http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Content-Management A listing of the most recently indexed works about Content Management 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/Content-Management http://tc.eserver.org/35778.html http://tc.eserver.org/35778.html Provides an overview of Alfresco, an open-source alternative to Microsoft's SharePoint content management system. http://tc.eserver.org/35779.html http://tc.eserver.org/35779.html Alfresco integrates easily with existing behaviors, is nimble enough to be adapted to fluid processes, facilitates project communication, and proactively provides the right information to the right people. http://tc.eserver.org/35770.html http://tc.eserver.org/35770.html SharePoint can neither create nor destroy organizational chaos, but does an excellent job of reflecting the level of organizational chaos that existed at the time of deployment. The “SharePoint paradox” and paths to SharePoint wickedness. The power of Issue Mapping and IBIS based collaboration. How to leverage the best of SharePoint and Issue Mapping. http://tc.eserver.org/35771.html http://tc.eserver.org/35771.html Information for administrators of Microsoft SharePoint servers. http://tc.eserver.org/35772.html http://tc.eserver.org/35772.html Given the pressures on firms to provide increased value at lower costs, it’s imperative that they find ways to reduce the costs of creating and managing documents and increase their value to clients and personnel. Microsoft SharePoint provides a range of features to make your firm’s documents “smarter,” from capturing rich metadata to automating workflows to intelligent search. As applied, these features can transform passive documents into active, reusable resources. In this article I’ll describe some of the ways that SharePoint can reduce the effort to create, manage and retrieve documents and increase their value, as smart documents, to both your firm and its clients. http://tc.eserver.org/35773.html http://tc.eserver.org/35773.html The SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata feature has been my favourite topic since coming back from the SharePoint conference. I get excited about this kind of thing because metadata is a big part of all of the software we build. But some people are probably saying "Why should we get so excited about new metadata features in SharePoint? The new UI and improved capacity are really the neat things about SharePoint 2010." http://tc.eserver.org/35774.html http://tc.eserver.org/35774.html Having seen Microsoft SharePoint in action at a central government department they could see the potential around records management and enabling the delivery of other business outcomes through ensuring the right information (records) were available to the right audience, at the right time in an appropriate manner. This meant exposing information securely to their clients, internally on their intranet and to the wider citizen audience, something their current IT platforms wouldn’t support in a simple, cost effective manner. http://tc.eserver.org/35775.html http://tc.eserver.org/35775.html Many doctors across the country want to perform research and trials. As a result, there’s more than a little competition for that government funding. This is where my company and SharePoint enter the picture. The fundamental idea is that a master organization will recruit other doctors across the country and enlist those doctors’ practices in a particular research study. http://tc.eserver.org/35752.html http://tc.eserver.org/35752.html The wiki crops up in many companies' internal discussions about process improvements and efficient collaboration, but it is often shot down because so few people have exposure to good models of what a really successful business wiki can do. Ars is here to help with a practical introduction based on real-world examples. 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/35701.html http://tc.eserver.org/35701.html If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35624.html http://tc.eserver.org/35624.html When choosing a blog platform, you have a variety of options: Drupal, Movable Type, Typepad, Blogger, Joomla, Expression Engine, WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress, and others. But when you start researching the options, WordPress seems to have at least 10 main strengths over its competitors. http://tc.eserver.org/35654.html http://tc.eserver.org/35654.html As a participant in the Content Strategy Consortium at the IA Summit 2009, I have enjoyed watching content strategy grow into a user experience discipline. The most recent and significant sign of content strategy’s rise is the release of Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson. Kristina is a renowned content strategist, co-curator of the Content Strategy Consortium, and president of Brain Traffic. I was honored to chat recently with Kristina about her new book. http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html Let’s say that you’re reading a news story about a particular area of geographic conflict and you decide to investigate further. Without an encyclopedia available, as fewer and fewer of us seem to have them on hand these days, you quickly check out your handy online references. To your surprise, the article on this disputed feature seems to be an amalgamation of strongly differing opinions and ideologies, to the point where the article has been locked down from further editing. Such is the nature of the brave new world of user-generated content, where a content publisher forges a careful alliance of sorts with a wide range of contributors across very diverse locales and cultures. Depending on the intended purpose of the provided content, the end result can take on a life of its own, as it becomes the focal point for a silent yet fervent battle over “fact” and “truth” from divergent viewpoints. http://tc.eserver.org/35677.html http://tc.eserver.org/35677.html The shift in information development from a narrative to a modular writing style reflects the established shift towards modularization of source code. What