A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information.
It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving.
It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users.
Note that we are focusing on the most common use of a CMS: to manage web content. In some circles, these systems are therefore called web management systems (WMS).