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Content Management Nightmares
bildstorm writes "I've recently been looking into content management systems for my company and have found that there are all kinds of systems out there. I've found that most Americans consider web content management to be the catch all for content management (like Interwoven). In Europe, I've noticed that what's referred to as digital asset management is what is usually meant by content management (like Artesia).
Has anyone used any of these systems well? For more than just web content? Has anyone tried any open source systems and used them well? I know there is a conference in Zurich next month for open source content management, but I don't know much about the products."
Favorite things about Zope:
this is getting old and so are you
blog
This is becoming a larger and larger issue among companies. I know of one company that is spending close to $3 Million US to get their content organized. In addition, I think there is also a movement to integrate Content Management Systems with Learning Management Systems. I guess this is a good idea.
Kris
...to set up and configure, especially (gack) on Windows, but once it is running it is an incredibly powerful tool. Currently running on Solaris, has Linux and HP-UX variant as well. Eminent customization and power comes with a price though. A very high one at that. Have looked at a promising app by eGrail that seemed to be competitive and at a fraction of the cost, but wasn't quite ready for prime-time (this was a year or so ago, things might have changed since...)
Brain: Promise me something, Pinky. Never breed.
There are heaps of these bloated systems. For a while, Vignette's system (formerly called Story Server) was a leader. Many outfits build their own, for example, based on Oracle. A colleague has recently installing Microsoft Content Management Server for a large government client, and he has been remarkably impressed.
weeell.. the first thing you need to understand is that some of these content management systems are really toolkits, some are more out-of-the box experiences... its kinda a spectrum.
my opinion - beware the hell of out of box stuff, (like red dot), you wanna budget about 50/50 buy vs build (or, better still save half your budget and use an open source system)
the open source alternatives, arsdigita, midgard, Zope Content Framework, are really every bit as good as the mid range CMS systems, but if the bureacracy is gonna wanna spend 400,000 dollars on a CMS systems like Vignette (bleech!) then nobody's gonna stop them.
<not a troll, no really>everybody, of course, is keeping a damn close eye on Microsoft, and their systyem is really shaping up, i gotta say, (if you like that sort of thing </not a troll>
if you want more, good info, check out cmswatch.com and *the*, definitive cms-list
is what we use here. And I'm actually the one in charge of it.
A few things to make note of:
1) it's a good product, AS LONG AS SOMEONE QUALIFIED INSTALLS IT. Our installation job was completely botched by the company that did it, and it ended up being practically unusable. We had to hire contractors to fix it. Whatever software you end up choosing, make sure someone certified by the company installs it. It's more expensive up front, but will save you endless hassles and cost much less in the long run. For god's sake whatever you do, don't assume it's just like installing any other software and any bonehead can do it. It's just too complex for that.
2) For whoever will be managing the software: either hire someone certified by the company, or send the person who'll be managing it on as many training courses provided by the company as possible. The more they know, the better. For interwoven, a knowledge of PERL, XML, DTDs, and some sysadmin type capabilities are a must. Familiarity with JAVA is a definate asset.
3) TeamSite is a great product for straight ahead, content management, but if you want any bulk functionality, you'll need to do extensive customization. It's meant for one-at-a-time changes. A good PERL programmer will save you a lot of headaches in this area.
4) $$$$$. Any good content management software is going to cost you through the nose in training, installation, and the software itself. Expect it, deal with it. Make sure the marketing pinheads know it.
5) Get the tech support, you'll need it.
6) TRAINING TRAINING AND MORE TRAINING. Make sure the editors take at least a basic training course in using the TS GUI, or your manager will spend 95% of his/her time fielding calls from frustrated content editors who don't understand what a DCR (Data Content Record) is, and don't know how to unlock a file.
7) Last, and most importantly, install it on solaris. Do not, under any circumstances, install it on WINNT. Gah.
There are a lot of good resources out there for TS. It's a popular product, and I'm on a few mailing lists that are quite helpful.
If you have any questions about TS, you can email me privately and I'll do my best to answer them.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
Most people have a problem defining 'content', or even 'information'. When I see an organisation struggling with their enormous pile of word documents full of sometimes vital information, I know there is something basicly wrong: the start of the storage of a bit of information (or better: a bit of data which can be interpret as 'information') is wrong in a lot of organisations, therefor the usability of this information is limited at best: to use it in expert systems, in general documents for print, in websites and f.e. in general database applications, it has to be extracted from the worddocument by external tools, which is not that easy in most situations.
