A foundational reading that explains what a Content Management System is, how it stores and presents content, and why CMS platforms are the standard solution for building and managing modern websites; learners read it before exploring specific platforms.
Topics
This module covers 6 topics. Open a topic to see its subtopics.
Module Content
13 items.
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A comparative overview of major CMS platforms (such as WordPress, Drupal, and others), examining their core features, strengths, and typical use cases to help learners and instructors evaluate which platform suits different project types.
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A decision-focused reading that weighs the trade-offs between using an existing CMS and building a fully custom web application, covering strategic, technical, and business factors; learners use it to develop a framework for making platform decisions on real projects.
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A reading that defines the webmaster role, its scope of responsibilities — spanning technical maintenance, content oversight, and organizational communication — and how it differs from pure development or content-editing roles; learners use it to understand the profession's breadth.
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A reading covering the ongoing practices required to keep a live website secure, performant, accurate, and reliable, including maintenance routines, production management workflows, and strategies for handling updates and incidents; learners use it as a practical guide to post-launch site care.
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A reading covering the ongoing practices required to keep a live website secure, performant, accurate, and reliable, including maintenance routines, production management workflows, and strategies for handling updates and incidents; learners use it as a practical guide to post-launch site care.
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A foundational reading that defines what a content management system is and breaks down its core components — the content store or database, the editing and authoring interface, templating, and user roles — so learners understand how a CMS separates content from presentation and code.
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A survey of widely used CMS platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and hosted services, comparing their dashboards, templating approaches, plugin ecosystems, and typical use cases to help learners match a platform to a project's needs.
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A decision-focused reading that weighs building on an existing CMS against writing a custom application, covering trade-offs in cost, speed to launch, flexibility, security, and long-term maintenance so learners can justify an architectural choice for a given project.
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An overview of the webmaster role after a site goes live, describing responsibilities such as patching software, monitoring uptime and security, auditing content, coordinating with designers and developers, and communicating with stakeholders.
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A practical guide to post-launch operations covering update and patch cycles, backup and restore testing, intrusion monitoring, performance tuning, content and link audits, and scheduling routine maintenance work.
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A reading on the professional communication side of web projects, addressing requirements gathering, setting and managing client expectations, organizing feedback, documenting scope and responsibilities, and avoiding the miscommunications that derail budgets and deadlines.
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The consolidated module page that compiles all five readings on CMS fundamentals, platform comparisons, CMS-versus-custom decisions, webmaster duties, maintenance practices, and client communication into a single document for review or printing.