Content Management Systems (CMS)

Wordpress

For those webmasters who don't want to get bogged down with the technicalities of learning HTML to code their own website, there are content management systems. These systems handle the creation and publishing of web pages for you. They even handle the addition of links o new pages to your menu navigation, too.

The most popular CMS by far is the blog and the most popular blogging system is Wordpress. A blog is simply a website designed to publish journal style entries in a chronological fashion. They are ideal for online diary style websites. Each new web page you add is called a "post" and is dated. However, it's possible to hide the online diary quality of a blog so that it seems just like any other website.

The advantages of using Wordpress are:

• It's quick and easy to install
• It's simple to create new pages that include a varity of media, like pictures and video
• You can get some really stylish designs (called themes) for free. There are also some fantastic ones available that you have to pay for.
• There is a huge range of extra functionality that you can introduce to your blog via "plugins".
• You don't need to mess around FTPing pages to your host.

There is a small learning curve involved with using Wordpress to publish your content, but most would argue that you need to invest less time in learning to use Wordpress than learning HTML.

For beginners who just want to get up and running quickly without having the hassle of learning a coding language, I would recommend using Wordpress.