can information developers learn from software developers? What are the challenges and benefits of the modular approach? http://tc.eserver.org/35680.html http://tc.eserver.org/35680.html Although the creation and translation of technical documents are essential parts of the product lifecycle they still play a subordinate role in most international organizations. Many companies are therefore leaving these tasks to an outsourcing provider. To ensure a smooth collaboration and guarantee high quality technical documents, the outsourcing process needs to be planned and supported thoroughly. http://tc.eserver.org/35617.html http://tc.eserver.org/35617.html Collaboration happens when multiple people work simultaneously towards a common goal. Collaboration software are tools which try to make working together easier and more productive. There are hundreds of methodologies and approaches out there to collaboration. We want to bring the focus on one particular dimension: open vs. structured collaboration. 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/35490.html http://tc.eserver.org/35490.html The concept of having control over your help content, to update it at any time, is what I’m calling content independence. Establishing content independence in your publishing environment may be a battle that can take years. For example, at a previous job, it took five years to finally convince architecture that we needed and deserved our own independent folder on a production server. In my current situation, I’ve pursued publishing routes in infrastructure that would enable on-the-fly updating, but for two years in a row I’ve come up empty-handed. With wikis, I think I’ve finally found the holy grail of content independence. http://tc.eserver.org/35438.html http://tc.eserver.org/35438.html Recently I’ve been working on a simple calendar project that uses a wiki for documentation. Although I’ve heard a lot about using wikis for documentation, and have even used them in the past, I ran into a few surprises this time. http://tc.eserver.org/35423.html http://tc.eserver.org/35423.html The reasons for the White House's decision to run its Web site, whitehouse.gov, on the open source content management system Drupal are being discussed on various Web sites. Alongside Drupal's functionality, flexibility and openness, some are suggesting that Drupal's documentation was also a key factor for deciding to use this system. http://tc.eserver.org/35403.html http://tc.eserver.org/35403.html A wiki can be a Frequently Asked Questions repository, much like the knowledge bases in their heyday in the late 80s. My favorite line from the blog entry has to be its closer: 'It's about a different way of thinking around how to interact with the community.' And that is what I have explored with my wiki presentation, about how to build community with a wiki and be an active member of that community. But what are other uses of the wiki? http://tc.eserver.org/35382.html http://tc.eserver.org/35382.html Cisco's $3.2 billion intended acquisition of WebEx has me thinking of what Charles Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, calls "this next wave of business communications." What do you suppose he means? http://tc.eserver.org/35333.html http://tc.eserver.org/35333.html How closely does the content in your CMS resemble the logical content you planned on? # Different systems have vastly different content modeling. http://tc.eserver.org/35335.html http://tc.eserver.org/35335.html A unified content strategy is: a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front; creating consistently structured content for reuse; managing that content in a definitive source; assembling content on demand to meet your needs. A unified content model is the framework that supports your strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/35336.html http://tc.eserver.org/35336.html Accurate translations of clinical trial documents play an important role in meeting global product demands. Mistakes from poorly done translations can result in product delays, cost overruns, malpractice or product liability lawsuits, and confused subjects / patients. http://tc.eserver.org/35337.html http://tc.eserver.org/35337.html Why is getting the process right, so important? Value for money, project success, Return on investment. http://tc.eserver.org/35338.html http://tc.eserver.org/35338.html Web 2.0 includes: wikis, podcasts, blogs, widgets/gadgets, social networks … and combinations of all the above. Not everyone contributes equally – Creators (18%), Critics (25%), Spectators (48%). But all are important. http://tc.eserver.org/35310.html http://tc.eserver.org/35310.html Intelligent content is content which is not limited to one purpose, technology or output. It’s content that is structurally rich and semantically aware, and is therefore discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable. It’s content that helps you and your customers get the job done, often automatically. http://tc.eserver.org/35313.html http://tc.eserver.org/35313.html A successful team is perhaps won of the most critical aspects to a successful SharePoint project, because without the right people you can’t make it happen. The first thing to say is that building a successful team is not about hiring as many developers as possible and hope they get it all to work. In fact the place to start is not with the people who will implement the project but those who will envisage and plan the project. http://tc.eserver.org/35297.html http://tc.eserver.org/35297.html A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. I think that professional writers and technical writers should consider a move towards this role. We already search for and find the best content, sift through loads of content, discard poor content, and publish the most worthy content whenever a software release goes out. This description also sounds like something a content strategist would do as part of their analysis of the content. http://tc.eserver.org/35298.html http://tc.eserver.org/35298.html A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. The