What separates a content management system from just a bunch of web pages?

I have a website that has related pages. They have links that point back and forth to one another but I have no integrated system, nor do I know what that would mean.

What is the minimum code that a group of web pages must have to be considered a Content Management System (CMS). Is it that all the settings are in the database and the pages are generated somehow? Is there some small snippet that all my pages could share that makes them a CMS, database or not?

Thanks. I was also hoping not to have to study a giant CMS to see what makes it a CMS . After maybe a basic understanding I would know what I was looking for.

edit: here's why I ask about code. Whenever I have looked at a CMS, and maybe they aren't all the same, I saw that to develop a module you always had to inherit from certain classes and had some necessary code. I didn't know if there was some magic model that I just don't get that all cms mak开发者_如何转开发ers understand.

edit: perhaps my question is more about being extendable or pluggable. What would a minimum look like? Is it possible to show that here?

edit: how about this? Is something a CMS if it is not extendable and/or pluggable?

I think this is really impossible to say. We all manage content. The "system" is just whatever mechanism you use to do so(dragging and dropping in Explorer or committing content changes via a SQL query). To say there is a minimum amount of code needed really isn't indicative. What is indicative is how often you find yourself making mistakes and how easy it is for a given user of a given skill level and knowledge to execute the functions in the designed system. That tells you the quality/degree of what you have in place being worthy of being called a "CMS."

Simply put a CMS is an application that allows the user to publish and edit existing web content.

In response to the edit:

A "good" CMS allows of extensibility. By using inheritence you can extend the functionality of a CMS outside of the core components provided. That's the magic.

About Extensibility:

Depending on the language/framework you want to build your CMS with, you can load pages or controls(ASP.NET) using command built into the framework. Typically what is being done is a parent class/interface is being defined that forces an module that is to be developed to follow some given standards:

Public MustInherit Class CMSModule

'Here you will define properties and functions that need to be global to all modules being developed to extend your CMS.

    public property ModuleName as string
End Class

public class PlugInFooCMSPage
   inherits CMSModule

end class

Then it's just a matter of simply loading a module dynamically in whatever construct a given language/framework provides.

Ultimately, a CMS is a system that lets you manage content, so it needs an user interface that is dedicated to letting you easily create, edit and delete pages on your website.

However, it's fairly usual to expect from a CMS to provide a browser-based WYSIWYG page editor, file uploading, image resizing, url rewriting, page categories and tags, user accounts (editor, moderator, administrator), and some kind of templae system.

Without dragging you into a theoretical explanation of what a CMS is and what it's not, perhaps some tutorials on the building methodology of a CMS will help you better understand.

http://css-tricks.com/php-for-beginners-building-your-first-simple-cms/

http://www.intranetjournal.com/php-cms/

A Content Management System is a System that Manages Content. :) So if you got many pages that share the same layout, you can create a system that stores the content into a database and when a page is requested, it gets that content, merges it with a template that contains the page header, menu, etc.. and outputs the result.

The basis idea is that you don't want to copy HTML pages, and have to edit hundreds of them when you want to change your layout.

Such a system can be very complex, featuring wysiwyg editors, toolbars, version control, multiple user publishing and much more, but it could be as simple as a single page behind a standard loging, that contains only an input field for the title and a textarea in which you type the html content.