Craft CMS
By Pixel & Tonic
Craft CMS is a flexible, developer-friendly content management system built in PHP that lets teams define custom content structures for bespoke websites rather than working within a fixed template or post type.
Definition
Craft CMS is a flexible, developer-friendly content management system built in PHP that lets teams define custom content structures for bespoke websites rather than working within a fixed template or post type.
Overview
Many content management systems ship with an opinionated content structure — posts, pages, categories — that works well for blogs but can feel restrictive for more bespoke sites like product catalogs, event listings, or highly custom marketing sites. Craft CMS instead starts from a blank content model: developers define "sections" and "entry types" with exactly the fields a project needs, giving editors a tailored authoring experience instead of a one-size-fits-all post editor. Craft's templating traditionally uses the Twig templating engine, giving developers a clean separation between content structure and presentation, while its control panel gives content editors a polished interface for managing entries, assets, and users without touching code. More recent versions also support headless and API-first delivery, letting Craft serve as a content backend for modern JavaScript frontends in addition to traditional server-rendered sites. Craft is generally positioned as a premium, developer-oriented alternative to more general-purpose systems like WordPress or headless platforms like Contentful, and it typically stores content in a MySQL database, commonly chosen by agencies building custom, design-led websites for clients who need a content structure tailored precisely to their content rather than adapted from a generic blogging template.
Key Features
- Fully custom content modeling via sections and entry types
- Twig-based templating for clean separation of content and presentation
- Polished control panel for non-technical content editors
- Headless/API-first content delivery alongside traditional rendering
- Flexible asset and user management
- Plugin ecosystem for extending core functionality
- Built on PHP, running on common web hosting stacks