Archive for the 'Content Management' Category
August 16, 2006
Get Your IT Administrator Out of My Webmaster
I’ve seen several position descriptions lately that meld both IT/Network Administrator and Webmaster* responsibilities into one impossible job. I just saw one come across a list I belong to that included:
- authoring, posting and managing web content
- upgrading web site software
- managing an in-house CRM database
- providing desktop support for staff
- managing network backups
- bringing peace to the Middle East
OK, I made up that last one but the whole thing is still completely unrealistic even without peacemaking. If they find someone willing to take this job, I guarantee that none of those tasks will be done well. Or only one or two will and the others will fall by the wayside completely.
While Nick Carr may be the crankiest guy on the web these days, I do agree that many day-to-day IT functions are commodities and can be effectively outsourced. In this situation, I’d recommend they focus the position on the most valuable activities for the organization and farm out the rest to support companies who specialize in those tasks. Even having CRM and web content in the same position would likely be too much and require very different competencies.
* (Webmaster is an outdated title and concept for web positions these days, but that’s another post.)
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August 14, 2006
Blogs for Project Management in PM Network
I was interviewed a while back for an article in PM Network magazine about using blogs and wikis for project management. The article is out in the August issue and you can read a PDF version of it on their web site. The magazine goes out to the Project Management Institute’s 200,000 members located in 125 countries around the world.
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July 2, 2006
WikiMatrix
Here is a nice tool for comparing various wikis, both open source and commercial/hosted: WikiMatrix.
I’ve been hearing lots of interest in wikis lately in conversations with clients and at events. If you are interested too, check out WikiMatrix.
(Via Nancy White.)
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June 7, 2006
The One and Only Purpose for an Intranet
The sole purpose for an intranet is to facilitate the work of staff in pursuit of the organization’s objectives. Nothing more, nothing less.
A good metric for this is that one of the first things that staff do when starting a project is to voluntarily create a space for it on your intranet. If the intranet is considered a prerequisite for success by staff, then you have succeeded!
I was prompted to post this after reading Nick Besseling’s rant on how stickiness is not a good goal for an intranet (I agree).
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June 5, 2006
Customizing for New Members
Michelle Frisque is thinking and writing about how to reinvent the American Library Association as part of a pilot course about inventing Library 2.0. Every association should be so lucky as to have members like Michelle, Michael, Jenny and others who are dedicated to their profession and will blog about how the association could best serve them and their peers.
Michelle also mentioned one of my articles in another post, which made my day!
Michelle recently wrote about how the ALA web site could do a better job of serving new members:
ALA is a huge organization. I remember when I first joined I found it very confusing. How do you get involved? What is ALA doing that affects me? What will my membership in ALA do for me? How do I network? None of this is easy to find on the Web site.
Something I got from Michelle’s post is the idea of customizing your association home page for new members. Help them discover the organization by highlighting information, services and opportunities on the home page when that new member is logged in. Change it every week or every day! You can phase out the special content over time or allow the member to turn it off when they no longer need it. It should be fairly evergreen content, which is great because it is relatively easy to manage once it is developed.
A few other ideas: Provide the same content in an RSS feed! Create a serial e-mail autoresponder for new members that gives them a new tip about the association every day for two week after they join! You get the idea.
(A serial e-mail autoresponder is an e-mail announcement list where all the messages are written and queued up so that a new subscriber gets each message in order at a specified interval. These have been around a long time but I’ve never heard of an association using them, oddly enough. Seems like a natural for a lot of association promotions and content.)
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May 18, 2006
AMS-CMS Integration Audio Download
You may recall that I did an audio conference a couple weeks ago with Wes Trochlil on the potential and pitfalls of integration association and content management systems. The session was very well received by our attendees at the live event.
I am pleased to now make the program available as a download: Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems Audio Product. For $99 you will receive an MP3 file of the audio and a PDF of the slides. A sample of the audio is available in this post.
And here is a special one week offer to my blog readers: use this code when you buy the product and get 40% off! This code will be good until one week from today (May 24, 2006). Enter this code in the shopping cart to receive your discount: V823R4E1 Please feel free to share the code with anyone you think might benefit from this unique program.
Learn more about the audio program.
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May 8, 2006
One CMS to Rule Them All?
A couple of good posts this month on whether a single CMS can be used to manage both your public and intranet web sites. Short answer: usually, no. For more detail follow the links.
I agree with those authors that more often than not, a single CMS will not be appropriate for your public site and your intranet site. The requirements for each are going to be pretty different once you get past basic authoring and content management features. Even for associations, whose public web sites could be considered more intranet-like than the usual corporate web site, are going to be hard pressed to find a single tool that effectively supports both.
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May 7, 2006
Dabble DB Demo Blows Away Meeting Industry Functionality
This seven minute demo of the Dabble DB web application should put the fear into conference web site providers. In a mere seven minutes, they take a comma-delimited file of session information and create a highly usable web interface for searching, displaying and modifying the data. Seven minutes! And to make it worse (or better, depending upon your point of view), the Dabble DB is for working with any data, not specifically meetings.
Usability failure is eventually going to be the death of many companies serving the association space. The barriers to entering the web application market are so low that the current players’ interfaces aren’t going to cut it for much longer.
(Via Paul Bissex.)
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February 7, 2006
Derek Powazek on Home Page Goals
Derek Powazek defines a set of 4 goals for any home page:
- Answer the question, “What is this place?”
- Don’t get in the repeat visitor’s way
- Show what’s new
- Provide consistent, reliable global navigation
Good stuff. Read the whole thing.
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January 17, 2006
Drupal Driven Web Sites
Gunnar Langemark has been highlighting numerous web sites that are published using Drupal, an open source content management system and community platform. If you are researching Drupal, you should review the sites that Gunnar has highlighted. Really impressive stuff.
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