Ajax and Your CMS

If a modern day Rip van Winkle woke up after just a year's sleep, he would be stunned by the buzz around Ajax today. Technology is moving very quickly in this space and whether you are a web author, a CMS developer, or a regular web user, Ajax will make some exciting changes to your world.

Downes, Jonathan and Joe Walker. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>Ajax

CMSwatch

CMSWatch.com provides information, trends, opinion, and analysis about Web Content Management (WCM) solutions. The site also includes information and commentary about related technologies, such as XML, digital asset management, and content syndication.

CMSwatch. Resources>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Enterprise Content Management in an Offshoring Context

Many companies outsource content management implementations to systems integrators, but what if the implementers are based half-way around the world? Wipro's Apoorv Durga offers some good advice for enterprises considering taking their next ECM project offshore. As this map suggests, the view is quite different from India.

Durga, Apoorv. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Content Management>International>Offshoring

Enterprise Portals: Tip of Which Iceberg?

Summarizing recent CMS Watch research on portal software, Janus Boye finds that portal technology represents just the tip of the enterprise information iceberg. But given the diversity of portal scenarios, you should ask yourself which iceberg you're on.

Boye, Janus. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Web Design>Content Management

The Five Biggest Mistakes in CMS Selection

Describes the big 'gotchas' in choosing a web content management system.

Welchman, Lisa. CMSwatch (2003). Articles>Content Management>Assessment

Is There a Gremlin in Your Website?

GRUPA stands for 'Gratuitous Runtime Page Assembly.' It's what happens when you overapply the once (and still) popular idea that your system should always generate web pages 'on the fly,' i.e. a user clicks on a page that triggers some logic to extract snippets of content from a repository and assemble a complete page to stream back to the browser.

Byrne, Tony. CMSwatch (2003). Design>Web Design>Search

Sex, Lies, and CMS Vendors

Despite an 11+ year history in the marketplace, CMS technology remains poorly understood by many prospective buyers. In the meantime, the field of available suppliers has never been broader or noisier. Most CMS salespeople I know are good educators, but they also have quotas to meet. Under these circumstances, vendors will sometimes short-cut important discussions about functionality and pricing with simple -- but not always completely truthful -- answers. So here's a list of 10 common myths you might hear during the sales process.

Byrne, Tony. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Content Management>Marketing

Structured Content: What's in it for Writers?

Everyone has heard (or experienced) stories of CMS or knowledge management initiatives that did not work because content contributors refused to use the tools deployed or were unwilling or unable to supply content in the format required. The conclusion often reached is that writers cannot give up their WYSIWYG tools and that any attempt to make them do so is doomed to failure. On the other hand there are always those who will reply with stories of systems where writers have successfully adapted to the use of XML or SGML, and the CMS is working well. All that is required to duplicate this success, they maintain, is that writers must be forced and/or trained to use the new tools.

Baker, Mark. CMSwatch (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Writing

When Word-XML Conversions Get Nasty

One of the first hurdles facing any major content or document management implementation is what to do with legacy documents.  Chances are, many or most of those documents reside in Microsoft Word format, but enterprises often want to get them into a more open format, like XML.  This is particularly the case for STM (Scientific, Technical, Medical) publishing, where you find complicated -- but highly structured -- information along with tantalizingly attractive re-use opportunities.  But it is also true for everyday corporate documents as well.

Gross, Michael. CMSwatch (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

When You Need to Localize and Categorize

Internationalization -- or 'I18N', a very geeky abbreviation referring to the number of letters left out -- is commonly defined as a set of practices intended to make software more 'localizable' by introducing layers of abstraction in the code and the data of an application. That way, it is easier to later modify the language, currency, date, and number format according to the requirements of a specific locale.

Donner, Christian. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Content Management>Localization

Back-End Designs and the CMS Cycle of Disillusionment

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?

Bloem, Adriaan. CMSwatch (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Do SharePoint Right Before SharePoint Does You Wrong

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.

Byrne, Tony. CMSwatch (2009). Articles>Content Management>Software>Microsoft SharePoint

How Much Should Vendor Sales and Marketing Skill Really Matter for Customers?

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?

Byrne, Tony. CMSwatch (2009). Articles>Content Management>Planning

Open Source: It's Just a License

There's only one thing you can generalize: open source is a specific kind of license. And discussions about which license is better are rather academic. What you'd want to decide on is what your software should do, if and how you want to customize it, and how easy it is to get support when you need it. That means doing your homework, and finding out the real story: you'll certainly want to know what's behind the facade. And that's something that applies to software under any license.

Bloem, Adriaan. CMSwatch (2009). Articles>Software>Open Source