A good start to describing a Content Management System (CMS) is to describe the experience of using one. At Core Zero Creative we design websites in a database-driven content management system (CMS) that allows our clients to easily update and manage the content of their websites. They can do this using any web browser from any location, and it requires no software to be downloaded, purchased, or installed. Each user within a company or team can have their own login and be assigned permission to edit various parts of the website content including the text and images. And the best part yet is that this can all be done with no technical expertise needed, and certainly no HTML or web programming knowledge—at all!

In the bigger picture, a CMS is actually an entire programming framework running on a web server inside a live, interactive database, allowing not only the above experience, but also the complete customization of entire websites or blogs created (and managed) using CMS. OK, I totally promise not to crack out any more tech-sentences like that, OK? Back to plain English, everything behind the scenes that allows the simple, powerful interface described above is also up for full customization. There are two reasons to customize: colors/visuals, and adding features/functionality. Every element can be customized from headers at the top, footers at the bottom, side bars on the left and/or right, to the theme—the overall appearance and colors. Your blog can visually match your brand and image, and you can add any functionality that will help better serve your readers, clients, and prospects.

At Core Zero Creative we use WordPress, which is a state-of-the-art CMS publishing platform with a high value placed on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is, in a word, priceless. Programming on this platform we are able to build entire custom websites with embedded blogs, or we can build stand alone blogs. Everything is taken care of for our clients, leaving them to focus on adding quality, helpful content to connect with their readers, prospects, clients, and customers.

The experience of “posting” (adding content) is that of using a simple word processor like Wordpad, or Word. You have bold, italic, and underlined text, center, left, and right alignment, and bulleted or numbered lists. All the fonts, colors, spacing, and other elements are automatic. This is for visual consistency. You just type, jazz it up a bit with a little bold or italics as needed, add web links or images, and then simply click a button to publish your work. Everything falls into place, your titles, links, fonts, all of it.

You’re likely reading this on our blog, so take a look around with different eyes now. See how everything looks consistent? Colors, fonts, headlines, titles, dates, authors? See the categories to guide you by topic? See the recent post list? Let us know what you think of this mad but simple science by posting comments below. Is this something you’d like to take advantage of for your business to maximize the use of your time? Let us know!

At Your Service,

Eric Bryant

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