From Wikipedia:

A content management system (or CMS) is a system used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Recently, the term has been associated with programs for managing the content of web sites. Web Content Management (WCM) is also used to refer to these programs.

Lenya is a CMS that supports the management of content by providing tools for each phase of the content life cycle. Let's focus first on definitions of content, content management and content life cycle to understand the big picture.

Content

Content refers to anything you wish to publish, regardless of the medium! Lenya supports content types from the very basic (text, images) to the more advanced (RSS news feeds, PDF files, etc.)

Lenya even lets you create your own document types! Imagine that you are publishing a website that consists of news articles, weather reports, and crosswords. With the power of Lenya and XML, you can create and edit document types for each of these categories.

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Content management

In most real-world applications, content management is a job performed by many people in different roles. There will typically be an administrator, editors, and reviewers. Lenya provides fine control over who does what, letting each person get on with their job with minimal fuss.

The Administrator

The administrator is primarily involved in creating the structure of the site. This means defining categories and sub-categories in which the content will be placed. He/she will also allow certain users to be editors and others to be reviewers. The administrator is thus concerned with the site from a very high-level view; he/she makes sure that it is all running smoothly.

Lenya simplifies things for the administrator by providing a graphical frontend to the site tree. The administrator simply points and clicks to move various sections, and the content moves with them!

The administrator may also decide that certain content has passed its used-by date. He/she can then archive the content. Archiving involves taking content offline while also being secure in the knowledge that a backup has been made by Lenya.

Lenya also provides a solid revision system, so that you can revert a document to any previous point in its lifecycle. For more information on administering, please refer to the Lenya documentation.

Editors

Content editors have the task of providing and maintaining the content of your website.

Lenya makes life simple for the editors by providing an easy-to-use frontend to edit the content. Lenya will also lock content when one person is editing, thus avoiding problems caused by two people editing the same document at the same time.

Reviewers

The job of a reviewer is to scrutinize the content provided by the editors. The reviewer is given the choice of accepting (and thus publishing) the content, or rejecting it.

Content life cycle

Lenya realises that content will progress through several stages in the course of its life. Thus it classifies content into different types: content that is published, content that is up for review, and content that has been taken offline (archived). Thanks to this distinction, life is made much simpler for those editing, publishing, and administering your website.