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Content Managment Systems
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 12:45 am
by devork
Can you describe
-what is a CMS?
-for what purpose it is used?
-how it is helpful for me for building sites?
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 3:16 am
by Nay
Well, a CMS is a Content Management System. A few of them out there are PHPnuke and PostNuke. They're like a ready-made backend for you so you don't have to build your own.
I'd say use them if you are lazy to build one yourself, not very experianced with programming or just want to experiment around. Other than that, not much reasons to use it - imho.
-Nay
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 3:56 am
by JAM
Adding...
Most CMS's are template driven, that also makes it something easy to customize. Premade ones (as mentioned, PHPNuke etc.) are meant for the enduser rather than a programmer. So it might not help you build sites, if you are not reading the code to learn and get ideas.
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 4:47 am
by mikeb
-what is a CMS?
Content Management System.
-for what purpose it is used?
This term describes an application which allows individuals to change the content of their site (articles, news items etc.) without having to use any html or other coding. Usually, a web development company will provide a browser based interface for their clients so that the client may update and change information on their web site without having to pay their development company to make the changes.
Traditionally, a website is a collection of text pages which a visitor can call from the server by name e.g. index.html. The server will locate that page and fire it back to the visitors browser and they can browse the data. With CMS, the pages will also contain coding (such as PHP, ASP, ColdFusion) which will operate when the web page is requested by a visitor. Typically, when these 'dynamic' pages are called from the server, the code will be operated on first, and then the page is displayed. The code is usually written to go and get pre-determined content (text for instance) from a database and then build the html page around a pre-designed template of html. This dynamic page is then sent back to the visitors browser with the data coming from the database and the html 'template' mixed.
-how it is helpful for me for building sites?
It's more helpful to your clients really, as they can now update their own sites. If you are developing a site for yourself, then it is helpful to write a CMS application if you think you will have regularly changing information such as news items, announcements, product listings etc. It would mean that, when you want to put new info on your site, you use the CMS to put new data directly into a database and when the next visitor asks for that 'dynamic' page, it will be automatically populated with your new content.
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 7:28 am
by devork
Thanx guys for reply
so I totaly manage the website by some interface like phpnuke ....
so if I have to adde some product in my page, I will added it to db not to html file so when my that html files is generated it will be from the db ,
no need to update the html right ?
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 10:56 am
by JAM
Well, if you have:
Code: Select all
<?php
// products.php
function list_products() {
$result = mysql_query("select * from products");
echo "<table>";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo "<tr><td>" . $row['productname'] . "</td></tr>\n";
}
echo "</table>";
}
?>
<html>
<body>
<?php list_products(); ?>
</body>
</html>
...the page will look the same each time, regardless if you add 1 or 500 products to you database. So no, no need to update the html.
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 12:24 pm
by devork
yep
and also It saves from headache of adding headings on each html page