Which is a website allowing people to create edit or delete content as well as discuss content?

Last Updated: July 30, 2020

A Content Management System (CMS) is defined as a software application that allows users to create, edit, publish, manage, and modify content on a website without any specialized technical knowledge.

In simpler terms, CMS is a must-have tool that lets any business user build their website without writing a single line of code or even knowing how to code at all. Rather than building their own system for creating web pages, storing images, and other basic publishing activities,, enterprises can leverage a content management system to manage all the basic infrastructure and system needs while they focus more on the forward-facing components of their websites as well as their overall content marketing strategy.

This article aims to give you a comprehensive understanding of what a content management system (CMS) is, its components, its key functions, some examples, and best practices that you can follow to leverage the optimum potential of your CMS software.

Table of Contents

• What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
• Types of CMS – Choosing the Right Solution, Deployment and Service Model
• Key Must-Have Features of a Content Management System (CMS)
• Top 10 Best Practices for Operating Content Management Systems (CMS) in 2020

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A content management system (CMS) is a software application that enables multiple users to create, edit, publish, and manage web content, without any technical expertise. It allows people who lack any coding knowledge to amend, modify, and edit content to websites using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface.

The content in a CMS system is stored in specific databases and displayed on a presentation layer based on set templates. Today, content management systems also offer additional features such as document management and automated process workflows to streamline content management.

Content management systems have become a must-have tool to drive content collaboration in an organization, allowing multiple users to log in and contribute, schedule, or edit the content to be published on internal or external interfaces. With remote work and distributed workforces as the new normal, the ‘anytime, any device, any interface accessibility’, through popular browsers, by multiple accredited users has added to the popularity of CMS adoption across organizations large and small.

According to a research by MarketsandMarkets, the ECM market size is expected to grow from USD 31.7 billion in 2017 to USD 67.1 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 16.2 percent and the WCM market size to grow from USD 6.0 billion in 2020 to USD 13.6 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.6 percent during the forecast period.

Content management systems have seen a drastic growth curve over the years, and today are widely used to develop static websites and blogs, news or content /publications, forums and communities, online e-commerce stores, social networking, online learning websites, and more.

If you are looking to deploy a CMS at your organization, this feature will help you understand the general ecosystem of solutions available as well as the key functionalities of a modern-day CMS as you start shortlisting and evaluating potential CMS vendors.

Who needs a CMS?

Simply put, any business that publishes web content will need a CMS. The question is- who should build one and who should buy one.

Typically, businesses that require heavy customization that are not found in ready-to-deploy software solutions, can get a custom CMS created either in-house or through outsourcing. However, most businesses, even heavy publication houses that publish hundreds of articles and content on a daily basis, can also find a suitable content management system software in the market today.

Today, content management system (CMS) software offers an array of additional features apart from just editing and publishing content. These include in-built landing page templates, in-content SEO check tools, HTML editing for page customization, tag setting, multimedia uploads etc. These features further reduce the amount of development work needed to manage and run a website at large, apart from just publishing text.

Infact, most CMS can be used on a daily basis by content and marketing teams without any technical knowledge or requiring developer assistance. This way, the focus remains on enhancing user experience and ensuring quality of content rather than worrying about the technical aspects of the site. Of course, beyond the provided templates and functionalities, there is always scope for IT to step in to develop more customised solutions or tweak functionalities and templates as per business needs, which constantly evolve.

Learn More: Top 10 Content Collaboration Software Systems for 2020

Key components of a CMS

A content management system consists of two key components, namely a content management application (CMA) and a content delivery application (CDA):

1. Content Management Application (CMA): The CMA is a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows the user to control the design, creation, modification, and removal of content on a website without requiring an in-depth programming language know-how.

2. Content Delivery Application (CDA): This component serves as the back-end service that supports the management and delivery of the content once it is created in the CMA.

Benefits of a Content Management System (CMS)

Apart from editing and publishing content, a CMS has also become important today as a collaborative tool when most writers and marketers are working remotely during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Let us take a broad look at the full set of advantages offered by a content management system in today’s context:

