Learning about Content Management

By Chiara Ogan 9 Comments

I received an email the other day asking me about resources I would recommend for someone who is interested in learning more about writing for the web and the science of content management. I did a quick browse through my bookmarks and came up with these starting points. I like these resources because they are good aggregators of content, a way to keep on top of trends, or are communities to get involved with.

CMS Watch [ http://www.cmswatch.com/ ] is a great place to learn about the industry, what products are out there, trends and what not. There’s a lot of good stuff in their information architecture section, even if IA isn’t directly in your realm of control.

The Content Wrangler [ http://thecontentwrangler.com/ ] is also a great source for news in the industry, as well as collected articles published elsewhere. They also have a great list of upcoming conferences and events.

There is also the CMS Pros [ http://www.cmprofessionals.org/ ] which is an organization focused on content management.

The Information Architecture Institute [ http://www.iainstitute.org/library/ ] has a library of resources—both online, books, presentations, and blogs—that cover CMS and writing for the web. If you become a member (it’s not that expensive) you get access to their great mailing list of professionals all over the globe.

Boxes and Arrows [ http://www.boxesandarrows.com/ ] is an online publication that focuses on information architecture and the user experience. There are a number of articles on CMS, and how content can be better created and organized on the web.

There are 9 comments on this idea.

Ian Muir

I work for a CMS vendor and I would be wary of some of those sources. CMS Watch seems to be very subjective in my experience, some of the others are a bit better.

I would reccomend figuring out what features you need and then use a tool like http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ to decide which systems to demo. If they don’t have a free demo, don’t waste your time. Most of the vendors that don’t offer demos require that you spend large amounts of money on implementation.

Chiara Fox

Ian -

You make a good point. Evaluating specific vendors is a different process (and requires different tools and approaches) than when you are just learning about CMS in general.

Jan Greis

There is a way though, how you can cut out on evaluating different vendors in the first place ;-)

If we look objectively, for most companies probably the only real reason to use proprietary systems, is that if something goes wrong, they can sue someone for it. That might be a good reason, but there is a lot of reasons, not to use proprietary systems in the first place.

The first is of course the price, the only thing you pay for with an Open Source CMS is the setup, which often cuts down your cost to a tiny fraction. Some people might argue, that proprietary systems are better in quality, but seeing how many people change for example from reddot to TYPO3 convinces me otherwise. Concerning the demos, many TYPO3 service providers offer what is called a “Playground”, a website set up in a way, that anyone can make changes, which are reversed after a certain period of time. Furthermore, with Open Source CMSs, you are not dependent on a company which might go bankrupt.

Also, extending the system is not a problem, as for most purposes, you already have free extensions available, and if you need something very specific, it is not expensive to ask your service provider to write a new extension for you.

Kerry McNally

We decided to go Open Source using the Wordpress blog platform. With over 100 fully developed plug-ins available (mostly free) we were up and running quickly and at little cost. Just one of the free plun-ins allows our site to be automatically updated every six hours without any human intervention.

uxdesign.com

Another vote for cmsmatrix.org, which by the way was built with WebGUI, whose developers created cmsmatrix.org.

As with cars, there is a CMS out there to suit more or less every need (usually less). People argue “less filling,” “tastes great” about the CMSs in their own camp, but the real difference is in your own needs as a user, or group.

Anyone landing on this in search of CMS evaluation info should really list their own particular CMS needs, first and foremost, as a simple “top 10” list.

I have a good deal of direct experience with a range of CMSs, from implementation to regular use. And if it helps, you may consider these factors in selecting one to suit you, as in my experience they highlight some of the greater differences between the best of open source, like drupal, and proprietary, like StoryServer:

1. Budget (cost)

2. Workflow complexity (who can edit what, when, approvals, scheduling, etc. etc.)

3. Scalability (data/structures)

4. Feature Customization

5. SEO

7. Admin UI Usability

8. Templating (visual design customization)

9. Technical Support

10. Training

Alter the order of these to personal taste (no counter posts necessary).

Basically, you get more of all of the items in my list with a proprietary CMS.

The smallest differences are are in feature customization and usability, as some proprietary CMSs can be very complex, and as such, can require a lot of costly programming to modify. Proprietary vendors do not often implement major UI overhauls, due to cost. On this point open source fares better, because of lighter coding effort and cost/overhead is less important to a “community” of developers (ref. digital socialism).

If you’re a business manager and your budget is under $50k/year, I’d recommend open source.

I’m endeavoring to sell a large corporation’s multi-site marketing department on WordPress (multisite install), as they do not need complex workflows, do not publish many document types, they wasted their CMS budget ($100k on Zope), and have competent technical resources for customization.

:)

http://uxdesign.com

uxdesign.com

Also see OpenConcept’s CMS evaluation for The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE):

http://openconcept.ca/blog/eche/content_management_system_cms_report_on_alternatives_to_back_end (link to PDF report below article).

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal compared for CUPE requirements match.

“6. Conclusion

In deciding upon a particular CMS for CUPE, there are a few key elements worth thinking about. First, because CUPE National hosts several subsites for Locals, the multisite component is an important aspect of any choice. Currently Joomla (with its commercial addon) and Drupal (with its built-in functionality) are the only options available from the opensource community. Drupal is the ideal choice here.”

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