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Introduction to CMS Systems

Requirements and positioning of Content Management Systems

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Purpose and Scope

This Content Management System (CMS) Review is focused on how to select and use a CMS systems to provide community support for churches, Quaker meetings, clubs and similar organisations.

This document was originally drafted to inform discussions and make recommendations for a content management system (CMS) or portal to could be used as part of the Website Strategy for the Quaker Britain Yearly Meeting, a not for profit membership organisation.

The scope is CMS systems, but within the architectural framework described below. Please note that vertical portals share many of the same characteristics, and overlap with Content Management Systems, as do weblogs and Wiki sites.

1.2 Other Approaches

CMS systems are optimised for content management. But sometimes the needs can be met in other ways, e.g.:

Weblogs have similar but simpler content creation. They are optimised for display and management on a date and time basis, following the diary metaphor. See Blogs and RSS Feeds on this site.
Wiki's can be used to construct CMS like sites, but with the emphasis on collaborative content creation by the community for the community. There is a learning curve for non-technical users. Most implementations have a simplified markup language, rather than using HTML, for content creation and editing. See WikiWikiWeb for more information, or try PmWiki.

1.3 CMS Resources

Please see the separate page for:

1.4 Background

The BYM Website Strategy document described business and user requirements, which are not repeated here, for an integrated target architecture to meet the medium term needs of BYM. The requirements can be summarised by:

Virtual Community Support includes such features as discussion forums, or bulletin boards, callender and shared access to files and pictures.

Email list management should ideally support selective subscription and unsubscribes by the users themselves, together with flexible autoresponder functionality.

The user database and multi-level access control function should provide a single user sign-on, utilised by each of the function al modules.

It is difficult to find an off the shelf system that meets all of these requirements. Many commercial content management systems are weak on community support, and few have comprehensive email list management.

1.5 Related Pages

John Wragg

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