Feb 22, 2024
Madhuri Maram
What is a CMS?
Getting down to basics — in its simplest terms — a CMS is a ‘system’ that ‘manages’ ‘content.’ Basically, Content Management System (CMS).
A Content Management System [CMS] is a software platform that lets its users create, edit, archive, collaborate, report, publish, distribute and inform. Its Graphic User Interface (GUI) makes interacting with a website's database user friendly.
A CMS allows users without any coding knowledge to amend, modify and edit content to websites using a WYSIWYG interface, an acronym for "what you see is what you get." The data entered into CMS software is stored in a database, which renders the web page via a template. The CSS of that page can then control the output.
How CMS Works
A CMS generally consists of two main components:
Content Management Application (CMA): This is the user interface that allows users to add, modify, and remove content from a website without needing to know HTML or other programming languages
Content Delivery Application (CDA): This component takes the content you input in the CMA, stores it properly, and makes it visible to your visitors. It provides the back-end services that support the management and delivery of the content once it's created.
Key Features of a CMS
Content creation: Users can easily create and format content.
Content storage: Stores content in a consistent fashion in one place.
Workflows: Assigns permissions for content management based on roles.
Publishing: Allows users to publish content live at designated times.
Optimization: Tools to improve the digital experience and content performance
How CMS Works in Framer
Framer, a design and prototyping tool, has integrated CMS capabilities that allow designers and developers to manage and display content such as blog posts, job listings, and marketing pages on their websites. (Images Credit: Framer.)
Here's how CMS functions within Framer:
Collections: Act like a simple database to manage and display content on your website. You can use different field types to collect and store items.
CMS Pages: Serve as templates for displaying content based on CMS items, ensuring consistent layout and design across automatically generated pages.
Collection List: Displays a list of items from a CMS collection on any page, allowing for the presentation of multiple content types like products or blog posts.
Field Types: Allow for different types of input fields depending on the content needs, such as text, date, and rich text fields.
Transforms: Add prefixes and suffixes to text variables globally, saving time on manual updates.
Filters and Conditionals: Sort, filter, and dynamically show or hide content within a CMS collection based on specific criteria.
Images Credit: Framer.
Framer CMS Basics
From the official Framer Channel, on how you can learn the basic CMS concepts like editing your collection, inserting collection lists, editing collection lists, adding new fields, populating existing designs with CMS content, adding dynamic social images and more.