IWMW 2003: Content Management - Buy or Build?
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Slides for plenary talk on "Content Management - Buy or Build?" given by Ricky Ranking and Gareth McLeese at the IWMW 2003 event held at the University of Kent on 11-13 June 2003. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2003/sessions/#talk-6
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IWMW 2003: Content Management - Buy or Build?
- 1. IWMW June Ricky Rankin Queen’s University Gareth McAleese University of Ulster Content Management Systems Buy or Build
- 2. IWMW June Content Management System - Buy • The Queen’s Environment • Problem to be Solved • CMS Expectations • The Implementation Path • Where are we • Next Steps
- 3. IWMW June The Queen’s Environment • Web Site • Combination of Intranet & Internet • Some information sourced from corporate databases • VLE/MLE/Portal • Developed in house • Database driven • Live links to corporate database systems
- 4. IWMW June WWW site - Enthusiast Pages
- 5. IWMW June Code it yourself <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97"> <TITLE>QUB Equal Opportunities Unit - eou</TITLE> <META NAME="Template" CONTENT="C:PROGRAM FILESMICROSOFT OFFICEOFFICEhtml.dot"> </HEAD> <BODY LINK="#0000ff" VLINK="#800080"> <TABLE CELLSPACING=0 BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH=100% height="431"> <TR> <TD colspan="5" VALIGN="MIDDLE" height="35" ><a href="http://www.qub.ac.uk/">QUB Home </a> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD VALIGN="MIDDLE" height="35" colspan="2" > <div align="left"><img src="images/EOUhead.gif" align="left" ></div> </TD> <TD VALIGN="MIDDLE" height="35" colspan="3" width="585" > <div align="right"><img src="images/EOUhomepage.gif" width="110" height="29" > </div> </TD>
- 6. IWMW June So what’s wrong with this • Information owner does not update page • The site’s a mess! • Our site is a laughing stock • Doesn’t look corporate or consistent • Can’t be good for business • Can’t find information • Patchwork of sites, inconsistent in presentation and navigation • Non compliance: usability; accessibility • The bloke who did it has left
- 7. IWMW June The fix • outsource
- 9. IWMW June So what’s wrong with this • Information owner does not update page • The site’s a mess! • Our site is a laughing stock • Doesn’t look corporate or consistent • Can’t be good for business • Can’t find information • Patchwork of sites, inconsistent in presentation and navigation • Non compliance: usability; accessibility • The bloke who did it has left
- 11. IWMW June Create Using Dreamweaver
- 12. IWMW June Dreamweaver Code <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <html LANG="EN-US"><!-- #BeginTemplate "/Templates/vcentre- default.dwt" --> <head> <!-- #BeginEditable "doctitle" --> <title>The Queen's Visitors' Centre - Welcome</title> <!-- #EndEditable --> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso- 8859-1"> <STYLE TYPE="text/css"></STYLE> <link rel="stylesheet" href="menu_items/qub3.css"> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"> <!-- if(window.event + "" == "undefined") event = null; function HM_f_PopUp(){return false}; function HM_f_PopDown(){return false}; popUp = HM_f_PopUp; popDown = HM_f_PopDown; //-->
- 13. IWMW June So what’s wrong with this • Information owner does not update page • The site’s a mess! • Our site is a laughing stock • Doesn’t look corporate or consistent • Can’t be good for business • Can’t find information • Patchwork of sites, inconsistent in presentation and navigation • Non compliance: usability; accessibility • The bloke who did it has left
- 14. IWMW June The Path to CMS Enthuasists Techie/’Nurd’ Raw html Unstructured Webmaster Dreamweaver Structure/Templates Business case Information owners html – if you want Templates Office skills Information owners Content Management
- 16. IWMW June CMS - Navigation
- 19. IWMW June So what’s wrong with this • Information owner does not update page • The site’s a mess! • Our site is a laughing stock • Doesn’t look corporate or consistent • Can’t be good for business • Can’t find information • Patchwork of sites, inconsistent in presentation and navigation • Non compliance: usability; accessibility • The bloke who did it has left
- 20. IWMW June CMS Expectations • Internet Pages Initially • 100K pages reduced to < 300 • Control in Hands of Information Owners • WWW based • Office skills minimum requirement • Controlled Publishing Process • Define authors/contributor; moderator; administrators • Documents can be prepared prior to publication date with publication/remove/review/archive dates defined • Workflow • Navigation generated by System
- 21. IWMW June CMS Expectations - continued • Corporate Style & Compliance with Legalisation • Define templates with protected areas • Enforce alt tags/metadata where appropriate • Resuse Content
- 22. IWMW June CMS Expectations Tomorrow • Improve Publishing Process • Collection of information for Prospectus • Increase use eForms • Build Central Resources • Media libraries • Bio files • Doc library • Tackle the Intranet • Generic templates for units • Built in links to corporate systems to produce staff lists, course lists ….
