CMS technology (Content Management Systems) is becoming increasingly important, but surprisingly a lot of people still haven’t heard about it, or more importantly, the majority is still trying to understand what CMS are all about.
The recently published book Content Management Systems, about 190 pages for eight chapters, is written by four geeks who offer the sharp perspective and the insights gained through hands on involvement, and targets the vast audience of newcomers to the field who are trying to define the most important parameters and schedule priorities for their CMS implementation.
The bottom line of the problem, writes Phil Suh in the first chapter , is that websites are a nightmare to manage unless built with CMS technology.
Interestingly, the second chapter written by James Ellis, addresses the concept of ‘content as asset’, and presents it from a process viewpoint: take stock of what you’ve got, work out the processes associated to the assets you are trying to manage – basically design the workflow . Here Metadata is labeled as an ‘enabler’ and the reader is reminder that calling someone an ‘author’ is not intended to offend.
Chapter 3 written by James Ellis explains how to handle templates and highlights issues relating to content presentation, while in chapter 4 David Thiemecke
Discusses the various technical implications of online publishing processes.
Dave Addey in chapter 5 and 6 – the latter co-written by Inigo Surguy – weighs the considerations underlying the tough decision: to build or to buy? And in chapter 7 he gives an array of advice on how to setup up an implementation schedule, and related production and testing issues.
In Chapter 8, co-written with Alyson Fielding, he advises on best practices to assist the project manager who needs to migrate content from heteregeneus formats – a vary common instance - into a new, uniform CMS environment.
Overall, the book tackles crucial technical issues that anyone involved in a CMS must face, but the pitch is accessible to most readers interested in the highly complex , and highly fascinating world of CMS
Content Management Systems
Dave Addey, James Ellis, Phil Suh, David Thiemecke
glasshous
ISBN 1-904151-06-X
Online Info

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