In the beginning, the web was simple. You used Mosaic to browse it. You used a text editor to construct pages on it in a language called HTML. If you weren’t a techie, you probably didn’t even know it existed. Then people realised that even non-techies had useful information (“content”) to share. So the Content Management System (CMS) was born.

What is a CMS?

At its heart, the web is a tool for sharing information. To make it possible to display that information (or “content”) on a variety of different machines, people devised a language (HTML) that told the machines how to display it. From the machine’s perspective, this was great: it helped separate information from mere formatting. From the perspective of someone who wanted to share information, it wasn’t so great: they now needed to learn HTML in order to publish their content.

CMSs were developed to resolve this dilemma. A CMS helps you create and store content in a shared repository. It then manages the relationships between content items for you (e.g. keeping track of where they fit into the site hierarchy). Finally, it ensures that each content item is connected to the right style sheet when it comes to be published. Some CMSs also provide facilities to track the status of content items through editorial processes and workflows.

By using a CMS, content editors and the organisations they work for get a number of benefits. For example, they can:

• Create and publish content in a standard format without needing to know HTML or other languages;
• Co-ordinate the work of teams of authors and editors (e.g. by ensuring that only one person is editing any individual content item at any one time);
• Control the branding and quality of content (e.g. by ensuring that the correct style sheets are applied, and that changes to the content are approved before they are published);
• Reuse the same content item in multiple different sites and formats.

A CMS can make it easier to create and publish content, to co-ordinate teams of authors and editors, to control branding, and to reuse content across multiple channels

How have Content Management Systems evolved?

Until about 1996, most people managed websites by editing HTML files and uploading them to their web servers. As well as creating a barrier for non-technical users, this made it hard for organisations to build consistent messaging into their websites. As companies rushed to get onto the web, this was a problem—they wanted to get their content out quickly, but at the same time they were scared of losing control.

Early CMSs were developed to address this problem. A number of large, expensive systems were very successful because they allowed a small group of knowledgeable people to take control of an organisation’s content. CMS vendors thrived during 1996-1999 as the dotcom boom created large demand for their products, and they developed some highly sophisticated tools.

By 2000, the dotcom boom was cooling and the CMS scene cooled with it. During 2000-2003 the first wave of major vendors consolidated and the pace of development slowed. However, during this period a number of new vendors recognised that many organisations didn’t need a highly sophisticated tool—they needed a “good enough” tool at a lower price. A second wave of CMS vendors started to deliver these tools.

During this second wave, free software content management came into its own. The web thrives on openness and collaboration, and many very capable CMSs were developed to work within this spirit. There is now a thriving marketplace of free software CMSs. Some of these provide basic, easy to use functionality for individuals and small organisations. Some of them provide advanced functionality for more complex organisations.