1. Democratizing website and content management: this is the biggest benefit of a CMS software as it frees IT from working full-time on web content publishing chores, while making the business user independent and far more flexible and agile in terms of keeping their web content up-to-date.
2. Content consistency : A CMS offers a range of administrative and role-based user authorizations which ensure adherence to content publishing standards set by managers and business leaders. This includes page tag settings (limiting the number of tags that can be created), content formatting (font type, height and width of images, formatting of titles and subheadings etc) and overall user experience of the content page.
3. Improved workflows and collaboration: because multiple users can access the system simultaneously, a CMS drives collaboration, streamlines processes and lets content managers, developers and IT all do their job without impacting each other, at any given time. Content managers across the organization- across product lines, geographies and markets- can also collaborate and streamline content publishing workflows for seamless fronent content experiences .
4. Easy to use templates and formats: most CMS platforms offer a huge variety of choices when it comes to pre-designed templates for the front-end look and feel of content. This not only makes the work faster and easier, it ensures that company-wide, the look and feel of content is consistent, maintaining a singular brand image.
5. Content discoverability and search optimization: most CMS software offer advanced content tagging options to ensure your content is structured for optimal discoverability via both- search engines such as Google and internal site search consoles and recommendation engines. This includes the URL structures, the alt-tagging for images, the way the headlines and subheads are structured and tagged, meta descriptions etc. Many CMS platforms today are also enabling content personalization capabilities where the CMS can auto-populate the site with content specifically designed for a particular known user- a functionality used to great effect especially by publishers of online magazine and news portals, and even ecommerce sites.
6. Integrations for innovation: though the core function of a CMS platform is indexing, search and retrieval, format management, revision control, and publishing, many solutions also feature advanced tools or third party integrations. For example, some CMS tools offer tailored advertising functionalities that facilitate the publishers content monetization goals. This way bloggers and website owners can monetize content by leveraging native ad or sponsored content placement on their websites, by allowing gated content that can be downloaded by readers, or by seeking payment for content behind a paywall.
7. Content security: A CMS offers an array of content security features such as role-based view and edit access, tracking of content changes based on timestamps, user activity tracking (who is editing what and when) etc. Many CMS solutions also offer roll-back features, which enables users to undo published changes and roll back content to a previous version.

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Types of CMS – Choosing the Right Solution, Deployment Model and Service Option

Today, the CMS vendor landscape is quite complex, with several options available for business users depending on their specific needs, complexity and resources.

When it comes to choosing the right CMS software, the first thing to decide is the type of CMS solution you need.

1. Internal or external use-case definition: CMS use-cases span enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM) applications.

While an ECM offers integrated document management, digital asset management, records retention, and role-based access to the company’s digital assets, a WCM facilitates collaborative authoring for websites. ECM is typically for internal use and ensures the most efficient and effective use of content by all internal stakeholders, whereas WCM is often outward facing with a more obvious content marketing and lead gen focus.

When it comes to WCM, businesses also need to think about their primary use-cases. For example, businesses looking to develop websites focused on information dissemination will need a different set of functionalities than those focused on personalized content, an interaction driven content experience, ecommerce, membership, community, or social networking functionalities.

2. Custom CMS or off-the-shelf CMS: are your website needs so complex in terms of interactivity, regulations or functionality that you need to custom-develop a CMS? Or would a standard off-the-shelf CMS meet most of your content publishing needs? This is the first step to iron out, as it will help kickstart your vendor shortlist based on the complexity of your needs and your specific use-cases. A custom CMS Is a huge undertaking and needs serious justification in terms of how you will staff the technical and operational specialists needed to develop, maintain and update/ upgrade the custom CMS system on an ongoing basis. A reputed off-the-shelf CMS would take care of most content publishing needs of the average organizations, and even global enterprises with complex web publishing needs are tending towards CMS platforms such as WordPress to minimize complexity, and maximise the focus on the front end. Many off-the-shelf solutions (especially open-source ones) also allow for a fair degree of customizations based on the granular needs of the business.

3. Coupled or Headless CMS? In either case – whether you custom develop or buy off-the-shelf CMS, you must choose what ‘kind of CMS’ you need. This means choosing between a traditional or ‘coupled’ CMS or a headless CMS model depending on your needs. Coupled CMS solutions are perfect for businesses that are highly focused on websites as a way of interacting with customers, since the backend and front end are ‘coupled’. The headless CMS is an increasingly popular option for businesses that operate in complex multi channel environments. This means, they need to interact with customers over not just websites, but also mobile apps, email programs, social media platforms etc. Headless CMS’s decouple the head (the front-end) from the body (the back-end) so that content on the backend CMS can easily be adapted to and published at scale and speed on any number of front-end devices, screens and platforms with minimal effort. Both needs are distinct and so are the solutions. Read all about headless CMS platforms in this detailed article.

4. Deployment and service models: Once you know the kind of CMS that will best serve your needs, you also need to figure out the best deployment model. Do you want to deploy on-premises or on the cloud? If cloud, are you seeking a public, private or hybrid cloud solution? And finally, what service model works for you? Most enterprises are heading for a SaaS model or a subscription-based pay-as-you-consume model, which offer easy scale up and down of investments; but again, it all depends on your unique needs, budgets and access to IT resources. THese key questions need to be addressed at the time of drawing up a CMS vendor shortlist so you can evaluate them on the right parameters.

