Robertson’s rule of CMS usage.

We’re just wrapping up a review of the content management system within an Australian government agency. Their story is typical: Lifecycle of a CMS Some…

Do automated review dates work?.

Keeping content up to date is hard. Whether on a website or intranet, organisations constantly battle with outdated or incorrect information. One of the primary…

Content migration: options and strategies.

There is a lot of work involved in redeveloping and relaunching an intranet or website. The project management challenges start early, and it is easy to overlook the time (and effort) needed to migrate the content from the old to the new site. Yet, for its lack of visibility, content migration is often the single biggest activity in a web redevelopment. Certainly it is the least interesting, and unfortunately unavoidable. This article explores a number of options for the migrating content, and provides some practical suggestions that should help it to go smoothly. Redeveloping a site Two factors often drive

Don’t try to boil the content ocean.

The phrase 'trying to boil the ocean' refers to tasks that are clearly and heroically impossible. This is exactly what most teams take on when they try to get every intranet page up to the same high standard. In the earlier article titled Intranet authoring: a hobby?, the role of intranet authors was explored, highlighting that many are required to maintain their content 'on the side', with little training or support. Most intranets struggle to deliver consistent, accurate, readable and valuable content. Despite this, the goal of many intranet teams remains to deliver universally 'good' content. This briefing will discuss

In-context vs back-end authoring.

Most modern content management systems provide two different ways of editing site content: in-context editing and back-end editing. While in-context editing is often seen as 'sexier', each method has its strengths and weaknesses. This briefing will explore these two editing options, providing advice on when to use them in practice. In-context editing In-context editing allows authors to browse the published website, using site navigation in the normal way to find the desired page. By clicking a small or hidden button (or some other equivalent action), they can switch into editing mode, updating the content of the page in place. During