Case Study: Discovering Plone Content Management System (Part 1)

DISCOVER Magazine, one of the most widely read science mags in the US, had out grown its dated Web Content Management infrastructure for www.discovermagazine.com. Times were changing, multi-media was big and in general Web and CMS technology had moved forward significantly. After analyzing current needs and taking stock of the Web CMS landscape DISCOVER ultimately selected the open source Plone platform. This is a two-part series where we look at the CMS features which convinced DISCOVER to chose Plone.

Paley, Scott. CMSwire (2007). Articles>Content Management>Case Studies>Plone

WordPress as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Application

I'm amazed at how easily people can make sites look both professional and functional in a short period of time using WordPress. Clyde Parson, the STC-Suncoast chapter in Tampa, just redid the Suncoast STC with a new WordPress theme. It looks pretty cool.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Content Management>Blogging>WordPress

Getting FLOSSy: Acrobat Killer Or HAT Replacement?

Some writers truly hate Adobe Acrobat and any tool that can do the job better is worth a shot, particularly if it’s open source and easily navigated. Flossmanuals.net introduces FLOSS which does a lot of the single desktop Acrobat Pro’s job - collaboratively and open source.

Jeter, Charles. Charles Jeter (2008). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>Software

The Why and How of Content Convergence and Integration

Content producers are about to live through interesting times, to adapt the popular saying, with the dawning of The Age of Content. Industry is discovering content as a commodity; the rules are changing, and fast.

Bailie, Rahel Anne. TechCom Manager (2008). Articles>Content Management

Understanding the Need for Content Quality Management

An interview between Diane Wieland, a technology writer in Indianapolis, and Scott Abel, publisher, The Content Wrangler.

Wieland, Diane. TechCom Manager (2007). Articles>Interviews>Content Management

Content Management -- A Career Path for Tech Comm Managers

If you are a technical communications manager, chances are you are working for an organization that has existed for far too many years to be considered a start-up. And if your organization is relatively mature, then at this stage, the organization is also swimming, if not already drowning, in information.

Bailie, Rahel Anne. TechCom Manager (2006). Articles>Content Management>Management

An Interview with Dr. JoAnn Hackos

Implementing a content-management system may seem a little outside the purview of the technical documentation manager. But, according to JoAnn Hackos, managers and their staff can play a pivotal role in the success of a content-management project. In this interview, guest editor Scott Abel, publisher of TheContentWrangler.com, chats with Hackos about how to prepare for a move to content management and explores who needs to be involved in the process and why.

Abel, Scott. TechCom Manager (2006). Articles>Interviews>Content Management

The Importance of Articulation Work to Agency Content Management: Balancing Publication and Control  

This paper describes the initial results of a qualitative field study of the work required to review and approve the content on government agency web sites. The study analyzes content management work in terms of Strauss’s conceptualization of articulation. The analysis describes examples of high and low level articulation in content review and approval including using paper, personal contact, and surveillance. Study results suggest that the articulation work present in non-software based review and approval processes helps to balance conflicting agency goals of publishing content and achieving absolute oversight over published content. It also suggests that software based content management systems may prove helpful for the management of some types of content in some situations, but it hypothesizes that actors will choose paper and face to face communication mechanisms to review and approve large amounts of new content and sensitive content.

Eschenfelder, Kristin R. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2003). Articles>Content Management>Organizational Communication>Workflow

The Effects of Socio-Technical Enablers on Knowledge Sharing: An Exploratory Examination    

Recently, the need for knowledge management has been drastically increasing so organizations may meet the high level of dynamic, complex business change and uncertainty. In particular, knowledge sharing has been recognized as a critical process through which organizational knowledge can be utilized. For successful knowledge sharing, companies need to capitalize on various socio-technical enablers. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how these enablers can affect knowledge sharing intention and behavior, and explore practical implications for knowledge sharing. For this purpose, the paper proposes a theoretical model to investigate these enablers from a socio-technical perspective. PLS (Partial Least Square) analysis was employed to validate the model. This field study involves 164 users. Furthermore, interviews with experts were investigated for practical implications. Our analysis reveals that social enablers such as trust and reward mechanisms are more important than technical support in isolation for facilitating knowledge sharing.

Choi, Sue Young, Young Sik Kang and Heeseok Lee. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Knowledge Management>Content Management>Collaboration

The Evolution of Visual Information Retrieval    

This paper seeks to provide a brief overview of those developments which have taken the theory and practice of image and video retrieval into the digital age. Drawing on a voluminous literature, the context in which visual information retrieval takes place is followed by a consideration of the conceptual and practical challenges posed by the representation and recovery of visual material on the basis of its semantic content. An historical account of research endeavours in content-based retrieval, directed towards the automation of these operations in digital image scenarios, provides the main thrust of the paper. Finally, a look forwards locates visual information retrieval research within the wider context of content-based multimedia retrieval.

Enser, Peter. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Content Management>Visual Rhetoric>Search

Repurposing Content for Multichannel Publishing (Single Sourcing)

It all comes down to managing and reusing source. Recycling content (chapters, graphics, etc.) is not new. What is new here is the common set of back-end structure in XML form and the fact that more than one set of tools — including small, mission critical custom tools — are explicitly focused on the specific needs of a given project. Reusing and repurposing content is all about improving efficiency: automating, accelerating, and merging applications, systems, and processes. In a multichannel publishing environment, it is critical that content development — source development — and its management are as efficient as possible.