Aside from figuring out the kind of CMS needed, to draw up an appropriate vendor shortlist you also need to check off basic must-have functionalities that you need, to ensure the vendors you are evaluating offer comparable functionalities and capabilities.

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Key Must-Have Features of a Content Management System (CMS)

CMS allows users to manage content from a single internal user interface or dashboard, enabling seamless content management workflows and processes for even the largest and most complex organizations.

However, choosing the right CMS software is a decision based on many considerations, as outlined in the section above. If you are going for a CMS platform from a third-party vendor, here is a list of must-have features – over and above the obvious CMS functionalities – that can help you evaluate the right vendors and arrive at the best solution for yourself.

1. Ease of Use – Intuitive User Interface and User Experience

Choosing the right CMS solution that offers an intuitive UI and UX is crucial to boost both – workforce productivity and end-user engagement.

At the business end, users such as content managers need easy navigation through the CMS and overall ease of use of the software to ensure optimal productivity. Visual indications and intuitive workflowsreduce the need for undue training and enable experienced users to resolve day-to-day issues by themselves and only seek assistance when necessary.

At the front-end, the audience or website visitor also needs an easy, delightful content experience while browsing the site and looking for (and finding) the information they need with minimal effort.

On the technical front,

2. Scalability, stability and flexibility

These are important considerations for any third-party CMS solution, as you need a system that can take on and scale up to larger workloads as your organization grows, both in content complexity as well as geographies. To keep pace with your growth, the CMS should have clarity on how it can help scale up to multiple language needs, high or highly fluctuating traffic volumes without becoming unstable, as well as enable flexibility for quick changes to the front-end. This is especially important for buyers on a hyper-growth path or operating in very dynamic market environments.

For example, having a powerful and easy-to-use editor is a core functionality of every content management solution or CMS. However, a CMS editor that works seamlessly in both WYSIWYG and HTML editing modes, allows content previews, supports multiple formats such as text, images, video, gif, and more, and allows easy addition of third-party content such as YouTube videos, tweets, or podcasts etc. all help drive content managers productivity.

3. Strong SEO Capabilities

Digital content – no matter how well crafted – needs to be discoverable in order to reach the right audience. A big part of this is SEO or search engine optimization. While organizing pages in a way that allows search engines to crawl and identify pages on the website is a core functionality and can boost the organic performance of content, more robust SEO features such as on-page SEO tools are critical to optimizing individual web pages via the URL, title tag, meta description, image optimization and indexing etc. Today, it is also critical to ensure that the system optimizes for voice and video search, as such content gains popularity with audiences and search engines. Sites with large content repositories also need a strong site search functionality to help audiences find content easily via relevant search results.

4. Seamless Integrations and Plug-ins with Third-Party Apps

There is no one size fits all CMS solution in the market that offers every single feature, and most CMS tools will claim to enable integration as well as easy access to a marketplace of plug-ins to enrich website functionality. For example, third-party integrations with email marketing platforms or social media help automate email campaigns or schedule social media posts for newly added content.

However, integration remains a huge challenge for businesses when it comes to tech stacks, and this is an area that needs additional scrutiny when evaluating potential vendors. Just how well does it integrate, how large is the plug-in or app marketplace or ecosystem, how secure are the integrations, how much technical intervention is needed to enable an integration or plugin etc. are all crucial considerations that set one CMS apart from the other.

5. Dynamic Content Management:

Managing the huge and exponentially growing repository of content is a key feature of a CMS. However, a user-friendly and dynamic content management system means a better-than-others content taxonomy system, content tagging capabilities, alignment with the SEO and site search functionality, ability to easily retrieve the right content based on user requests at the front end without delays and drops, effective content version control etc. are all areas to consider when evaluating the content management capabilities of potential CMS tools.

6. Content Performance Optimization:

This is an important area that often gets overlooked when a feature-specific evaluation is in progress. How can a CMS best power content performance optimization? For this, look for a strong and compelling content analytics dashboard that gives you the right insights, as well as the ability to test and optimize content formats and placements – such as A/B testing.

7. Web Security:

one of the biggest advantages of working with a SaaS based CMS software is that you also get access to best-in-breed security features and upgrades. This is especially critical for sites that handle a lot of PII and other sensitive data.

Top 10 Best Practices for Operating Content Management Systems (CMS) in 2020

There are many a slip between choosing and deploying the best possible CMS and deriving optimal returns from the system. Let’s take a look at some of the proven industry best practices to get the best out of your CMS investment: .

