A web content management system (WCMS) is a software content management system (CMS) specifically for web content. It provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools that help users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages create and manage website content. A WCMS provides the foundation for collaboration, providing users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation. Most systems use a content repository or a database to store page content, metadata, and other information assets the system needs.
A presentation layer (template engine) displays the content to website visitors based on a set of templates, which are sometimes XSLT files.Most systems use server side caching to improve performance. This works best when the WCMS is not changed often but visits happen regularly. Administration is also typically done through browser-based interfaces, but some systems require the use of a fat client.