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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
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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