Section E.2. Web Publishing and Content Management System Capabilities


E.2. Web Publishing and Content Management System Capabilities

You can implement the solutions we listed earlier in many different ways. One of the most challenging aspects of evaluating web publishing and content management systems for a particular purpose is that so many different systems can be used to provide solutions, each in its own way and with its own set of capabilities.

The purpose of this section is to describe at a high and relatively detailed level the sort of capabilities that web publishing and content management systems provide. It is from these capabilities that the solutions we described earlier are constructed.

The challenge when summarizing the capabilities provided by web publishing and content management systems is the breadth of the functionality these systems offer. Perhaps the easiest way to approach the subject is to examine the three primary steps of most web publishing and content management processes:


Create

The content is created or acquired.


Manage

The content is manipulated, reviewed, and improved.


Deliver

The content is rendered into publishable format and is presented to the audience.

Most content management systems have some subset of the capabilities covered in the following subsections.

E.2.1. Content Creation and Persistence

The capabilities in this category are focused on creating and storing content:


Content repository

The repository is the star of the show for most web content management systems. The content that is eventually stored in pages is stored in this repository. It can be as simple as a filesystem or as complex as a special-purpose, object-oriented database. Most often, the content repository is a relational database.


Structured content types (record formats for addresses and forms for input)

Web content management systems frequently are used for what some people call database publishing, which means forming web pages out of fields stored in a record in a database. An important feature to look for in a web content management system is support for structured content types that allow an existing database to be accessed and used when creating content.


End-user content creation tools

Many web content management systems offer only the simplest web forms as a way to enter content. Adding just a little bit of markup, such as the ability to incorporate boldface and italics, can go a long way. Sometimes, with the help of browser plug-ins, a full-featured text editor can be delivered through the Web. XML editors are also often used to create and edit web content in both online and offline mode.


Integration with desktop editors

Most content is created in word processors that make the job of writing much easier than with other tools, such as online editors or XML editors. Being able to accept content from Microsoft Word documents into a web content management system can greatly expand the pool of potential contributors, but opens up many quality control problems that can occur during conversion. Providing one-way support is seldom sufficient, because when an author wants to make changes, she will want to use the word processor, not an online interface.


Metadata management

Metadata is data about the content in a web content management system. Metadata fields can be used to assign categories to content, to contain titles and summaries of articles, and to contain other fields such as the author, date of publication, and source for the content. Web content management systems sometimes have ways of automatically creating or assigning metadata and special interfaces for those responsible for focusing only on the metadata.


Versioning and change logs

Keeping track of what has changed on a web site can be extremely valuable and is a common regulatory or compliance requirement. It can also help determine who changed what when, the usefulness of which goes way beyond finger pointing. Some systems show reports that indicate what changed from one version of a piece of content to the next.

E.2.2. Workflow Management

Workflow is all about keeping track of who is doing what in a web content management system. Perhaps a better way to say it is that workflow is about who should be doing what, and whether they are doing it. Workflow is specified in most web content management systems in two ways:


State-based workflow

One of the most useful and simple workflow mechanisms is the ability to assign a state to a piece of content that determines what can be done with it. Typical states include approved, copyedited, and submitted. In a state-based workflow, a piece of content might have a person assigned as well, and perhaps a series of notes that reflect what everyone did.


Process-based workflow

A process-based workflow keeps track of more complicated activities that involve many different content items. It can be used in conjunction with a state-based workflow. A publishing process for documents about a new product might have many different stages, each with its own process. The planning stage defines what documents were to be created, and then a resource allocation stage might be executed to determine who would create each piece of content. Publication might not be allowed until all content items are in an "approved" state.

E.2.3. Search

Search capabilities range from being able to choose to see a list of all content that is in a certain category of metadata, to a full, free text search in which documents with specific words, phrases, and combinations thereof can be located. It is not uncommon for web content management systems to have a simple, moderately powerful search capability. Most of the time, full-featured search can be added with an open source project for that particular purpose.

E.2.4. Site Administration

Site administration is all about managing the day-to-day operations of a web content management system. The following capabilities of web content management systems should be considered:


Installation packages

Open source programs vary widely in the way that installation packages are created. The best programs have wizardlike functionality that guides users through software installation and basic configuration. Many open source programs have basic instructions and require more user expertise.


Administrative interfaces

Administrative interfaces assist system administrators and users in configuring software behavior. Open source programs have everything from form-based interfaces to property files containing settings that control system behavior.


Archiving

Content can proceed through a life cycle in many web content management systems. At the end of that life cycle, the content is removed from the repository and placed into an archive. Some web content management systems come with this as a prebuilt function, and others have toolkits that enable users to construct such functionality.


Task scheduling

Web content management systems support a variety of processes to maintain and update content. Most systems have a way of scheduling when a content item might be published to a site. Others have task scheduling systems that allow arbitrary tasks to be scheduled and executed.


Multisite support

Frequently in corporate environments, one database of content items might be used to create several different sites. Some web content management systems allow several different sets of templates to be maintained, each able to access the same repository of underlying content. Several sites can be created and maintained from one repository in this manner.


Security

Security in web content management systems ranges from simple role-based security that allows different users to perform different functions based on their role, to incredibly fine-grained security models that control read/write permissions to individual content items.

E.2.5. Page and User Interface Design

Capabilities in this section involve dealing with the design of pages where content will be displayed, as well as the user interface that content creators and administrators will deal with on a day-to-day basis:


Page templates

Templating is a core function of web content management systems. Templates allow users to design a page's form and publish many different instances of the form by substituting different content in specified locations of the template. The templating architecture of web content management systems ranges from substitution of variables, to HTML-like display templates, to clever use of XML and XSLT transformations, to incredibly elaborate templating languages that allow complex logic that is executed as part of the templating process.


Content components

Templating systems frequently have a component architecture in which certain types of content components are defined. Such content components might contain the navigation of a page, or interfaces to commonly used content from third parties.


Navigation

Templating systems frequently have specialized support for creating common navigation among a group of pages.


Print-friendly versions

Templating systems have strategies or prebuilt templates for creating print-friendly versions of articles.


Multilanguage support

Multilanguage support generally comes in two flavors: support for different languages in the navigation or "chrome" of the page and support for different languages in the body of the page. Multilanguage support for navigation involves building the site's templates in such a fashion that all natural-language elements are stored in property files. When a user accesses the system, the preferred language is identified and then site navigation is presented using the property files of that desired language, if they exist. Multilanguage support for content within the page's frame means that the content items in the repository can be rendered in different languages, and the correct version of the content items must be selected based on the viewer's preference.

E.2.6. Content Delivery and Distribution

Capabilities in this section involve delivering the content for distribution once it is published. The speed with which content can be delivered to the final distribution environment is often an important consideration when choosing or building a web content management system.


Page rendering

Templates and content items can be rendered into pages in a variety of different ways. Pages can be dynamic (created when requested), or they can be created in advance so that they can be delivered as quickly as possible. All sorts of other strategies are possible, including rendering parts of the pages in advance or creating an entire site in static HTML files.


Web server support

Most open source web content management systems support Apache, but other web servers such as Microsoft IIS and Netscape are frequently supported. Some web content management systems are not linked to a specific web server.


Email support

Publishing content through email or sending alerts about various events or workflow tasks is the most common way that email is supported in web content management systems.


Load balancing

Web content management systems can support different scalability strategies, such as replicating versions of the content across many web servers or allowing many page template engines to be replicated on top of a single repository.


Integration with Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV)

Many web content management systems support the WebDAV protocol to allow easy access to the repository using commonly available tools.


Integration with FTP

Many web content management systems support the FTP protocol to accept or distribute content.


Replication and distribution

Replication and distribution of content using XML, the ICE protocol, RDIST, or many other mechanisms are supported by web content management systems for syndicating content, or for other purposes.



Open Source for the Enterprise
Open Source for the Enterprise
ISBN: 596101198
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 134

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