CMS is a multifunctional application. It is capable to create a powerful portal website in a matter of minutes and it has wide supporting community. The CMS portals offer intuitive administration and dispose of detailed tutorials. CMS consists of a content management application which enables the management and modification of content without advanced webmaster knowledge, and a content delivery application, that uses new information to update the website.

In this article we have selected some of the most popular open source, free to download and use CMS tools. You can choose any of them for your website depending on your particular needs or organizational requirements.

Creating a successful website is now easier than ever due to the Content Management System (CMS). With CMS you can Joomla CMS create and publish web content, present it to your audience, and archivate it safely.

CMS helps you keep your website well organized and comprehensive, increases the data security, and reduces the site maintenance costs.

In this manner CMS is an outstanding solution for your small or middle sized business as well as for your personal websites.

            A content management system (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content.

A CMS may support the following features:

• identification of all key users and their content management roles
• the ability to assign roles and responsibilities to different content categories or types
• definition of workflow tasks for collaborative creation, often coupled with event messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in content. For example, a content creator submits a story, which is published only after the copy editor revises it and the editor-in-chief approves it.
• the ability to track and manage multiple versions of a single instance of content
• the ability to capture content
• the ability to publish the content to a repository to support access to the content
• separation of content's semantic layer from its layout (For example, the CMS may automatically set the color, fonts, or emphasis of text.).

The content management systems (CMS) or scripts listed here allow you to install a PHP script onto their web account that makes this possible. Depending on the script you install, content management scripts may allow users to easily change content on their site, define their site appearance site-wide by modifying a template, provide a search engine, site map, web statistics, online file manager, online content editor, etc. A few require the site to have SQL, while others work with the ordinary account.

Writing your own CMS can lead to a solution that is better suited to your requirements, better addresses the needs of your users, and is better understood by your development team. If you have the time and expertise to write your own in-house system, it may well prove the better option.

• Look at the overall plan for the CMS, and a look at PHP and the concept of object-oriented programming.
• look at the basic PHP code that will power the CMS.
• the creation of the database and the database connector.
• the creation of a validator class and the creation of sections for the content that needs to be managed.
• security to the content management system, and shows how to create a system that is accessible only to those with authorization to access it. It also takes a look at creating a log-in for users.
• layouts for the content, templating systems, and talks about possible add-ons and features that can enhance your PHP-based content management system.

A tool used to organize documents and keep track of what's where. I've covered a plethora of such systems in previous articles, but for many businesses there can be only one solution: to design and implement their own custom system.

Writing your own CMS, on the other hand, can lead to a solution that is better suited to your requirements, better addresses the needs of your users, and is better understood by your development team. If you have the time and expertise to write your own in-house system, it may well prove the better option. And this is what I shall be embarking upon in this series.

The system we create will be written using the PHP programming language, which excels in the development of Web-based systems. I'll be using MySQL as the database server, but the system will be written to allow the use of alternative databases, such as PostgreSQL or SQL Server.

So what will this system actually do? First and foremost, it will allow the bulk of the intranet or Internet site's content to be easily stored and managed in a database. We'll also include a number of other features required for running a successful site, such as authenticating users and managing files.

Some basic PHP knowledge will be needed for coding your own CMS, although most of what you'll need to know will be demonstrated here. I'll assume you have access to a server running PHP and a database system. Once the series is complete, I'll make available a polished version of the CMS for anyone to use.

I don't promise the vast array of abilities incorporated into systems such as Postnuke, Smarty, or some commercial content management systems. But just having lots of features isn't always what's needed, and this series will help you to develop a system specifically targeted to your needs. With that, let's get going...

To begin with, we'll plan how our PHP-based content management system will work. In subsequent articles, I'll demonstrate how each of the major components are implemented, leading to a complete system.

The first step is a basic specification of what our CMS must do. Obviously, this will depend on your needs:

1. Content Management: Probably the most vital function of the system, it must store content such as documents and news in a database, and display to the user whatever he or she requests. An easy-to-use interface is required to allow editors to add, remove, or modify content.

2. User authentication: There may be certain areas of the intranet or Internet site to which we wish to limit access. At the very least this will be the "admin" area, where the editor of the site will be able to add, edit or modify content. You may also wish to have areas only available to certain departments or staff.

3. Page uniformity/templates: The system should have a uniform look and feel, and this design element needs to be separated from the logic element, e.g., the programming required to display an article should be separated from how that article looks (stylistically) on the screen.

We have four main PHP modules (or "classes") that will be widely used in the system. These are tasked with accessing the database, allowing the user to upload files to the site, reading and writing templates, and logging users in and out. These classes all "extend" one parent class called "systemObject."

Think of these four as being independent of one another, yet all inheriting whatever data we put in systemObject. This technique of hierarchy allows us to make changes effecting all four system classes, just by adding or modifying the code in the systemObject parent class. Again, this concept will become clearer when we start coding. In the middle of the diagram are the basic areas of the administration system, and each will need one or more PHP pages to perform the required tasks. 

PHP helps the design process by supporting object-oriented programming (OOP). When putting together our system, there are certain chunks of programming that are needed again and again, such as database access, user authentication, etc. To keep this code neat and tidy, we bundle it together in PHP files called "classes." We can then create instances (or "objects") of these classes whenever they are needed. Thus, the class can be thought of as a blueprint for one or more instances.

For example, we could create a class with code for connecting to a database, and then create an instance of that class whenever we need to query the database. If this isn't immediately clear then don't worry, it will become more obvious when we start coding. This method of programming allows a complex system to be broken down into smaller and simpler blocks, which makes life easier when it comes to management, modification, and error finding.