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No, CMS stands for "content-management system," and that's how we build websites for InterVarsity. Here's a crash course in this crucial publishing technology, from the perspective of a happy test pilot.

Brainstorming the article module.

In the "old days" of the Web — that is, before AD 2000 — almost all websites, no matter how large, were really just big piles of loose pages held together only by an abstract idea of their structure. (Indeed, many still are.) Good navigation and visual design could help visitors find their way through the jungle of pages, but for the people who had to publish and maintain such "flat file" sites, this became a nightmare.

These days, many sites build themselves on the fly, whenever a visitor requests a page, by dipping into a database that contains all the bits and pieces of content that are needed — stories, navigation bars, images, everything. (JonBoyd.org, for instance, works this way.) Storing content centrally in a database makes it easier to add and much easier to revise content.

But in order to create, edit, and administer that content, you need an application to see what you're doing and to save it into the database. That's what a content-management system, or CMS, is for. Most web surfers, even extremely savvy ones, have never seen a CMS themselves, just as you can be a seasoned restaurant-goer and never have set foot in a commercial kitchen. But the recent explosion of blogging has put CMSes into the hands of many more people than ever before — because that's essentially what the blogging revolution has been: the spread of the CMS to a much greater population. (JonBoyd.org currently depends on Movable Type, one popular CMS often used for blogs.)

Because of InterVarsity's distinctive publishing needs, the Web Team has developed our own, in-house CMS. Nathan Lenz and Brian Beitzel deserve the title of "Dynamic Duo" for pioneering the dynamic administration and display of content for InterVarsity's public websites, with the first CMS-based sites going live around three years ago (for International Student Ministries and Following Christ 2002). Since then it's been onward and upward, with constant improvements to the CMS behind the scenes, as well as regular launches of dozens of new public sites. Every new site we launch now depends on the CMS, and we have dozens of colleagues using it to publish everything from front-page news items to the official staff handbook.

For most new sites, the CMS gets a new super-power or two. For instance, a year ago the staff-only resource library for the Alumni Department introduced unlimited levels of subcategories, and for the Cedar Campus site, we got multiple images for any content item and easily customizable interactive forms. For the forthcoming Student Leadership site, there will be user commenting, streamlined URLs, and more.

My involvement with the InterVarsity CMS is an intimate one. Not only am I a user of the CMS (as a "content guy" for several of InterVarsity's sites), but I also have the privilege of working with Nathan, Lydia Sidrak, and Tim Miller to dream up and evaluate new features. We also are constantly keeping an eye on other CMSes (for instance, Movable Type, Typo3, Textpattern, and Word Press) to glean inspiration. I often feel that this part of my job is like being a test pilot, since I depend on the engineers to do the real building, but then I get to let it rip and try to break their beautiful creations as best I can.

Lately, Lydia and I have been discussing her major overhaul of the CMS's "article module" that handles a huge portion of intervarsity.org's content. In the end, it may or may not look much like our early scribbles, but it's great to put on our thinking caps and start filling up the white board with ideas that could shape a tool used by so many of our colleagues.

first published Jun 21, 2004