Content management software

Content management (CM), is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referred to as digital content, or simply as content. Digital content may take the form of text (such as electronic documents), multimedia files (such as audio or video files), or any other file type that follows a content lifecycle requiring management. The process is complex enough to manage that several large and small commercial software vendors such as Interwoven and Microsoft offer content management software to control and automate significant aspects of the content lifecycle.

Content management practices and goals vary by mission and by organizational governance structure. News organizations, e-commerce websites, and educational institutions all use content management, but in different ways. This leads to differences in terminology and in the names and number of steps in the process.

Content management is an inherently collaborative process. It often consists of the following basic roles and responsibilities:

A critical aspect of content management is the ability to manage versions of content as it evolves (see also version control). Authors and editors often need to restore older versions of edited products due to a process failure or an undesirable series of edits.

Another equally important aspect of content management involves the creation, maintenance, and application of review standards. Each member of the content creation and review process has a unique role and set of responsibilities in the development or publication of the content. Each review team member requires clear and concise review standards. These must be maintained on an ongoing basis to ensure the long-term consistency and health of the knowledge base.

A content management system is a set of automated processes that may support the following features:

Increasingly, the repository is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates enterprise search and retrieval. Content management systems take the following forms:

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