CMS systems are also very useful for setting up online shopping carts as they provide all the structure necessary to 'frame' the online shop. For one example see Poxodd's Lair.

What are the advantages?

The first and foremost advantage is the ability to easily update your website without having to send the entire thing to a server over and over. For large sites this can take a very long time.

You can see an example of how you would edit content (from this particular page no less) to the right. This screenshot is from PHPWebsite (the engine running this site) and you can see that it includes handy buttons to format text, lists, links and just about anything else you might need.

Besides being easy to update, all open source CMS systems make it very easy to expand the system with custom content. For example, on a shooting club website for Greenport Tactical Association I added a match results system that allows user to browse the results, change the sort order, download a PDF or a printable web version.

As well as the above, CMS systems allow for easy control of the format of all pages and content so that the site looks and feels consistant no matter what is going on.

In addition, the security features of open source CMS systems are extremely good. Due to the large number of sites using them and the constant review of the source code, security defects (and indeed any defects) are found very quickly and usually fixed by a system admin before anybody is affected. These fixes tend to be posted on CMS forums systems in short order so that the impact is very limited.

Lastly, you can allow users to submit content (either to be reviewed or posted directly). This includes features like forums, calendars, shopping carts, feedback and others. The uses of CMS systems are varied and nearly unlimited.

As you can see, CMS systems are far superior to traditional static web pages in many ways.