What Does "Content Management" Mean to You?
April 01, 2004 | 
16 Comments
I’ve been interviewing candidates for a project management / content management position for the last week or so. As always the interview process, from either end, can be very interesting.
One of the questions I’ve been asking our candidates is, “what does the term ‘content management’ mean to you?” The answers can be very telling and they generated some great discussion.
So I want to know what you think.
What does the term “content management” mean to you?
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. Andrew said:
I’m mostly serious when I say it means “spending too much money and time to get almost no gains.”
Ideally, what content management means to me is: reducing the number of redundant sources for content, reusing what you have in smart ways, and minimizing the grunt work of marking up similar things day after day.
I think in 90% of the cases I’ve seen, “content management” just means “use page templates.”
Posted on April 1, 2004 07:41 AM | #
2. Jeremy Flint said:
The term “content management” to me invokes the idea that someone is responsible for adding new content to a site, and making sure the old content is archived appropriately.
However, in most cases, the software can handle the archiving automatically if it is set up to do so, and the new content is usually just copying a press release from Word to a textarea on a page and hitting “submit”.
So is there really a need for someone that does ONLY content manangement? In rare cases, yes. Most often, no (in my opinion).
Other than press releases (latest news, upcoming events, etc.), what other content is going to change on a regular basis? At least 75% of most sites have content that never changes.
Posted on April 1, 2004 08:02 AM | #
3. Joe Grossberg said:
My baseline definition:
Or, more cynically:
Posted on April 1, 2004 08:41 AM | #
4. Gabe said:
At my job we have a 400+ page site that I maintain and expand with the help of one part-time assistant. A started from scratch in 2000, so it was very easy to manage back then. As it got bigger I was spending more and more time on maintenance. I started to notice a lot of monkey work that seemed like it could be automated. The problem was that every page was unique.
Most large websites either pull content externally (portals) or they have many documents of the same type (press rooms, on-line documentation, blogs, etc). Content Management Systems tend to address those two scenarios reasonably well, but not sites that have frequently changing designs and layouts. You pay a setup cost up front to get everything working, but then it’s easy for all staff to update documents with a standardized form and navigation convention.
Our site is comprised of all kinds of content, ranging from advertising-like event promotion sites to building services to course registration. None of these invidual pieces are massive enough to leverage the benefits of a traditional CMS. We need the freedom to change any element of any page at any time. In this kind of environment, the traditional Apache publishing method of uploading files to a Unix box is about as optimal as it gets.
Yet there was still gruntwork and lots of it; mostly centered around repeated page elements throughout the site. This spawned the idea for my own ‘content management system’ which doesn’t rely on any browser-side tools (although it has them). Instead it is a simple way for a webmaster to cascade templates and page elements throughout his site, removing redundancy, all without changing the workflow. The approach is not to make it easier for non-web people to publish, but to make the web people themselves more efficient. The result is a system that has huge tangible time-savings without impinging on design freedom or imposing the overhead of a new system on people who already are adept at working in the Apache environment.
Once I finish the documentation and some good examples I will be releasing it (probably under the GPL). I have written a bit more about Templation on my website. Sorry for the poor organization and navigation, I’m also working on getting that cleaned up.
Posted on April 1, 2004 09:13 AM | #
5. Krista Stevens said:
Interesting… Jeffrey Veen offers his take on this subject in his article published today at Adaptive Path.
Posted on April 1, 2004 09:14 AM | #
6. waylman said:
Well, so far all I see is descriptions of “Content Management Systems” (CMS; ie.: movabletype, wordpress, etc.), but if I understand you correctly, you’re looking to fill a “Content Management” position. That means a person who manages content. As this position also involves project managment I would see the individual who holds this position determining the scheme (directory structure, file naming convection, etc) and making sure it is implemented correctly. He/she could possably determine how the content is stored (database, textfiles, etc.). Even for a static site, this person would be the one to arrange the files and/or data for the site. For a frequently updated site, he/she may build the CMS. I would say that Gabe (above) fits the bill in his current job.
I could, however, be completely off base. I don’t know that I ever gave it much thought.
Posted on April 1, 2004 10:14 AM | #
7. Scrivs said:
The key is understanding that Content Managment is totally different than a system that manages content.
I think content managment involves the ability of making content relevant to the audience. People who run successful blogs are great content managers. Keith, that would make you a great content manager.
