Content Management Systems
INF385E Fall 2004
Helena Loh
21 September 2004
What is Content?
• The intellectual information transmitted in or by a resource,
information package, or metadata; content is distinguished
from the encoding, packaging, or framework used for
transmission (Taylor, 2004)
• …used to refer to any kind of audiovisual, visual, sound, or
textual information….(Mauthe and Thomas, 2004)
• …the stuff on your web site. (Rosenfeld and Morville, 2002)
What is Content Management?
• …[a] process for collecting, managing, and
publishing content to any outlet. (Boiko, 2002)
• …is about organizing, categorizing and
structuring information resources so that they
can be stored, retrieved, published and reused in
multiple ways . (Hackos, 2002)
A Content Management System…
• …is a software tool designed to manage and track the
location of, and relationships among, content at the
element level in a central repository.
• …supports the creation, management, distribution,
publishing and retrieval of corporate information. A CMS
addresses the complete lifecycle of content as it moves
through the organization"
(www.cmswiki.com)
A (Very) Brief Look at CM History
• Formal content management
• In terms of IT, imaging technology in 1980s
replaced large-scale filing
• 1990s - explosion of personal computer use
• Control over electronic content - document
management
• Mid-1990s - widespread adoption of the Internet forced evolution of “document mgmt” to “web
content mgmt”
• Variations of content management exist based on
similar principles, but with different objectives in
mind
CM - Lifecycle
Developing and Managing a CM solution:
• Identifying the need for a CM solution and its
overall goals
• Evaluating and selecting a suitable CM solution
• Developing and deploying the selected CM
solution
• Expanding the CM solution
• Fully integrating of the CM solution within the
environment
CM - Requirements and Steps
• Authoring
• Repository
• Assembly and
Linking
• Publishing
CM -Authoring
• Information sources
• Forms
• Labels
CM - Repository
• Databases
• Library Services
• CM System - a layer of software controlling a
database management system that stores either
the content resources themselves or references
to those in a file-management system. (Hackos,
2002)
CM - Assembly and Linking
• Assembly - Manipulation of smaller components
to create compound documents
• Greater control
• Increased flexibility for use in multiple contexts
• Linking - through cross referencing
CM - Publishing
• should be able to publish documents in multiple
styles for multiple delivery media
– Use an existing style provided by authoring
tool - convert to style for another medium
– Begin with a neutral document without style
tags and add format during publishing process
The Marriage of CM and IA
• IA portrays a “snapshot” or spatial view of an
information system while CM describes a
temporal view by showing how information
should flow into, around, and out of that same
system over time.” (Rosenfeld and Morville, 2002)
CMS - Resources
• Rosenfeld, Louis and Morville, Peter (2002). Information
Architecture for the World Wide Web. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly
& Associates.
• Hackos, Joann T (2002). Content Management for Dynamic
Web Delivery. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
• Mauthe, Andreas and Thomas, Peter (2004). Professional
Content Management Systems: Handling digital media assets.
Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
• www.wikipedia.org
• www.cmswiki.com
Some other definitions
• Information is stimuli that has meaning in some context for
its receiver. When information is entered into and stored in
a computer, it is generally referred to as data. After
processing (such as formatting and printing), output data
can again be perceived as information. When information is
packaged or used for understanding or doing something, it
is known as knowledge. (www.whatis.com)