We need a tool that enables a diverse community of members to create, edit, manage and publish a variety of content by standard rules, process and workflows that provide coherent, validated content. Such a tool is Content Management System — CMS.

Simply stated, a content management system is : a system that manages content.

To better understand what a CMS does, we must define :

1. what is content
2. what is content management
3. what is a system

When you know what content you want to manage, you can intelligently filter through available options and avoid misguidance into wrong directions.

What is Content?

Essentially, content is information. Content can be text, images, graphics, video, sound, documents, records etc — anything that is likely to be managed.

What is Content Management?

Content Management is the management of content as described above, by combining rules, process and/or workflows in such a way that content storage is deemed to be 'managed' rather than 'unmanaged'.

What is the CM System?

The system itself is definable as a tool or combination or tools that facilitate the efficient and effective production of the desired 'output' using the managed content.

Primary CMS Theaters

• Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS)
  check-in/checkout control, version control, security and library services for business documents
• Web Content Management Systems (WCMS)
  ability to remove the webmaster bottleneck, managing dynamic content and content authoring, general ease of use