Fraley, Liz. Tech Writer Voices (2008). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Introduction to Web Content Management Systems: Part Two

Content Management System software is available commercially from several vendors, as well as from many free or open source software (FOSS) communities. The quality of the open source versions, especially the market leaders mentioned in this article, is very good, and using open source has the additional benefit of an collaborative community of programmers working on improvements and bug fixes, often able to respond faster than their commercial rivals. Of course, cost is the advantage many IT managers are interested in when considering open source alternatives, as most of these packages are available free or for a small donation of time or money.In either case, using a CMS solution, whether commerical or FOSS, saves money in development time and also provides stronger security through the technical support of the software vendor or the collaborative programming community.

Kephart, Tom. New Tech Heroes (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software

Introduction to Web Content Management Systems: Part One

Content Management System (CMS) software tools give even the smallest business the chance to have a first-rate, interactive web presence. Packed with powerful features, and easily extended with add-on modules, CMS tools reduce web site development time and costs while providing interactivity, distributed responsibility, security, convenience and significant cost savings.

Kephart, Tom. New Tech Heroes (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software>Open Source

Looking for Open Source CMS and Portal Software Options

I find choosing a CMS incredibly difficult, and evaluating them is very time consuming and often frustrating. There are hundreds of options, one worse than the other. To date I have never come across a CMS that doesn’t have serious flaws. Even if a CMS looks good at a glance, once you start digging deeper you will always encounter problems with usability, accessibility, and front-end code.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software>Open Source

How to Manage Out of Date Content

Organizations are in urgent need of professional review processes for their intranets and public websites. Out of date content is growing year by year, and there are many horror stories about out-of-date content waiting to happen. It’s time for management to get serious and professionally manage their websites.

McGovern, Gerry. CMSwire (2008). Articles>Content Management>Editing>Assessment

Open Source Content Management System Market Share  

The survey shows that three systems have come to dominate the present market: WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. Indeed, the numbers indicate that these three systems have opened up a large lead on the rest of the pack and have emerged as the dominant brands in the market.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software

Review: Gartner Avoids OSS Content Management Systems

I received a copy of the Gartner report on the status of the web content management system market. I am always skeptical of such reports because they are geared towards those that work in a corporate environment. The reports are also made in a manner that allows the reporting company to remove itself from any responsibility if their information on the market climate is incorrect. Gartner did not disappoint me. But they do much to disappoint those that are putting a lot of energy and effort in to the OSS Web content management market.

Hiveminds (2008). Articles>Reviews>Content Management>Software

Five Reasons Why the Drupal CMS is Not Ready for the Enterprise

Many Open Source content management systems written in PHP want to be recognized by the business industry as being "enterprise" ready. This is not only a mark of prestige and status but places them in a position where large companies are ready to invest in the software as a platform for their projects. Drupal is now trying making its move to be enterprise ready but has a long way to go.

McDade, Carl. Hiveminds (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software>Drupal

How to Select a Content Management System

There's recently been a lot of discussion and considerable interest in content management systems. Buyers are starting to ask for these solutions from vendors with greater regularity and the buyers are clearly better informed than in the past. Still the issue that comes up again and again is, how do you know which content management system (CMS) is right for you?

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2003). Articles>Content Management>Software

Changing the Way We Work

The CMS market really took wing with the liftoff of the LAMP stack and the growth of a supportive development community. Suddenly it seemed everyone was producing LAMP-based CMSes under Open Source licenses.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2006). Articles>Content Management>Software>Open Source

Ready for the Enterprise?

A quick look at ten Open Source Content Management Systems which are beginning to find their way inside Enterprise IT Departments.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2006). Articles>Content Management>Open Source>Workplace

Integrating Social Media into a Web Content Strategy

Outside of the tech industry, skepticism and fear are the norm when it comes to social media. But it is simply about finding the best way to communicate with an audience. Social media consists of the same content already in use: text, audio, images, and video. The difference lies in its ability to open up new channels of communication.

Parrott, Britt. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>Social Networking

Effective Content Reuse: Storing Paragraphs, Not Topics, Is Key to Content Management Success

Most content management organizations promote the concept that in order to reuse content you must segment content into topics. This approach works well for technical information because with technical content you are describing concepts, asking people to perform tasks or follow steps, or providing reference material. Consequently, you can reasonably and easily create topics that represent concise ideas, and ultimately, small chunks of content. However, while people might comprehend the benefits that topic-oriented documentation provides, they generally don't grasp the downsides of such an approach.

Trotter, Paul. Content Wrangler, The (2008). Articles>Content Management>Methods

It's In The Mix: The Next Generation Of Open Source Publishing

The same principles behind music remixing are at the heart of a hugely important open source software documentation experiment, taking place on the web today. It’s called FLOSS Manuals, a content remixing project that provides its website visitors with the ability to read, write and remix documentation.

Abel, Scott. Content Wrangler, The (2008). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>Personalization

The Rise Of Hyperlocal Information

The net effect of social networking is the increasing availability of fine-grained information about locales. This information is both interesting and valuable. It is sought after by people living in these places and by advertisers who are trying to reach these people. A handful of startups are recognizing the big potential of local information - relevance. In this post we look at different aspects of the hyperlocality, from satellites to local blogs, and ponder how this information will be organized and monetized.

Iskold, Alex. ReadWriteWeb (2008). Articles>Information Design>Content Management>Wikis