Beyond the Buzzword: Single Sourcing  

Single sourcing, which has been a buzzword in technical communication for several years, is now emerging as a practical, efficient, and cost-effective method for creating multiple deliverables. You might want to consider single sourcing if you have some documentation projects that repeat, if not every one of your projects is a one-off, if you reuse some of your content, and if your budget planning includes more than just the very next project.

Brierley, Sean. Intercom (2002). Design>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Blog 101: An Overview of Weblog Technologies  

A weblog or 'blog' is a Web site with content consisting of a series of discrete postings added sequentially and presented in reverse chronological order. Historically used for personal Web sites, blogs in fact represent a form of lightweight content management that can be adapted to virtually any topic, including technical communication. The recent explosion of blogs is in part a result of the availability of publishing tools that simplify their creation. These tools vary significantly in capability, setup, and ease of use, and each offers advantages and disadvantages.

Berry, Robert R. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Blogging

Blogs and One-Step CMSes are the Future of Web 2.0

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.

Hiveminds (2006). Articles>Content Management>Software

Blogs and Technical Communication

Blogs are a simple, yet powerful tool and their popularity is rapidly growing. How are blogs affecting the community and technical communication?

Cottrell, Christina. Michigan State University (2003). Articles>Content Management>TC>Blogging

Blogs as Disruptive Tech

Content Management is starting to wrestle with what Clayton Christensen calls The Innovator's Dilemma: the inability of successful companies to adapt to a new, disruptive technology.

Hiler, John. Web Crimson (2002). Articles>Content Management>Technology>Blogging

Boomtchak

Tout sur les CMS. Tous les jours. Toutes les infos.

Belin, Philippe. Boomtchak (2003). (French) Resources>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Blogs

Bridging the Back-Office/Front-Office Gap  

With 75% of your organization's information contained in unstructured formats, can you transform it into 'usable content?' The problem that e-business exposes most often is inadequate integration.

Gross, Mitchell. KMworld (2001). Articles>Knowledge Management>Content Management

Build, Buy, or Rent?

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.

Doyle, Bob. EContent (2004). Articles>Content Management>Software

Building a Biodiversity Content Management System for Science, Education, and Outreach    

We describe the system architecture and data template design for the Animal Diversity Web (http://www.animaldiversity.org), an online natural history resource serving three audiences: 1) the scientific community, 2) educators and learners, and 3) the general public. Our architecture supports highly scalable, flexible resource building by combining relational and object-oriented databases. Content resources are managed separately from identifiers that relate and display them. Websites targeting different audiences from the same database handle large volumes of traffic. Content contribution and legacy data are robust to changes in data models. XML and OWL versions of our data template set the stage for making ADW data accessible to other systems.

Parr, C.S., R. Espinosa, T. Dewey, G. Hammond and P. Myers. Data Science Journal (2005). Articles>Content Management>Scientific Communication

Buyer's Guide to Content-Management Tools

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.

Hoffman, Richard. Network Computing (2000). Articles>Content Management>Software

Calculating the Cost of a Large-Scale Web Site

A well-designed information architecture with intuitive organization, labeling, navigation, and indexing systems can significantly reduce the amount of time that users spend blundering through the hierarchies of Web sites and intranets. How much is this time-savings worth? The case is clearest for intranets where the users are your employees.

Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (1997). Design>Web Design>Content Management>Usability

Capturing Feedback: Building a Tighter Net  

Describes how to use Microsoft FrontPage and Access to build a system for organizing and retrieving feedback from reviewers. The article is intended for those with some experience with Web and database design.

Shoesmith, Kevin. Intercom (2001). Design>Content Management>Web Design>Microsoft Access

Case Study: Implementing a Content Management System  

This paper presents a case study of implementing a content management system in a federal government setting. This case study may aid technical communicators who are interested in leveraging content management technology and who work for complex organizations or organizations with intricate communications requirements. Included in this paper is a detailed description of the background, approach, and early lessons learned for this implementation. The implementation was still in process at the due date of this paper. Additional lessons learned will be in the presentation's slide set and available from the Society for Technical Communication (STC) website at www.stc.org.

