What Is a Content Management System ?

A content management system (CMS) is software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for technical knowledge. In other words, a CMS lets you build a website without needing to write code from scratch (or even know how to code at all).

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Instead of building your own system for creating web pages, storing images, and other functions, the content management system handles all that basic infrastructure stuff for you so that you can focus on more forward-facing parts of your website.

Beyond websites, you can also find content management systems for other functions – like document management.

How Does a Content Management System Work?

To give you an idea of how a content management system works, we’re going to take a whirlwind tour of the WordPress interface (WordPress is a good example of a content management system).

Let’s start with creating a piece of content. Without a content management system, you’d need to write a static HTML file and upload it to your server (sounds complicated, right?).

With a content management system like WordPress, you can just write your content in an interface that looks a good bit like Microsoft Word:

How you create content with the WordPress content management system

That’s a lot simpler, right?

Similarly, to upload and manage media, like images, you can just browse the media library instead of needing to actually interact with your web server directly:

How you manage images and other media with a content management system

The content management system isn’t just a backend management interface, though. It also makes all of the content that you create show up for your visitors exactly like you want it to.

What Makes up a Content Management System?

On a more technical level, a content management system is made up of two core parts:

• A content management application (CMA) – this is the part that allows you to actually add and manage content on your site (like you saw above).
• A content delivery application (CDA) – this is the backend, behind-the-scenes process that takes the content you input in the CMA, stores it properly, and makes it visible to your visitors.