Editorial team publishing to website, app, social, and newsletter from four different systems with no shared content store -- the same article reformatted four times?
Content archive with no searchable metadata, so journalists rebuilding research that's already been done because they can't find what's in the system?
Media Content Management System Development
One content record that publishes to your website, mobile app, email newsletter, and social channels -- with editorial workflow, digital asset management, and monetisation built in from the start.
We build custom CMS platforms for media companies, publishers, and broadcasters that need more control over their content infrastructure than WordPress or Contentful provides.
Structured content modelling for articles, video, audio, and live content
Multi-channel publishing -- web, app, email, social
Digital asset management with metadata and search
A custom media CMS is built around the content types, editorial workflows, and publishing channels of a specific media organisation -- rather than adapting a general-purpose CMS to fit. It manages articles, video, audio, live blogs, and galleries in a structured content model, routes content through editorial approval, and publishes to web, app, email, and social from a single record. RaftLabs builds custom media CMS platforms for publishers, broadcasters, and digital media companies.
100+Products shipped
·24+Industries served
·FixedCost delivery
·12-14Week delivery cycles
The cost of the wrong content infrastructure
Editorial teams at media companies spend a disproportionate amount of time managing the publishing process rather than producing content. An article written in one tool is reformatted for the app, copied into the email platform, and manually adapted for social -- four versions of the same content managed separately, with no single source of truth and no consistent metadata across channels.
The archive problem compounds over time. Content produced years ago has value for SEO, for reference journalism, and for content packages -- but only if it is findable. A CMS without structured metadata and full-text search means journalists start from scratch rather than building on what was already published.
A custom media CMS is built around the content types your editorial team actually produces, the channels you publish to, and the workflow your organisation uses. It is not a general-purpose CMS configured with plugins to approximate media publishing -- it is designed for the job from the start.
What we build
Structured content model
Flexible content types designed for your editorial output -- article, video, podcast episode, live blog, photo gallery, and interactive feature. Structured fields for headline, deck, body copy, byline, tags, categories, and channel-specific metadata. Content relationships for related articles, series, and topic hubs. Schema versioning so content types can evolve without breaking existing content. The structured model that makes every piece of content publishable across all channels without manual reformatting and searchable by any field without a full-text scan.
Editorial workflow
Draft, review, and published states with configurable approval routing. Assignment of articles to specific editors with deadline tracking. Inline commenting and annotation tools so feedback is attached to the content, not buried in email. Version history with diff view so editors can see what changed between drafts. Conflict-free collaborative editing using operational transformation so two editors can work on the same piece without overwriting each other. The workflow infrastructure that makes editorial handoffs visible and accountable without requiring a separate project management tool.
Multi-channel publishing
Single content record published to web, mobile app, email newsletter, and social channels from one action. Channel-specific formatting applied at publish time -- image crops for different aspect ratios, excerpt length for email, character limit for social. Scheduled publishing with configurable go-live times per channel. Social post management with platform-specific copy and link variants. Push notification trigger for breaking news or priority content. The publishing architecture that eliminates the four-system process and makes every piece of content available everywhere from a single edit.
Digital asset management
Centralised media library for images, video, audio, and documents. AI-assisted tagging and keyword extraction on upload for searchability without manual metadata entry. Rights and licence tracking -- photographer credit, usage restrictions, expiry dates -- attached to each asset so the editorial team knows what they can use before publishing. Image crop and resize for multiple output formats managed in the CMS rather than requiring image editing for each channel. Full-text search across metadata so finding a specific image or video is a search query, not a folder browse.
Monetisation integration
Paywall and metering logic for subscription and freemium content access. Article-level paywall configuration so editors control which content is gated without a developer change. Ad slot management integrated with your ad server -- Google Ad Manager, Xandr, or custom -- with content-level targeting signals passed to the ad server. Sponsored content tagging and disclosure management for commercial partnerships. Affiliate link management with click tracking. The monetisation layer that connects editorial decisions to revenue without requiring a separate tool for each income stream.
Analytics and content performance
Article-level engagement metrics -- page views, unique readers, scroll depth, time on content, and return visits. Referral source breakdown by article to show which channels are driving traffic to which content. Subscription conversion rate by content piece, content type, and author so the editorial team knows what drives paying subscribers. Live view counts for editors monitoring breaking news performance in real time. Performance data visible inside the CMS so editorial decisions are informed by how content is actually performing, not by a separate analytics dashboard that only the data team knows how to read.
Frequently asked questions
WordPress works well for content-heavy sites where the standard article model fits and plugin availability covers the workflow requirements. It struggles with structured content that needs to publish across multiple channels, high-traffic live publishing events, and complex editorial workflow. Contentful is a strong structured content platform but is not purpose-built for editorial workflow, digital asset management, or monetisation. A custom CMS is the right call when your content types, workflow complexity, or multi-channel publishing requirements are specific enough that configuring a general-purpose platform requires significant workarounds -- or when the cost of those workarounds (in developer time and editorial friction) exceeds the build cost.
Each content type has a defined output format for each channel. When an editor publishes an article, the CMS applies the channel-specific formatting rules to produce the web page, the mobile app content payload, the email newsletter HTML, and the social post copy -- from the single structured content record. Editors configure channel-specific fields (different headlines for SEO vs. social, specific image crop for email) without duplicating the full content. Scheduling is per-channel, so an article can go live on the website at 6am, drop into the morning email at 7am, and post to social at noon -- all from a single publish action with per-channel timing configured at the time of writing.
Live blogs are implemented as a content type with a real-time update feed -- editors post updates from a simple interface, each update is timestamped and ordered, and the page updates for readers without a full page reload. Breaking news publishing strips out draft and approval workflow and allows direct-to-publish from a designated editor role. Infrastructure for high-traffic events uses CDN caching for static content and edge-side includes for dynamic elements like comment counts or update timestamps, so the CMS server is not hit for every page view during a traffic spike. Load testing is part of the delivery process for platforms that expect high concurrent traffic events.
A core CMS covering article publishing, basic editorial workflow, digital asset management, web and email publishing, and subscriber access management typically delivers in 14 to 18 weeks. Adding native mobile app publishing, live blog, advanced monetisation, or a large content migration from a legacy system extends the timeline. We scope the feature set against your editorial and technical requirements before committing to a timeline. The scope document defines what is in the build and what is not, so the timeline is specific rather than a bracket that adjusts as the project runs.
