As per WT, there was a lot of excitement about the spread of the Internet. Business owners gained a new channel of presentation. They could showcase their companies to their prospects and customers in a new, modern way.
However, at the very beginning, content creation and presentation were accompanied by a big problem. It was impossible to change even a tiny detail on a website without the help of a specialist. In other words, webpage internals were the developer-only zone. In consequence, updates required much time, money, and effort. They were also error-prone, and, from the business point of view, were often implemented too late.
Because of technically complicated, low-level management, websites before CMSs were not effective communication tools. In the early days of the Internet, information circulation between the business owner and the customer via the website was very limited, or even non-existent. The reason was its multiple mediation; the business owner planned all the changes in the website content by e-mailing their ideas to the developer. They urgently needed new tools to manage the content of their websites themselves to really get in touch with the content and the client.
The Ownership: Web Content Management Systems
To manage websites efficiently, business owners needed to be able to control their content. And they wanted to do it fast, without the participation of web developers every step of the way. Hence, they needed tools enabling website management instead of manually managing their content.
Initially, content management tools were created ad hoc, and until 1995 the niche for a commercial CMS was empty. That year, Vignette created the first fully functional Web Content Management System (WCMS). It addressed perfectly the simple needs of its times, and embraced template-based document publishing for a sole communication channel, the World Wide Web. Since then, the website owner was able to introduce changes, update the information as needed, and adapt the appearance of the website as often as they pleased.
Vignette was the first to fill the niche, but was not the only company in search for making web publishing more accessible. Documentum, FutureTense, and Inso, among others, followed shortly.
It soon became clear that an entirely new software industry emerged from the mix of hand-crafting HTML, custom built systems for each project, and content managed by source control. These solutions had one common goal: they were created to make publishing and updating content easier, and more operative.
Web 2.0
The first CMSs were tools providing website owners a possibility of simple and effective web publishing. The visitor could read up-to-date information, e.g., check the opening hours. However, they still could learn from the website as much as from a press advertisement. If the customer needed to contact a store, they could only consult the website to check the phone number and postal address, but could not get a real-time answer. However, allowing users to comment and ask questions would have meant allowing them to co-create content on the web. It would open a new space for interaction and set new challenges. Simply speaking, the idea of a website needed to be reimagined again.
When the Internet entered the age of Web 2.0 to address these expectations, the CMSs needed to follow. They needed to dynamically serve the content answering users’ craving for interaction, as well as to provide two-way communication.
When social media became the central issue, CMS was not only to display user-generated content, but also to personalize the user’s experience. Providing the website owner with an option to manage permissions for editions and access to certain functionalities, provided them an opportunity to enable various types of users to interact with the content differently.
Growth
At 6.5% CAGR, Global Content Management Software Market Size to Hit US$ 25.5 Billion by 2028 | Content Management Software Industry Trends, Share, Growth, Overview & Forecast Report by Facts & Factors
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