Web Content Management

A Web Content Management System (WCMS) is a software system which provides website authoring, collaboration and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage the site's content with relative ease. A rich WCMS provides the foundation for collaboration, offering users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation.

Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, 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 Web-site visitors based on a set of templates. The templates are sometimes XSLT files.

Most systems use server side caching boosting performance. This works best when the WCMS is not changed often but visits happen on a regular basis.

Administration is typically done through browser-based interfaces, but some systems require the use of a fat client.

Unlike Web-site builders, a WCMS allows non-technical users to make changes to a website with little training. A WCMS typically requires an experienced coder to set up and add features, but is primarily a Web-site maintenance tool for non-technical administrators.

Advantages

Easy Customization

A universal layout is created, making pages have a similar theme and design without much code. Many CMS tools use a drag and drop AJAX system for their design modes. It makes it easy for beginner users to create custom front-ends.

Easy to use

Designed for non-technical people in mind[13] Simplicity in design of the admin UI allows content managers and other users to update content without much training.

Work Flow management

Being able to control how content is published, when it is published, and who publishes it. Some WCMS systems allow administrators to set up rules for the workflow management.

Source: Wikipedia