A web content management system (WCMS) is content management system (CMS) software, usually implemented as a web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential web maintenance functions.
Usually the software provides authoring (and other) tools designed to allow users with little or no knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease of use.
Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, and/or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Content is frequently, but not universally, stored as XML, to facilitate reuse and enable flexible presentation options.
A presentation layer displays the content to regular website visitors based on a set of templates. The templates are often XSLT files.
Administration is typically done through browser-based interfaces, but some systems require the use of a fat client.
A Content Management System (CMS) differs from website builders like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver. A CMS allows non-technical users to make changes to an existing website with little or no training. Web content management systems typically require an experienced coder to set-up and add features, but it is primarily a website maintenance tool for non-technical administrators.
