content management system

content management system (CMS), collaborative software for creating, modifying, and managing digital content. CMSs typically include tools for creating and formatting content that are simple enough for most people to use, workflow options for administrators to permit particular users to serve in certain roles, and a means of presenting content online, generally on a website. By far the most common CMS is WordPress, which was being used on more than 40 percent of all websites by 2023.

A CMS is a very easy way to set up a website, which was once a difficult and expensive prospect. After acquiring Web hosting services and installing a CMS, users generally have only to choose a template, adjust the CMS’s settings to their own preferences, and start generating or uploading content. The assistance of other technical staff is rarely required. Consequently, many individuals and organizations now build their own websites with the help of CMSs.

A CMS consists of two parts: a content management application (CMA) and a content delivery application (CDA). For the majority of users, the CMA is the component with which they are most familiar; it is what they use to create, manage, and edit content. Many CMAs offer premade templates and other features to ensure that even users with little experience can operate the software.

A CDA, on the other hand, serves as the backend of the CMS, getting the content components from the CMS database and displaying them to viewers. For a CMS like WordPress, the CDA is guided in this task by the metadata that the CMS’s users create with the CMA; no display information, such as the layout of the site, is hard-coded into the program. Indeed, little more than the CMA’s default start page is. Consequently, CMA users have a practically unlimited number of options for how the website looks and functions.

CMSs are best known for Web content management (WCM), wherein content is stored and delivered to websites, but other uses exist. Digital asset management (DAM) systems, such as those used by museums, manage graphics and multimedia components, along with their corresponding metadata. A document management system (DMS) specializes exclusively in documents. Component content management (CCM) systems manage and index the individual elements of a document—for example, at the level of images, paragraphs, or even words. More generally, CMSs are also used for enterprise content management (ECM), wherein multiple users in an organization collaborate in managing information so it can be more easily used and accessed.

In 1995 FileNet became the first company to create a CMS. Competitors arrived shortly thereafter—some made it to market the same year—but it was Vignette, which released StoryBuilder in 1996, that would coin the term content management system. The introduction of Adobe’s PageMill and Vermeer Technologies’ (later Microsoft’s) FrontPage, both in 1995, popularized the new type of software. Since those two large companies treated their own products as loss leaders, they also swiftly drove down prices.

By the early 2000s the CMS was ubiquitous. The open-source CMS appeared, along with a host of frameworks (prewritten code for building websites and Web applications), so that basic CMS products for the average consumer became free. In 2003, user-friendly CMS sites, like the then new WordPress, debuted premade templates for people without coding experience. In 2006 Alfresco presented the first open-source option for ECM.

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With the advent of smartphones like the iPhone in the later 2000s, CMSs had to change. Every CMS had been designed to deliver digital content to desktop and laptop computers. Adapting to mobile devices meant creating a new version of websites—often simplified—for smartphones. The arrival of even more devices with Internet access, such as smartwatches, gaming consoles, and voice-activated devices, required a more elegant solution. The answer was the “headless CMS,” in which the content repository (the backend of the CMS, or its “body”) lacks a presentation layer (the “head”). Instead of having a front end, the headless CMS makes its content available to any display via an API (application programming interface).