Wiki or CMS

Question

What are the differences between a wiki and a CMS? Is there any?

Answer 1

Typically a Wiki is community editable, visitors to the site can edit it, take Wikipedia for example. A CMS is more designed typially, for a set of site administrators to manage and display content.

Answer 2

In some cases, a wiki is built on a CMS. A wiki is an application, that people use. A CMS is just a kind of database. CMS's often have front-end administrator applications. However, the point of a CMS is to manage content for some purpose-built front-end application.

CMS is to Wiki as Database is to Financial Application.

Answer 3

A Wiki is a type of CMS, CMS come in many flavors, but all manage some content somehow. In a wiki's case the content is user-editable and creatable information or articles.

Answer 4

The difference is in the letter "M". A content management system manages content. A CMS often has built-in workflow and other features to make it easier to manage a collection of assets. For example, to move articles from staging to production, to facilitate proofreading, etc.

A wiki is more like a public bulletin board. Anyone can add any content at any time and in any way they choose.

Think of it perhaps as the difference between an IDE and a text editor. Both can be used for many similar tasks but one is a bit more structured than the other.

Of course, the lines can blurr in that some Wikis have tools for managing the content and some CMS's are nothing more than "type here and press the submit button".

Answer 5

In the conceptual world a Wiki is for collectible content, anybody can create, delete, modify any content. Is oriented on knowledge.

A CMS manages content, is oriented on format, form, maintenability.

Some wikis are constructed with an CMS

Answer 6

CMS:

1. A CMS focuses on content which is then published through standardized templates -- think of an online newspaper as driven by a huge CMS system.
2. It's about standardized publishing information.
3. CMS'es usually have a limited group of editors.
4. Useful for relatively static content, maintained by non-tech people.
5. Much emphasis on style/presentation: very slick templates so it looks professional.

Wiki:

1. On the other hand, a wiki focuses on pages where each page represents a topic.
2. It's much more about collaboratively improving each topic (adding hyperlinks to other topics and websites counts as improving the topic).
3. Wikis are generally much more open to "the public" (or everybody in the company, vs. just the "internal communication" department).
4. Wikis are meant to be living, dynamic things, maintained by everybody.
5. Much emphasis on content: less slick templates but easier to find and update information.