- 23. IWMW June The Process • Senior Management • It’s their WWW & message • Focus on Intrenet • Define functionality required • Linkage with legacy systems • Metadata • Accessibility • Research the market • 100+ alleged products • JISC documents • CMS mail lists • Vendor white papers
- 24. IWMW June What’s out There - Costs • Open Source • Free • Needs configuration and building • Bargain Basement • <£5K • Limited functionality • Low End • <£30K • Mid Range • £30K - £100K • Top of Range • How much have you got
- 25. IWMW June 2003 Canterbury What’s out There – Alleged Vendors Allaire Spectra Ektron - eMPower3.0 Microsoft Content Management Server Revize AOLServer; ( 1) eMPower MidGard Roosh Newspublisher Appalachian State University Enhydra MKDoc Roxen ArsDigita now Enigma - Insight Moveable Type SIM Atomz Publish Estrada Onstage Mysource SIM (Structured Information Manager) Blosxom eZ publish NCompass Resolution SIMPL Broadvision ezContents Net-It Central SiteEditor Callisto CMS Fatwire NewsPro slashdot.pl Capstone Content Management System FileMaker Pro NQL SOHOnet Runtime Site Builder Cascade FileNET Obtree - C3 SquishDot CMS FireSite OmegaCMS Starbase - eXpressroom CMS200 Freestyler Open Content Stellent Cofax Frontier OpenCms Tridion - DialogServer content object factory FutureTense opensource.go.com Trillium Crownpeak Technologies Gauss - Interprise VIP Enterprise Content Management Platform PaperThin - CommonSpot Content Server Typo3 Cytura Infosquare - openshare Percussion - Rhythmyx 4.0 Userland: Day - Communiqué Ingeniux XPower phpCMS Vignette Divine | Eprise Intervoven phpMyAdmin (MySQL admin) Webgenerator Divine | Openmarket Krysalis PHPWebsite WebObjects Documentum lclark.edu PostNuke WebSite Director Drupal Manila Provue SiteWarrior Xopus EBT - enterprise-wide content management MasonHQ Red Dot Zope EditTag Mediasurface Red Hat
- 26. IWMW June Sources of Information • Vendor WWW Sites white papers • JISC Paper http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/tsw_01-02.pdf • CMS List http://www.cms-list.org/ • Useful Links http://www.steptwo.com.au/cm/vendors/list/index.html http://www.hartman-communicatie.nl/content/tools.htm
- 27. IWMW June Items to Include in OR • web technologies • editing • site mgt. • workflow mgt. • database connectivity • localisation Mgt • personalisation • multi-channel publishing • global brand mgt. • application Development • XML support • licensing • Cost • eforms
- 28. IWMW June Evaluation & Selection category weight ease of use 3 administration 1 static pages 1 legacy 2 authentication 1 functionality 2 licencing 2 company 1
- 29. IWMW June Current Position • System Selected • Templates being developed • Internet Site Converted to use CMS and Live end June
- 30. IWMW June Next Steps • Develop Training • Expand Range of Templates Available • Develop Corporate Assets • Develop Intranet site based on CMS • Develop Generic School/Unit Sites
- 31. IWMW June Things We Missed on the Way Through • Tracking • Spell Checking • Edit in situ
- 33. IWMW June Edit in Situ
- 34. IWMW June Edit in Situ
Editor's Notes
- I met with Gareth about a month ago and he told me that he had volunteered me for a presentation at the next IWMW – as a dual act with himself Last week he said that I could do the warm up and he would finish it off
- I have listed here the outline for the Queen’s (buy) part of the presentation The Queen’s Environment This outlines the systems at Queen’s and the ongoing developments Problem to be solved Given the systems in place this section outlines what is not working and how it might be solved CMS Expectations CMS one of latest buzz words, important to limit user expectations, don’t oversell, stick to things that hopefully can be delivered The Implementation Path It’s a jungle out there. Marketing departments of software companies like new buzz words and their products, x years old, clearly fit this new market – with a little bit of imagination Where are we Easy – Cantebury Were we are in the implementation phase Next Steps what next – have we cracked the www problem
- Web Site The WWW site is a combination of internet and intranet pages with a variety of styles For many areas under control of Information services were appropriate information is pulled from the corporate database systems Many www sites, main one is on Sun Solaris System running Apache VLE/MLE/Portal Like everyone else we are doing this as well. Not using webct or blackboard – in house development, as webct and blackboard did not have required functionality when we started down this road – if they catch up we would consider incorporating them SQL server database used In both above main development language is PHP Same developers involved in both areas decided to concentrate on VLE and look for off the shelf WWW solution
