Now that we are on part four of my “what is CMS” blog series, lets talk about the different types of CMS.

 

Content Management Systems (CMS) come in various shapes and sizes, each possessing different purposes and functions. So, if in the last post you took the “Do I Need CMS?” questionnaire and are now reviewing your needs,  you need to understand the different types of CMS to ensure that you get the system that best fits your needs so you can receive the benefits of CMS that would be most helpful to you and your organization.

 Types of CMS

Enterprise CMS:

 This type of CMS is a comprehensive solution that can deliver content management systems on an enterprise scale, such as to serve an entire corporation or other large organization.

 

These solutions are designed to increase efficiency where a large number of people are involved, allowing documents or cases to pass through the business lifecycle regardless of the size of the business. By bringing enterprise content management down to the user level, this type of CMS has the ability to more effectively manage business processes while still ensuring that any number of individuals can contribute their piece of the pie to the system as a whole.

 

This type of CMS can incorporate business functions such as human resource materials, invoicing, shipping information, customer relations and various other functions into the CMS itself. Most of these large scale types of CMS have the ability to be customized to further guarantee that the client organization will receive what they need out of these solutions.

 

The types of CMS solutions that are capable of effectively operating on an enterprise scale are largely made up of proprietary software vendors, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, IBM Enterprise Content Management, FileNet and several others. There are, however, open source technologies such as Alfresco who have some of the industry’s leading solutions for this type of CMS.

 

Web CMS/ Portals:

 Web CMS (WCM) or Portal systems are another type of CMS that is mainly used for content creation and management on the web.

 

Just as with the Enterprise CMS solutions, Web CMS systems can incorporate a number of functions and benefits. In general, these types of CMS allow numerous users to be able to contribute content to a website, which may be controlled by an “Editor” or someone who moderates what is actually published on the site.

 

They also typically provide features such as file check-in and check-out, project management, calendar systems, and internal forums.

 

Web CMS systems also differentiate themselves from other types of CMS in that the market is currently filled with viable open source options. These options allow an internal developer to control most of the modifications that need to be made to the solution.