Planning and Analysis Articles and Surveys

Provides you with several resources you may find valuable during the planning and analysis phases of implementing content management.

Abel, Scott. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy

Planning for DITA Success: How to Set Up the Right Team and the Right Strategy  

This two-part series explores why DITA has created such a buzz in the content management arena, particularly among technical documentation teams--and how you can prepare for long-term DITA success.

Manning, Steve and Su-Laine Yeo. Rockley Group, The (2007). Articles>Content Management>Standards>DITA

Planning: The Key to Successful CMS Implementation

So you think you need content management? The temptation is to call your Information Technology (IT) department and ask them to help you choose a content management system (CMS). Being very tool oriented, your IT department will love buying you the latest 'silver bullet' without ever looking at your content requirements or your internal processes. This is the best prescription for failure.

Glick-Smith, Judith L. 'Judy'. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Podcasting Tutorial: Create Your Own Podcast

This podcasting tutorial will show you how to create your very own podcast quickly and easily! Think about listening to a radio show on a topic that you're interested in, but instead of having to tune in at a specific time, you can listen to the show at the time and place of your choosing. That's what podcasting enables you to do.

Guides and Tutorials (2006). Articles>Content Management>Streaming>Podcasting

Power from the People: Assessing the New Online Participatory Tools for Your Organization

New online participatory tools like blogs, YouTube, and MySpace can be powerful and valuable--if they mesh with your goals. Colin Delany walks through the benefits and costs of common participatory tools and suggests which are likely to be useful for you.

Delany, Colin. IdealWare (2006). Articles>Content Management>Community Building

Preparing Your Staff for Content Management  

Few changes are as potentially uncomfortable for technical communicators than implementing a content management system. Freeman explains why, and offers advice to managers on how to address writers' concerns.

Freeman, Bret. Intercom (2005). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

Print to Online: Conflicting Tales of Transition    

This is a success story of how a large, high-tech service support organization made the transition from print to online documentation in both CD-ROM and Web media. But this is also a cautionary tale of the damaging drawbacks resulting from that changeover. The co-existence of two such very different evaluations, both based on accurate reporting about common products and circumstances, is emblematic of the challenges that new technologies can bring to information developers. The success story, told by the publications group responsible for the transition, is focused on new features and reduced production expenses. The cautionary tale highlights larger issues of process, product suitability, and indirect costs that affect both users and the company, including the publications group itself. The instructive value of considering two such versions of a single case history is in developing a fuller view of how technology advances can lead to unintended consequences for information developers.

Rehling, Louise. Technical Communication Online (1999). Articles>Content Management>Publishing>Online

Process Pieces and Tools in Content Development

As long as we are working with people, there will be clogs in the flow of information. As long as we are working for corporations, the bottom line will be money. With the dependence on computers and information in accessible and digital form, there is still a challenge in getting meaningful information. The tools, as advanced and automated as they are, will not fix all our problems. But we have to work with what we have, and automate as much of the production and maintenance of our content as possible.

Albing, Bill. KeyContent.org (2006). Articles>Content Management

Publishing for Dual Media — Paper and Electronic  

With electronic publications moving solidly into the mainstream, it is becoming apparent that steps must be taken to streamline the production process. Compared to the relative simplicity of traditional hard copy output, the electronic medium introduces new capabilities — and complexity — for publishers. Indeed, electronic publishing is not much different than programming; publishers must address issues like user interfaces, hypertext linking and context-sensitive intelligence.

New, Michael. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Recursively Sorting our Documents

Traditional document management vendors and many newer approaches allow you to apply multiple attributes to individual documents, such that they can retrieved according to different facets.

Byrne, Tony. CMSworks (2004). Articles>Content Management>Search

Redefining Content Management

We live in a time where people have an amazing amount of power when it comes to publishing. Blogging, podcasts, vidcasts (or whatever you call ‘em) and more have been put into the hands of millions and it’s changing the way we live and work. Despite all of that, content management for the web remains a huge pain point for many individuals and businesses. The amount of time, effort and money that’s involved (and often wasted) to do things that are seemingly rather straightforward is astronomical.

Robinson, D. Keith. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Content Management

Requirements of Content Management Systems: Definition According to Need

In all companies, the requirements of an editorial system are worked out individually from the analysis of existing functioning and the definition of editorial and publication processes required in the future. The first important criteria for analysis are change frequencies and degree of reuse of the published information. The description of the information types as well as translation sequences constitute another starting point for the definition of a modular work process (single-source principle) and publication options (cross-media publishing).

