Content Management Systems – An Overview
Last Updated :
07 Apr, 2025
Are CMS worth your time?
Find out in this article.
Content Management System (or CMS) is a framework already designed by other programmers and coders on which you can either contribute your knowledge and skills, or just use those coders’ skills to design your own website or blog.
This is the basic definition of CMS as given by myself and in this article I will make the concept of CMS clear and understandable.
CMS is the most practical approach in designing websites today, whether you want a blog, an e-commerce or simply any other type of website, by using, it’s just a work of few hours.
Although, if you’re using a free domain and free hosting (like some of my sites), CMS can prove to be a pain.
How CMS Works
- CMS is downloadable, means when you download a CMS, you will obtain a compressed file (tar, zip, 7z) and after uncompressing it, you would obtain a folder known as “CMS Directory”.
- This folder contains the entire CMS including working files, .htacess file and themes. All of these will be explained later in the article.
- After you upload this CMS onto your remote host or local host, you can install the CMS on host in very simple steps different for different CMS.
CMS Directory
The three most important content of any CMS directory are these 3 types of files:
Remember, every time you browse on a functional website (say facebook), there are multiple modules working at one time. Login module, profile picture, facebook liking system and even the endless newsfeed you scroll through, is a module.
Module is a bundle of files linked together to perform any specific function. These files are collection of codes written in any of the web programming language in a machine independent package. Everything on modules cannot be explained in one article although, this is pretty much information you would need to proceed.
This point doesn’t need much explanation. Themes are often included as sub-directory inside our CMS directory that contains bundled HTML5 and CSS files incorporated with few javascripts or Ajax that represents graphical structure you can use. Generally there are one basic theme preloaded in every CMS (Two thousand sixteen in WordPress, Bartik in Drupal etc.) but like modules, you can download external themes too.
This is the file that messes up with even experienced coders and designers. It is a set of instructions for server to handle your site in the huge World Wide Web network. SEO, Redirections and overwrites are managed by this one single file. Generally you have to write this file by yourself if you’re making a site from scratch but since you’re working on CMS, htaccess file is absolutely free.
Popular CMS
The battle of CMS is as old as Internet itself. The first CMS was created in 1992, however the first acting CMS was released in 1997. Enough with history, the three most famous CMS, that occupies more than 70% of entire CMS market are: Drupal, Joomla and WordPress.
All these CMS are free of cost, Drupal and Joomla being as open source projects. Thousands of coders are working on these three CMSs every day to provide best user experience worldwide.
If you want to learn CMS by the way of practice, my recommendation would be Joomla as it is easiest to learn with its drag-and-drop site builder. However if you want to brainstorm, Drupal is best in the field. It’s huge, complex and very efficient with relatively less memory and hardware consumption. Although help support is very limited in drupal.
If you want to create a project, really quick, with the aid of a CMS, join other of millions that are using WordPress every day.
How effective is a CMS compared to a site created from Scratch?
An IT student created an exact replica of Facebook social networking site within 3 hours on django (another CMS).
So is it worth your time?
It depends completely up to you whether you choose to work on CMS or not but in my opinion, working with a CMS can help you understand the concepts of hosting, domain registration, name servers, computer networks in clarity. CMS can also hone your coding skills and in practice, coding a website from scratch is not very practical in commercial and corporate computer network. Knowledge of working with CMS can help you become a better web designer anyways, so why not?
For any suggestions, pointers, arguments, appreciations, post a comment below!
Hope you enjoyed reading
About the Author:
This blog is contributed by
Aayush Garg.
He is a web developer, writer and a filmmaker based in New Delhi holding a degree in B.Tech IT from Kurukshetra University. Besides liking watching live theaters and foreign TV shows/movies,he also loves technical stuff and has published papers on logical reasoning and brain rationality. He can be reached at Twitter @reesgargi.
Similar Reads
Top 10 Best Content Management Systems (CMS)
Suppose you are buying earphones from an E-commerce website. Or maybe read about which earphones are the best from a blog. Or even just check out the official website of the earphone company. Chances are high that each of these websites was created using a Content Management System! That’s the popul
9 min read
7 main components of a website
The following are the 7 main components of a website. Navigation : The navigation is one of most significant pieces of a site, as it causes clients to handily explore whole webpage and encourages web index to get a thought regarding structure of site. Complex navigation can without much of a stretch
4 min read
Role of a System Analyst - Blog
A definition of system analyst (as per Random House Dictionary) is defined as, 'a one that conducts an organized study Associate in the Nursing analysis of an activity like business to spot its desired objectives to work out procedures by which these objectives are often gained. This article focuses
3 min read
System Design Netflix | A Complete Architecture
Designing Netflix is a quite common question of system design rounds in interviews. In the world of streaming services, Netflix stands as a monopoly, captivating millions of viewers worldwide with its vast library of content delivered seamlessly to screens of all sizes. Behind this seemingly effortl
15+ min read
System Design - Live Course By GeeksforGeeks
If you're preparing for a tech interview, especially for SDE 2 or SDE 3 job profiles - then you need to know you're required to have a sound knowledge of System Design concepts. Almost every IT giant whether it be Facebook, Amazon, Google, or any other asks various questions based on System Design c
5 min read
System Design Interview Questions and Answers [2025]
In the hiring procedure, system design interviews play a significant role for many tech businesses, particularly those that develop large, reliable software systems. In order to satisfy requirements like scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability, an extensive plan for the system's a
7 min read
100 Days of System Design - A Complete MindMap
"Are you looking for the best way to learn system design in just 100 days? " "Do you want to effectively prepare for System Design Interviews and master the key concepts and techniques? " If so, you're in the right place. This comprehensive guide is designed to take you through a structured 100-day
10 min read
Design BookMyShow - A System Design Interview Question
Designing BookMyShow is a popular system design interview question that tests your ability to build scalable, high-performance systems. It involves creating a platform where users can search for movies, select seats, and book tickets while handling high traffic and real-time updates. This article wi
11 min read
Web3.0: The Next Era of the Internet
Web3.0, commonly known as Web3, is the next era of the Internet. It aims to address the limitations of the previous versions of the Web. From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, we have been consuming information in a way that we have very little control over. However, Web3.0 claims that it will provide information
9 min read
How Much System Design Should A Software Engineer Know?
In software engineering, mastering system design has become critical. From small-scale applications to complex and distributed applications, knowing how to design robust, scalable, and easy-to-maintain software is very important. With this article, we will be answering the most common question asked
10 min read