- With credit to one of last years presenters, the next few slides may look familiar, but to quote a bearded politician from home – ‘they haven’t gone away you know’ He was refereeing to a particular group, I am referring to a problem – on second thoughs we might be talking about the same thing In the beginning there were the enthusiasts These are pages that have been designed by local experts No one was given responsibility for department web pages as part of their job description It’s somewhat worrying that I can still find some of these on the site
- In the good old days these were hand crafted in an editor of your choice – usually note pad or vi Really easy to understand and a clear visualise interpretation of what the final page would look like
- The people who understood the information were incapable of putting it up – webmaster bottle neck. They had to wait until the webmaster could fit them in Patchwork of different style, no corporate identity – the site is a mess/laughing stock Organisation and different navigation systems make it difficult to find relevant information More importantly it is difficult, if not impossible, to ensure compliance with leglisation such as accessibility Oh yes and what do you do when the bloke with the knowledge to make it work leaves
- Management’s initial fix – well it’s just like paper We outsource to 3 printing companies for printing letter headed paper and flyers Lets do the same for the WWW and appoint 3 WWW design companies to help produce departmental pages
- Here are some of the screens There are now potentially 5 groups of developers/designers working on the site 3 outside companies The departments Web Team
- In some instances the external WWW developers produced mechanisms to enable the information owner to input information through a www form The site is less of a mess with some conformity in look and feel – just depends on how many pages each developer group produce It’s not so much that the bloke has left more that if you are using an external provider and need a change, you can have it done relatively easy if you’ve got the money – one of the external developers claimed to have done £100K in business (good money if you can get it) There are more blokes doing the work
- Internally moved to using dreamweaver to develop pages Here we see the dreamweaver templates produced the banner and menus are fixed and cannot be changed by the author Red banner is corporate internet site Blue is affiliate sites Green intranet
- Creating pages using dreamweaver allows the author to visualise the page they are developing Can still require a certain amount of technical skill –if your not using it on a regular basis it can still cause anxiety
- You can still code in html if you wish The code in yellow is part of the template that is locked and the user cannot change
- Starting to look better Look and feel plus navigation now under control User still needs to be a bit technie or at least not frightened of the technology If changes required to the protected part of the template they need to get help from web team You of course still can’t do anything if the bloke that did it left except make sure that you have spread the knowlege
- So we have followed the path from enthuasists using their favourite tool to putting some structure on the process by introducing dreamweaver The next step appears to be content management Use a system that requires the authors to have no more than word skills and accessed through a browser
- Spot the difference from dreamweaver – not a lot Dreamweaver templates can be used to build the CMS templates
- To have a look a some aspects of the system. The user/author is driven by the site structure, select a section to add content/modify content or add a new section Note that the navigation is driven by this structure – create another section and it will appear on the navigation on the left
- The published page is the same as for the dreamweaver site
- The page is produced by the author completing the this template NOTE You still need the technical backup to build the tempaltes, but from the authors perspective you only need basic office skills and a bit of orientation around the site structure NOTE the different elements of the template You don’t get a feel for how it looks when finished but there will be a limited number of templates – image to left text to right, text to left image to right ….
- You still can’t do much if the bloke that made it left – but at least we now have more than one and we are using a well know development language and with the current situation in the IT market place we should be able to find someone with the required skills set – and hopefully, the opportunities for him to go have decreased The bloke who did it has left is now restricted to the bloke that knows how to build templates
- Looking to move responsibility for keeping information up to date by empowering the owners of the information to easily create and publish WWW pages Use of templates allows control of Corporate Style while letting Departments have ability to do certain customisations We hope to develop develop a generic faculty/school/department pages Keep information current and accurate review dates with actions to automatically remove delete or archive send message to review pages Only require office skills to author Not everyone can publish – author, moderator, supervisor concept of work flow – contributor creates the page but the moderator checks the style and content before allowing page to be published. The contributor creates pages in a staging area
- Looking to move responsibility for keeping information up to date by empowering the owners of the information to easily create and publish WWW pages Use of templates allows control of Corporate Style while letting Departments have ability to do certain customisations We hope to develop a generic faculty/school/department pages Keep information current and accurate review dates with actions to automatically remove delete or archive send message to review pages Only require office skills to author Not everyone can publish – author, moderator, supervisor concept of work flow – contributor creates the page but the moderator checks the style and content before allowing page to be published. The contributor creates pages in a staging area
- Looking to move responsibility for keeping information up to date by empowering the owners of the information to easily create and publish WWW pages Use of templates allows control of Corporate Style while letting Departments have ability to do certain customisations We hope to develop develop a generic faculty/school/department pages Keep information current and accurate review dates with actions to automatically remove delete or archive send message to review pages Only require office skills to author Not everyone can publish – author, moderator, supervisor concept of work flow – contributor creates the page but the moderator checks the style and content before allowing page to be published. The contributor creates pages in a staging area
- Senior Management We didn’t have a problem – they told us EdBoard set up with Registrar in chair remit concentrate on Internet pages current site was 60-100K pages internet, intranet … intranet about 300 Functionality legacy systems and development languages php/java/silverstream/asp some of the systems looked at were attractive but would have required the introduction of an additional technology – Coldfusion while we are currently trying to reduce the number Templates able to address accessibility issues that are now legally enforcable What’s out there
- Vast range in price and functionality Free to £250+ Comment on CMS list asked why companies would pay in excess of £200K for a system One response was that if it was anything less they would not even consider it – we were not in that league and a budget was somewhat below this figure – perhaps even an order of magnitude One of the outside suppliers on our outsourcing fix would not work for less than 10K
- Here is list of 96 companies claiming to provide a CMS solution Since the slide was produce some weeks ago, at least one of the companies is no longer trading – it was also highlighted in a ‘Leading IT Analyst Company’s’ as the best buy! We shortlisted 7 companies and at least 3 of them are not on the list
- Vendor sites contain some good white papers explaining different aspects of CMS Gives you questions to ask other vendors and identifies functionality that you might not have thought of JISC paper outlined some of the requirements of CMS CMS list – very active be selective in what you read. If you post a message that you have money to spend on a CMS sit back and wait for a deluge from vendors on list
- Depending on size of budget you’ll probably have to produce a tender Some of the issues to be included Web technologies – the usual unix v microsoft war, but you know what you are using and the skill sets that you have – you probably don’t want to introduce a new one as this adds to the training spend and time required to become effective Database connectivity – if the information exists then you will want to take it from source – this integration with corporate systems and development technologies was a major factor for us Be careful of licencing – there are several different methods (per server, per cpu per user or all of the these) eforms – not on our original list but in the purchased product. Will give us great flexibility in the way we collect information – will be using them to improve the production of the prospectus
- Need to weight the categories some are more important than others For us ease of use was most important followed by integration with corporate systems and licencing (ie cost)
- Corporate assets are images, biographies and that can be used through the site
- Corporate assest are images, biographies and that can be used through the site
- When used with workflow to amend existing documents, tracking would enable the moderator to quickly identify the changes
- Some users prefer to navigate through the site and insert changes at the appropriate spot. Selecting one of the o’s inside the rectangle would produce the following form
- It’s been a long and interesting road I think we have learnt a lot about what a CMS can achieve and I think T4 have learnt a lot about how University web sites work We’re looking forwarded to the challenges that lay ahead (I think!) Questions