Do I get the job now?
Posted on April 1, 2004 10:20 AM | #
8. Keith said:
Krista – I “quick” linked to that article today. It’s a good one. I actually posted something very similar back in November.
That’s why Veen is my new hero. He thinks like me – only he’s smarter!
For those of you who follow those links, don’t let that color your answer to my question.
Posted on April 1, 2004 10:25 AM | #
9. supercrisis said:
The system by which content is appended to a website. Depending on the architecture, this could be entirely new threads (like a forum) or just news posts (a blog). If a new section is needed, this will often not fall under the task performed by a properly written CMS, as this changes the information architecture, which the CMS is in-place to maintain.
Posted on April 1, 2004 10:57 AM | #
10. Joseph Lindsay said:
Content Management is a process, not a piece of software. People are critical to effective content management. While it is hugely important to ensure that you have the correct content management tools (i.e. software) that fits your needs, the primary need is to develop effective business processes for the management of content. Good software will adapt to your business, or allow your business to adapt its processes to gain the benefits that it can make.
Posted on April 1, 2004 12:15 PM | #
11. Horacio Salazar said:
Content management as a definition is simple; it’s the management of content. The issue lies on how you define management and most of all how you define content.
The most useful definition I’ve found is the one based on a scale of sense/value:
bit - the lowest end. Senseless. Example: 0.
data - the next level. Some sense, a value plus a reference. Example: 3 dollars.
information - a web of meaning. More sense: a value, a reference, a context. Price of a particular book: 6.95 dollars.
content - targeted information. Information with a purpose, useful for somebody in a context. If I want to buy a book, showing me similar books: that’s content, relevant to what I’m doing.
This categorization is what makes us talk not about information architecture, but about content architecture. That is, the idea is that a site should have information, but be designed in such a way as to offer the users content: information targeted to suit their needs. Content management is the task of handling smartly the assignment, prioritization, organization and disposal of content.
Just my 2 cents.
Posted on April 1, 2004 12:55 PM | #
12. Jonathan Dietrich said:
a librarian.
takes content, classifies it, organizes it, retrieves it, knows the best place to look for it, takes care of it when it is damaged, ensures that people can only see what they are allowed, audits when it is moved, helps you find it when you don’t know exactly what it is, value it and treat it like it is something magical.
a content manager.
Posted on April 1, 2004 01:34 PM | #
13. Jeremy Flint said:
Maybe this could turn into one of those Signal vs. Noise description things.
Describe Content Management in 10 words or less to someone who has no idea what it is.
Posted on April 1, 2004 01:59 PM | #
14. owen said:
the librarian hat that Jonathan mentioned seems to fit the bill nicely. Though I was thinking along the lines of updating website, reading log files and maintaining categories
Posted on April 1, 2004 02:51 PM | #
15. Matt M. said:
Content Management is the process by which an organization’s content is processed into a form suitable for visitors to consume. At one organization I worked at they produced an online magazine of sorts with very high production values. This site had some elaborate content production processes. At another organization the content was basically a knowledge base application for the corporate support folks to use. A different process as the content tended to come from the other side of the website.
A content manager understands the story that the organization wants delivered, as well as what the visitor wants from the site. These two goals can contrast quite a bit and the content manager has to balance those needs. These needs are articulated in an editorial vision for the web site by the content manager.
The content manager creates a process for the content creators to follow. At the online magazine site we had designers, writers and videographers assigned to each story and we had a CMS in place to manage their assets (PSD/HTML mockups, copy, raw and encoded video) and publish them to the right place at the right time. The content manager built and supported the web based tool chain for tracking those assets and having them published to the site. The content manager also looked at visitor stats like dwell time on a page, paths through the site and favorite stories to see what served the company and visitor needs best.
At the knowledge base site the content manager role was more of the librarian. Create indexes and catalogs. Clean up the aggregated and visitor supplied content. Analyze the way support people used the site to make sure the click path to the answer was as short as possible.
The mechanics can differ from site to site, but ultimately content management is about determining what the story is for the organization and the visitors. Then putting the processes and tools in place to make that happen.
Posted on April 3, 2004 12:10 AM | #
16. dasari said:
If the system is open source what about the maintenance of website ?
Posted on April 26, 2004 03:49 AM | #
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