When we talk about CMS, we refer to systems that enable us to manage content. This typically involves updating, deleting, and adding new content. These systems have been integral to the web since what marketers termed "Web 2.0." However, their role on the web has changed over the years, as have the expectations of users and organizations regarding their functionality.
Authoring the Web
While the web was always intended to be built by everyone, not just those trained in programming, it posed a significant barrier for many. In an era when dynamic web development was not yet standard, updating content meant modifying HTML documents.
During this time, managing content largely required understanding HTML and related systems. Often, "webmasters" not only translated necessary content from one medium to the web but also created content themselves.
Although HTML 3 introduced some modularity with frames, and editing systems emerged, content creation and editing remained static until PHP and MySQL made dynamic web development the new norm for building websites.
Dynamic Web Development?
The term "dynamic web development" has become somewhat ambiguous. We often use it interchangeably with "interactive," but it generally means that instead of serving a static HTML document, the server dynamically builds it based on the request and serves it to the client.
The popularity of the LAMP stack and its prevalence in shared hosting created an ideal environment for systems focused on content management. Websites were built around these new monolithic CMS systems, but the ability to update content separately from the website code opened content publishing to a broader audience.
Publishing on the Web
During this period, web development processes and content management were aligned with the capabilities of the CMS in use. WordPress eventually became the dominant system in this landscape. Its architecture of plugins and themes shifted much autonomy to site admins and authors without requiring extensive technical knowledge, popularizing the idea of separating presentation from content. This mirrored the separation of concerns, a long-standing paradigm in web development, although the nature of these concerns is certainly changing nowadays.
For the first time, established editorial processes aligned with web content editing, allowing the web to become an integral part of content publishing rather than an afterthought. However, making a CMS the backbone of a website often relegated developers to a secondary audience. CMS that excelled in web development rarely catered well to authors. This changed with the rise of the Jamstack as the new standard.
Off with their heads!
What was once known as AJAX eventually made client-side JavaScript-rendered SPA the new standard for the web. Instead of needing a CMS to return an entire webpage, we could now manage data and render it on the client side. This further separates content from the website itself. How content is presented can now be entirely distinct from how it was created. CMSs that support this approach are termed "headless."
This aligns with an era that views websites more as applications, treating content as a secondary concern. This shift offers developers significant freedom and coincides with the industry's focus on DX ("Developer Experience"). A website may change entirely, but its content may remain the same. This allows content creators to be less dependent on development while also becoming more reliant. Changing content may not necessarily lead to a website update unless specifically implemented.
At the same time, it allows content to become its own distinct concern, where a website is merely one publishing channel, not necessarily its source of truth. This separation enables content creation and reasoning to become a distinct discipline, allowing individuals with specialized skills to thrive without needing to conform to the capabilities and limitations of a monolithic CMS. However, because content is so detached from its context, content authors often lack control over many presentational aspects, including their URL, unless developers specifically accommodate these needs.
While separation of concerns has served the web platform for decades (and continues to do so), it may sometimes fail us regarding content. Meaning is derived from context, and for content, this context is the experience through which it is consumed by readers. The ability to influence this experience through the content itself is crucial for the autonomous movement of any team working on it. They need to avoid being overly dependent on time-consuming and cognitively demanding planning; instead, they should operate at a pace that allows them to learn as they go.
Components meet content
As a specific piece of content is created, we gain a deeper understanding of its subject, which may have a recursive impact on how we create this content. This is often referred to as a hermeneutic spiral. Creating content for a website is frequently an exploratory process where our intentions and methods become clearer as we delve into the subject matter.
This is where it becomes essential to consider the visual building blocks with which our content is delivered. WordPress recognized this and introduced the block-editing experience through the Gutenberg project. Separation of concerns is being reexamined in the age of componentization on the web, as we see the concerns of content and its representation merging into one. The outcome is a mental model and workflow that abstracts individual units of content and design into components, or blocks, that can be composed together.
On the development side, in its most refined form, components are designed and developed in isolation from the context in which they are consumed. This workflow aligns perfectly with using blocks in WordPress, making it logical for competitors to adopt this model. Storyblok is one of those CMSs that focuses on providing a fully block-based model, coinciding with the rise of the omnichannel CMS.
Omnichannel is a marketing term that refers to delivering and promoting content through all relevant channels. The concept of an omnichannel CMS aims to provide publishing across various channels from a single source of truth. The fact that current-generation CMSs like Dato CMS, Storyblok, and Agility CMS market themselves as omnichannel CMSs indicates a demographic shift in CMS usage.
So. Who is it for?
Generally, a CMS is for anyone who sees value in adding, changing, and deleting content independently from its development workflow, to varying degrees. While it was once safe to assume that content editors were skilled in HTML, that is no longer the case. We are in the era of headless CMS, which are moving their interfaces to their own platforms and offering themselves as a service, enabling CMS users to require less technical knowledge. While many individuals needing to edit their website content autonomously are often better served by platforms like Wix or Squarespace, those needing more are increasingly served by CMS that bridge development and marketing teams.
What we require from a CMS is shaped by how we work with content, who engages with it, and how we develop the website housing that content. All these factors have changed significantly and will continue to evolve. Thus, it is only natural that CMS, as vital pillars in this cycle, also adapt to better serve those who benefit from them at any given time.
Today, CMS primarily address the needs of developers, as non-technical users have migrated to WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, or even Webflow. Users of our current generation of CMS are often found in groups, particularly within businesses, and their needs differ somewhat. CMS like Storyblok, Agility CMS, Dato CMS, and even Hubspot CMS or builder.io demonstrate their focus on marketing teams while still attempting to cater to developers.
While a CMS is for anyone who finds it useful, its primary target audience has shifted from empowering non-technical users to primarily serving developers and marketing teams. Over time, this is expected to change as well.
Header Image: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
