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Jan 05
Web
Content Management Marketplace Circa 2005
"...buyers seem to have
decided that managing Web content is a more situational, departmental
activity, worthy of lower costs and simpler solutions."
Nov 04
Making
a better CMS
"Most open source content management software is
useless. The only thing worse is every commercial CMS I've used."
Apr 04
Why
content management fails
"Content management is not a
technology problem. If you're having trouble managing the content on
your Web site, it's because you have an editorial process problem".
Find the
appropriate solution
"Vendors are creating generic solutions
that actually increase the cost of running a site. Meanwhile, most
businesses either have very simple needs that require only cheap,
simple systems, or they have specific needs that the generic solutions
handle poorly - or both."
Mar 04
Don't make
these mistakes when buying content management software
"The
specification of content management software should begin with the
author..." Gerry McGovern on putting content before technology.
Oct 03
Why
personalization hasn't worked
"A portal costs four times more
to buy and operate than a normal website. It delivers half the
benefits."
Jul 03
How many CMS vendors are there?
According to of Erik Hartman in
response to a question on cms-list,
"I guess there are world-wide about 2,000 vendors of content management
systems...Every week I discover 2 or 3 new vendors/systems...There are
also many open source solutions".
Jun 03
Is
There a Gremlin in Your Website?
Spot-on analysis of why
most websites should not attempt to serve content dynamically.
May 03
Open-Source
CMS: Prohibitively Fractured?
Tony Byrne considers the
future of open source CMS development and concludes that "Five years
from now, it's highly likely that buyers are going to choose from
among CMS solutions built on top of 4 major 'enterprise' families:
Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and Apache", so that developers "might as well
start aligning with the Apache project now".
Where is
the knowledge in a content management system?
An interesting
paper by James Robertson identifying what is needed for turning
content management into knowledge management.
Apr 03
An out-of-control web budget
Fujitsu burns through $A4m on a modest-looking Australian government website.
Mar 03
Low-Cost Alternatives for Web Content Management
Overview of desktop applications, server software, hosted services and open source options for content management.
Feb 03
Is
Content King for ASPs?
"The big question for CMS ASPs is
whether a CMS is a big enough application to stand alone." A
review of hosted content management services from Vignette, Crownpeak
and Atomz.
Irish
e-Governement survey highlights problems
Lack of vision and
difficulties in getting content authored—not
technology—are the main hurdles to getting government services
online.
The
Problems with CMS
Survey results
conclude—unsurprisingly— that content management software
is too expensive and requires too much customization.
Jan 03
Enterprise
Content Management Revisited
"The checklist of ECM
capabilities has grown so large that no supplier has them all. Hence,
each vendor's desire to redefine 'true' ECM around the subset it can
offer. But in lean times like these, users are looking for less
grandiose offerings, simpler content solutions for specific business
needs."
Dec 02
Evaluating
your content management needs
"Before evaluating a content
management system, you need to evaluate your own needs first". A
quick questionnaire that may be useful if you're thinking about using
a CMS for your website.
Recently returned from the floor of ECM 2002 at Earl's
Court. The overall impression was of salesmen outnumbering punters; of
stands reduced in size and extravagance; and nothing very new or
interesting:
Q. Can an industry be experiencing
double-digit growth and appear moribund at the same time?
A. Yes, when suppliers are multiplying at a faster rate than
the demand for their products.
Nov 02
Seven
Areas of Content Management Growth for 2003 [$] Gartner
prognostications. Outsourcing of web content management is one of the
areas and Kitsite gets a mention (hooray!).
Outsourcing
Content Management
"while the cost of hardware and storage
may be dropping, the cost of software and IT personnel to maintain
adequate content management continues to rise", more or less sums up the
argument for outsourcing.
Oct 02
Content
Management fever bites, vendors lose out
Bloor Research's
glib take on the Yankee Group's Doing
Business on the Internet: "Any organisation with a reasonable
web content management need can plug that hole with a month's
work." Er, hold on...
While some in-house systems might have been built on the
promise of a reasonable need being met within a few weeks, it is
unlikely that many of those systems will have turned out quite as
planned.
The high number of home-grown systems now in use is a result not of
the ease with which usable cms systems can be thrown together, but of
the expense and relative scarcity of such systems at the time when
work on most home-grown systems is likely to have started.
Now that the Internet bubble has burst, many organizations that
hired staff to work on online projects are likely to be looking more
closely at their cost base. They may also find that the market for
content management systems is no longer as favourable to flaky and
over-priced products as it once was. Furthermore, once the job market
picks up, holding on to staff in a climate of anxiety about costs may
not be easy. At that point, the in-house CMS may begin to look like
an expensive and unsustainable distraction.
Sept 02
Multilingual
content management
"Perhaps the most common, and an easily
overlooked, difficulty encountered in developing multi-lingual
websites is the maintenance of a consistent design across different
language versions of a site". My quick take on the subject of
managing multilingual websites.
Content
management usability
"The network launched not too far
behind schedule, and to great success, soon picking up a slew of
awards and one of the largest audiences of any UK news site. But
behind the scenes there was a problem. The web production process was
so convoluted and time-consuming that the web edition wasn't able to
launch until 3am at the earliest. There was a cost to this in cash
terms—overtime fees to staff—but there was also a cost in
terms of staff morale: many of the editorial staff became frankly
rebellious". Kitsite interface designer, Michael Kowalski, on the
under-rated topic of CMS usability.
July 02
Designing
content using web services
"Web services hold the key to
self-service content management systems and to the rapid development
and deployment of applications". It's a future so bright we'll
need sunglasses. It may be some way off, though.
Look
in to the future of content management
Tony Byrne's overview
of the market. In summary, the lower end of the market is becoming
commoditized; the enterprise market is beginning to show signs of
consolidation. In the mid-market: products are appearing targeted at
niche markets; managed services are on the rise; open source solutions
are maturing; and no sign yet of consolidation. In conclusion: caveat
emptor. All pretty sensible stuff.
Jun 02
Failings
catch up with Web content management's consultingware
Referring to another Jupiter
report, David Walker on why a home-grown system can sometimes
produce better results than the likes of Vignette, Interwoven and
Documentum—particularly for smaller projects. Although perhaps this
misses the point. Why would anyone want to use enterprise software for
a smaller project in the first place?
Apr 02
Exporting
content from QuarkXPress
"QuarkXPress was never designed
for marking up the structure of documents and is ill-equipped for
doing so. It may not be the ideal tool for cross-platform content
delivery, but while it remains in widespread use, there are ways to
work around its limitations". My guide to the painful issue of
Quark-to-web publishing.
Pass
me that brochureware, please
A sensible piece by David
Walker—citing a Jupiter
Report—in praise of websites that provide useful information .
Dec 00
Content without it? The doubts about Vignette
More Vignette rubbishing. This time from David Walker.
1997
Phil
Greenspun on Vignette
"Sitting through a meeting with them
was for me a rather surreal experience. It would be rather akin to
hearing Adobe pitch PhotoShop as a payroll check processing
system". Still my favourite piece of writing on the subject of
content management software.
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