Some organisations try to use a 'content management system' (CMS) to transfer their pile of worddocs into data inside the CMS, which is then usable as 'content' for websites. However, this process is difficult and error-prone, and the end-result is not what most people want to have but another collided form of the data which was once stored into a huge pile of worddocs.
Here in Europe you have a lot of different CMS's. Some large ones try to grab a lot of external data and 'publish' that on websites, mostly by offering worddoc/office document importers, others are build around 'data' and stick viewers on pieces of data, which can then be used in websites or anywhere else. How I see it is that there should be a general base of data-elements which make up the core base of data-elements for an organisation, which is used in all kinds of systems that use that data, including viewer applications for websites. My CMS (CESys) does this, also others like the Open Source CMS MMBase follow this approach. I think that's the way to go: it forces organisations to think about HOW to store data and how which data is used, instead of keeping organisations at the level of "when you want to store information, open word and start typing". Because: webpublishing is just connecting a viewer and a piece of data to get viewed by that viewer and with the proper storage of data it's an easy job to do.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I'm posting this anonymously because of the usual reasons related to my employment ...
...
Another company which delivers a content mangement solution which integrates nicely into a web publishing and management environment is Blue Martini Software. I've used their system on a few projects and it does a good job of managing content and pushing out new 'releases' when you have something new to publish. BMS currently drives some rather high-traffic websites, which if nothing else, proves their scalability.
Yes, BMS in commercial software, but quite good at what it does; it also includes a sophisticated API and a (supposedly, haven't worked with it) quite good Data Mining tool, all of which is nicely integrated
The MS CM version today is a souped up NCompass version, since MS bought NCompass and changed the name into MS Content Management Server. It's ok, but page-focussed (not good IMHO, since a page is a collection of data-elements that are VIEWED by the page but are not part of it), and quite expensive ($35,000.- per CPU)
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Correct, Zope is more of an app server. CMF (Content Management Framework) is a plug-in for Zope. Considering it's all free for the taking, anyone interested in content management would be foolish to pass up the chance to evaluate the Zope + CMF option.
CityDesk by our beloved Joel Spolsky seems like it may be powerful enough and quite easy to use (if it lives up to Joel's standards as he claims it does). I haven't tried it myself but you might want to look into it as it seems *much* cheaper than other content management software.
Here is an overview of the various flavors of content management:
1. Content Management. A generic term for managing various types of content. It includes a system for managing digital content files (and perhaps offline content as well) along with metadata that describes the content. Usually workflow and security are included.
2. Document Management. Content management focused on text documents, office automation documents, and scanned images. These tend to be very workflow oriented.
3. Web Content Management. Obviously web focused content management that is oriented towards the web publishing process. Includes some workflow and usually publishing templates and perhaps a mechanism for actually publishing the content to the web server.
4. Digital Asset Management. Focused on being an archive or digital library that other systems such as web content management can draw on. The focus is on re-purposing of content. Often these system are rich media focused and include facilities for transcoding content from one format to another dynamically.
Hope this helps.
From what I can see, many people need to be reminded it's not all HTML content, too! A particular example I can think of is telnetting- if you have employees RPGing online through IRC, or flash files from various sites. Some people I know who attempt content filtering do it only on http bound traffic!! Almost any of us /.ers could so easily find ways around this stuff.
:)
All I gotta say is thank God for AFS permissions when it comes to content management- a few netgroups and decently thought out tree makes things SO much easier to manage.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
I would like to state that I do not have any relation with Documentum.
According to an entire army of market researchers, among which Gartner, Seybold, etc, Documentum is the most important document management system on the market (Gartner: max. vision + max. ability to execute).
In my opinion the product is architecturally flawed and has serious shortcomings in terms of documentation (to say the least).
Architecturally flawed: the product still bears a legacy of client server, or better, outdated client application (i.e. Desktop client) and so-and-so server.
The so-called e-Content Server is in fact a topping of any major RDBMS (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2) which turns that RDBMS into an object-oriented DB and inserts and manages the usual document mgmt stuff into the DB: versioning, document life cycles, workflows, etc. Nothing extraordinary and one might ask why in heaven do they need to turn around the nicely structured relational database into a very intransparent OO DB.
The webifying of the entire thing, because that is what Documentum is after right now, is strategically an absolute mess. I very often had the impression that Documentum itself does not know which direction to choose: J2EE?
Stability: the product is very unstable, server-wise as well as web-client wise. The client-server Desktop client is better but outdated.
One could actually ask whether it is a product or a service you get in exchange of your million dollars or so. Sure you get some software but it requires a tremendous amount of "customisation". And, o yes, forget about getting a set of proven procedures etc. Documentum just shines in terms of absolute lack of documentation on best practice, methodology etc.