1. Know Your Purpose: use-cases and outcomes

While shortlisting a CMS, it is vital to consider the end-users first. So involve multiple stakeholders based on the nature of your end-users- both internal and external.
For example, if the webmaster is the only user at a firm, then a technical solution is an ideal choice. But an organization with a full-fledged content team must choose a straightforward CMS that is robust and easy to use, requiring minimal training

2. Choose a Good Web Host

While giant corporations usually have their own web host servers, it may not be the same for smaller businesses. Therefore, selecting a web host that ensures fast page load speed and maximum uptime for the website, as well as stability and bandwidth based on your traffic loads and storage needs is key..

3. Implement Stringent Security Architecture

The ever-expanding number of touchpoints and devices have resulted in increased security vulnerabilities and data leaks. On a global scale, brute-force login attempts, malware attacks, and redirects have caused billions of dollars of revenue loss for companies and government organizations alike, not to forget the loss in credibility and regulatory fines.

Knowing your vendor’s security roadmap and historical success rate is important, but no matter how good your CMS vendor is, the organization itself is also liable to own security and ensure users are trained in security best practices, especially when working remotely, or on mobile devices.

4. Pick Extensions or Plugins Wisely

Extensions and plugins help enhance the functionalities of a CMS system. Some of them boost the website performance, some can improve the user experience, and some lets you add third-party integrations to your website.

For example, you cannot build an online store on your website using WordPress CMS alone, but will need to add something such as a WooCommerce extension to create a full-fledged ecommerce functionality.

However, as a best practice, be mindful of the plugins and extensions you choose to build into your site, and avoid ‘frankensites’ that are full of messy integrations which can be problematic later on. Plugins may also impact your security, as well as site speed adversely, so consider all front and backend aspects as you build your plug-in stack.

5. Clearly Define Team Roles and Workflows

Publishing content through a CMS platform involves three steps—creating, editing (approval/rejection), and releasing content. Companies with full-fledged content teams and development teams need to define clear roles and establish workflows to ensure the smooth running of their content machinery.

For optimum results, review and refine current processes, and re-assign roles where necessary. This will enable you to do two things – simultaneously, manage different projects and content pieces effortlessly; and arrange the right training to boost team performance and productivity without duplications.

6. Take Periodic Content Inventories

Maintaining a periodical inventory of your content provides a detailed and updated view of all content, by date of publication and publisher.

This helps you maintain a clean CMS, while ensuring that different content formats which may need different maintenance or update schedules are not ignored. Being current ensures better organic search results as well as offers greater value to readers and visitors.
For example, a travelogue to a tourist destination may require annual maintenance, whereas a financial reporting webpage may need monthly updation and regular supervision.

7. Facilitate A Quality-Minded Culture

Creating and maintaining a quality-minded culture in your organization is another best practice to follow for optimized web content management. When the content editors of your team and other stakeholders understand the significance of quality content and adhere to the best practices, the website’s organic reach is greatly enhanced.
To facilitate this, build the right team with the right skill sets, follow content creation and management best practices, adopt efficient workflows and collaboration culture, and ensure user rights management/issues management in your CMS software.

8. Track Emerging Trends

Finally, paying close attention to emerging trends and CMS platform or software advancements in the market can be crucial. From search optimization to security enhancements, speed hacks or disruptive new plug-ins – it’s important to know about new opportunities to drive more from your content strategy via your CMS. For example, the big content management trend today is to move to a headless CMS that enables easy content publishing on platforms and screens beyond the website- be it mobile apps, digital signage, email marketing or ecommerce platforms., and it’s useful to evaluate if such a migration could have big returns in your organization’s context.

In Conclusion

Content management systems allow users to create and run websites or blogs without requiring any specialized programming skills. Before closing on a CMS vendor, carefully evaluate your business needs, use cases, budget, resource availability – both technical and non-technical, security, scalability, and other requirements.

Some of the largest brands use WordPress or Drupal for their websites. However, users with specific requirements or who prefer proprietary software can download and customize an open-source CMS software or can even develop their own CMS architecture. Cloud deployment models have made the installation and management of CMS software an effortless exercise, allowing even the smallest organization to punch way above their weight with great-looking websites that offer delightful user experiences.

What features do you think CMS should include? Comment below or let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!

What is a website called where everyone can edit the page and contribute to the website?

What is the website that allows Internet users to contribute Delete make changes or correct information on the content of by signing up?

Which of the following system allows users to work collaboratively to create edit and link web pages easily?

Which refers to the website which allows users to add remove and change text based content?

Is a web site that allows users to add and update content on the site using their own web browser?