Understanding Content Management, by Jeffrey Veen

Understanding Content Management

My colleague at Adaptive Path Peter Merholz and I are heading to Boston on 13 October 2004 to conduct a full-day workshop on Making Your Content Management System Work For You". I've done this workshop a couple of times before, and I find that my thesis often surprises people. I tell them that content management is a process and not a sofware package, and that most companies don't need a CMS at all. Jared Spool, who is running the conference, asked me to do an interview for his newsletter, and in it I make the point further.

Most often, I find that businesses don't treat their web site as a publication, especially those organizations developing standard content, such as product and service descriptions. Instead, they view their site as a software project -- a product that undergoes a development process and needs to be "released". Parts of a web site development project work this way, such as search engine upgrades. Yet, most users aren't concerned with these parts -- they are focused on the content.
For example, I recently helped a company migrate to a new content management system. In my interviews with the content creators, they told me that problems, such as spelling errors and fact changes, required them to open a bug-tracking system ticket. Once the issue was report, they typically had to wait four to six weeks before the problem was "resolved." Like many companies, they consider their web site a software project and not a publication.

The whole interview is online at UIE.com. If you're planning on attending, you can knock 15 percent of the registration price by using code JV01 when filling out this form.

Update: John Zeratsky offers an excellent continuation of this discussion. "In the long run, good strategy tied with good content will benefit an organization in ways that software cannot." Read the full post...

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 29 September 2004 at 9:01 PM. It was filed under Technology. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 29 September 2004 at 10:40 PM James Robertson wrote:

Hi Jeff, since you are doing so much great work in the content management space, you might want to join the newly-established "CM Professionals" association:

www.cmprofessionals.org

(There are 30 founding members, most of whom are fairly well-known.)

2. On 30 September 2004 at 1:08 PM Gilbert Lee wrote:

"Most often, I find that businesses don't treat their web site as a publication..."

So, so true. You said it well in the interview. In my experience with clients, content publication is not given as much attention as the visual design. And I think it's mostly because company executives don't connect this very thing: websites = publication.

Can you share other articles or interviews (of you) that echoes this thinking?

3. On 1 October 2004 at 3:24 AM Faruk Ates wrote:

If a customer has to wait up to 6 weeks for a change on the website, I don't even consider that a CMS anymore.

The CMS I've developed for the company that I work for allows our customers to simply change their website around with minimal efforts. They can keep their own site updated because they don't need us to do anything, other than deliver the initial package/site.

That's what a CMS should be: letting the customers be able to just manage their site content all by themselves. Preferrably in a way that prevents them from having to learn any technical details or HTML or anything, which is why our CMS works using a fully cross-OS-compatible WYSIWYG editor that works very much like Word - and everyone can use Word.

Side note: my new site, that I opened -just this morning-, is run on the very same CMS that our customers use. See it in action: http://www.kurafire.net if you're interested.

4. On 1 October 2004 at 4:16 AM Faruk Ates wrote:

Not to be a pain in the ass, by the way, but that CM Professionals site is quite horrible.

I personally would expect much, much better from people who call themselves Professional. Even though the term "professional" means no more than that you do that for a living; whether you're any good or not is not part of the meaning of the word. But the latter is how we use it in today's world, and these guys don't give me any indication that they're any good.

Okay I'll stop whining...

5. On 5 October 2004 at 3:38 PM Andrew wrote:

I have to agree with Frank: that CM Professionals site looks like it serves no purpose other than to strike fear into the hearts of potential CMS customers, and to scare them into hiring expensive consultants.

Join me for a one-day conference on starting your own company. August 7 in San Francisco.