What Can and Can't CMS Do For You?

There are tons of open source CMSs downloadable in the internet, among which joomla is quite popular among webmasters. Almost all of them claim that they could help even those who know nothing about HTML build a sophisticated dynamic website within several minutes. I agree that's true. With a strong set of core functions, numerous powerful extensions, and a lot of free or bought templates available in somewhere, putting a website live overnight is not difficult at all. CMS is so fantastic that CMS experience is shared in every corner of the webmaster' world. However, before you take advantage of CMS, I think it is better that you are familiar with what can and can't CMS do for you.

First let's go through briefly what CMS can do for you. CMS, as its name tells us, it's a web content publishing and management system that allows normal content originators to create, submit, and publish their content directly within a web application/site without any development tools or knowledge of HTML. Therefore, in principle, CMS is a management tool which could facilitate the maintenance of your website greatly.

However, what I want to elaborate more about is those things that CMS can't do, since we are more like to make mistakes in this regard. Here I summarized several points for your reference.

• CMS couldn't perform design work for you. You have to prepare your template separately, and leave proper slots in the template for the CMS to layout all types of content, including text, image, and video and so on. Although free templates for any kind of CMS are available here and there, it's highly possible that you can't use them as they are and have to adapt them to your need, which cannot be accomplished without a good knowledge of basic HTML and CSS.

• CMS couldn't create content for you. No matter you use CMS or not, you are the originator of unique content and should be held responsible for the quality of content. CMS won't take over the writing job for you. On the contrary, it only help you manage the content created by you.

• CMS couldn't develop ideas for you. The same as content, you are the one who are held responsible for the creativity and marketability of your idea. If you try to delegate this important task to CMS, your failure is then inevitable.

Based on the aforementioned points with regard to what CMS can't do, we could arrive at the following conclusions:

• If you don't know anything about HTML or CSS, don't try to build any independent website, even if CMS and templates, either free or bought, are both available.
  
• If you don't have any sources to acquire unique contents, don't hope CMS will help you become a great writer
• If you don't have any mature and innovative idea in mind, don't try to become an entrepreneur just because you have acquired the skills of manipulating some kind of CMS.

What do you think? Should any thought, don't hesitate to leave your comments here.