Before content management systems, websites had teams of webmasters who were in charge of putting up content. There were some problems in getting all pages to adopt a common look. Typically, a single file would be passed around as the "template" and programmers filled in the parts marked for content. As the site expanded, the task of updating pages was usually delegated to the people who provided the content. Maintaining the look and feel of the site became increasingly difficult as more people got involved in the content publishing process.
Microsoft Content Management Server provides a solution to this problem by fixing the look and feel across a website in predefined templates, which cannot be changed by authors. Pages based on the same template are alike in both design and layout. They serve as special web forms that support editable text regions for authors to enter content. In this way, developers concentrate on the programming aspect of the...