1. The Future of
Content Management
Rachel Andrew: Smashing Conference 2012
Thursday, 2 May 13

2. edgeofmyseat.com
Thursday, 2 May 13

3. grabaperch.com
Thursday, 2 May 13

4. Question.
Who here generally develops sites using some form of
content management system?
Thursday, 2 May 13

5. Why don’t we talk about
this more?
Thursday, 2 May 13

6. The trouble with content
management systems.
Thursday, 2 May 13

7. http://storify.com/rachelandrew/cms-horrors
“Has your client ever done something
really odd using a CMS? Font horrors,
giant images, crazy content? I'd love to
know your stories.”
Thursday, 2 May 13

8. Thursday, 2 May 13

9. Thursday, 2 May 13

10. Thursday, 2 May 13

11. Thursday, 2 May 13

12. Thursday, 2 May 13

13. Clients love to do a little
bit of web-designing.
Thursday, 2 May 13

14. “Make the logo bigger!”
No.
Thursday, 2 May 13

15. “I want to use 24 point
Comic Sans”
No.
Thursday, 2 May 13

16. “I want to edit my site in
Microsoft Word!”
oh go on then ...
Thursday, 2 May 13

17. Web designing.
Just one of my
many skills.
Thursday, 2 May 13

18. Why are we doing this?
Thursday, 2 May 13

19. We should not be giving content editors a
tool to use to destroy their site.
Thursday, 2 May 13

20. If you provide something better than the
Word experience of website content-
editing. Your users stop asking for Word.
Thursday, 2 May 13

21. Thursday, 2 May 13

22. Thursday, 2 May 13

23. We cannot expect non-developers and
designers to make sane decisions about
document semantics.
Thursday, 2 May 13

24. Thursday, 2 May 13

25. Thursday, 2 May 13

26. A CMS is not a website
design tool.
Thursday, 2 May 13

27. If you wouldn’t give the client a copy of
Dreamweaver & their site files, why give
them a CMS that attempts to mimic that
experience?
Thursday, 2 May 13

28. Your CMS should be entirely focussed
around creating great quality content.
Thursday, 2 May 13

29. Content editors are often the forgotten
users when we deploy a CMS.
Thursday, 2 May 13

30. This is not a new problem.
Thursday, 2 May 13

31. This is why we can’t have nice things
Thursday, 2 May 13

32. (probably not) Henry Ford.
“If I had asked people what they wanted,
they would have said faster horses.”
Thursday, 2 May 13

33. What should the CMS
user experience be like?
Thursday, 2 May 13

34. 1. The CMS helps content editors make
good decisions.
Thursday, 2 May 13

35. A CMS is often as much an enemy of good
content as it is of good design.
Thursday, 2 May 13

36. - Karen McGrane
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/08/08/karen-mcgrane-content-strategy-for-
mobile/
“Let’s try to make the job for our content
creators as easy as possible, and let’s build
the tools and the infrastructure that we
need to support them in creating great
content.”
Thursday, 2 May 13

37. 2. The CMS allows the designer to make
semantic decisions so the editor doesn’t
have to.
Thursday, 2 May 13

38. Thursday, 2 May 13

39. 3. The CMS protects the design and
architecture decisions made for the site
Thursday, 2 May 13

40. When we stop trying to give content
editors a web design tool, we can focus on
a system tailored to the type of content
they need to create.
Thursday, 2 May 13

41. If content editors are not worrying about
how it looks. They can add better content
more quickly.
Thursday, 2 May 13

42. You keep control of document semantics -
can add Aria Roles, HTML5 elements,
format dates for international audiences.
Thursday, 2 May 13

43. Content is stored based on what it means
rather than how it looks.
Thursday, 2 May 13

44. Structured content can be easily
repurposed - on the site or for email,
RSS, social media, another website.
Thursday, 2 May 13

45. A big textarea to fill in page content is a
terrible user experience.
Content editors are our users too.
Thursday, 2 May 13

46. An example.
a structured content approach to image management
Thursday, 2 May 13

47. greenbelt.org.uk
Thursday, 2 May 13

48. greenbelt.org.uk
Thursday, 2 May 13

49. greenbelt.org.uk
Thursday, 2 May 13

50. Requirements
Make it easy for content editors to explore the archive
and choose images without needing to maintain their own
folder of images.
Thursday, 2 May 13

51. Requirements
When an image is used, if the template changes, we need
to be able to regenerate the image at the new size.
Thursday, 2 May 13

52. Requirements
Provide a browseable library of images on the website,
direct from the archive, that again could be regenerated
if the templates changed
Thursday, 2 May 13

53. Requirements
Leave the door open to provide a range of image assets
for any one use of an image in a template - to enable
retina images or different images for screen widths/
bandwidths.
Thursday, 2 May 13

54. Greenbelt Media Server
Thursday, 2 May 13

55. Greenbelt Media Server
Thursday, 2 May 13

56. greenbelt.org.uk
Thursday, 2 May 13

57. Structured Content
not a silver bullet.
Thursday, 2 May 13

58. strong, emphasis, links, blockquotes,
lists, inline images and files
Thursday, 2 May 13

59. Avoid raw HTML being inserted into your
content at all costs.
Thursday, 2 May 13

60. Your CMS should actively be removing
HTML elements added by content editors
(unless you really love 1997 markup)
Thursday, 2 May 13

61. Markdown
Thursday, 2 May 13

62. markitup,jsalvat.com
Thursday, 2 May 13

63. We are solving the
wrong problems.
Thursday, 2 May 13

64. Our customers ask for
faster horses.
Thursday, 2 May 13

65. Our customers ask for a
better WYSIWYG.
Thursday, 2 May 13

66. Trying to make the CMS behave ‘like
Word’ is solving the wrong problem.
Thursday, 2 May 13

67. Pouring energy into solutions that tie the
content to one design or one output is
solving the wrong problem.
Thursday, 2 May 13

68. Turning a content management system into
a site building tool rather than a content
creation tool is solving the wrong problem
Thursday, 2 May 13

69. Seeing ourselves as the user, or the visitors
to the website as the user and ignoring
content editors means we will continue to
try and solve the wrong problems.
Thursday, 2 May 13

70. The future of CMS?
Thursday, 2 May 13

71. Karen McGrane - http://karenmcgrane.com/2011/12/14/mobile-content-strategy/
“If we’re going to succeed in publishing
content onto a million different new
devices and formats and platforms, we
need interfaces that will help guide content
creators on how to write and structure
their content for reuse.”
Thursday, 2 May 13

72. Use structured content wherever possible
Thursday, 2 May 13

73. Avoid directly inserting HTML into content
Thursday, 2 May 13

74. Treat content editors as your most
important user.
Thursday, 2 May 13

75. Craft better experiences for content editors
within the tools you use
Thursday, 2 May 13

76. If your CMS falls short tell the maker.
Report user experience issues to open
source projects & CMS vendors just as
you would any other bug.
Thursday, 2 May 13

77. Difficult problems
Thursday, 2 May 13

78. Hoe can we create a more elegant layer
on top of structured content?
Thursday, 2 May 13

79. Can we enable offline editing?
Thursday, 2 May 13

80. Multilingual content?
Internationalized sites.
Thursday, 2 May 13

81. Let’s talk about this.
Thursday, 2 May 13

82. Photo credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/7018116723/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jk_too/3300092780/
Thank you
@rachelandrew
http://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/smashing-conf
Thursday, 2 May 13