An open look under the hood: Documentum is to a large extent a puzzle of software from other vendors. As said: 3rd party RDBMS (ok, we can live with that, SAP also uses mostly 3rd party DBs), 3rd party search engine for the repository (!!!), 3rd party PDF rendition software (!!!), 3rd party (OPEN SOURCE!!!) XML engine (Xalan or Xerces, I do not remember)...
Can a company go for an open source content management system?
Sure it can, especially since large chunks of a commercial document management system are based on open source. But that is the wrong question.
Can the management of a company go for open source software?
Usually not. Because open source poses a risk. Not so many have done it before, there are less highly paid consultants around which you can blame the failure on and besides Gartner says
Just my few cents.
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
I run a mailing list for people interested in content management. It was started by myself and my friend Cam at OSCon in 2000, and has grow from the stack of about 35 business cards to a mid-sized list of about 1000 regular subscribers and more on digest. It's populated from some smart, articulate people and there is plenty of traffic these days.
Recently we had some discussion about why or why not use open source content management systems. There are many issues beyond technology in the content management world--the list in general tries to address all aspects of content management, though those conversations are often held in the context of costs and performance.
The list is geared towards users of cms as well as the engineers/designers who admin and support the cms. Marketing to the list is forbidden. There's lots of interesting discussion in the archives. The cms-list is moving to a new home, cms-list.org, but for now, find it at cms.filsa.net.
Phil Suh - cms-list Listmom
ActiveWeb, a German company, has a great content management system that covers digital assets as well as content management. Its granular workflow and security features allow you to fully customize who sees what, and templates, preferences, and other features let you dynamically change how they see it. A great product for the money.
Got Rhinos?
Or at least I have been for the past month+.
:).
I was tasked with evaluating and recommending a CMS on top of Weblogic Commerce Server/Personalization server/Campain server or whatever it's being called at the moment.
After going through all the presentations, whacking at installs and demos, pouring over frameworks and reading through source code I have finally come down to the following recommendations, opinions, and other such stuff.
Let's start with the definition. Is a CMS just supposed to store text, images and possibly other binary files, or does it store HTML and a framework as well? Every single one I have seen (ArsDigita, Zope/CMF Dogbowl, Fatwire, Stellant, Interwoven, etc...) have different ideas of what that means.
I believe that a CMS and a CMF should be separate yet work together nicely. This concept only shows nicely on the Zope project, and not at all in the others I mentioned. Write your own framework or use the CMF Dogbowl, it's all yours to choose. All the others I mentioned force you to use their framework if you want to use their CMS. A CMF is an architectural framework implemented in a language on top of a framework. A CMS is an application written in any language you choose for storing content.
Fatwire and Stellant are ok, but really bloated and untested. They do not perform well and are not even really out of beta yet. Interwoven does not perform much better and is priced somewhere past the moon. ArsDigita is ok from what I have seen, but nothing to write home about and lacks some of the functionality of Zope's CMF. That said I think it is a fine solution if you want to: go with it. Again you are forced to use their CMF if you use their CMS. Zope is my favorite because it's a CMS with other nifty tools like Python and DTML to boot. I can extend it and hack the source, both very nice features. They don't make me use their framework, but if I want to use it then I have a very nice one integrated and ready to bring online. The biggest benefits are discussed below, which was why I was so picky about our CMS.
I also see things that are a mutation of the concept of a CMF and a framework, like Portal Server. This horrific idea by BEA of how to mangle productivity and make the overworked lives of web developers much worse is only more problems on top existing ones without offering anything to ease the pain. BEA's marketing department is using mind-control devices, however, and used them on my bosses convincing them to force me to use the beast.
After learning (through great frustration) how to use Portal Server I have managed to implement a nice solution that minimizes the pain of administrating Portal Servers "portals". (I put that word in quotes because their "portals" are not Portals, but something else entirely which I have failed to properly quantify.)
My solution was to create a pipeline to Zope through a wrapper library and an HTTP connection, a tag library, and bang-whip-zing I have a working CMS and I can pretend to use the Portal Server "framework" (NOT), while really using Zope's stuff. It looks like this in JSP:
Now I pass of everything except actual java programming (like ERP access to corporate systems and in-house tools), to marketing to plug into Zope. I don't get called for "change this style sheet" questions anymore and yet I still have full control over everything.
IMO, if you are going to use a CMS and you don't want to make your life hell use Zope. Otherwise, my second choice is to go with ArsDigita. The rest are just too knew to the game and way too bloated and slow.
