Functionality
A technical view of content systems: the roles of rulesets, the limits of visual editing, and alternatives to traditional WYSIWYG approaches.
Core questions
Functionality is considered from the perspective of the people who author, govern, and deliver content. The emphasis is on what content systems enable, how rules shape their behavior, and what changes when visual editing is no longer the center of the authoring experience.
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WYSISMUC: What you see is SMUC
Explores the relationship between what an author sees and the structured meaning underlying the content.
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Rulesets in content management
Considers how rulesets can govern content behavior within a management system.
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The end of WYSIWYG paradigms
Questions traditional WYSIWYG approaches and considers alternatives for managing structured digital content.
Broader context
Functionality sits alongside wider discussions of content strategy, information architecture, and content management. Explore the related CMS perspectives for a broader view of content systems and author experience.
Functionality is considered here from the perspective of the people who author, govern, and deliver content — the architects, editors, and strategists who shape how information moves through a system. A ruleset defines what is possible: it constrains structure, repeats patterns, and encodes organisational intent into the machinery that publishes. The page explores what happens when visual editing stops being the centre of the authoring experience, asking whether seeing and editing a page directly is actually the most useful model for structured content, or whether a document that already knows its own structure serves the author better. Understanding these mechanisms is a step toward creating content systems that adapt to context rather than fighting it.