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How to Build a Simple CMS for Your Website
A custom CMS app manages the content for your website, letting you create, edit, categorize, and publish articles, blog posts, or product pages from an admin interface. Combined with the platform's web hosting, it gives you a lightweight content management system where AI can help draft, edit, and optimize your content before publishing.
What the CMS Manages
- Content records with title, slug (URL path), body text (HTML), excerpt, category, tags, author, and status (Draft, Published, Archived)
- Publishing dates with created date, last modified date, and optional scheduled publish date
- SEO fields including meta title, meta description, and keywords for each page
- Categories and tags for organizing content into browsable sections
Building the CMS
Step 1: Define your content structure.
Tell the AI what content fields you need: "Each article has a title, URL slug, body content in HTML, excerpt, category dropdown (News, Tutorial, Product Update, Case Study), tags, author name, status dropdown (Draft, Published, Archived), meta title, meta description, and publish date." Be specific about which fields are required versus optional.
Tell the AI what content fields you need: "Each article has a title, URL slug, body content in HTML, excerpt, category dropdown (News, Tutorial, Product Update, Case Study), tags, author name, status dropdown (Draft, Published, Archived), meta title, meta description, and publish date." Be specific about which fields are required versus optional.
Step 2: Set up the admin editor.
The platform's admin pages support rich text editing through the HTML editor field type. Ask the AI: "The body content field should use the HTML editor so I can write formatted content with headings, lists, links, and images. The excerpt should be a plain textarea for the summary that appears on listing pages."
The platform's admin pages support rich text editing through the HTML editor field type. Ask the AI: "The body content field should use the HTML editor so I can write formatted content with headings, lists, links, and images. The excerpt should be a plain textarea for the summary that appears on listing pages."
Step 3: Create a content API for your website.
Ask the AI to create an endpoint that serves published content: "Create an API endpoint that returns all Published articles sorted by date, with title, slug, excerpt, category, and publish date. Also create an endpoint that returns a single article by slug with all fields." Your website fetches content from these endpoints and renders the pages.
Ask the AI to create an endpoint that serves published content: "Create an API endpoint that returns all Published articles sorted by date, with title, slug, excerpt, category, and publish date. Also create an endpoint that returns a single article by slug with all fields." Your website fetches content from these endpoints and renders the pages.
Step 4: Add AI content assistance.
Ask the AI to add writing helpers: "When I create a new article, I want a button that takes my title and generates an outline with suggested H2 sections. I also want a button that generates a meta description from the article body. And a button that suggests relevant tags based on the content."
Ask the AI to add writing helpers: "When I create a new article, I want a button that takes my title and generates an outline with suggested H2 sections. I also want a button that generates a meta description from the article body. And a button that suggests relevant tags based on the content."
AI-Powered Content Features
- Draft generation where AI writes a first draft from your outline or topic description, which you then edit and refine
- SEO optimization where AI reviews your content and suggests improvements for search engine visibility
- Content summarization where AI generates the excerpt and social media descriptions from the full article body
- Automated publishing through scheduled background jobs that change status from Draft to Published at a specified date and time. See How to Publish AI-Generated Content Automatically
Why Build a Custom CMS Instead of Using WordPress
WordPress is the standard choice for content management, and it is excellent for blogs and marketing sites that need extensive themes and plugins. A custom CMS makes more sense when you need tight integration with your other business tools, when you want AI built into the writing workflow, when your content structure does not fit WordPress's post/page model, or when you want to avoid managing WordPress updates, security patches, and hosting. See Custom AI App vs WordPress Plugin for a detailed comparison.
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