Selecting a content management system
Background: Websites frequently grow so quickly, or get so large, that the original “quick and dirty” publishing tools prove inadequate for keeping the site under control.
It’s usually the editorial team that sounds the alarm – and asks for better content management tools.
But what do you ask for? How do you explain to the technical team (or a vendor, or a consultant) what it is you need?
Goal: What you need is a very simple functional specification: a list of things you need the system to do, and constraints it will have to operate under. With this list in hand, the technical team ought to be able to recommend what kind of system serves your needs, how big it needs to be, and whether to buy it or build it.
Here are some ideas for that list.
Top line: Describe your needs at a high level. Typically you want to build or buy a system to support creation, editing, approval, layout, markup, publishing, revision and maintenance of your public-facing content. What else?
Major functions: Think of all the things the internal users need to do with the system. Take nothing for granted. Suggestions for your list:
- Authoring
- Editing
- Approvals
- Concept tagging
- Conditional tagging
- Integration with content database
- Integration with digital assets
- Display markup (XML)
- Workflow controls
- Permissions
- Publish to staging or preview
- Publish to site
- Publish to other outputs (newsletters, blog, web service, FTP, etc.)
- Ad hoc publishing of small items or corrections.
- Version control
- Retrieval for review/update/maintenance
- Support for multiple related products
Content characteristics: Make sure the system is sized for the kind of content you’re manipulating.
- How long?
- How many?
- How is it grouped, organized, structured?
- Text? Images? Videos?
- Tables?
- What’s the biggest, most complicated piece of content?
- What’s the smallest item you’ll want to publish?
User characteristics: Who will be using the system, where will they be, what computers will they be using, how tech savvy are they, and whom do you trust to touch code?
- Writers
- Editors
- Copy editors
- Production editors
- Official approvers
- Staff? Freelance?
- External bloggers or commenters?
- On site? At home? Traveling?
Frequency: How often do you do things to the content? What occurs daily? Weekly? Monthly? How often do you have to make quick little fixes or additions? How often to you have to review and update the whole site? How long a work cycle do you want for each type of content?
Approvals: How rigid or loose do you want the approval and publishing system to be? How many signoffs are needed, and by whom? Are exceptions OK?
Editing features: How much control do you need during editing, design, tagging, chunking and publishing? Here are some ideas that might apply.
- Standard editing features you expect.
- Compatibility with authors originating content in Word.
- Templated text entry that matches chunking of text on site.
- XML tagging of chunks behind the scenes.
- No familiarity with HTML required.
- Control over image locations on page.
- Concept tag pick lists.
- Ability to edit tag lists, categories, sections.
- Ability to update published content without technical help.
- Preview capability for management.
- Support for tables and image placement .
What is missing from this list? Suggest an addition.