Within the past few years content management systems (CMS) have revolutionized web development for designers, website owners, and visitors alike. The advent of CMS has adapted to the core of what web design has evolved into by using intuitive web-based backend management to offer a clean, fast, and efficient online experience. Designing with ease, quickening loading times, tightening security, making content more accessible, simplifying maintenance, and automatically streamlining code for search engine optimization are just some of the bare bone attributes of what CMS websites can provide.

 

The premise of CMS websites are actually very simple, even though the sites themselves can end up to be very complex. The owner or the designer of the site has access to an administrator panel (backend) via a login and password. This backend has a combination of links, checkboxes, buttons and other editing features such as media uploaders and article editors in order to control the content that the visitor would see on the webpage (frontend). When a visitor reaches the site, all the information needed is pulled directly from the site's database. As a result no one page needs to be hand coded. If a change needs to be made across the entire site, it's all a matter of changing an option and clicking the save button. This is monumental in terms of creating, changing, and maintaining a streamlined website.

 

With an extensive community of designers and developers, free addons are always available to customize the site to do your bidding. On top of all this, everything resides on your server, so you don't need to install any software on your computer, and you can make changes from any computer in the world that's connected to the internet (with proper security of course). Choosing the right CMS is truly the best direction for anyone wanting to start their own website.

 

My favorite and suggested content management systems are listed below. Wordpress is a very well known and effective blogging platform. Pixelpost is a great showcasing system for displaying art or photography which is also known as photoblogging software. Last but definitely not least is Joomla! which is the CMS that this website was created with. Joomla! has little restrictions. If you can dream it, Joomla! can do it. Click any of the CMS below to find out more.