most important component of this job is the word "continually." In the real time world of the Internet, this is critical. In an attempt to offer more of a vision for someone who might fill this role, here is my crack at a short manifesto for someone who might take on this job. http://tc.eserver.org/35287.html http://tc.eserver.org/35287.html Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to experiment with WebWorks ePublisher, a set of tools that converts documents from Word, FrameMaker and DITA XML to a number of different output formats. One of those output formats is Confluence wiki. It’s been very interesting, so I thought I’d blog about it and see if anyone else wants to give it a go as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35170.html http://tc.eserver.org/35170.html If content strategy isn’t in the current budget, though, how do you convince your client to add money for it? Your client might already realize content strategy can help create measurable ROI. If they don’t, help them understand. After all, relevant and informative content is what their audience wants; content strategy assesses the content they have and creates a plan for what they need and how they’ll get it. http://tc.eserver.org/35154.html http://tc.eserver.org/35154.html As wikis mature, we’re using them for more complex business cases such as technical documentation, business analysis and project management. It’s becoming more and more interesting, if not essential, for wikis to support the import and export of content to and from other formats. Most wikis allow you to convert their pages at least to PDF and HTML. But what of other formats, and what about tools for getting content into wikis as well as out of them? http://tc.eserver.org/35122.html http://tc.eserver.org/35122.html Although managing costs is important anytime, it is especially important in today's economic reality where budgets are shrinking drastically. Getting your money's worth as well as what you need to support your data should be a core factor of any data project. The two biggest cost factors are the type of conversion work you need done and how much of it you'll need. This article focuses on how your goals for your project relate to the output format you choose, and how that format impacts costs. While some outputs, like XML, provide higher capabilities, they also cost more to create. http://tc.eserver.org/35123.html http://tc.eserver.org/35123.html While I'm a big fan of XML for many purposes, it's a misconception that it's the single best solution in every scenario, and it's worthwhile to consider the alternatives in situations where the benefits of XML are not necessary. In this article, I discuss alternatives to XML, SGML, and HTML that might be suitable when budgets are more limited. While XML is perfect for highly coded information, other options can work well for many kinds of information. Markup languages are at the high end of the cost spectrum, so if you don't need the benefits they provide, you certainly should consider the alternatives discussed below. http://tc.eserver.org/35093.html http://tc.eserver.org/35093.html While the design of democracy is a wonderful thing, democratic design is less positive. We’ve heard over and over that “everyone is a designer,” and that through a combination of user-generated content, ubiquity of access, and new tools, design has finally made its way out of an ivory tower and into the grasp of the masses. What, exactly, have the masses gotten their grubby paws into? Can one truly claim to be a designer when they upload a picture to Facebook or remix a video for YouTube? http://tc.eserver.org/35075.html http://tc.eserver.org/35075.html Because most of CMS integration efforts will be concentrated on the boundaries, it further supports the engineering conclusion that minimizing the amount of effort spent on the core functionality is good because it maximizes the amount of the total implementation budget that can be spent on implementing the boundary functionality. http://tc.eserver.org/35076.html http://tc.eserver.org/35076.html I feel that the term "XML CMS" is unnecessarily specialized. In my world, content management is a much more general problem and 90% of what you need to manage XML well applies to everything else too. That's another reason I chafe at over-specialized XML repositories--they really can't manage anything else. http://tc.eserver.org/35053.html http://tc.eserver.org/35053.html In the field of technical communication, practitioners are being challenged to adapt to a completely new approach to creating documentation and user-assistance materials. In this rapidly-changing arena, traditional content production practices are being replaced with modular, topic-based content production practices that allow organizations to recombine content elements—often automatically or on-demand—into new, derivative products. http://tc.eserver.org/35042.html http://tc.eserver.org/35042.html Structured writing requires an analysis of content and a reorganization into the smallest possible coherent topics. http://tc.eserver.org/35046.html http://tc.eserver.org/35046.html The DITA Open Toolkit can transform your DITA files into a wide variety of output types. When you first install it, it's easy to get the impression that you need to know Ant well to use it, but you can pack most of its available options into a single Java™ command line. http://tc.eserver.org/35047.html http://tc.eserver.org/35047.html The topic of technical publishing is relatively new to the world of Eclipse. One can make the argument that technical publishing is just another collaborative development process involving several people with different backgrounds and skills. This article will show that the Eclipse platform is a viable platform for technical publishing by discussing how to write documents such as an article or a book within Eclipse. In fact, this article was written using Eclipse. http://tc.eserver.org/35030.html http://tc.eserver.org/35030.html Usually, the one thing missing from the planning of a WCM-driven web site is what's most likely to shoot the implementation in the foot: the functional design of the CMS back-end. The form and function of how the CMS will work, look and feel for the end-user of the system, not the visitor to the web site, is too often overlooked. This is odd: isn't the rationale for getting a CMS in the first place usually based on some kind of ROI in efficiency in actually producing the content and sites? 