Chapter 1

Introduction to Content Management

WDMM 2307 - Content Management Systems

Dr. Tamer Madi

 Learning Objectives

• To introduce the term of content management and other related terms.

• To describe the key types of the content management systems.

• To discuss why we need content management.

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 Content Management

• We tend to look at content management as a digital concept, but it’s been

around for as long as content.

• For as long as humans have been creating content, we’ve been searching for
solutions to manage it.

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Content Management

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 Content Management

The Library of Alexandria Industrial Revolution www

• An early attempt at • The accumulation of • The content management

managing content. information increased shifted into fast-forward.
exponentially.
• Librarians were the first • Almost anyone could create
• The problem of managing it a web page about anything.
content managers.
became more critical.

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 Content Management

• Each HTML file was a mass markup.

• There was no way to separate what was content from what was presentation.

• Each redesign of the site involved manually reworking these files.

• Finally, at some crude level, the content was managed.

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 What is Content?
• Many people have tried to draw a distinction between the fuzzy concepts of “data,”
“information,” “content,” and even “knowledge.”

• We’re not going to go that far, we will differentiate between content and row data.
There are two key differences:
▪ Content is created differently
▪ Content is used differently

• This is because content is:

▪ created by humans via editorial process.
▪ intended for human consumption via publication to an audience.

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 Created by Humans via Editorial Process

• Content is created through “editorial process.”

• This process is what humans do to prepare information for publication to an

audience.

• It involves: modeling, authoring, editing, reviewing, approving, versioning,

comparing, and controlling.

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 Created by Humans via Editorial Process

creation of a news article

Team 1 Team 2
is highly subjective

• Two editorial teams, given the same information, might develop two completely
different news articles due to the human factors.

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 Created by Humans via Editorial Process

• The creation of content pivots largely on the opinions of human editors:

▪ What should the subject of the content be?
▪ Who is the intended audience of the content?
▪ From what angle should the subject be approached?
▪ How long should the content be?
▪ Does it need to be supported by media?

• Content is subjective and open for evaluation and interpretation.

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 Created by Humans via Editorial Process
• The editorial process is iterative—content is rarely created once. Rather, content is
roughed in and refined over and over, often even after being published.

• Content can change with the passage of time and the evolution of circumstance.
What was relevant at one point might need to change later.

• Compare this process to the creation of the record of a retail sale. There is no
editorial process involved. The data created is not subjective, it is deterministic. The
transaction happened in an instant, a historical record was created, and that’s that.

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Intended for Human Consumption via Publication to an Audience

• Content is data we create for a specific purpose: to distribute it with the intention of
being consumed by other humans.

• For example: a news article is created as a forward-looking item to be published in the

future and consumed by humans, through whatever channel.

• The content of the article might be repurposed, abbreviated, rearranged, and

reformatted, but the ultimate goal for it is to be consumed and evaluated by another
human being.

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Intended for Human Consumption via Publication to an Audience

• Our content has value in the future. It might be consumed for years, and can
continue providing value to the organization.

• Every time our article is read, there is a benefit attributed to the content creator.

• Content is an investment in the future, not a record of the past.

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 A Definition of Content

Content is information produced through editorial process and ultimately

intended for human consumption via publication.

• This definition points to a core two concepts of content management: (1)

management and (2) delivery.

• Content is created and managed, then it is published and delivered.

• The two disciplines require different skills and mindsets.

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 What is a Content Management System?
A CMS is a software package that provides some level of automation for the
tasks required to effectively manage content.

• A CMS is usually server-based, multiuser software that interacts with content

stored in a repository.

• The repository might be located on the same server or in a separate storage.

• A CMS allows editors to create new content, edit existing content, perform
editorial processes on content, and ultimately make that content available to other
people to consume it.
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What is a Content Management System?

software package manage content multi-users(editors)

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 Types of Content Management Systems

Enterprise
Web content Digital asset
content
management management
management
(WCM) (DAM)
(ECM)

• The management of content • The management of general • The management of rich digital
primarily intended for mass business content. assets such as images, audio, and
delivery via a website. video for usage in other media.
• ECM excels in collaboration, access
• WCM excels at separating content control, and file management. • DAM excels at metadata and
from presentation and publishing renditioning.
to multiple channels.

