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Book review: Web Content Management, A Collaborative Approach

Web Content Management
A Collaborative Approach
Russell Nakano

It has been said that this book presents content management the "Interwoven way". This is not surprising, considering the author was the co-founder and key designer of the Interwoven TeamSite CMS. This, in itself, is not an issue if the book presents technology-neutral insight into the "best practices" in the field. Unfortunatley, it does not do so.

This book is written around a model of website creation and maintenance that was born directly out of pure programming development models. In this worldview, web designers and coders are the central figure, and the concepts of usability and information architecture don't even get a single mention.

Despite being recently publishing (in 2002), it still holds on a marketing-driven website design process, where statements such as "content must be frequently updated" are blandly asserted. Where the role of user requirements fits into this process it is impossible to tell.

Even more disturbing is the complete absense of the concept of metadata in this book. As far as I can tell, it isn't even mentioned once. How the author asserts that the approach described is "best practice" without incorporating a detailed discussion of the role of metadata is beyond me.

In a wider sense, the publishing model outlined in this book no longer matches most organisations. The website as an innovative platform run by specialist web designers has been replaced with a "business as usual" model where authors in the business are paramount. This book has even less relevance when it comes to intranet sites.

If I sound frustrated by this book, it is because I have seen too many projects fail due to this sort of technology-focused approach. I can only hope that Interwoven has considerably advanced their thinking since this book was released.

In summary, if you are already in the process of implementing an Interwoven project, this book would probably be of value. It clearly communicates the underlying TeamSite concepts, and suggests ways of building on the products strengths, and working around its weaknesses.

For everyone else, I cannot recommend this book. Most CMSs are not built along the lines of the concepts in this book, and the approaches suggested are far from "best practice".

Posted by jamesr on March 10, 2003 02:27 PM
Categories: Book & product reviews, Content management