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/35032.html http://tc.eserver.org/35032.html When I parse the comments of technology customers in the midst of long-term vendor relationships, what I hear them asking for is predictability, rather than commercial zest. Sure, they want their suppliers to innovate, but since when is innovation a function of sales and marketing skill? http://tc.eserver.org/35033.html http://tc.eserver.org/35033.html Web Managers must think globally (information) and act locally (Web) all the while trying to widen your universe and build the internal business relationships which will allow your organization to manage its information more holistically now or in the future. http://tc.eserver.org/35027.html http://tc.eserver.org/35027.html This chapter explores the idea that a small group of people who have a sense of belonging in an online community may provide content much like a technical writer does. Regardless of their background, education, or training, more people are becoming providers of technical information on the web. http://tc.eserver.org/35025.html http://tc.eserver.org/35025.html In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life. The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals. http://tc.eserver.org/35017.html http://tc.eserver.org/35017.html XML provides a way to identify data items and subcomponents within any structured data set, but has its roots in documentation development and production. Robust, open standards for XML document markup and a rich set of freely available tools for XML document parsing and format conversion make it easy to install and configure a complete documentation development and formatting environment on any UNIX® or Linux® system. http://tc.eserver.org/35018.html http://tc.eserver.org/35018.html Discover simple solutions to reuse information in XML documentation, such as how to use XInclude to include other documents at a given point in a document and how to use XPointer to include small document fragments from other documents or a similar pool of information in XML format. Also, get tips for structuring XML documentation to simplify information reuse, and learn how to maintain stand-alone documents that you can incorporate into larger documents. http://tc.eserver.org/34979.html http://tc.eserver.org/34979.html Marketing materials are always important, and in these difficult times, they are critical to the success of the organization, and there are huge pressures to do more with less and for less money. Enter XML. XML is often perceived as complex, rigid and horrible to work with (geeky, technical) — anathema to the average marketing communications author. But this is no longer true. XML and the tools that support them have matured to the point where the XML is hidden, much in the same way RTF is hidden from the average Microsoft® Word author. Using XML for marketing materials provides considerable benefits, including consistent messaging, reduced time to create content, reduced costs to maintain content, reduced translation costs, and powerful multichannel conversion capabilities. XML is creating a profound shift in the way we create, manage, deliver and control marketing materials. It is a shift that is resulting in significant ROI and increased levels of success. http://tc.eserver.org/34907.html http://tc.eserver.org/34907.html オンラインコンテンツは、文脈とは無関係にユーザーの目にとまることが多い。本来想定された目的とは違う目的で読まれることもよくある。そうした目的を全部予測することはできないが、テキストのさまざまな利用を考慮することはできる。 http://tc.eserver.org/34801.html http://tc.eserver.org/34801.html It’s great to have a little 90-second elevator pitch ready to go for those times when you’re invited to talk about what you do (or even when you’re not). It’s also handy to have a version of this speech at the ready when someone outside of your industry, like a family member, asks what you do for a living. http://tc.eserver.org/34754.html http://tc.eserver.org/34754.html A content strategist looks at all the content from a holistic point of view, treating everything as content, and analyzing whether each aspect of the content aligns with the company’s messaging, branding, and intent. The content strategist is acutely aware of the multifaceted nature of the user experience. It’s not just the user interface that influences the user, or the marketing material, or the training — it’s all of this and more, working together as one. The whole user experience is the content strategist’s domain, not just help materials or written text. http://tc.eserver.org/34749.html http://tc.eserver.org/34749.html OSCOM is the international association connecting users and developers of Open Source Content Management solutions. OSCOM organizes events, promotes standards and undertakes projects to further the state of the art of Open Source Content Management. OSCOM promotes Open Source Content Management solutions as powerful, affordable and flexible replacements for proprietary products. http://tc.eserver.org/34752.html http://tc.eserver.org/34752.html Like many companies, CorVu has extensive knowledge of its own products and a desire to make that knowledge available to customers. A major block to achieving that desire has been a lack of people with the time to either record the internal knowledge or to fashion the knowledge into a customer-ready format. We needed to spread the load so that a broad range of developers, tech writers, professional service consultants and others could all contribute what time and knowledge they had to a shared goal. Our hope was that a process built around several Wiki sites would facilitate this collaborative approach. http://tc.eserver.org/34727.html http://tc.eserver.org/34727.html Getting even semi-publishable writing from experts is notoriously difficult; they may