If you have been involved in getting a website built, you have almost certainly encountered the term CMS. It stands for Content Management System, and understanding what it is and what it does will help you make better decisions about your website, both now and in the future.
What does a CMS do?
At its core, a CMS is software installed on a web server that separates a website's content from its design and code. Without a CMS, updating the text on a web page requires editing the HTML file directly, which requires technical knowledge and direct server access. With a CMS, the same update can be made through a control panel in a web browser, by anyone with the appropriate login credentials.
For a business owner or content editor, this means being able to:
- Update page content, news articles, blog posts, and product listings without developer help
- Upload images and manage media files
- Add or remove pages as the business evolves
- Manage forms, user registrations, or ecommerce inventory depending on the platform
For a developer, the CMS provides the underlying structure within which they build templates, configure custom functionality, and define what content editors can and cannot change.
Which CMS options are available?
The CMS landscape in 2026 is broad, with platforms suited to very different types of projects:
- WordPress remains the most widely installed CMS on the web, with an enormous ecosystem of themes and plugins. It suits a wide range of projects but can require careful management of updates and security.
- Craft CMS is a developer-friendly CMS that gives teams precise control over content structure and templating. It is particularly well suited to content-heavy or structurally complex websites where flexibility matters.
- ExpressionEngine is a mature, robust CMS with a strong track record on complex, business-critical websites. Its channel-based architecture offers exceptional flexibility for custom content types and is particularly popular among businesses with long-established, content-rich sites.
- Shopify and WooCommerce are the dominant choices for ecommerce-focused projects, each with distinct trade-offs around control, cost, and complexity.
- Headless CMS platforms (such as Contentful, Sanity, and others) separate the content backend from the front-end delivery layer entirely, providing maximum flexibility for multi-channel delivery at the cost of greater technical complexity.
Which CMS is the right choice?
The honest answer is that it depends entirely on the project. A simple brochure site with occasional content updates has very different requirements from a complex ecommerce platform or a content-heavy editorial site. The right CMS is the one that best fits the specific requirements of the project: the type of content, the technical capability of the team maintaining it, the expected scale, and the long-term support requirements.
The worst outcomes in web projects typically come from choosing a CMS based on familiarity or cost alone, without properly matching it to what the project actually needs.
What do I use?
My two primary platforms are ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS. Both are mature, developer-friendly systems with excellent flexibility for custom content requirements, strong security records, and active development teams. I have built and maintained sites on both for many years, and both represent genuine quality choices for businesses that need a robust, long-term CMS solution.
If you are considering a new website build or are thinking about migrating to a better CMS, get in touch and I can advise on what would work best for your specific situation.