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What Is a Content Management System? A Beginner’s Guide to CMS

What Is a Content Management System? A Beginner's Guide to CMS
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A content management system (CMS) is a content editing system or software you access on the web. Users can use it to easily create, publish, modify, and manage website content without writing codes from scratch. 

Think of CMS as a regular text editing application, such as Google Docs. You can write text, upload files, and drag and drop images and objects from a standard control panel. And you don’t need any technical programming skills to do so. 

What Makes Up a Content Management System?

Every CMS consists of two parts: A Content Management Application (CMA) and a Content Delivery Application (CDA).

CMA is the part you and all the other users can interact with. It enables you to create, edit, publish, delete, and manage content on a website. 

The following is an example of a CMA from WordPress.

What Is a Content Management System? A Beginner's Guide to CMS Softlist.io

While CMA is a part we can interact with, CDA isn’t typically. CDA looks after the backend processes, such as content storage. 

When CMA and CDA are combined together, they form a complete CMS that can handle your content (in the form of code) and backend infrastructure. 

How Does a Content Management System Work?

While you already know what a CMS is, it is time to tell you how it really works. 

To post an article on your website, you’ll have to write a long piece of HTML coding file and upload it to the server. Isn’t it too much time to publish only one article? 

Well, yes, it is. Here, a content management system comes into play. Take WordPress as an example. Instead of creating a long file of HTML code, simply paste the content or write it through the Add New Post to feel like you’re writing in a text file.