If you've read anything at all about Content Management Systems (CMSs), you'll probably know at least three things: CMSs are the most exciting way to do business, CMSs can be really, I mean really, complicated and lastly portals are absolutely, outrageously, often unaffordably expensive.

Focus Graphic Design can change all that with Joomla! for mainstream business or Zen Cart for an on-line store. They are different from the normal models for portal software. For a start, they're not complicated. They have been developed for the masses. They are licensed under the GNU/GPL license, easy to install and administer and reliable. They don't even require the user or administrator of the system to know HTML to operate them once they're up and running.

What is a Content Management System?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a web-based interface (linked to a database) that allows users to update a website (adjusting existing content, or adding new pages) without having to know any HTML. At its simplest, that might mean correcting a spelling mistake or updating a phone number on an existing page.

However, a more useful example is something that's much more complex and entirely normal: posting a new press release. The user logs in, adds the heading to a specific field, enters the body of the release, and finishes by selecting some categories to describe the story. The Joomla! CMS will automatically put the title, date and first paragraph on the homepage, create a new page for the release, and also add the story to an archive by date and category.

More complex systems have extra features such as review and approval processes, or timed publishing (and removal).

What are the benefits?

Many people using existing CMSs just assume that this is how all sites are updated. But without one, the above example would involve manually changing several existing pages (the homepage and archives), and creating a new page from scratch for the story itself. Then if you wanted any other page to link to the release – such as a list of latest stories in the sidebar of pages – you’d have to change all those manually as well.

A CMS drastically speeds up these cumbersome steps, and decentralises the site updating process, freeing up the technical people (assuming you have any) to do other work. And it means the people who know the content are the ones who can update the website.

Are the expensive ones better?

Not necessarily. The sales staff of the large enterprise content management vendors might be slicker, and their list of features longer, but to our minds the 80/20 rule applies to CMS very strongly: most people will only use the the most basic features most of the time.

A CMS with all the bells and whistles might appeal to the IT department looking for a single solution to keep the marketing department off their backs, but if it confuses people and never works well, it’s not worth the money.

A simple (and free) system like Joomla! or Zen Cart might well be all you need, even for a relatively complex site.