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 Types of Content Management Systems

Component
Learning
Records content
management
management management
systems
(RM) systems
(LMSs)
(CCMSs)

• The management of transactional • Used for management of • Used for management of learning
information and other records extremely fine-grained content resources and student interaction.
that are created from of business (paragraphs, sentences, and even
• Most colleges and universities
operations (e.g., sales records, individual words), often to
manage syllabi and the learning
access records, contracts, etc.). assemble documentation or highly
process via an LMS.
technical content.
• RM excels at retention and access
control.
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 Types of Content Management Systems
• In the end, a given software system is mentally classified among the public
based on several factors:
▪ The market in which it promotes itself and competes.

▪ The use cases and examples that the user community creates and promotes.

▪ The specific features designed to meet the needs of a particular user or type of content.

• For the purposes of this course, we will concentrate on mainstream WCM—

that software designed to manage a website intended for public delivery and
consumption.
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 What a CMS Does?
• Control Content

• Allow Content Reuse

• Allow Content Automation and Aggregation

• Increase Editorial Efficiency

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 What a CMS Does?
• Control Content
▪ A CMS keeps track of content. It “knows” where our content is, what condition it’s in, who
can access it, and how it relates to other content.

▪ Specifically, a CMS provides core control functions, such as:

Permissions State management Versioning Dependency Search and

& workflow management organization

▪ Each of these items increases our level of control over our content and reduces risk.

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 What a CMS Does?
• Allow Content Reuse
▪ Using content in more than one place and in more than one way increases its value.

▪ For example, a news article appears on its own page, but also as a teaser on a category
page and in multiple “Related Article” sidebars.

▪ In this situation, this information is not created every time in every location, but simply
retrieved and displayed from a common location.

▪ The ability to reuse content is highly dependent on the structure of that content which in
turn is highly dependent on the features your CMS provides for you.

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 What a CMS Does?
• Allow Content Automation and Aggregation
▪ There is one system (CMS) that “knows” all about our content.

▪ If our content is structured correctly, we can manipulate it to display in different

formats, publish it to different locations, and rearrange it on the fly to serve the needs of
our visitors more effectively.

▪ CMS becomes the single source of information about our content which enable us to
structure, store, examine, and provide query facilities around our content.

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 What a CMS Does?
• Increase Editorial Efficiency
▪ The ability of editors to create and edit content quickly and accurately is affected by the
platform used.

▪ Editor efficiency is increased by a system that controls what type of content editors can
and can’t add, what formatting tools are available to them.

▪ A good CMS enables editors to publish more content in a shorter time frame and
to control and manage the published content with a lower amount of friction or drag on
their process.

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 What a CMS Doesn’t Do?
• Create Content

• Create Marketing Plans

• Effectively Format Content

• Provide Governance

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 What a CMS Doesn’t Do?
• Create Content
▪ A CMS simply manages content, it doesn’t create content.

▪ It doesn’t write your news articles, procedure documents, or blog posts.

▪ You must still provide the editorial team to generate the content that it’s supposed to
be managing.

▪ Related to this, a CMS won’t ensure that your content is any good, either.

You need to ensure that your content creation process exists apart from your CMS.

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 What a CMS Doesn’t Do?
• Create Marketing Plans
▪ Even assuming your content is created consistently and managed well, that doesn’t mean
it actually provides your organization with any value.

▪ A CMS doesn’t “know” anything about marketing.

▪ Effective marketing is a uniquely human practice.

▪ A CMS can make executing your marketing plans easier and more efficient, but those
plans still need to be controlled by human.

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 What a CMS Doesn’t Do?
• Provide Governance
▪ “Governance” describes the access to and processes around your content: who has
access to what, and what processes/steps they follow to make changes to it.

▪ For example, if Jennifer wants an account on the CMS to start creating content, how does
she get that? Who decides who is allowed to become an editor?

▪ Governance is primarily a human discipline.

▪ The plans have to be created through human interaction and judgment, then
converted into the permissions and access limits the CMS can enforce.

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Thank You
The main source of the slides’ content is
the book of Deane Barker: Web Content
Management (2016)