Comments on: Managing the Complexity of Content Management

By: Scott Abel

Scott Abel — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest overlooked problems is a lack of strategy. For information on content management strategy, see The Rockley Group’s Unified Content Strategy documented in “Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy” (New Riders Publishing). Additional information can be found on the companion web site to the book — http://www.managingenterprisecontent.com. A free downloadable chapter is also available there entitled “Fundamental Concepts of Reuse”. Do yourself a favor, start with a strategy. You’ll be far more likely to suceed!

By: Michael Heraghty

Michael Heraghty — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

For regular updating of small sites (e.g. for SMEs), publishing tools originally designed for weblogs — such as Movable Type — are becoming more and more popular.

MT is very user-friendly, highly cusomizable, and the commercial licence is only $150.

By: bernie bowker

bernie bowker — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

To print please

By: Mike Chrysler

Mike Chrysler — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The second word in CMS
is the most important, Management.

Organizing what you are going to build
cuts a great deal of strife out of the project.

Educating your team as to techniques
is also essential to getting the most out
of them when working in the environment.

Choosing a cms that is right for your long
term goals is essential.

OO cms have the most to offer as far as
growth they are also easier to organize.

When choosing a cms. Start with what types
of content you want to use it for.
Organize that into a structure of mod’s
that works with you. Make sure you have
a search engine with the cms.

Then you will be better able to construct
a portal that works now and in the future.

For me the choice was simple
http://xoops.org
Only install the mod’s you need.
Customize navigation.

Frets

By: Stuart Guest-Smith

Stuart Guest-Smith — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

To often organisations ponder the word “CMS”, with very little understanding of the complexity and severity of their decision. Do we define a CMS as an “Enterprise” solution, or should we remember that web culture can be described as iterative. We have derived a new toolset for the deployment of a CMS, complex systems of solving organisational problems – how often has this been successful.

Strategic importance is valuable in educating and technology provides a framework. If you uncouple these elements you will identify a focus that is generally missed “people/change management”. CMS implementations are often focused at a business technology solution, with a misunderstanding of organisational behaviour. Acceptance is a term for “willingness to believe” or “positive response to application”. This behaviour can be reflected as “tolerance” to change. Content Management defines a new investment into the cultural change of corporate knowledge. This impact is wide, and breadth deep. To what level can this be tolerated within an organisation, this is the measure of acceptance. This willingness to regard the success of “acceptance” a key indicator, breaths new life into CMS implementations. Successful CMS implementations have found the balance between process, people and technology.

To follow up, I with provide some behavioural solutions implemented by many CMS implementations I have been involved with.

By: bentremblay

bentremblay — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Heads Up: alas, I found ” Building a Metadata-Based Website” to be 404.

p.s. your 10 points … dang that’s good. I’d love to spend a weekend just beating up on them and then putting the pieces back together. Really, that’s a fine set you’ve forged. (I mean forged as in black-smith, not forged as in fake.)

By: baumr1

baumr1 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Mark,

I know what you mean, so I’ve added your comment as an idea for a story.

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/idea/view/14798

You’re welcome to write it up, if you like, or you can see if anyone else would like to do so.

Cheers,
Chris

By: richardlol

richardlol — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Another interesting point of complexity is choosing to manage your site’s structure in the CMS as well as the content. In our system we maintain all page hierarchies and subnavigation structures as part of the content we create. This forces everything to be inside the CMS or it cannot be linked to without building some kind of placeholder page. When building out a site redesign, having to create and re-create the site’s structure (in an environment that is very fluid) while implementing a new CMS, while also writing and developing content is another sure way to missed deadlines.

By: scenario2

scenario2 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

On the other hand the CMS is the manifestation of process, in other words a coded version of what someone believes is required to get the job done.

I my experience the issue about a CMS centric view of the world is that it cannot adapt as fast as the changing needs of users. This is both obvious and counter intuitive.

It may be that most systems try to do too much an fail different user personas.
Eventually more features are added and they fall by their own weight.

Cheers,
Nick

….oh, by the way, this appears to be a community that only wants to hear the rah, rah..not this post, which is quite good.

By: scenario2

scenario2 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I forgot to mention the myth of taxonomy and ontology.
Again these are command and control labels which tend to hamstring any CMS.
Add the ‘T’ and the ‘O’ to the general inability to accomodate users and you have major pain.
Simple appears better in this case.

Which reminds me of the NASA joke where million(s) was spent on an intrument to write in space.
The Russians used a pencil.

Cheers,
Nick