BTW: It took me only a couple of days to wrap zope in a library for use in JSPs and It can be done from any type of framework. Sure, it's odd to read content from an HTTP stream until you remember that when you channel bond your NICs, make your connections cached in a resource pool, and use Zope's caching the HTTP stream is faster than reading from disk
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Obviously, as PHP-Nuke's author, I can't be too much objetive on this matter.
;)
There are a lot of Content Mnagement Systems on the net to try out.
PHP-Nuke is just one of them with many nice features that maybe can solve your needs. But with so many options (free software options) you need to try then decide.
Download all of them, test each one and decide for the better option. You have many options like PHP-Nuke, Postnuke, Slashcode, PHPSlash, Zope, Thatware, PHPWeblog, Xoops, MyPHPnuke, etc... etc.. etc... I can only speak for PHP-Nuke but I prefer that you try and evaluate it yourself.
Hope you can find the best solution in the "free" world
Regards!
Recave
I wouldn't use Citydesk for a major project requring an RDBMS, but for small websites it's the best. Most people using Frontpage or Fusion would be *much* happier with Citydesk.
I attended a talk earlier this year given by Andy McKay from Activestate describing their use of Zope on activestate.com. Basically for one portion of their site they develop all their software on Zope on their development server, export it all to flat files and push it to their production side.
So just because a CMS wants to be a web server, that doesn't mean it has to the a production web server.
Whatever you do, don't buy a proprietary CMS.
:-) )... :-). Just add a .org or .com to those I mentioned and you find your way through. (to lazy to write links just know :-) )
This is serious OSS turf and most of the professional CMS - Vendors I know and deal with in buisness have gone/are just about to go belly up. Note that those who do go belly up usually release their babe as OSS themselves in the end (ars digita - a Java thing I gather - for instance)
There are tons of OSS-CMS solutions out there that kick their proproietary counterparts up and down the street.
Depending on what project scale you have in mind I'd chose between 2 to 3 strategies:
#1: The small, minimum overhead PHP/MySQL (an SSI solution... THE SSI solution) way. Tons of ready to use OSS solutions out there, lot's of ISPs with PHP to go. I personally use phpnuke (kinda like 'slashcode reimplementation in php') as the cms for my webproject (www.modp4rlor.com). Note that PHP rulez the SSI market above ColdFusion, JSP, ASP and all the rest and is somewhat scalable if you use the proprietary stuff like that from zend later on.
#2: The big, fat , hairy project way with all the Java might the OSS community has to offer (apache, tomcat, jakarta, cocoon, turbine, jetstream,... you name it). All of these are leading edge, GPLd and kick serious ass in large scale projects. Allways keep in mind though: Beware of the Java overhead. A lesson hard learned in the recent years by lots of people who thought their 10-hits-a-day Site would look cool with servlets...;;-)
#3: My extra-special, quite very scalable, one size fits all, CMS, DocMS 'n multithreaded Appserver in a box: ZOPE!
Features: Exept for some performance critical stuff in C completely written and extendable in Python. A fully OO, bytecode interpreted PL, GPLd of course. Very nice. Easy to learn, next to no overhead for your small projects, powerfull enough for larger stuff like Document Management or Revisioning or Publishing Systems. I know IT-service companies that rely completely on Zope (internal and for customers) and pull some serious projects.
Has it's Web and FTP Server on board but can also be run as an addon to others (apache f.i.)
Comes with it's own small and unobstrusive SSI solution (DTML - Document Template ML) just suitable for everything that's to small for servlets.
Is fully OO and uses it's own Post Relational Database that actually stores EVERYTHING it uses.
Very easy to extend via plugins, so called "products" and it's easy to build these plugins too.
Oh, almost forgot: It uses a web interface. Only a web interface. And a good one on top. And it takes on klick to install on Windows and something like 4 and a half on Linux. Whatever you're up to, definitely check this one out!
Roxxen is quite cool aswell. AFAICT a sort of smaller Zope using Ruby (sheesh
Well I could go on but I think you see that there is no need to spend God knows what on Cold Fusion or Intershop
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That's pretty much the case for most general purpose CMS (rather than something site-type specific like Slashcode, PHPWebsite or whatever). Whether you're talking about Zope or Vignette, you're still essentially getting a high-level toolkit, with some nice APIs to handle stuff at the level of user authentication, workflow capability and so on.
You're still going to have to put something on top to run your site, whether it's a higher-level still toolkit like CMF (Content Management Framework, note) for Zope, or Multisite Content Manager (previously known as Enterprise Application Portal) for Vignette.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's