Pettit Jones, Colleen, Jane Mitchko and Marc Overcash. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Content Management>Case Studies>Government

A Case Study in Developing Dynamic Content at Ontario Systems

Charles Cantrell, an Information Engineer, describes Ontario Systems' process for delivering dynamically assembled and populated documentation for Artiva, its 'highly customizable' accounts receivable management application.

Cantrell, Charles. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Documentation>Content Management

A Case Study in Modular Documentation  

Modular documentation is a variation on single-sourcing methodology developed by Interim Technology Consulting in response to a client’s needs. Our client needed documentation on multiple formats that could be easily modified for multiple customers of their customized software package. The process of developing the modular methodology required considerations such as how to define, structure, and access the information modules in a way that worked for the current project and also provided a foundation for future projects. Interim Technology also wanted a methodology we could use for other clients.

Johnson, Melanie M. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Change Management For Content Management Projects

A content management initiative is a lot about change--changing the way people think and work. Ensure that you have a change management plan in place. If you have change management personnel in-house, get them involved in your project as soon as you make the decision to adopt a content management initiative. If you don't have change management personnel, consider hiring consultants who specialize in change management.

Rockley, Ann. STC Hoosier (2004). Articles>Content Management>Project Management

Characteristics of Web Site Content

Web site content must be recrudescent, repositorial, refluent, and rectilinear. What? Here's an innovative treatment of the essential attributes of online text. Find out why great web site content generally has these 14 characteristics that start with a "R".

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Usability

Cherryleaf Survey: Use of Single-Sourcing Solutions

During March and April 2003, Cherryleaf carried out an online survey into the current trends in technical communication. One of the questions we asked was: Do the people directly involved with user assistance development at your organization use a single sourcing authoring solution? Our findings are summarised in the article

Cherryleaf (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Reports

Choices and Challenges: Considerations for Designing Electronic Performance Support Systems    

Introduces the breadth of decision-making required in EPSS design. Explores choices and challenges facing designers in the design process, performance cycle, technology constraints, use of storytelling techniques, evaluation, and success factors.

Carliner, Saul. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>EPSS

Choosing the Right CMS Authoring Tools

There is no single best authoring environment provided by a content management system. Instead, the authoring tools must be matched to the job at hand to ensure they are easy and efficient to use.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Chris Thompson on Searching for a Content Management System

Thompson talks about his search for the right content management system. He talks about the importance of content reuse across an entire system and having a workflow for editing, reviews, and translation. He discusses AuthorIT as a possible CMS solution. He also gives tips for talking with CMS vendors without being suckered in.

Thompson, Chris and Tom H. Johnson. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>Interviews>Content Management>Podcasts

Circle Jerks

Recently, on several well-known community and personal sites, familiar cries were heard: 'A is a sellout. B, C, and D are much better than X, Y, and Z. N, O, and P are overrated, back-scratching link whores.' The web design community goes through this kind of self-examination every three months. Under the banner of honest criticism, names are named, guesses about motivation are sketched, and sometimes entire bodies of work are dismissed. Useful and reasonable criticism is often advanced in these debates. But too frequently it is overshadowed by those with the loudest voices, whose anger can sound like passionate truth to those who've nurtured similar thoughts but been afraid to express them publicly. Undoubtedly some people sell out, some are overrated, and some use links merely to advance their careers or promote their friends. But even when the accused are guilty as charged, the accusations change nothing—they simply create turmoil.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Content Management

Clean URLs for a Better Search Engine Ranking

Search engines are often key to the successful promotion and running of your website. Read more on how clean URLs can influence your ranking and how clean URLs can be achieved for dynamic applications.

Opitz, Pascal. Content with Style (2005). Articles>Computing>Content Management>Search Engine Optimization

Closing the Content Gap: Converging Authoring and Translation  

As companies strive to improve themselves by rethinking their global content strategies and redesigning these for the new world of continuous and multilingual deployment, they must unify their authoring and translation processes--not an easy task. Fenstermacher explains why authors and translators should work to close the content gap that often exists.

Fenstermacher, Hans E. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>Translation>Localization

CM Professionals 2005 Spring Summit: A Case Study in Event Planning and Informal Content Reuse

This case study (which contains a complete set of model content) describes the processes of content creation, content management (CM), and event coordination used to plan and implement a professional meeting held in April 2005.

van Raaphorst, Anna. VR Communications (2005). Articles>Content Management>Case Studies