Ziegler, Wolfgang. tekom (2005). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Workflow

Restructuring Your User Information  

Details a process for improving the usability, consistency, and organization of user information within businesses that maintain medium to large documentation libraries.

Richards, Charles. Intercom (2003). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>Usability

Reusability 2.0: The Key to Publishing Learning  

What would you do if you had to develop and deliver personalized training to 900,000 employees, located in 34,000 different locations globally with a complex set of variables that changes training on a location-by-location basis? The key is reusability 2.0. While technology-delivered training has become mainstream in many organizations, most are still not fully leveraging the power of reusable learning content to meet their instructional needs.

Chapman, Bryan. Xyleme (2007). Articles>Content Management>Instructional Design>White Papers

Rich Media Management and Business Agility

Understanding how rich media assets are used by the enterprise, of course, remains the central prerequisite for the enterprise’s ability to capitalize on the deployment of a rich media content management platform. The keys to a successful platform for rich media management include an approach to development based on service-oriented architectures (SOA) and a rich underlying content repository that exposes both the content and its metadata.

Trippe, Bill. Gilbane Report (2004). Articles>Content Management>Multimedia

The Right and Wrong of Quark and Adobe Strategies

What distinguishes the underlying strategies of Adobe InDesign from QuarkXPress is the absence or presence of a content management system (CMS). And each company asserts that it’s following the less-traveled road. The problem is they’re both taking roads most traveled because of their respective stances towards integrated content management systems, and I’ll show you how after looking at their respective strategies.

Kuhnen, Eric. Content Wrangler, The (2008). Articles>Document Design>Software>Content Management

Running with "KEDS": Document Control in Lotus Notes  

Many companies have faced the challenge of putting their policy and procedure documents online, usually in a network or Intranet. KEMET Electronics Corporation had the extra hurdle of achieving complete document control online, The solution is a program cal!ed 'KEDS' (KEMET Electronic Document System).

Ries, Ken. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Content Management>Software

SAPHelp: A Multilingual Authoring Tool  

SAPhelp is a proprietary authoring tool for documenting and translating on-line. It allows development, documentation, and translation to function concurrently. Its documentation structure lessens the need for redundant storage of texts. It provides version and authorization control and assigns work to authors and translators.

Ladd, Dennis D. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Content Management>Localization>Machine Translation

Seeking a More Dynamic Website

Putting content in a database will not inherently make your website more dynamic. Making sure that content providers keep information fresh, interesting, and relevant will make your website more dynamic -- and ultimately more useful.

Byrne, Tony. CMSworks (2004). Articles>Web Design>Content Management

Selecting a Content Management System  

Learn about what a content management system (CMS) does and the different types of systems available in order to better understand how to select a new system or replace an existing one with a CMS that will be more effective for your organization.

Doyle, Bob. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>Assessment

Selecting a Content-Management System  

It's not about buying a tool; it's about understanding your requirements.

Hackos, JoAnn T. and Tina Hedlund. ComTech Services (2001). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Selecting a Content-Management System  

A discussion of the features and functions of content management software packages.

ComTech Services (2001). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Selecting the Right Single Sourcing Tool  

Tools and technologies available for single sourcing and content management have grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years, and indications are that they will continue to do so for some time to come. Understanding just what they do, and what kind of tools you need for your single sourcing or content management strategy can be confusing. The tools can be expensive, and a wrong decision can be costly. This session will cover authoring tools, content management tools, workflow, and delivery tools. This session will discuss a number of representative tools and provide guidelines for developing criteria for evaluating tools.

Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

The Seven Challenges of Implementing a Content Management System

The term 'double-edged sword' may have been created with content management systems in mind. On one edge, they hold great promise for organizations in terms of their ability to create and manage content that is more accurate, less costly to produce, and more consistent in appearance and message. On the adjacent edge, they can present a myriad of challenges and barriers in their implementation and ultimate acceptance by the people using them - and purchasing them.

Trotter, Paul. Content Wrangler, The (2007). Articles>Content Management>Management

Sex, Lies, and CMS Vendors

Despite an 11+ year history in the marketplace, CMS technology remains poorly understood by many prospective buyers. In the meantime, the field of available suppliers has never been broader or noisier. Most CMS salespeople I know are good educators, but they also have quotas to meet. Under these circumstances, vendors will sometimes short-cut important discussions about functionality and pricing with simple -- but not always completely truthful -- answers. So here's a list of 10 common myths you might hear during the sales process.

Byrne, Tony. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Content Management>Marketing