What is a content management system?
A CMS is a software program that provides simple controls for building websites and for organizing, formatting, and controlling access to website content. It allows people to manage their websites without knowing HTML or CSS, let alone programming languages like javascript or Cold Fusion.
What is CommonSpot?
CommonSpot is a content management system that Cornell has bought a site license for, allowing units here to use it at little to no cost.
What kinds of sites can benefit from content management?
It’s probably a good idea to build your website in a content management system if you want it to have content that’s updated frequently and don’t have a dedicated programmer available to make those updates. In particular, if you can benefit from having many non-technical people able to add or change information on the site, or standard formatting and text styles throughout the site, a CMS site makes it much easier to achieve those goals. Many Cornell units use CommonSpot sites to allow their department admins to update news items or seminar schedules, or their faculty to update their bio pages.
Are content-managed sites more expensive to build than plain HTML sites?
In general, no, if the site is built by people familiar with the content management system. The programming for new functions may take longer in a CMS site, but it takes little time to include functions that are already tested (such as the IWS dynamic navigation or data management forms).
How hard is CommonSpot to learn?
Most people can learn all they need to know to create and modify text and images in a CommonSpot website in one to three hours. To administer a CommonSpot site, or to master all of the authoring options, takes much more work, and programming in a CommonSpot site is more challenging than programming in a plain site.
Resources for training: