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Thoughts on the CMS debate

Philippe Parker — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:26:18 +0000

Last week I attended the Future of Web Content Management Debate hosted by Squiz at Australia House. I met many interesting people and saw a range of presentations from analysts, customers and software vendors. I’m not sure that the future of the WCM was really debated that much, but perhaps the acquisition of enterprise search engine Funnelback by Squiz tells us that content management may well be rendered obsolete by improved information retrieval technologies… The debate instead seemed to focus on the advantages of open source content management software, as you might expect given that Squiz is an open source CMS vendor.

But why should open source even be a consideration when selecting a CMS? Increasingly we see drives by government and other organisations to promote open source, but as Adriaan Bloem points out, the only generalisation you can really make about open source software is legal: the licence. So unless being able to get into the nuts and bolts of the application and feeding back into its source are important to you, then open source shouldn’t really matter.

What should matter, and is often confused with the open source requirement, is:

cost: initial licences, project costs and on-going support;
who’ll carry out the development and support: an external supplier or an in-house team;
relationship with your suppliers and how easy it is to change them if something goes wrong without throwing away your technology;
upgrade path: ensuring you don’t over-customise your application so that you can’t move off it once it has outlived its usefulness.

Certainly, open source has a strong case to make with many of these issues, but fundamentally choosing the right CMS is about matching business requirements and budget to a technology and supplier, not about licence models. Hopefully the one-sheet guide we just published will help you in this respect.

Many thanks to Squiz for organising the debate and in particular to Kenton Ward, who was very open about his company and its development approach. Kenton also organises the Last Thursday group who meet in Shoreditch on the last Thursday of each month to discuss content management. Do join us!

A one-sheet guide to picking a CMS

Philippe Parker — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:38:59 +0000

I’ve been trying to consolidate my thoughts on content management technology selection (a large number of which are collated on this site) into something more digestible.

So I’ve come up with this one-sheet guide to picking a CMS (rich text format, 41KB).

The guide is based on reading the many excellent posts on this subject from across the web (you can find a few of these on del.icio.us), discussions with colleagues and my own experiences in tweaking this process on client projects over the years.

Of course, reducing the process to a single page does mean that some of the finer points about how you achieve these tasks can’t be captured fully, but the key purpose is that people who haven’t been through a CMS selection before understand the main tasks involved and the order in which they should be undertaken. The document should also assist those of us who help clients select a CMS to focus on the most significant issues.

It’s not meant to be definitive, so please do let me know your comments: twitter’s the best place to do this. I’ll happily update this page and the document as required.

Feed your CMS knowlegde

Philippe Parker — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:46:56 +0000

I’ve gradually been collecting links to interesting blogs and feeds about content management and associated disciplines. Here are a number to share:

CMS news and analysis

CMS vendors

Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management

del.icio.us Bookmarks

Contented Management: del.icio.us bookmarks (feed)

You can also download the OPML export of all the feeds (7KB). Save it and import it into whichever feed reader you use.

The list of vendors in particular is far from exclusive, but if there are blogs missing that you think should be included, let me know.

We’re not just policing your content

Philippe Parker — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:52:39 +0000

Contented Management has joined forces with Linea to develop an online application and candidate management system for the Metropolitan Police. The system, which went live earlier this month, has already taken on appications for nearly 300 Special Constables and will shortly go live for Police Officers, Community Support Officers (PCSO) and police staff.

Candidates can check the progress of their applications online through integration with an enterprise offline system managed by the Met’s HR department.

The application was audited by a third party security consultancy and is built using the Java Struts 2.0 framework.

Visit metpolicecareers.co.uk and contact info@contentedmanagement.net to find out more.

Introduction to Contented Management

Philippe Parker — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:01:11 +0000

Contented Management is a UK-based company that helps you to resolve all your content management needs. From developing a business case and procuring a solution, to advice on design, user experience, implementation and support, our consultants have have worked for UK central government, global investment banking and publishing clients with a wide range of content management technologies.

This site aims to provide some insight into typical problems our clients have experienced, so that you can learn the lessons with as little pain as possible.

We’ll also be adding regular insights into the principles of content management, as well as the latest content management news collated from around the web.