{"id":203,"date":"2007-09-19T11:03:51","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T16:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2007\/blogs-vs-cms\/"},"modified":"2007-10-31T18:43:07","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T23:43:07","slug":"blogs-vs-cms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2007\/blogs-vs-cms\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogs vs. CMS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Preamble:<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve mentioned several times in the past 2 years, that web designers should learn how to use\/edit at least one blog or CMS. Some popular choices:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>WordPress &#8211; a blog.<\/li>\n<li>Drupal &#8211; a CMS.<\/li>\n<li>Mambo &#8211; a CMS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>.. And there are many, many more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why should web designers be concerned?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t go into all the details here, but in a nutshell, a lot of web sites can use the features\/functionality provided by blogs or CMS packages. Why reinvent the wheel?<\/p>\n<p>That said, what is the difference between a blog and a CMS?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nBlogs vs. CMS<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>First, let me start by defining a blog:<\/p>\n<p>A blog is a web-based software that allows users to create web pages through a web interface &#8211; you enter text into an HTML form and that text is placed into pages. <\/p>\n<p>&#8230; The pages that you add to a blog, are date ordered and (are typically) stored in an SQL database .. like MySQL for example.<\/p>\n<p>From the popular WordPress site:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<em>A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Blogs have been created with several languages: PHP, Perl, Python etc. WordPress for example, is written in PHP. <\/p>\n<p>&#8230; Actually, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.killerphp.com\">PHP<\/a> is probably the most commonly used language for building blog and CMS software.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So what is a CMS?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a nutshell: a CMS does everything a blog does &#8230; and a whole lot more.<\/p>\n<p>Blogs are typically designed for one or two people to use. Whereas a CMS is designed to handle communities. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Blogs = few contributors\/writers<br \/>\nCMS = many contributors\/writers.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>CMS software will have a lot more capability in terms of what kind of activities you can do with it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>User polling.<\/li>\n<li>Built in blogs.<\/li>\n<li>Built in Forums.<\/li>\n<li>Configurable, precise control over what users can do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>.. And much more.<\/p>\n<p>All this extra functionality comes with a cost: CMS software is more complex to learn and use. I have also found that CMS softwares tends to run slower than their nimble cousins &#8211; blogs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blurred lines between blogs and CMS&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These days, you are seeing many blogging tools being slowly transformed into what I would call &#8216;mini CMS&#8217;. <\/p>\n<p>&#8230; This is blurring the lines between the two types of software. <\/p>\n<p>WordPress for example (a popular blog software,) has a plug-in capability where programmers can build modules that enhance WordPress&#8217; capabilities. Over time, a lot of really interesting plug-ins have been created and now WordPress is no longer a simple blog.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Choosing between a blog or CMS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Choosing between a blog and a CMS can be a painful experience &#8211; as it was for me. But in the end, you have to approach it by figuring out what you really need to do on your website &#8230; and then look at your options in the blog and CMS world.<\/p>\n<p>In my case, I narrowed it down to Drupal (a CMS) and a blog, WordPress. After having installed and configured both (to get a feel,) I went with WordPress because it was fast and it met my needs. <\/p>\n<p>Thanks for reading,<\/p>\n<p>Stefan Mischook<\/p>\n<p>www.killersites.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Preamble: I&#8217;ve mentioned several times in the past 2 years, that web designers should learn how to use\/edit at least one blog or CMS. Some popular choices: WordPress &#8211; a blog. Drupal &#8211; a CMS. Mambo &#8211; a CMS .. And there are many, many more. Why should web designers be concerned? I won&#8217;t go &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,35,9,34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}