be immersed in their “real jobs” and too busy to write even a first draft of content, they may not understand why web content matters at all, they may not be fluent in the language(s) in which you publish your website, or they may just be terrible writers. Define a content workflow as early as possible, preferably as part of a unified content strategy that includes a content audit (a detailed analysis of what content you have, what content you need, and how to bridge that gap), voice and tone guidelines, and a schedule for collecting and generating content. http://tc.eserver.org/34728.html http://tc.eserver.org/34728.html It’s an open secret in our daily work how often the challenges posed by content elude our collective talents and acumen. We’ve all been there. For me, lorem ipsum makes it personal. It personifies the proposition at the heart of what content specialists do and mocks how often the manifold complexities of content can get the better of all of us. It’s happening because we haven’t been talking. http://tc.eserver.org/34729.html http://tc.eserver.org/34729.html What is content strategy? Good question! We're working here to provide a basic definition of the field of interactive content strategy, its body of knowledge, and its practitioners. http://tc.eserver.org/34730.html http://tc.eserver.org/34730.html Content-Strategy.com is an English language version of a Scandinavian web resource called Nettredaktor.no ("Nettredaktør" is the same as "Web editor"). http://tc.eserver.org/34731.html http://tc.eserver.org/34731.html Nettredaktor.no ble skapt på Nettredaktørskolen, og drives av Nina Furu med bidrag og innspill fra flere andre nettredaktører og bransjekolleger. http://tc.eserver.org/34732.html http://tc.eserver.org/34732.html If you or your organization has any sort of media presence (especially online), it’s useful to consider your overall content strategy: what you intend to say, and when and how to say it, in order to connect and interact constructively and efficiently with the people you need to help you achieve your goals. http://tc.eserver.org/34733.html http://tc.eserver.org/34733.html Content strategy seems still to be a nascent discipline that folks are catching wind of. We kind of know that it lives somewhere between web writing, web editing, information architecture, SEO stuff, web analytics, and production. We know that it (and content in general) are often overlooked in the web design and development process, despite everyone’s insistence that Content is King. And we know it’s all about planning for what content will go where, who owns, authors, and maintains it, how the content relates to a company’s business and other goals, how it fits within a larger matrix of technologies and constraints, etc. http://tc.eserver.org/34723.html http://tc.eserver.org/34723.html This presentation describes how authoring DITA topics and managing those topics in a content management system (CMS) will contain translation costs while improving overall information quality. This is not a recommendation for any particular product. It is a guide to how one group built their candidate list and computes return on investment. http://tc.eserver.org/34715.html http://tc.eserver.org/34715.html Technical Communication continues to change as we find new ways to meet the needs of our audiences. I have attended several conferences recently and discussed several of the latest trends with other technical communicators. This article provides a quick list of several of these trends and ideas. http://tc.eserver.org/34704.html http://tc.eserver.org/34704.html There are obvious benefits to single sourcing, the ones that roll off the tongue the minute single source is mentioned: multi-format publishing, consistency of information, quicker updates of common content, lowering translation costs and so on. But beyond all those, what else is there? In this guest blog post, Gordon McLean discusses just that. http://tc.eserver.org/34703.html http://tc.eserver.org/34703.html A case study of a university-wide implementation of a web content management system at Gonzaga University. http://tc.eserver.org/34692.html http://tc.eserver.org/34692.html The definition of content strategy, according to Wikipedia, is “a repeatable system that defines the entire editorial content development process for a website development project.” This definition, not surprisingly, is taken from the The Web Content Strategist’s Bible, by Richard Sheffield. While there is no explicit connection of Web copy to marketing copy, the implication is that Web sites are marketing sites. I would argue that, depsite the perception that websites consist of marketing content, for many sites, the marketing content is only the top layer. http://tc.eserver.org/34694.html http://tc.eserver.org/34694.html SEO techniques will increase your search rankings and SEM will get you traffic on the top search engines. But a boatload of quality content will also accomplish these things and prepare you for the more contextual future of search. http://tc.eserver.org/34678.html http://tc.eserver.org/34678.html “Content types” are among the least understood, and yet most potent, aspects of user experience and web design. Most people encounter them for the first time when implementing a grand-scale content management system (CMS) because you have to define content types before building templates for each kind of content you’re going to publish. Because they associate content types so closely with CMS, some make the mistake of equating content strategy with content management. They’re not the same thing, though they are certainly related. Your content strategy specifies the content types that will then be modeled for your CMS. http://tc.eserver.org/34679.html http://tc.eserver.org/34679.html Be known for your content first, for your name second. I can’t bear to hear anyone say one more time that “content is king,” but the truth is simple, if painful. http://tc.eserver.org/34680.html http://tc.eserver.org/34680.html If you’re getting ready to implement a CMS, and you haven’t yet worked out your content strategy, then I urge you to do it now. