How Content Management Systems Work

A Content Management System is a software system that facilitates the creation, modification, organization and management of multiple types of data as a centralized system and provides controlled, secure and well defined access to it through a well designed user interface. There are some things that are important to know in order to know basically how these systems actually work.

Content Management Systems are generally written using some high level programming language, choice of which differs according to the type of system being developed and its scope of operations. For example for Enterprise CMSs, COBOL and C++ are preferred languages because of their orientation towards business systems as well as the flexibility for handling system level chores easily. Similarly for Web based CMSs, PHP is mostly the preferred language as it’s free, it’s an open source technology and it provides all the functionality that designing a CMS requires. ASP.NET is also getting quiet popular as a web programming language and there are some CMSs available today built in it.

A Content Management System's chief objective is to manage the creation and management of data in organized way so most of the content management systems provide Template structures suitable for different types of data to be inserted in the CMS. These Templates usually define the layout as well as storage semantics of the contents. So a template can define what colors and fonts will be used in displaying that particular type of contents as well as can specify what will be stored where.

The next big concern is to provide a user interface for management of this data. This is done by providing something called a Dashboard, which functions as a centralized hub for controlling every aspect of the system as well as fine tuning various parts of it for optimum performance. This facility's access requires an administrator password since it’s the most sensitive part of the whole system. Backup and Restore facility for data security is also available from here.

The last piece of the CMS puzzle is the storage or the database that stores all the content. Again, in Desktop based, or Enterprise CMS systems many a times flat file databases are used to save data. Languages like COBOL are very efficient in handling this kind of storage. Component CMS also use flat file system but in form of XML files mostly. Web based CMSs generally use a structured, well defined Database Management System like MS SQL server or MySQL server for storage.