What is a Content Management System?

You might have heard the three-letter acronym before – CMS. But what exactly is it, and how can it help you manage your website? This blog will clarify some of the essential functions of a CMS. If you are looking for a more in-depth evaluation of a CMS, subscribe to our mailing list to be notified of new blog posts or schedule a meeting with WooStrategy for your free website assessment.

CMS stands for Content Management System. A CMS is a software application that allows people with all technical background levels to create custom websites. It stores your content in user-friendly platforms, where it is easily accessible to edit, manage, and publish. Do the names Wix, SquareSpace, or WordPress, ring a bell? These are examples of some of the most popular Content Management Systems used to build millions of websites worldwide.

You might not know much about web design, but neither do most of the millions of people who are launching websites with a CMS’s help. A recent Web Technology Survey estimates that 40% of today’s active websites were built with a CMS. Even experienced web designers use these tools every day.

How can a CMS help you?

CMS’s simplify customizing a website. You can easily design a website from scratch or apply a template that someone has already created. Another advantage of using a CMS is the numerous out-of-the-box widgets found at your disposal, such as forms, image galleries, and video embeds. Those built-in features are guaranteed to simplify your life.

Instead of starting from scratch with a blank page, a CMS takes care of most of the backend functionality of a website, all you are responsible for it to arrange and create the content. Displaying content on your pages is straightforward; there is no need to know the HTML rules to upload images or hyperlink a section of your text. All CMS’s have a built-in text editor to format content, comparable to the toolbar found on Microsoft Word or any email system. Hosting images and files is as simple as uploading a picture to your Facebook page.

Perhaps the most significant advantage of working from a CMS is the ease of publishing any change directly to your site. There is no need to access a live server and request a File Transfer Protocol (FTP); hold your breath and hope you made the right change. With a CMS, all you have to do is log in to your admin panel, make the change, preview your site, and press publish. It doesn’t get any easier.