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself saddled with a cumbersome CMS that doesn’t do what you need it to, that actually multiplies (rather than reduces) the time and resources you spend managing content, and that everyone curses and tries to circumvent. http://tc.eserver.org/34598.html http://tc.eserver.org/34598.html Over the past two years my team conducted an extensive review of translation process and costs, and we found a lot of ways to reduce translation time and costs. This including exploring use of machine translation. In the end, we found that machine translation created more hassles than it fixed. It was hard to explain to upper management, but the concept that helped most was explaining that translators aren't translating word for word, they're translating thought for thought. http://tc.eserver.org/34599.html http://tc.eserver.org/34599.html When the cost for translation on support documentation for a foreign sold machine continues to go up, what can be done to minimize the cost of this EU mandated requirement? http://tc.eserver.org/34601.html http://tc.eserver.org/34601.html The suggestions that follow are culled from 10 years of experimentation and note-taking by a client in the translation game. I have tried to arrange them in logical groupings, but real coherence is difficult to achieve when it involves such a compilation. Although the company I work for has found it advantageous to move away from dependence on translation agencies, complete hands-on management of translation projects is not for the neophyte. Easing into it one language at a time, however, may be attempted after becoming intimately familiar with the basic translation process. http://tc.eserver.org/34607.html http://tc.eserver.org/34607.html Whether one is localizing documentation or translating Web sites into multiple foreign languages, managing updates is a major component of the localization process. Content development often involves constant updates. Therefore a localization methodology must have the infrastructure to manage change seamlessly, efficiently, and accurately. It must also offer complete flexibility to accommodate each project’s unique schedule, requirements and development cycle. http://tc.eserver.org/34585.html http://tc.eserver.org/34585.html In this paper, I suggest that granularized content management introduces as-yet-unexplored issues to genres of technical communication. I argue that content management, while it can, as advertised, free content and make it easy to reuse that content in multiple genres, that flexibility can create new problems for genres and genre systems, leading to problematic reuse, inflexible genre systems, rigid and proprietary genres, and uncritical internationalization. http://tc.eserver.org/34592.html http://tc.eserver.org/34592.html Translation companies typically embrace innovations in methods for efficiently creating final formatted documents. About a year ago a client asked if we would be interested in testing and evaluating a content management system (CMS) and how it would relate to our translation process. http://tc.eserver.org/34576.html http://tc.eserver.org/34576.html There are two camps in technical documentation. There’s the “quick web” folks who connect easily and author easily, and then there’s the “structured quality” camp that requires more thoughtful testing and time spent on task analysis and information architecture. http://tc.eserver.org/34578.html http://tc.eserver.org/34578.html In this article you looked at a simple application of Alfresco to create a web project and define web forms using XML Schema to allow non-technical users to create content. http://tc.eserver.org/34579.html http://tc.eserver.org/34579.html In the content management system I currently use, I’ve noticed no less than nine metaphors, which are meant serve as organizing principles, but they don’t. Granted, the particular tool I use isn’t really meant for gobs and gobs of editorial work, but nonetheless its organization and structure were likely created by a developer within arm’s reach of a bottle of tequila. http://tc.eserver.org/34557.html http://tc.eserver.org/34557.html The Firefox Support Knowledge Base is a collaborative work of dozens of contributors, the Support Forum is bustling with people answering questions, and Live Chat is manned by dedicated team of community members. http://tc.eserver.org/34549.html http://tc.eserver.org/34549.html A question that technical communicators frequently ask about wikis is "How do I get the documentation out of a wiki?" A simple answer: "Don’t worry about it." Because the wiki is the delivery method. http://tc.eserver.org/34511.html http://tc.eserver.org/34511.html The authors give a detailed account of their assignment to create a content management system (CMS) for a large office and how paying close attention to workplace culture and behavior affected their design of an effective CMS. http://tc.eserver.org/34487.html http://tc.eserver.org/34487.html The goal was to use Subversion (SVN) as a poor man's CMS, and take advantage of great PC-based editors like DreamWeaver (for HTML) and XMetaL (for DITA). Eventually, we could add pre-commit checks and utilities to give us some of the advanced functionality we'd really like--like link management and metadata change management--but in the meantime we could do everything manually to get by. All we had to do was install Subversion and enable the WebDAV interface in Apache. But many hurdles later, I'm exhausted from jumping over them. Every one requires me to look through 20 web pages in search of a solution, and each time I surmount one obstacle, it's only to find a new one standing in my way. http://tc.eserver.org/34492.html http://tc.eserver.org/34492.html If you need the collaborative aspects of a Wiki combined with DITA's modular topics and publishing capabilities, then DAISY might just be the system you need--and it's free. DAISY provides WYSIWYG editing for Wiki pages that can be combined to publish books, either in a PDF or as a single HTML page. http://tc.eserver.org/34493.html