Making Knowledge Sharing Work

The intranet is beginning to restructure the organization in more ways than one. Content is now an asset, and the people who manage it need to treat it as such. Managing editors, and their team, understand how technology can facilitate effective publishing, collaboration and self-service focused application development.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Content Management

Publish What You Can Manage

There is a view in some organizations that an intranet is only for staff, so you can publish what you want. Quality content matters as much on an intranet as on a public website. Get your content right to begin with. Keep it right by removing out-of-date content.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Content Management

The Business Case For Web Content Management...and Why Plone

Each situation is unique based on specific organizational needs and issues. Although the benefits may be difficult to quantify at times, at some point, your company will simply decide that, ROI or not, it can't live any longer with the (likely growing) pain of not effectively managing your content.

Crouch, David. SlideShare (2008). Presentations>Content Management>Business Case>Plone

Electronic Document and Records Management System Implementation Toolkit

he objective of this toolkit is to provide institutional Records Managers and other information professionals with a 'one-stop shop' for impartial, detailed and practical advice of use during all the stages of a proposed or actual EDRM system implementation that is free from vendor bias and specific to the needs of the FE/HE sector. This toolkit represents an attempt to synthesise some twenty years of experience of assisting public sector organisations to define their requirements for Electronic Document and Records Management solutions plus all the data gathered from some four months of fact finding in the further and higher education sector.

JISC infoNet (2008). Resources>Content Management>Project Management>Education

Improving Plone and Zope Market Acceptance  

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.

Burgoyne, Robert. Plone.org (2006). Articles>Content Management>Software>Plone

Comparing Open Source CMSes: Joomla, Drupal, and Plone

Open source content management systems (CMS) are particularly attractive to the nonprofit community because of their cost-efficiency, but what do these systems actually do? And what are the differences between the most common CMSs? We’ll compare Joomla, Drupal, and Plone for typical nonprofit needs.

Quinn, Laura S., Ryan Ozimek, David Geilhufe and Patrick Shaw. NTEN (2007). Presentations>Content Management>Software>Open Source

Six Strategies for Low-Cost Content Management

Although Gartner says software licensing for basic content services can cost less than US$100 per user for large volume deals, requirements for extra functions will increase the initial software costs if content management components are not included. How do you set aside enough money to solve the initial ECM pain points and create a strategy for the future? We asked the experts for some ideas.

Schick, Shane. IT World Canada (2008). Articles>Content Management>Open Source

Are You Publishing Too Much On Your Website?

Many websites are still publishing content that is not core to their business. The justification is that such content will indirectly deliver benefit. This is not a good idea. Focus on the content that is directly applicable to your organization’s objectives. Any other content confuses. It wastes time and money.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Web Design>Content Management

Avoid Santa Claus Approach to Content Management

The Santa Claus approach to content management creates a content management software wish list. It believes in the magic of technology to sweep away any and every problem. Typically, those who believe in Santa don't believe in defining their processes, or figuring out just why they need a website in the first place.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>Technology

Content Manangement Without A System

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.

Robinson, D. Keith. Asterisk (2004). Articles>Content Management>Software

Content Reuse in Practice

Few organisations are able to realise this vision of content reuse in practice. Instead, content reuse is typically only used in a few limited situations, with authoring and publishing continuing unchanged to a large extent.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Articles>Content Management

Creating a Content Strategy for Your Website

People are looking for content to help them reach their goals, and you should start any site redevelopment by drawing up a content strategy designed to satisfy the user. We're currently doing this for a couple of our clients, and working through it ourselves now we've finally found the time to revamp our own presence (the cobbler's children and all that).

Moore, David. IQcontent (2003). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Content Strategy

Doing a Content Inventory (Or, A Mind-Numbingly Detailed Odyssey Through Your Web Site)

A content inventory is a relatively straightforward process of clicking through your Web site and recording what you find. We’ve developed a simple Excel spreadsheet to help you structure your findings, and some tips on how to get through it.

Veen, Jeffrey. Adaptive Path (2002). Articles>Web Design>Content Management

Do You Manage a Website or a Warehouse?

There are two types of people involved in websites today: those who see content as an asset, and those who see it as a commodity. The latter better start looking for a new career.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Web Design>Content Management

Measuring Your Web Publishing Processes

What's really important to measure for your website? Firstly, you need to measure how successful you are at creating, editing and publishing content. These are your web content management processes. Secondly, you need to measure reader behavior. There will also be some core website performance issues to measure. This week, I'd like to examine key web content management process measurables.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Content Management

Quality Publishing is About Saying No

Are the people who have least to say in your organization publishing most on your intranet or public website? Are the people who have most to say publishing least? You're not alone. Organizations are slowly realizing that managing a website is as much about what you don't publish as what you do.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Content Management>Web Design

Scientific Content Management

Management is the pursuit of the best way. Content is an increasingly important resource and activity within organizations. It is time it was professionally managed.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Content Management>Management

Should You Centralize or Decentralize Your Publishing?

Large websites often struggle to develop an efficient and cost-effective publishing model. Centralizing publishing ensures a consistent quality of what is published, but is often slow and frustrating. Decentralized publishing is faster and often more cost-effective, but can result in inconsistent quality, unless rigorous publishing standards are adhered to.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Content Management>Web Design

Start Measuring the Cost and Value of Your Content

Frederick W. Taylor, in his book, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), wrote about how waste in activity was a greater problem than material waste. He wrote about planning, organizing, training, management and measurement, as ways to address the problem. Today, we require a new form of Taylorism; one that addresses efficiency in content publishing.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Content Management

Successfully Deploying a Content Management System

This article outlines a structured approach to deploying a CMS, as well as providing a range of practical guidelines and tips that will assist the implementation team.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Articles>Content Management

Taking a Content Inventory

You take a content inventory because, before redesigning a website or intranet, you need to know what you have. This is especially important if you will be migrating your content to a new structure or new CMS - at some point you need to know every single content element.

Spenser, Donna. DonnaM (2006). Articles>Content Management>Web Design

Taxonomy and Metadata Strategies for Effective Content Management

There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo like the word "taxonomy" that is being thrown around to describe how to manage so-called unstructured content like business documents, web site pages, and old fashioned technical reports and articles. On the one hand, we want to remember what we already know about how to create a useful core catalog record to describe a content object so it can be found again later when needed. On the other hand, there are some bad habits and obsolete ideas like inverted file indexes that we need to get beyond. This talk is about what we have seen in dozens of applied information management projects over the past few years, and how you can take advantage of what you already know to solve big problems like these in your own organizations.

Busch, Joseph. ASIST (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Metadata

The Top Five Risks of Not Managing Your Content

Managing content is the key task in keeping a website strategic and fresh. Content management requires commitments to develop and follow a standard set of publishing processes, archiving strategies/lifecycle rules, and coordination with marketing, sales, training and customer service.

Marsh, Hilary. Content Company (2004). Articles>Content Management>Advice

Web Content Management: A Lot of Great Progress

Every day there is tremendous work being done on the Web. Talented, dedicated people are working with limited resources and support to achieve brilliant results. If you’re one of those people struggling to achieve the recognition you need, take a moment to take a bow.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Content Management

Web Content Management Depends on Trust

You must be able to stand over everything that is published on your website and say that it is all accurate and up-to-date. Trust is a fundamental building block of professional web content management.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration