| Content
management is the process of organising information on a
web site:It is a trivial task if the amount of content is
small
and/or the number of updates to the site is small. Under
these circumstances there
is no reason why you can't keep track of it all in your
head. But as the number of posts increases and the size
of the site grows it will become necessary to at least document
what goes where and, increasingly importantly, where that
information comes from.
|
|
|
| |
What
is content?
"Stuff
that's on a web server"
That's
web pages themselves plus documents, executable programs,
image and video files, document files. |
What we generally now mean by content management in
the context of CMS is slightly different to the basic definition.
In
this context we consider content management to be the use
of software tools to organise web content. It takes the
first generation web development tools (applications with
which we are all familiar and we feel at home using them)
to
the
next stage
by providing ways to store and index, search, retrieve and
present an ever-increasing range of information entities.
These entities
are data objects like data files, image files and database
records.
At
the turn of 2002/3 the term content management
turned soft, mostly because of the CMS context. Marketing managers
want it to mean - bend it to mean - anything that will sell
their content management package to you.
A
lot of buzzwords - an entire buzz vocabulary, in fact - has
been constructed to support the CMS market niche. This
is language which is being used to re-mystify a process
that, for a few years, had become clear and accessible.
I'm
not anti-CMS; I'm pro-CMS but anti-spending loads of money
buying technology without ever considering either its necessity
or the process.
What
now? Where next? |
|
What
is the process?
Like
most operational processes, the content management
process depends on the environment to which it will
be applied. Here are five quite different scenarios |
1
For
a simple, personal web site the content management
process will probably need to address "How do I upload
the most recent updates to my home page?" |
2
If
a group of contributors are collaborating on documentation
the process must ensure that documents and web pages
are locked while they are being edited by a contributor;
it must allow documents to be passed onward for comment
or editing and for further additions; it must support
some kind of version control to identify which generation
given information belongs to and that only current
information is presented on the web site |
3
An
e-business site will need a process which audits applications
code changes to ensure that functional upgrades and
bug-fixes do what they should; it must allow application
errors to be recorded for action |
4
There
may be legal requirements to maintain records for a
period of time (maybe years for some accounting transactions)
so the process here must include archiving elements |
5
A
large organisation like a multi-national enterprise
will probably have a web site on which certain business
functions are responsible for their own areas of content:
Marketing present products; PR, press information and
news; legal department, statutory information and so
on.
Here
a much more complex process must allow each functional
area to post information appropriately - The legal
detail will probably go straight onto the site, press releases
will be reviewed before posting, pricing information will
come straight off back-end ERP systems where sales orders
are processed |
These
are intended only as illustrative examples: The important
point is that such a diverse world requires an equally
diverse range of content management processes.
Some
of the processes will benefit from technology and
some won't. Of those that require technology only a
few will need a bought-in CMS solution. |
|
