The problem is really an outgrowth of how we used to create websites...
In the olden days we had flat html files, jsp files, whatever, that included all of the content to be rendered for the site. Even for the many templating systems, content shipped inside of the development artifact so web project management mirrored software project management where an artifact would be created and tested and, at the end of each phase, would be promoted to the next layer until eventually it reached the production tier.
But it was that initial decision to see content creation as a development activity, one that should adhere to software project management methodologies and follow traditional code deployment paths.
Creating content is closer to writing a book or publishing a magazine or creating a poster or other promotional materials. They follow a completely different path than software development.
In publishing a newspaper, a writer will create the article which goes to the editor for approval and/or tweaking, maybe some other layers of review, but then the paper is printed and the article is out there (yes this is an oversimplification of the process and I hope you all can forgive me for that). They don't print a series of separate papers which get reviewed and at the pass of each results in another printing until they reach the published paper.
It was an artificial constraint applied to web content creation due to the lack of suitable tools. Web content creation had to be merged with web development because they were tightly coupled because of the tools.
Now we have the tools necessary to treat web content creation as it should be, akin to the publication processes. Content can be created by authors, approved by editors and delivered to "publication" in the production site. It is not a development process and should not be constrained to the software development lifecycle.
All too often when I'm asked why content cannot be promoted, it's typically by old school web project managers that want to continue to treat content creation as a development activity. They cannot look at a page full of Lorem Ipsums that reflect how the page will look without having the content in place. They don't get that the Lorem Ipsums are a better tool for development evaluation because it removes the focus on the content and places it on the presentation and layout which can be considered development artifacts (although this can also be a matter of interpretation as these can also be seen more as content than as a developer activity).
Unless they see the actual content in dev, test, UAT and finally production they just can't get behind it and approve it.
So we're left trying to explain how no, you don't want to do content creation in dev and promote it like code through the other layers through staging setups or (god forbid) manual movement via LAR exports.
I go so far as to avoid combining the words "content" and "development" together as I want to avoid giving the idea that content creation is somehow development. It is not and should not be. So I stick with "content creation" as that is a better phrase which represents what the authors are doing - creating content.
