The advent of the Content Management System (CMS) has brought professional web creation to the masses. Just a few years ago, web design meant self-coding or using a package such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver. While these solutions offer the website creator a way to build the front page relatively easily, managing a full-featured site quickly becomes overwhelming when additions are required. For a simple example, a website with many pages must duplicate the menu if it is done in html. If one were to add an extra menu item, one would have to do it for every page which turns into a content management nightmare. The alternative is to build the menu server side, for which php, ASP and similar technologies are used. And that leads us to the CMS. Read the rest of this entry »