http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Content-Management/Software A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Content Management and Software in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Content-Management/Software http://tc.eserver.org/35699.html http://tc.eserver.org/35699.html WordPress is fairly simple to set up as a CMS ‘out of the box’, but where it needs a lot of customization is for setting up ‘smart’ navigation and being able to serve up pages or posts in multiple languages. http://tc.eserver.org/35567.html http://tc.eserver.org/35567.html An organization we at Reflab work with recently re-evaluated Plone against Sharepoint 2007; their main requirements are related to document management, where Sharepoint is for sure quite strong. What’s interesting is that they made the comparison also considering the different platforms and browsers their organization uses. Here are the results of their analysis and tests, they where so kind to share them with us, I checked them and translated them. I hope you’ll find them useful. http://tc.eserver.org/35031.html http://tc.eserver.org/35031.html Microsoft markets SharePoint as an omnibus information-management platform, but like all software, it has meaningful strengths and weaknesses. People frequently label SharePoint a collaboration product, when in fact, it excels at some types of collaboration but virtually ignores other. SharePoint is useful for some Web Content Management scenarios, but poor at (many) others. http://tc.eserver.org/34374.html http://tc.eserver.org/34374.html As an experienced Plone front end developer, people are often surprised when I often decide not to use Plone, in favour of something like Drupal or Wordpress. I thought it would be useful to explain why and how I make this decision. I know some of these points won’t be popular in the Plone community, but they are based on experience, and think this blog post will be useful to people deciding whether to use it or not. http://tc.eserver.org/34351.html http://tc.eserver.org/34351.html When companies decide whether or not to adopt a CMS or continue using a HAT, there are many factors to consider. Perlin outlines elements of both CMSs and HATs that could help you determine which is best for your organization. http://tc.eserver.org/34284.html http://tc.eserver.org/34284.html Once you've built the business case for purchasing a CMS, this guide can serve as a 'field guide' for the evaluation, implementation and deployment process. It begins by analyzing the anatomy of a CMS project, going through the decide and buy, implement and integrate, manage and maintain and upgrade and enhance phases. As part of the first phase, this guide provides a very useful sample of a Request for Proposal (RFP) to help you evaluate content management vendors. The guide also underlines the importance of viewing content management as a process, not a product, and suggests working with a content management vendor who will become a core part of your Web site management team. http://tc.eserver.org/34260.html http://tc.eserver.org/34260.html With FrameMaker 9 comes a new way to work with files on a CMS (Content Management Server) that supports HTTP/WebDAV protocol. WebDAV is a kind of extension over HTTP which allows user to write files on Web along with usual viewing. Multiple users can collaboratively edit and manage files hosted on the Web server. Since many of today’s CMS servers provide users with a WebDAV route to access and edit files, FrameMaker 9 can automate the collaborative tasks by providing direct ways to view and make changes to files on CMS systems. http://tc.eserver.org/34231.html http://tc.eserver.org/34231.html YSlow assigns letter grades (A thru F) for a page in each of 13 categories of best-practice. I decided to run YSlow against the home pages of 35 well-known web content management and/or enterprise content management vendors, then calculate a Grade Point Average. The scores are posted below. http://tc.eserver.org/34176.html http://tc.eserver.org/34176.html You might think corruption is mainly an issue in places like sub-Saharan Africa or Myanmar, but unfortunately I’ve been exposed to several cases of this inside the online industry. http://tc.eserver.org/34104.html http://tc.eserver.org/34104.html In this report, we take a look at four different open source Content Management Systems—WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone—and rate them on a variety of criteria, including system flexibility, features, ease of use and the availability of support. We chose these systems because they’re the most popular four in the nonprofit sector today, according to our analysis (see Appendix C for more details on our market analysis). We also dig a little deeper into what open source is all about, and how a CMS can help streamline processes. We even take a look at some vendor-provided systems, along with a few other open source ones, in case you don’t find what you’re looking for among the four original choices. http://tc.eserver.org/34042.html http://tc.eserver.org/34042.html Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look for in a CMS? http://tc.eserver.org/33549.html http://tc.eserver.org/33549.html CMS software selection with Plone and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) as finalists seems to have become a pretty common case. This is true especially for “intranet/extranet” projects in which the primary focus is on web publishing and collaboration features. I’ve been asked several times to work on comparing the two and I’d like to share some of this experience. Also note that this can’t be a “vendor neutral” comparison because of my