Column Two

George Dearing has listed more reasons that a CMS vendor will go out of business. To quote: The next five reasons on my list come from an ECM executive who asked to remain anonymous because he said it would be too obvious which company he's talking about, and he's already ...

George Dearing has written a list of 5 reasons a CMS vendor will go bust. To quote: Several months ago a content management vendor told me that the oncoming recession was causing it problems with revenue generation. I said perhaps, but it's also possible its problems were related to the ...

Gadgetopia have posted an article on composite pages and embeddable content. To quote: A composite page is a single page, made out of pieces. Your users can add a “Page” to the system, then add “Sections” to the page. They can pick from different types of sections, like “text with ...

A new social network for content management folk has been recently launched: The Content Wrangler Community. It's early days yet, but anything that helps to connect those working in this challenging field must surely be helpful. Connect up and start chatting...

It seems that despite my inflammatory post arguing that wiki markup must die, I haven't yet been tied to a stake and set fire to. In fact, I've received quite a few emails strongly agreeing with my position, and in lieu of working commenting, I'll share a few in ...

The CMS Myth have posted an item on the roles needed in a CMS project. To quote: I'm the first to agree with limiting the number of cooks in the kitchen, yet it's hard to ignore the fact that building websites today does require more specialized skills (and processes that ...

Michael Silverman has written an article on the top ten mistakes of web CMS projects. To quote: Maybe you are beginning to think about developing a content management systems for your organization's website. Or maybe you are just about to start a CMS project. In either case, you are probably ...

The CMS Myth has written a piece asking: are you making the right CMS promises? To quote: We talk a lot about the expectation gap between vendors that beat the drum of 'out of the box,' and 'easy' compared to the reality on the ground of a complex implementation. But ...

Tony Byrne writes about picking the right content management approach. To quote: The lines between all content technology families are notoriously blurry. This is especially true of portals, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems and Web Content Management (WCM) system, where there's lots of overlap in vendors, product functionality, and marketing ...

Tony Byrne has published his holiday wishlist for CMS products. To quote: A broad set of plain old java objects for core content technology services (to run in any of our favored JVMs), which we can deploy independently of each other on an a' la carte basis to create our ...

Gadgetopia have published their definition of the four disciplines of content management. To quote: A lot of stuff gets lumped under the heading “content management.” In my experience, however, all the technical activities under the banner of content management can general be broken out into four disciplines.

Joe Lamantia continues his series on connectors for dashboards and portals. To quote: The building block system includes several types of Connectors that make it possible for designers and architects to link the different areas of a Dashboard together via a consistent, easily understandable navigation model. The system also ensures ...

Ann Rockley has written an article on identical vs derivative reuse. To quote: Reuse can bring many content benefits to an organization including increased productivity, reduced costs, greater consistency, more usable content. But is reuse really realistic? Don't you need to modify content for the channel (e.g., web, print) or ...

Joe Lamantia continues his series on designing portals, by looking at building block definitions. To quote: The different kinds of Container blocks in the system play different roles, based on their relative size, in the overall effort to construct dashboards or portals. The smaller blocks--Tiles, Tile Groups, and Views

Seth Gottlieb has written a superb entry on running CMS vendor demos. To quote: After you watch a couple of vendor demos, it doesn't take long to realize that the performance of the demo (how well the presenters know the product and how well they understand and connect with the ...

In a lot of the work that I'm doing at the moment, I'm seeing very ambitious goals for content management system (CMS) projects. Bundled up in the project are many different capabilities, beyond just page publishing functionality. This is causing a lot of problems. Organisations are going out to market looking ...

Alex Iskold has written an interesting article that asks: will podcasting survive? To quote: What is going on with podcasting in general? We certainly no longer hear about it as much as we did in the past. Is it because it simply became part of our culture that we take ...

Tony Byrne has written an article on the confusion of terminology in the content management industry. To quote: One of the challenges of any content technology project is standardizing on a particular set of terminology. Without that, you risk confusion among the business users, developers, managers, vendor staff, and consultants ...

There are a lot of content management system (CMS) products in the marketplace, over 140 in Australia alone. There are new products springing into existence even as this is written. As discussed by Seth Gottlieb, there are also an uncounted number of homegrown CMS packages, developed by individuals ...

Seth Gottlieb has written an article about the perils of writing a homebrew CMS. To quote: I have seen (and replaced) enough home-grown content management systems to know that they are not as easy to build as you would think. As a software architect, I understand the temptation. You just ...

Alan Pelz-Sharpe has written a blog entry on the issues with ECM and integration. To quote: "Integration" is a hot topic with Enterprise Content Management vendors these days. But just like terms such as BPM or SOA, integration can many things to many people. The current focus on integration stems ...

Seth Gottlieb has written an item on how to select a CMS. To quote: A while back, I wrote a post on selecting a CMS. I have since gotten requests for more step by step instructions. While, the process is not so formulaic that it can be written into a ...

Seth Gottlieb and Brice Dunwoodie continue their series on web 2.0 CMS. To quote: In the first article in this series we discussed in practical terms our take on meaning of Web 2.0 as it relates to content technologies. In this article, we describe the three key constituencies of Web ...

Seth Gottlieb and Brice Dunwoodie have written an article on web 2.0 content management. To quote: With all the hype that Web 2.0 has gotten, many companies are now looking at their existing Web CMS and wondering whether it meets the new paradigm's needs or merely traps them in an ...

Graham Oakes has written an article that questions whether to consolidate websites. To quote: Many organizations are looking at a portfolio of dozens of content management systems running somewhere on their network. From sheer tidiness alone, it'd be nice to have a shorter list. And such tidiness can have real ...

Janus Boye has written an article on the state of the art for enterprise portals. To quote: As our understanding of portal technology has evolved we've elaborated a set of common, sometimes decisive, portal scenarios that describe different business problems. These scenarios, however, range widely from the simple to the ...

Tony Byrne has posted a followup to his earlier entry on vendor briefings. To quote: Sure, ideally you'll work in partnership with your vendors, but you should also set high expectations for delivery -- and candor. At the end of the day, it still falls to you to take responsibility ...

Joe Lamantia has written a post on scoping CMS projects, providing an entirely new way of looking at the process. To quote: Two misconceptions - and two common but unhealthy practices, discussed below - drive most content scope estimates. First: the scope of content is knowable in advance. Second, and ...

Emma Hamer has written the first part of an article on CMS and change. To quote: Content Management systems have a similar potential to ERP software, and that is to revolutionize the way organizations do business. The impact of a CMS project reaches deep into the organization, and is a ...

Sara Redin has written an excellent article on avoiding CMS implementation problems. To quote: CMS project managers face a dilemma. For a project to succeed, contributors need to embrace the system. However, when confronted with a new CMS your business colleagues are, understandably, not interested in understanding the system but ...

The CMSWatch team have published an article on their content management predictions for 2007. To quote: What does this year hold for content technologies? As the holiday season winds down and we all gear up for 2007, we offer 12 predictions for the next 12 months. On the whole, ...