What is A CMS?

First things first, what do the letters "CMS" even stand for?

Answer: CMS is an acronym for "Content Management System". You may see some variations on this term, but they all refer to the same concept. Variations include:

  • Content Management System
  • Web CMS
  • Web Content Management System
  • CMS Platform
  • Content Management Platform
  • CMS System (yes, it's redundant)
  • etc...

What Does A CMS Do?

In it's simplest terms, Content Management Systems are designed to help users create and manage their websites. A CMS helps webmasters manage the many different resources, content types and various data that make up modern web sites.

At a minimum, modern websites make use of HTML, CSS, Javascript and images (jpeg, gif, png...) to create web content for visitors to read. At the core of every CMS is the ability to organize these resources and generate valid content that can be read by web browsers. More advanced websites have interactive components (comment sections, forums, e-commerce...) that requires server software to validate and save user submitted content.

All of the most popular Content Management Systems have features built-in or available for download as addons for all of these features.

How To Use a CMS

To begin using a CMS on your website, you'll need to get it installed on your server. Installation is typically very easy. The most popular systems have created interfaces to guide you through the installation process which can include the creation of a database and changing file permissions. To make things even easier, your hosting provider may have taken care of most of the configuration options already with a "1 Click Installation" feature.


Dedicated Content Management System Detection