involvement in Plone; but I’ll do my best to highlight differences and strenghths of the two solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/33260.html http://tc.eserver.org/33260.html It is quite possible, in fact could be preferable, to manage content and distributed authorship without the use of a content management system (CMS). Regardless, it’s very important to have a process in place before you choose a CMS. http://tc.eserver.org/33281.html http://tc.eserver.org/33281.html Most organizations don’t need content management software. Unless you have a very busy website with lots and lots of content being published, the return on investment is not there. The majority of those who do require such software need a very simple, streamlined solution. http://tc.eserver.org/33283.html http://tc.eserver.org/33283.html This whole category of software desperately needs to be redesigned with writers, editors, designers, and site owners in mind. Here are my recommendations to the folks writing open source content management systems. http://tc.eserver.org/33216.html http://tc.eserver.org/33216.html The worldwide ecosystem of interested parties involved in website and web application development has become enormous. Accordingly, there are few unifying themes among the various parties other than the mutual goal of having a “good” website as the final product. However the definition of what is good is entirely subjective. Many other requirements such as the ability to leverage existing resources and a desire to integrate the new project with existing enterprise applications contend for attention in the decision process. To get a clear idea of how we might increase the buzz and attention for Plone and Zope, let's profile some of the interested parties. http://tc.eserver.org/32602.html http://tc.eserver.org/32602.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/32605.html http://tc.eserver.org/32605.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32579.html http://tc.eserver.org/32579.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32580.html http://tc.eserver.org/32580.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32581.html http://tc.eserver.org/32581.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32440.html http://tc.eserver.org/32440.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32372.html http://tc.eserver.org/32372.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32373.html http://tc.eserver.org/32373.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32146.html http://tc.eserver.org/32146.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32079.html http://tc.eserver.org/32079.html In SharePoint, we are likely to think of developers as people who work to customise SharePoint, but there are a lot of developers out there who are simply end users of SharePoint. How do they like the system? http://tc.eserver.org/32081.html http://tc.eserver.org/32081.html Joomla is more complex than WordPress but it has more power. Because it’s a real content management system—unlike WordPress which is a blog with content management capabilities—you don’t have to customise it to make it look like one. Other people have also created templates you can use. http://tc.eserver.org/32082.html http://tc.eserver.org/32082.html I know that some users of high-end CMS’s may dispute this definition, as a high-end CMS does a lot more. But what is a content management system really? It is content, stored in some kind of database, accessed via a front end. That is exactly what WordPress is. http://tc.eserver.org/31753.html http://tc.eserver.org/31753.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31491.html http://tc.eserver.org/31491.html One of the things I like about WordPress is its versatility. WordPress isn’t just blogging software. With the right theme, you can build a website that doesn’t resemble a blog at all. Essentially, writers who become familiar with WordPress become empowered as web designers as well. http://tc.eserver.org/31273.html http://tc.eserver.org/31273.html Content migrations are often the dirty little secret that folks in the CMS world like to avoid. It’s hard, it’s messy and very few organizations do it well. Truth be told, the content migration can often be the hardest part of implementing a new CMS. http://tc.eserver.org/30997.html http://tc.eserver.org/30997.html Open source content management systems can make creating and managing your website a lot easier - and there's no licensing fee involved. But which should you use? We look carefully at Joomla, Drupal, and Plone to compare their strengths and weaknesses. http://tc.eserver.org/28944.html http://tc.eserver.org/28944.html The Rockley Group takes a look back at the year 2006 in review. What happened in the CMS market? How is globalization changing the content management landscape? And, what about new communication vehicles like blogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS feeds? http://tc.eserver.org/28507.html http://tc.eserver.org/28507.html We reviewed and compared the seven tools most frequently used to create a blog. Which are easiest to get up and running, or to tailor to match your site? Which has the best comment moderation features? Reporting functionality? We'll give you all the details and recommend a tool for you. http://tc.eserver.org/28196.html http://tc.eserver.org/28196.html A triple-barreled question facing many enterprises today is whether to use an application-building tool or 'framework' to build a content management system (CMS); to buy one of the many out-of-the-box finished products in use by major Web sites; or to simply rent a CMS from an application service provider (ASP) and avoid