7.8 Building a Site with Content Management Server

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Most of the effort in building a Microsoft Content Management Server- based Web site is spent during the planning phase. In my experience, up to 60 percent of the project time can be used working through the issues of how the site developers work with the content owners and content managers. The political impact of defining organizationwide standards on a highprofile project, such as a Web site, can be significant. It seems that everyone wants to have a say on how the site works!

Having worked on a number of Microsoft Content Management Server projects, I know that the reality of building and deploying Microsoft Content Management Server is sometimes different from that laid out in Microsoft documentation.

As with all development work, any Microsoft Content Management Server site plan needs to be accompanied by a suitable methodology and an agreed set of deliverables. This would typically include such areas as the content plan, site navigation, templates, workflow, and deployment specifications.

Some of the content is likely to be dynamic, such as a news feed, and this requires management different from more static data sources, such as an about page or contact information.

7.8.1 Building a Content Plan

The content plan identifies the type of content that will be included in the site. This then feeds the Microsoft Content Management Server page templates and the navigation specifications. The site developers will then need to review the content plan to ensure that any pages to be ported across from an existing site are transferable and won't bring a host of problems along with them.

7.8.2 Navigation Specifications and Links

The navigation specification plans the links used to access the various parts of the site. Microsoft Content Management Server navigation is built on the fly, and new pages can be automatically linked based upon rules defined in the navigation specifications. There are three types of navigation:

  1. Global navigation refers to the top-level channels on any site.

  2. Local navigation refers to navigation within each top-level channel.

  3. The breadcrumb trail leaves a visible trail of where a user has visited on a site, enabling quicker user orientation. (The term breadcrumb trail is alleged to have come from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel so that they could retrace their steps in the fairytale forest. Certainly some Web sites are very much like a forest!)

7.8.3 Template Specifications

Most of the authors contributing to the site using Microsoft Content Management Server will, by their very nature, be nonexpert users of HTML and, on that basis, need to be guided through the content submission process. Using the content plan, each template needs to be defined with a name, use, and gallery reference. The style and content of each placeholder or field is then worked out-for example, stating that a name placeholder must be text only and bold. The functionality is then documented and the appropriate links laid out.

7.8.4 Workflow Specifications

As you should have seen by now, Microsoft Content Management Server has a set of workflow features that enables content to be published. By default, the out-of-the-box workflow is reasonably straightforward, and the general advice is to use this as it stands. If the workflow becomes too complex, pages can get lost in the approval process-never to be seen again. If you have Windows 2000 Active Directory or Windows 2000/NT users and groups enabled, the chances are that these can be mapped to Microsoft Content Management Server roles quite easily. Failing this, new groups and users may need to be set up. At this point drawing up a tabular diagram with roles mapped from Windows 2000/NT to Microsoft Content Management Server is probably the simplest thing to do.

7.8.5 Deployment

This defines how a site will be developed, staged, and deployed with all of the associated network and server technicalities. Areas considered include security, bandwidth, clustering, load balancing, and firewalls. When creating the deployment specification, workloads need to be considered and any final technical 'gotchas' eliminated since it will be difficult to fix problems further down the line.

Complex sites will have separate development, test, staging, and production Microsoft Content Management Server sites all linked together to form the site. The costs associated with this type of implementation can be considerable in terms of both hardware and software, so think carefully about how your site is going to be structured and ensure that you secure a big enough budget from the start.



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Microsoft  .NET. Jumpstart for Systems Administrators and Developers
Microsoft .NET: Jumpstart for Systems Administrators and Developers (Communications (Digital Press))
ISBN: 1555582850
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 136
Authors: Nigel Stanley

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