http://tc.eserver.org/34493.html So what's wrong with using <b>, <i>, and <tt>, anyway? What's so useful about identifying things as menu items, APIs, or filenames? Here's the list of reasons that surfaced at the recent 2008 DITA/CMS Conference. What are your thoughts? http://tc.eserver.org/34468.html http://tc.eserver.org/34468.html In this column, I’ll review what user assistance architects mean by reuse and what its benefits can be. I’ll then describe some different scenarios for reuse and offer guidelines that user assistance architects and information developers can follow. My examples show how DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) can be an effective reuse framework. But the principles I discuss go beyond DITA, and you can apply them to any structured information framework or toolset. http://tc.eserver.org/34437.html http://tc.eserver.org/34437.html The widest data base referential for CMS (Content Management Systems) or, what the French-speaking people call, the PGC (Progiciels de Gestion de Contenu). Here, you will find the best information with regards to the large majority of the CMS, and their tools, found throughout the Web. http://tc.eserver.org/34438.html http://tc.eserver.org/34438.html Un site web pour afficher les différences entre des centaines de Progiciels de Gestion de Contenu. http://tc.eserver.org/34452.html http://tc.eserver.org/34452.html Migrating to a new system can be surprisingly difficult (some reasons). The following steps can help in your migration. http://tc.eserver.org/34455.html http://tc.eserver.org/34455.html We still had a huge, unruly Web site. It just had different graphics, a better-named Web team and more people shoveling on content and applications. Finally, out of desperation, we decided to try a new-fangled thing called a Web content management system. http://tc.eserver.org/34423.html http://tc.eserver.org/34423.html In this session, attendees will learn how to use MadCap Flare to develop multiple documents and/or online help systems from a single project and how to share content across multiple projects. Learn how to create multiple online help systems and/or print documents from the same content. Learn how to reuse content developed in multiple applications. Learn how to reuse content in multiple topics and across multiple projects. http://tc.eserver.org/34417.html http://tc.eserver.org/34417.html While the effort to provide more interactivity and power to the end-user seems to suggest that we open up a wiki to allow them to add and edit content, the basic idea of a set of edited documentation is now challenged with a social network of participating customers, all of whom may now edit, add, and delete content. How social can you go? This article is an attempt to look at the process of evaluating the use of a wiki for end-user documentation, if such a thing can exist. Are the two types of customer content — wikis and end-user documentation — mutually exclusive? http://tc.eserver.org/34405.html http://tc.eserver.org/34405.html Learning Management Systems have dominated online education up until now, but must they be what we rely on in the future? Having found our way out of one box, must we immediately look for another? Can we imagine no other possibilities? http://tc.eserver.org/34411.html http://tc.eserver.org/34411.html None of the technologies mentioned so far support the production of content for purposes of producing technical documentation. Such a system is a specific type of content management that has specialized functions for technical communicators doing multi-channel publishing, yet it hasn't spun off its own specific acronym. http://tc.eserver.org/34412.html http://tc.eserver.org/34412.html I’m keenly interested in getting a better handle on content strategy, but it seems to me there’s still much to work out, even among the thought leaders themselves. It’s an exciting time for content and people looking at content strategy as a field. If naysayers speak up, it can only be because content strategy is taking focus off their own game. http://tc.eserver.org/34413.html http://tc.eserver.org/34413.html This group seeks participation from smart folks who think content strategy matters. http://tc.eserver.org/34399.html http://tc.eserver.org/34399.html There are a wide variety of uses for Wikis and a level of interest in using them that’s matched by an extensive range of Wiki software. Wikis introduce to the Internet a collaborative model that not only allows, but explicitly encourages, broad and open participation. The idea that anyone can contribute reflects an assumption that both content quantity and quality will arise out of the ‘wisdom of the crowd.’ http://tc.eserver.org/34391.html http://tc.eserver.org/34391.html I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Hoehn from Kodak at Online Marketing Summit - DC last week. Tom has a really cool job at Kodak, where he is director of brand communications and convergence media. http://tc.eserver.org/34384.html http://tc.eserver.org/34384.html Although wikis have gained substantially in popularity since they first appeared some ten years ago, many enterprises still begin their wiki projects with unrealistic expectations. 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/34350.html http://tc.eserver.org/34350.html The authors have come up with eight guidelines and three concrete suggestions on best practices for editing modular documentation, including ensuring that all topics are standalone, that titles are unique and descriptive, and more. 