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Content Management

Nowadays content management is crucial to keep costs down for maintaining a site and to keep the site up to date in an easy manner. Keeping a high-volume Web site up to date with low cost methods takes more than just a fancy HTML editor. It is necessary to have complete support for reusable components, plug-in support, easy administration of user groups and roles, and easy administration of the content on the site. These are only a few of the issues that a modern content management tool must handle smoothly.

We will first go through some basics for content management, since you need to know quite a lot of definitions to understand content management environments. The primary focus for the first content management tools was to manage content. The first versions kept data in simple databases, and the editor was often a simple ASP (Active Server Pages) page with fixed fields for the title, introduction, and body text.

The area where content is displayed on a page is often called a placeholder or a content component. A placeholder can hold any kind of information. The most normal situation today is that it contains formatted HTML—transformed from XML. But as you will see later, it can contain charts, images, or even content retrieved from other Web sites. There can be x number of placeholders on a page. In a content component, objects of a specific type are placed. These objects can, for instance, be of a particular type, say an article, and contain HTML code. Normally, you have flow layout of the objects in a placeholder, which means that they are added one after the other to the placeholder.

Content management is all about effectively collecting, managing, and making information available in targeted publications. Information is created or acquired, and put into a master format (like XML). This information is segmented into chunks, that is, content components or placeholders. Content components serve as metadata containers for the content that make it easier to organize, store, and retrieve the information. The content is then managed in a repository stored in a database and/or in files on the hard disk. To make the content available for the end user, the content management system (CMS) pushes it to target publications such as Web sites, Web services, e-mails, or newsletters. A good content management system helps organize and manage the publishing process. General reasons behind the need for content management tools are as follows:

The Parts of a Content Management System (CMS)

A content management system typically has four parts. The collection system contains the tools and procedures. This system is used by the staff employed to gather content and provide editorial processing. The collection system often consists of four different areas: authoring, aggregation, conversion, and editorial/metatorial services.

Authoring is the process of creating content from scratch. Authors mostly work with a framework that allows them to fit their content into the structure of the target publication. Authors should be encouraged to change the meta information since they often are the best persons to determine the right information for the work they are creating.

Aggregation is generally a process to streamline content from different sources to be included in the CMS.

Conversion occurs when imported information needs to be restructured; tags may be inserted or deleted, for example. One conversion problem involves identifying structural elements (footers, for example) that only have format codes marking them in the source content. Another problem is transforming formatting elements that do not exist in the target environment.

Finally, the editorial service applies the editorial format, and the metatorial service adds metadata that connects the current content with other content in the CMS.

The management system is the database and files of all content and meta information. It also comprises the processes and tools employed to access, update, and administer the collected content and meta information. The management system stores the content and makes it possible for staff to select content and manage it. A management system must also be able to connect to other systems via Web services, for instance.

The workflow system contains the tools and procedures used by staff who are employed to ensure that the entire process of collecting, storing, and publishing runs effectively and efficiently, according to well-defined timelines and actions. A workflow system supports the creation and management of business processes. In the context of a content management system, the workflow system sets and administers the chain of events around collecting and publishing.

Finally, the publishing system consists of the tools, procedures, and staff employed to draw content out of the repository and create publications for a target, such as a Web site.

Problems with Content Management Today

Many companies nowadays are installing content management systems. They are often driven by the growing recognition that business currently generates huge volumes of information, and this must be made available to staff and customers when and where they need it. Few companies, however, ask themselves this question: What do we want to achieve with a CMS tool? The fundamental question is how to get the right information to the right person at the right time. To be able to answer this, you need to ask yourself two questions:

  • What information does the business need?

  • What technology should be used to manage this information?

Presently, most CMS tools only solve (or focus on) the second question—the first question is often overlooked.

The Content Creators

The people who should be the ones creating the content are often the category of users who are forgotten in the development of most CMS tools. Many large CMS tools provide versioning, workflow, and job tracking support, whereas the tools provided for the authors often are weak. This is a critical problem, because if the tools provided for the authors are difficult to use, how will the site be fed with new updated information?

The problems with hard-to-use author tools grow exponentially to the amount of content available. If those authors complain a little in the beginning, you can be quite sure that they will yell at you before too long!

We will now discuss some simple steps for selecting a CMS tool.

Identify the Business Needs

Do not start a CM project without identifying the business problems the CMS is meant to solve, and also what strategic benefits it will help to achieve. Implementing a CMS tool is not a goal in itself.

Talk to the Users

This is the most missed step, even though it is the easiest! To find out the requirements, simply ask the users. Once you have convinced the users that you will react to their feedback, the tips will never stop.

Rewrite the Content

We have seen too many companies that only want to move their current information into a CMS tool. This is far from the most optimal solution. Instead, they should focus on rewriting their content on a long-term basis to make it fit the CMS and digital publishing. Many companies also do not understand that it is difficult to write a good technical article or description! The use of professional technical writers is often absent today. If you were to ask customers if they would be willing to let their people code one of the critical applications they are going to hire contractors for, the answer would probably be "no." But when it comes to content, these same customers are not interested in investing much. In our view, companies are taking too lightly the design, layout, and content itself.

Quality Not Quantity

One of the biggest problems, besides the quality of the information that really is published, is that too many people publish too much. An intranet or an external site may contain too much information, making it hard for users to find what they are looking for. The solution is to give the user less, but better, information—quality before quantity. As mentioned before, you must encourage the customer to rewrite content for the CMS to develop the content further, rather than publishing old manuals directly in the CMS tool. Putting old stuff into a CMS tool directly will mostly decrease the organization's efficiency instead of improving it.

Structure and Navigation

Next comes the need for a navigational tool that makes it possible to traverse the information on the site (even if you have reduced the quantity, you still may have thousands of pages to handle). Without an effective tool to navigate this content, the site will be useless. We often use information architects and professional indexers to pinpoint the problems, and from there construct a solution that solves the problem and makes end users happier.

Workflow and Review

Currently, there are two different workflows on the market: centralized and decentralized.

Centralized workflow is when all workflows pass through one person, or a few, who needs to authorize the information before it will be published. This solution is great in that the information published via the CMS can be held to a consistent level.

When you are working with a decentralized workflow, many authors are allowed to publish information directly to the site. This presents the challenge of ensuring the consistency and quality of the content. The use of templates is one step to try helping the authors in following the design guidelines set up for the site.

Despite the selected workflow model, you need to ensure that any kind of workflow and review model exists on the site before you take it live. Trying to apply a workflow after the authors have started to work is likely to fail.

Support Authors

Finally, the most important category of users is the one that will publish information via the CMS tool. These people need to have an easy tool that can help them with everything from browsing images for use in the content, to approving and publishing complete articles via the CMS tool. If you are using a decentralized workflow model, this is even more important, since more people will be working with the publishing tool, and you will have to provide more support if the selected tool does not fulfill the authors' requirements.

The authors should not be required to understand HTML, XML, or other technical stuff. The best solution often is to have a publishing tool similar to some other tool they are using on a daily basis, like a word processor (or something similar). This makes it easier for the authors to learn the new environment and quickly start producing material for the new CMS.

In Chapter 5 we will show you two different CMS tools and explore the pros and cons when applying the mentioned criteria on them.

The next topic we will cover is modeling. Our preferred modeling tool is Microsoft Visio or a Rational Software product (like the IBM Rational XDE Modeler). Visio comes with Visual Studio .NET, and to be honest this is the tool we most often use—but we really do not prefer one over the other. To describe our models, we use the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is supported in Visio as well as in Rational's products.


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