[CMS](atomicglue.co/glossary/cms) — A Content Management System (CMS) is software that lets you create, manage, and publish digital content without writing code from scratch. It separates content from presentation, so non-technical teams can update websites without touching HTML or CSS.
[Contentful](atomicglue.co/glossary/contentful) — Contentful is an enterprise-grade headless CMS that provides a visual content modeling interface, robust governance features, and a global CDN for content delivery. Founded in 2013, it pioneered the headless CMS category and remains the leading choice for large organizations that need structured content management with enterprise SLAs.
[Custom Post Types](atomicglue.co/glossary/custom-post-types) — Custom Post Types (CPTs) are user-defined content types in WordPress that extend the default post and page types. They allow you to create structured content like portfolios, testimonials, products, events, or any content type specific to your site's needs, with its own admin interface and template files.
[Full Site Editing (FSE)](atomicglue.co/glossary/full-site-editing-fse) — Full Site Editing (FSE) is a set of WordPress features that extends the block editor (Gutenberg) from editing page content to editing the entire site. With FSE and a block theme, you can customize headers, footers, templates, and global styles using the visual Site Editor, all without touching code.
[Gutenberg Editor](atomicglue.co/glossary/gutenberg-editor) — The Gutenberg Editor is WordPress's block-based content editor, introduced in WordPress 5.0 (December 2018). It replaced the classic TinyMCE editor with a modular block system where every piece of content (paragraph, image, heading, gallery, embed) is a block that can be added, rearranged, and styled independently.
[Headless CMS](atomicglue.co/glossary/headless-cms) — A Headless CMS decouples the content management backend from the frontend presentation layer. Content is stored and managed in a backend system and delivered via APIs (REST or GraphQL) to any frontend. This gives developers full freedom over the presentation layer while content editors get a clean, purpose-built editing interface.
[Page Builder](atomicglue.co/glossary/page-builder) — A page builder is a drag-and-drop visual editing tool that lets users create custom page layouts without coding. Popular WordPress page builders include Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi Builder, and WPBakery. They provide a visual interface for adding, arranging, and styling content elements on a page, bypassing the theme's template structure.
[Payload CMS](atomicglue.co/glossary/payload-cms) — Payload CMS is an open-source headless CMS built on TypeScript and Express.js. Unlike Strapi (auto-generated admin) or Sanity (cloud-hosted), Payload CMS gives developers complete control over the admin panel, database schemas, and API behavior through code. It's TypeScript-native and designed for developers who want full-stack CMS customization without fighting abstractions.
[Plugins](atomicglue.co/glossary/plugins) — Plugins are add-on software packages that extend the functionality of a CMS without modifying its core code. In WordPress, plugins can add anything from SEO tools and contact forms to full ecommerce systems and membership platforms. There are over 59,000 free plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory alone.
[Rank Math](atomicglue.co/glossary/rank-math) — Rank Math is a modern WordPress SEO plugin that offers more features in its free version than any competitor. It uses a modular architecture (you enable only the features you need), supports multiple focus keywords, advanced schema markup, redirection management, 404 monitoring, and local SEO, all in the free tier.
[Sanity](atomicglue.co/glossary/sanity) — Sanity is a headless CMS that treats content as structured data in a real-time 'Content Lake.' Unlike traditional CMS platforms, Sanity lets you define content schemas in code (TypeScript/JavaScript) and query content with GROQ, its custom query language. It's built for developers who want full control over content architecture and real-time collaboration.
[Strapi](atomicglue.co/glossary/strapi) — Strapi is an open-source headless CMS (MIT license) that you host yourself. It generates a customizable admin panel from your content type definitions and provides REST and GraphQL APIs for content delivery. Strapi is the most popular self-hosted headless CMS, giving you full control over your data and infrastructure without SaaS vendor lock-in.
[Taxonomies](atomicglue.co/glossary/taxonomies) — Taxonomies in WordPress are classification systems for organizing content. The built-in taxonomies are Categories (hierarchical) and Tags (non-hierarchical). Custom taxonomies extend this to any classification scheme, like 'Genre' for music posts, 'Location' for property listings, or 'Department' for team members.
[Template Hierarchy](atomicglue.co/glossary/template-hierarchy) — The WordPress Template Hierarchy is the system that determines which PHP template file is used to render a given page request. It follows a specific order of precedence, starting with the most specific template file (like single-post.php) and falling back to less specific files (like index.php) when more specific ones don't exist.
[Themes](atomicglue.co/glossary/themes) — Themes control the visual appearance and layout of a WordPress website. A theme is a collection of files (PHP, CSS, JavaScript, and template files) that determine how your content is displayed to visitors. Modern WordPress supports both classic PHP-based themes and block themes designed for Full Site Editing.
[Webflow](atomicglue.co/glossary/webflow) — Webflow is a visual web design platform that combines a CMS, hosting, and a drag-and-drop design interface. It lets designers build responsive websites visually while generating clean HTML, CSS, and JavaScript under the hood making it a powerful alternative to WordPress for design-forward teams.
[WordPress](atomicglue.co/glossary/wordpress) — WordPress is the world's most popular open-source CMS, powering over 43% of all websites. It started as a blogging platform in 2003 and evolved into a full-featured content management system with a massive plugin ecosystem, theme marketplace, and a global developer community.
[WP-CLI](atomicglue.co/glossary/wp-cli) — WP-CLI is the official command-line interface for managing WordPress installations. It lets you perform almost any WordPress admin task from the terminal: install and update plugins and themes, manage users, run database operations, generate content, and debug issues, all without logging into the WordPress admin dashboard.
[Yoast SEO](atomicglue.co/glossary/yoast-seo) — Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress SEO plugin, with over 5 million active installations. It provides tools for optimizing content for search engines including on-page analysis, XML sitemaps, meta title/description editing, breadcrumb control, schema markup, and social media previews.