A better way to manage content?
In my previous incarnation as an IT consultant, I spent several years in Europe and here in America helping large companies to implement contact management solutions. So as I was reading Winning Campaigns Online, many of the problems raised struck a familiar chord.
One in particular struck me today - that of content management and allowing non-programmers to edit web pages. It is suggested in the book that the optimum approach is ensure that the web developer can work as productively as possible but I see several issues with this approach:
For me, the ideal solution is to remove the need for a web developer to do the updating and instead let those directly responsible for creating content also publish it on the web site, leaving the web developer to do the tasks only they are qualified to perform. The book talks about using SSI to achieve this, but there are now software packages that can do this and much more.
One package I have used is Documentum. It is a very powerful tool, and possibly too expensive for smaller campaigns, but once the core templates are created, anyone can update, review and publish content to the web site, and add basic formatting, similar to the blogger software we are all using.
In the same way, because the content is published within pre-defined templates, the navigation experience for the user is always consistent, a key part of usability. Take a look at what it can do  in my experience, everyone benefited from this approach.
One in particular struck me today - that of content management and allowing non-programmers to edit web pages. It is suggested in the book that the optimum approach is ensure that the web developer can work as productively as possible but I see several issues with this approach:
- Most web developers like to do more complicated coding that just updating some pages using basic HTML, so will find doing such tasks repetitive and boring.
- In most cases, the developer doesnÂt understand the content, so is less likely to spot a mistake until it is too late.
- The web developer can become a bottleneck to uploading new content when several departments are constantly producing new information to be uploaded.
For me, the ideal solution is to remove the need for a web developer to do the updating and instead let those directly responsible for creating content also publish it on the web site, leaving the web developer to do the tasks only they are qualified to perform. The book talks about using SSI to achieve this, but there are now software packages that can do this and much more.
One package I have used is Documentum. It is a very powerful tool, and possibly too expensive for smaller campaigns, but once the core templates are created, anyone can update, review and publish content to the web site, and add basic formatting, similar to the blogger software we are all using.
In the same way, because the content is published within pre-defined templates, the navigation experience for the user is always consistent, a key part of usability. Take a look at what it can do  in my experience, everyone benefited from this approach.
