Daisy: WYSIWYG Wiki for PDF Books  

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.

Armstrong, Eric. Sun Microsystems (2008). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>Wikis

The Value of Semantic Tags

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?

Armstrong, Eric. Sun Microsystems (2008). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Semantic

Finding Usability in Workplace Culture    

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.

McCarthy, Jacob E. and William Hart-Davidson. Intercom. Articles>Content Management>Usability>Ethnographies

The Medium is the Delivery Method

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.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Documentation>Content Management>Wikis

Firefox’s Revolutionary Community Approach to Customer Support

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.

Nelson Ko. NelsonKo.com (2008). Articles>Documentation>Content Management>Case Studies

Are Structured Authoring and Wiki Opposing Forces?

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.

Gentle, Anne. Just Write Click (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Wikis

Obtaining Alfresco Web Content Management

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.

Potts, Jeff. Packt (2007). Articles>Content Management>Project Management>Alfresco

Alfresco Is Not A Picnic: The Problem With Metaphors and Content Management Systems

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.

Bochman, Felice. Content Wrangler, The (2008). Articles>Content Management>Open Source>Alfresco

Content Management and the Production of Genres    

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.

Clark, Dave. ACM SIGDOC (2007). Articles>Content Management>Genre>Localization

Evaluation of an XML-Based Content Management System in the Translation Process

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.

Argondizzo, Peter. STC International TC SIG (2008). Articles>Content Management>Translation>Assessment

Reducing Translation Costs

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.

Brewer, John. STC International TC SIG (2005). Articles>Content Management>Translation>Language

Taming the Translation Alligator: Or How to Facilitate Document Translation without Getting Eaten Alive  

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?

McDowell, Elizabeth C. STC International TC SIG (2001). Articles>Content Management>Translation>Localization

Translation Management: In-house or Outsourced  

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.

Whitman, Michael. STC International TC SIG (2001). Articles>Content Management>Translation>Machine Translation

Effective Update Management in the Localization Process  

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.

Shapiro, Tom. STC International TC SIG (2003). Articles>Content Management>Localization>Translation

Getting a Handle on Your Content Types

“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.

Content Strategy Noob (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Be Known For Your Content, Not Your Name!

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.

Content Strategy Noob (2009). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>Writing

You’ll Wish You’d Had a Content Strategy Before Implementing Content Management

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.

Content Strategy Noob (2009). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy

Redefining Content Strategy

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.

Bailie, Rahel Anne. Intentional Design Inc. (2009). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy

The Illusion of SEO vs. the Reality of Great Content

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.

Tipping Point Labs (2009). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Search Engine Optimization

Web Content Management Systems in Higher Education  

A case study of a university-wide implementation of a web content management system at Gonzaga University.

Powel, Wayne and Chris Gill. Educause (2003). Articles>Content Management>Education>Case Studies

Pick a Card

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.

McLean, Gordon. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Documentation

Technical Communication Trends and Ideas

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.

Mueller, Paul. Answers for All (2009). Articles>TC>Content Management>Information Design

Evaluating DITA-Enabled Content Management Systems  

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.

Adams, Ann H. XML.org (2007). Presentations>Content Management>DITA>Assessment

Content Templates to the Rescue

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.

Kissane, Erin. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy>SMEs

Content-tious Strategy

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.

Macintyre, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy