Archive for the 'Content Management' Category
September 6, 2007
WYSIWYG Web Editors
All modern content management systems provide a Word-style editor that lets non-technical staff edit and add content to web sites. It is a key part of enabling line staff around the organization to produce and manage their own content.
What you may not have realized is that you have several options avaiable for adding WYSIWYG editors (what you see is what you get) to your own web applications. Sometimes they are as easy to install as adding a few lines of code to a web page.
Here are a few free and commercial solutions for providing an easy to use text editor in your own web applications:
Tiny MCE
This editor works across numerous platforms and is available under an open source license. It is written in javascript and is used widely in many applications. It has many configuration options available and can be tweaked to support a defined set of styles.
Ektron eWebEditPro
A widely used commercial editor from Ektron. It is also highly configurable and allows you tie down functionality to just what you want editors to have access too. It is not cross platform and only works on Windows-based browsers. (Their suggestion for Mac clients is a bit of a joke.)
openWYSIWYG
Another open source content editor written in Javascript.
FCKeditor
And one more open source, Javascript-based, editor.
Given all the options available, it is unreasonable not to provide a rich editor for your applications that should support user formatting of content.
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August 28, 2007
Vista/IE7 Support Lagging in Content Management Systems
The good folks over at CMSWatch report that many content management systems still do not fully support authoring on Vista/IE7.
As they point out in the post, this will be a growing problem for telecommuters as new PCs with Vista are purchased. Most corporations are sticking with XP for now (with good reason) but the home market is another story.
If your staff work on web content from home, you should do some testing with your system on Vista so that you can anticipate any problems and lean on your vendor to get a fix into place if needed.
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August 27, 2007
Web Analytics Definitions or A Page View by Any Other Name Is Not Allowed!
The Web Analytics Associations has released an expanded set of 26 standard definitions for measuring web traffic and usage (PDF). This is a useful document for providing consensus definitions of common terms used in the web industry.
However, I find it rather ironic that they released this document only as a PDF. Come on folks! You should know better, being an association of web professionals.
(Via Shawn Zehnder Lea.)
Update: What would I recommend in addition to a PDF? A sub-site on the WAA site for the definitions, providing an index and a separate web page for each definition. Having a page for each definition would allow people to link to them directly as references. This would improve the usability of the content and enhance search engine results for those definitions (ahem).
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July 18, 2007
Integrating Third Party Web Sites: Don’t Forget the Template!
A common issue I come across in my work is the effective integration of third party services with the overall web presenece for an organization. And I don’t just mean the login system, although that’s been a hobby horse of mine for some time.
I mean that the visual and navigation experience of moving from the main site to a hosted service is often jarring and off putting. If your audience includes folks who are still a bit skittish online, you’ll lose them if they are not positive that the hosted site is actually yours. We can thank the phishing scammers for that.
What is a third party site? It is one that an organization has contracted with to provide a specific service, content or features that they either cannot or do not wish to develop on their main site. Job boards, search engines, discussion forums, social networking tools and blogs are all examples of these kinds of services.
The solution is to make the ability to use your overall look and feel, including navigation system, on the hosted site as a primary selection criteria. Many managers don’t explore this fully and end up with a service that has their logo on it but otherwise bears no resemblance to the main site. Exploring this fully during selection and contract negotiations will prevent a lot of user pain down the road.
And to you service providers out there, making it insanely easy to support an organization’s overall look and feel would be a good way to stand out from your competitors.
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June 20, 2007
Microsoft’s Hammer
Is it just me or has Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) mania taken over the IT world?
I have heard lots of buzz about this package, especially in the association industry, but I’ve yet to see the overwhelming value in MOSS’s interfaces and services over previous versions of SharePoint. MOSS is nice for collaboratively managing documents and searching but beyond that basic project work I think its interface gets in the way. It is a horrible community platform compared to many of the open source and low-cost solutions already available.
Not to mention the organizations that are diving in head first and planning on using MOSS (with MS CMS rolled in) as the total solution for their intranet and public web sites. There is a good reason that different classes of solutions have evolved for public and intranet sites: they have vastly differing requirements for most organizations.
My advice is to bide your time and carefully consider which nails you ultimately decide to whack with the MOSS hammer.
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June 5, 2007
Association Management Meets Content Management
I’m facilitating a panel today at the Gilbane DC conference today that discuss the intersection of association and web content management.
Here is the handout for the session that I am posting for attendees to find as well as readers of the blog. It provides a brief overview of the cases we will discuss today.
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May 24, 2007
A Couple Conference Opportunities for June
There are two conferences I’ll be attending in DC in June that I wanted to let you know about. They happen to overlap but are in the same building, so you could hit them both if you wanted.
First, Jeff De Cagna is spearheading a social media unconference for association executives on June 5, 2007 at ASAE & the Center’s meeting space in the Reagan Building. The event is free and will be driven by the attendees. Simply add your name to the registration list on the web site if you wish to attend. I’m very excited this event is happening and I encourage you to attend if you are passionate about social media and/or want to learn more about it.
The second event is the Gilbane Washington DC conference on June 5-6, 2007, also at the Reagan Building. This conference focuses on content management technologies for government and non-profit organizations. Content is tracked, so there should be something for everyone. I will be facilitating a panel on integrating association and content management systems and processes. This event is not free but you can get a $100 discount by entering my last name as a promotional code when you register.
I hope to see you at one or both events!
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May 22, 2007
On Launching and Marketing a Redesigned Web Site
There was an interesting thread last week on a list I subscribe to about how to best launch a major web site redesign. I ended up writing a white paper in response on how to best prepare for a web site launch from a technical standpoint: Five Critical Steps for a Successful Web Site Launch.
There was also a discussion of whether you should market the new site in advance or launch it quietly without fanfare. In my view, the decision should be driven by your overall goals and confidence in your timelines.
If the new site is the embodiment of a major initiative, making a splash with the launch may be in order. However, if you are not highly confident in your ability to stay on schedule, the soft launch will ameliorate a lot of potential risk.
Finally, when you do market the new site, focus on the new value it provides to visitors rather than the fact it is new. This sounds obvious but it is easy to lose sight of after the organization has invested so many resources in the effort.
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May 14, 2007
Big Book Stores and Amazon
So, when you compare Amazon to Barnes and Noble or Borders (just on book selling), how are they fundamentally different?
All three sell online and, while Amazon is still the best, the other two have reasonably easy interfaces for selling books. What is left? Physical stores. B&N and Borders have the liability and asset of a physical retail presence in many communities across the country. However, they fail horribly to the leverage the two together to improve overall sales.
If you are looking for a physical retail store, it is likely because you want to buy a book right away. If you are willing to wait a few days, you can just order online. But if you want it right now, say before you catch a flight that afternoon, you want to know if the store near you is carrying the title before making the trek out there. Making retail inventory available for search by store seems like a no-brainer. It relieves floor staff from having to answer as many phone calls and enables customers to find out if they can buy more immediately.
However, Borders buries this feature several levels down in their site and B&N doesn’t even offer it. What a wasted opportunity.
The ideal interface, I think, would be to set a cookie for the user’s zip code at some point and then offer local retail inventory results along with online inventory.
Gee, that sounds simple. Why don’t they do it? My guess would be that their performance measures don’t reward cross-selling between physical and online operations.
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May 11, 2007
Pre-requisites for a Successful Small Business Web Site
There are 6 pre-requisites for a successful small business web site. The are:
- Have one!
- It lists location, hours and contact information prominently on the home page.
- Services and/or products are clearly identified in general on the home page and in detail on dedicated pages.
- They qualify that they are the best source for whatever the business provides.
- The design looks reputable.
- They have updated their listings in the local search engines for Google and Yahoo!.
Hitting each of the above won’t guarantee success but it will prevent fundamental flaws from preventing the best possible outcomes for a business with their web site.
The above is based on part of my presentation to the American Association of Endodontists a couple weeks ago.
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