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/34358.html http://tc.eserver.org/34358.html You can open and edit XML files stored on the WebDAV server using FrameMaker 9. When FrameMaker 9 is installed on your computer, the Edit with FrameMaker plug-in is added to the browser's toolbar and is listed as an option in the edit menu for XML files. http://tc.eserver.org/34295.html http://tc.eserver.org/34295.html Users often see online content out of context and read it with different goals than you envisioned. While you can't predict all such goals, you can plan for multiple uses of your text. http://tc.eserver.org/34312.html http://tc.eserver.org/34312.html Unless you’re a one person web shop with no team to collaborate with, you’ve experienced the frustration that goes along with file sharing. No matter how hard you try, when multiple people are working on a single project without a version control system in place things get chaotic. In this article, I’ll give you a quick review of Git, an excellent version control system. http://tc.eserver.org/34313.html http://tc.eserver.org/34313.html Git, though remarkably handy and powerful, is also remarkably hard to use sometimes. Though you can learn the basics easily enough, it can be really tough to dig yourself out of certain corners if you don’t understand what’s going on under the covers. This page provides links to documents, how-tos, cheat sheets, tips, and tricks related to learning and using git. 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/34274.html http://tc.eserver.org/34274.html This page contains information about how to use DITA for authoring Eclipse Help. 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/34248.html http://tc.eserver.org/34248.html If you use copy and paste while you're coding, you're probably committing a design error. Instead of copying code, move it into its own routine. Future modifications will be easier because you will need to modify the code in only one location. 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/34233.html http://tc.eserver.org/34233.html How do we know whether content is any good? This simple question does not have a simple answer. Yet, I think having a good answer would help us show our employers and clients why their content needs to improve and how their content compares to the competition’s. http://tc.eserver.org/34220.html http://tc.eserver.org/34220.html With the number of publicly offered Web service APIs, it's now much easier to get content from different Web sources and to build mashups—if you have access to the right APIs and tools. Discover how you can combine an obscure cross-domain call technique (JSONP) and a flexible JavaScript library (jQuery) to build powerful mashups surprisingly quickly. 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/34145.html http://tc.eserver.org/34145.html Recently there has been a flurry of activity around a concept called “Office 2.0” – another offshoot of the term “Web 2.0” – in which all traditional office applications can be replaced by online services accessible through a generic web browser. http://tc.eserver.org/34118.html http://tc.eserver.org/34118.html If you cater to the younger group, you risk alienating your most senior people (talented, expensive, hard-to-replace experts; people you don't want to lose to the competition; people with great political capital in the organization, who can perhaps defeat an IT initiative by pushing back hard). On the other hand, if you cater to the older group, you risk alienating the younger workers; and you risk keeping obsolete systems in place far longer than you should, making future replacement that much more difficult while also impeding business objectives, etc. http://tc.eserver.org/34120.html http://tc.eserver.org/34120.html I always try to get a look at a vendor's APIs before (or in the process of) evaluating a product. And I recommend you do, too. If you are involved in a product-selection effort, get input from your developers -- have them evaluate APIs as part of the product-evaluation process. Don't wait until after the deal is inked to find out whether the product's APIs are so problematic that your rollout schedule might have to undergo serious changes. http://tc.eserver.org/34122.html http://tc.eserver.org/34122.html There's a common myth that one of the main reasons enterprise customers get locked in to a particular vendor's technology is the huge investment (of time and money) that goes into specifying, procuring, rolling out, and maintaining a large system. I was talking to a financial analyst the other day about this very phenomenon. The name of a well-known CMS vendor came up. My financial-analyst friend -- somewhat new to the software biz -- asked whether the huge cost of rolling out, training for, and maintaining a large system didn't pose an enormous disincentive for customers considering moving to another system. I said no, that's a myth. http://tc.eserver.org/34124.html http://tc.eserver.org/34124.html Add to your bag of tricks several handy techniques for crafting real-world regular expressions (regexps). Building regexps is a part of the daily life of any administrator. Learning to think in terms of pattern matching, in order to construct successful regexps that return the desired criteria, is a skill that takes both time and practice. http://tc.eserver.org/34135.html http://tc.eserver.org/34135.html O’Keefe gives detailed information on two technology standards that may be used in multilingual workflows: XSL and XLIFF. 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/34095.html http://tc.eserver.org/34095.html There’s one area that I believe user experience has lagged behind: the enterprise software space. I can’t tell you how many frustratingly unusable enterprise Web applications I’ve encountered during my 12 plus years in corporate America. As important as the user experience of enterprise software is to a business’s success, why isn’t its assessment usually a factor in technology selection? http://tc.eserver.org/34096.html http://tc.eserver.org/34096.html In this column, I’ll provide a technology selection framework that can help enterprises better assess the usability and appropriateness of enterprise applications they’re considering purchasing, with the goal of ensuring their IT (Information Technology) investments deliver fully on their value propositions. http://tc.eserver.org/34052.html http://tc.eserver.org/34052.html Twitter is changing the way information spreads online. Links that would have been blogged a couple of years ago are now more often shared via the micro-blogging service instead, which fundamentally changes strategy when trying to get content to spread.