPress Blogs.

What is a Content Management System?

“In computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document centric collaborative application for managing documents and other content. A CMS is often a Web application and often it is used as a method of managing Web sites and Web content.” – Wikipedia

“With CMS, the content of a site is stored outside of design elements – the content is actually stored in a database.” – TECHNOSIGHT

In WordPress, your informational content is stored in a database rather than on individual Web pages or files.

Pages vs. Posts

Most bloggers do not even know what a page is. Pages in WordPress were first provided for in version 1.5. What is a page in WordPress?Basically in WordPress, depending upon the theme, Pages have a different look to them. Some themes do not allow visitors to comment on pages, for example. In WordPress a page is a fully developed article that is of a more more permanent nature than a post is. In other words, WordPress originally presented a page template designed for sequentially listing a series of posts which they called their Main Index Template. And, later on decided to add a second page template to display generalized pages, which they called their Page Template.

To convert WordPress into a true CMS, you have to play down the use of posts and make extensive customized use of pages. That means both creating and using multiple page templates.

Customizable

CMS applications can be customized. With WordPress blogs this is done with:

1. Choice of Theme
2. Choice of Page Templates – WordPress has a secrete feature which allows you to display pages with a choice of different page templates.
3. Choice of Plugins
4. Selection of WordPress Options
5. Customization of both themes and plugins to suite the needs of individual bloggers by way of XHTML, CSS, and PHP.

Customization is the name of the game. But, those who go this route should be prepared to deal with your WordPress Blog stop working completely, over and over again until you get the hang of it. Believe me, those WordPress bugs that you are experiencing are likely coming from poorly written CSS or from incompatible plugins.

The beauty of WordPress is that it has already provided the basic structure needed for writing posts to you. All you need is the skills to modify it, here and there, in order to get it to do what you want done. Usually there is little need to re-created major portions of what WordPress has already done for you. Hence, dabbling into the PHP programming arts can be quite productive.

What Else?

Right off the bat, I would say that CMS applications like WordPress are always:

1. Database based,
2. Intuitive, and
3. Developed Online.

WordPress Blogs

WordPress straight out of the box provides the basic functionality of a content management system, which can be broken down into several parts.

1. Content Creation
2. Content Management
3. Publishing
4. Presentation

Content creation means that authors can easily write new posts to their blog with almost no technical knowledge of what they are doing.

Content Management revolves around WordPress use of PHP, MySQL, and the fact that all content is stored in a database. Relational databases have many advantages built into them.

Publishing means that WordPress offers an easy way to create a Web site which requires almost no technical knowledge. All WordPress blogs basically look the same.

Presentation means that WordPress allows bloggers to select different themes and plugins that easily alters how the basic WordPress blog looks like with very little technical knowledge.

The Essence Content Management Systems (CMS)

The essence of a WordPress Content Management System is a customized page intensive Web site, with minimal use of blog posts.

So, I would say that a WordPress CMS is using over 25 WordPress Pages in an unique way, such as providing magazine articles.

Once you are using that many Web pages you need some way of organizing your pages, other than simply dumping a complete list of them on every page. And, that requires some techie modifications to your installed WordPress blog.

Examples of Content Management Systems (CMS)

Here are a few content management systems that are using WordPress.

• Navarre Beach, FL Condo & Home Rentals
• Jackson Hole Vacation Rentals
• San Juan Islands Hotel in Washington State

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