A website content management system is used to publish a wide range of content. These can be simple pages, complex pages dynamic information sourced from databases, training materials, online manuals, and general business documents. The websites can range from large ecommerce sites to personal blogs, from school lessons to corporate sites. There can be thousands of pages with extensive linking between pages.

The very first thing you need to do in selecting a website content management system is to ask yourself about your future goals and potential needs. Obviously there can be no single best list of requirements which can cover everybody's future needs and potential goals. Every organization or person is going to have unique requirements.

In order to ease the process, the prerequisites can be put in to the following categories, creating, managing, publishing and presenting content as well as contract and business. These steps show every aspect of a website content management system from building the actual content to displaying it to users.

The material present ion websites is written by authors who facilitate of content creation. A content management system's (CMS) success is measured by its ability to enable easy content creation and providing maintenance for content. The CMS' core functionality is content management which is facilitated by a central repository and is supported by a variety of tools for modifying and managing content. A CMS provides version control, archiving, workflow, and reporting. It must do this securely with integration support with external systems.

The final web pages are generated by the publishing engine, which uses content that has been stored in the repository. Stylesheets and page templates are key requirements for this process. Other requirements may include the ability to support multiple page formats (such as print, pdf, html, and wap). The webmaster may wish to also use personalization and usage statistics for larger sites.

How content will be displayed must be considered, because webpage design and appearance will be heavily influenced by it. Customers expect web pages to adhere to certain standards of appearance and usability, or they will deem the pages of little value. The most important characteristics are; general usability and ease, accessibility, cross-browser support, speed, navigation and metadata.

The final item of business is the focus on the project management and oversight of the third-party or vendor implementation of the content mangement system (CMS). Items that should be finalized and documented in the contract include (but are not limited to) user training, CMS administration skills needed, specific hardware, software, and database requirements, and all costs.

A website content management system is often crucial to the popularity of the website that it helps creates. Millions of dollars may depend on the website in the case of complex enterprise system. Therefore, it is imperative that the website content management system meets the neccessay needs of the website. Addressing the goals and necessities remains the most important task, and all persons involved should perform this job beforehand.