the headache of running an application server in the enterprise's data center. http://tc.eserver.org/27376.html http://tc.eserver.org/27376.html Unless we manage to make Drupal more accessible to new users and to get back to the basics, we'll find the ground shifting beneath our feet. http://tc.eserver.org/27156.html http://tc.eserver.org/27156.html Drupal's database design is stupid! it sucks! it is crap! To things clearer I am talking about design errors. Yes, they do exist. Some say that design errors are the basic cause of bugs in a system. They are right. Rather than go through a bunch of queries or rather hundreds of queries, I will just say that the database design has no relational qualities that would optimize and speed up the system what so ever. This a glaring whole in the knowledge of the Development team so if you are a joiner and want to contribute to the project then think about helping them out with the database design first. http://tc.eserver.org/27131.html http://tc.eserver.org/27131.html Last year before I discovered Drupal and a host of other Content management systems I was building websites from scratch. I spent hours in PHP and Active Server Pages coding and designing. I was quite happy doing so. But then I came upon a flaw in the business plan of the company where I worked. It seemed we were doing the same thing over and over again only with slight differences in the end result. These differences were the reason I was busy all the time but could never catch up to the work load. What we needed was a finished product that allowed us to produce addons to satisfy the individual needs of each client. http://tc.eserver.org/27130.html http://tc.eserver.org/27130.html As ridiculous as that may sound many are getting away with doing it. There are many comparisons of open source CMS software that are popping up that are total garbage. The reviewers are comparing CMS systems that are in 5 to 8 different categories and have 4 different sets of requirements. No wonder they are confused and can't make a choice. http://tc.eserver.org/27127.html http://tc.eserver.org/27127.html After a week of fighting with it I have come to the conclusion that Drupal access control modules are all inadequate and are based on some weak database design. Taxonomy access and node access are flawed from the start. This type of access control where the assets are assigning their own internal security is not scalable and suffers from very high database overhead. http://tc.eserver.org/25104.html http://tc.eserver.org/25104.html Microsoft has in no way abandoned the web content management market. http://tc.eserver.org/22851.html http://tc.eserver.org/22851.html 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). http://tc.eserver.org/22080.html http://tc.eserver.org/22080.html Open-source CMS has now matured to the point where it should be considered alongside commercial products, but is not without its weaknesses and issues. http://tc.eserver.org/20509.html http://tc.eserver.org/20509.html Use XML in Adobe® InCopy 2.0, to apply tags to parts of a document, and then export the document as an XML file. http://tc.eserver.org/18308.html http://tc.eserver.org/18308.html The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Internet Scout Project [1] received funding in the fall of 2000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [2] to build an open source software package that would allow collection developers to share their collection's metadata via the web. The resulting software, the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT), is virtually turnkey, very inexpensive to maintain and operate, and easy for non-technical staff to download, set up and populate with metadata. Conforming to international standards for metadata, data harvesting, and Web technology makes SPT useful for and usable by a wide variety of projects and organizations, allowing and encouraging collaboration and record sharing among projects. Over the SPT project's two-year period, beta testers and in-house quality assurance testing provided valuable feedback, helping to ensure that the software was robust, easy to use, and well-suited to the needs of the intended audience. http://tc.eserver.org/14715.html http://tc.eserver.org/14715.html Desprez illuminates some of the advanced features of Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher, a software package that allows single-sourcing from Adobe FrameMaker to online documents. For a discussion of WebWorks tailored to beginners, see Wendy G. Beren's article 'WebWorks Publisher: Can It Convert You?' http://tc.eserver.org/14168.html http://tc.eserver.org/14168.html As your sites become more critical and complex, you need tools to automate management--and you need them now. Enter the new generation of Web site content-management products--a seasoned batch of tools and systems ready to help you meet the challenges of the brave new Web world. There's a wide range of products out there, and while they overlap somewhat in functionality, the phrase Web site content management means different things to different people. For some, content management is really asset management--that is, a system to keep track of media assets, such as graphic elements, text and video. More commonly, however, Web site content management refers to a set of integrated tools that helps manage some portion of the whole range of site development and deployment tasks. Although no single product can do everything, many offer deployment/publishing, versioning and rollback, site design and page authoring tools, link checking, access control, change routing and notification, and site-visualization tools among their features.