CMS
What is a CMS?
A CMS (content management system) is the software your team uses to change what the site says — text, images, pages, products — without a developer and without touching code. A good one exposes exactly the fields someone will edit, keeps a history of changes, and makes the layout impossible to break. It is the difference between a site that keeps moving and one that freezes on launch day.
What a CMS does
- editing text, images and pages through forms, without code;
- products, prices and stock for an online shop;
- users with different rights — who writes, who approves, who publishes;
- a history of changes and a way back to an earlier version;
- versions of pages in several languages.
Kinds of CMS
- Ready-made open-source systems — WordPress, Joomla, Drupal. Free, with thousands of extensions, but they need updates and security care.
- Site builders — Shopify, Wix and the like. A monthly subscription with hosting included, but features and data stay within the platform.
- Headless CMS — content only, with no built-in design. Suited to content that goes to a site, an app and other channels.
- A custom system — built for the business. It shows exactly the fields the team uses, and nothing more.
Example
A furniture shop has 300 products and two people who maintain them. In the general system each product has 40 fields, of which 8 are used, and every price change takes several clicks. Once the admin panel is arranged to show only what is needed, with prices changed for a group of products at once, updating the seasonal prices takes an hour instead of two days.
Why it matters for a business
The CMS decides whether a site keeps moving or freezes on launch day. The choice starts with people, not technology: who will write, how often, in how many languages, who must approve. What happens three years on matters too: whether the system updates easily and whether the content can be exported if you change platform.
What to ask
- Who on the team will change the site, and how long will an everyday change take?
- Who updates the system and its extensions, and what does that cost a year?
- Can the content be exported if we change systems?
- Does the system keep a history of changes?
Which content management system to choose depends on who will write on the site and how often; that conversation opens our website development. Our own CMS is described under the T&B platform.