A web content management system (WCMS) is a software system that provides website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

 authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

s or markup language

Markup language

A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...

s to create and manage website content with relative ease. A robust 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

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

 to store page content, metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

, and other information assets that might be needed by the system.

A presentation layer displays the content to website visitors based on a set of template

Web template

A web template is a tool used to separate content from presentation in web design, and for mass-production of web documents. It is a basic component of a web template system.Web templates can be used to set up any type of website...

s.