Ben Miller brought up a great question on the introduction post asking:
I was wondering if you could define the terms “CMS” and “Content Management System” as you are going to use them here. I’ve always understood the abbreviation CMS to have two different meanings: “Content Management System” and “Church Management System.”
He’s right, the terms are confusingly similar. So, here’s a look:
What is a Content Management System?
Even in the traditional CMS world, there are two flavors: Web and Enterprise.
A web CMS is exactly what you think of in Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress with some CMS-specific plugins.These are used to control a website, and are mostly concerned with content aimed at the “public” as opposed to internal operations.
On the other hand, an Enterprise CMS (ECM) is focused on storing and accessing information for an internal user, much like a Church CMS. In this WhitePaper on Enterprise CMS, the author points out the five functions of an ECM:
- Capture
- Manage
- Store
- Deliver
- Preserve
Since those are essentially the core functions of any ChCMS, I suspect that the field of ChCMS (which is relatively old) derives it’s name from the world of Enterprise CMS rather than a Joomla-type setup.
What is a Church CMS?
They come in all different flavors, mostly according to how much you’re interested in paying. Their goal is to make some of the data-heavy problems in the church simpler. So if you are charged with attendance tracking, a ChCMS would take all the numbers, and format a nice report each month.
Or if you need a unified, secure way to check children in and out of sunday school, many of them also provide check-in functionality.
In fact, the core services of most ChCMS services are fairly similar. The differences come in the form of:
- Level of integration between services.
- Ease of training new volunteers to use the system
- User-friendliness
- Pricing type
- Platform
Of course it is hard to assess ease-of-training or user-friendliness before you take the plunge and buy it and even comparing price can be a hassle. We’re going to try to eliminate some of that uncertainty, and combine a lot of those factors so you can compare “apples to apples.”
Ben Miller says
Thanks for the explanation!
Chris says
So, does this mean that Sochurch would be placed in the Church CMS category, and not in the Web CMS category? And that Fellowship one would also be in the Church CMS category?
Thanks for explaining. Just trying to get my thoughts straight. 🙂
Stephen Bateman says
Well FellowshipOne is solidly in the Church CMS category, but SoChurch is different. SoChurch focuses on church communication, rather than administration.
@PaulSteinbrueck says
Stephen, the terms that have been conventionally used for years are “Content Management System” and CMS for platforms like Joomla and Drupal, and “Church Management System” and ChMS for platforms like Shelby and Fellowship1. If you use the terms “Church Content Management System” and ChCMS to refer to platforms like the latter, I think you’re going to introduce a lot of unnecessary confusion. Just my $0.02.
John Saddington says
i think there’s room for both. it’s pretty self-explanatory, and you’re view of how often this is used is limited. most of the church world doesn’t even have a concept about this type of stuff.
Lauren Hunter says
Great new site! Love what you guys are doing.
I started working in the church management software market about 9 or so years ago and the term started out as “CMS” meaning “Church Management Software.” Now, however, with Content Management Systems being the more typical definition of CMS, the church market has mostly moved over to “ChMS” for “church management software (or system).”
I work with Steve Hewitt over at CCMag.com, and he even decided this last year to completely move over to “ChMS” as the acronym for “church management software.”
So I guess now you just have to insert an “h” in that cool URL 🙂
Best of luck with the new site!! Rock on!
Stephen Bateman says
Lauren haha you’re right, perhaps next year we can roll out churchch.ms, catchy don’t you think 😉