Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach

For business managers and web practitioners, the success of their most vital web initiatives depends on doing one thing particularly well--managing web content. As web site content grows in volume and importance, its development and maintenance can no longer be performed either informally or by a single group. Instead, content must be systematically developed, deployed, and managed through standard techniques and processes that enable the site to scale.

Written by the leading visionary in the field, Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach presents the principles, practices, and mindset involved in web content management. Learn the core issues of collaborative development, including versioning and managing concurrent changes. See how a solution framework used by many Fortune 1000 companies details a step-by-step process for designing and implementing a content infrastructure, including a workflow architecture and a task-based deployment methodology.

This book prepares you for the issues you are likely to face. It describes key tools, processes, and organizational approaches that support effective web content management and shows how all of these elements can be expertly integrated into a world-class enterprise solution--a web site with plentiful, current, and dynamic content that gets critical information to customers, employees, and suppliers quickly.

You will learn:

• Development principles that allow you to scale web sites to enterprise class
• Proven ways to organize enterprise web sites
• The underpinnings of web site versioning, concurrent changes, and templating
• The work area/staging area paradigm of development
• How to distinguish source files from generated files
• How workflow and approval patterns allow web sites to innovate continuously
• How to handle multiple web initiatives
• How web systems typically integrate with databases, template systems, document management systems, deployment, and backup systems
• Current trends in content management and what these trends imply for the future

Real-world case studies drawn from the author's extensive experience consulting for large companies illustrate the practical use of content management techniques. In particular, new managers will find tremendous value in viewing the practices of other web organizations through these "day-in-the-life-of" examples.

With Web Content Management as your guide, you will be better prepared to elevate your web site--whether it is small, growing, or already large--to an information-rich, enterprise-scale solution.

Table of Contents

Foreword.

Acknowledgments.

I. MOTIVATION FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT.

1. The Internet Changes the Rules of the Game.

2. Overview of Content Management.

3. Principles of Collaborative Web Development.

4. Best Practices for Collaborative Web Development.

5. Templating Empowers Content Contributors.

6. Workflow Speeds Work Cycles.

7. Deploying Content.

8. Multiple Web Initiatives.

9. Using Web Content Management for Globalization.

10. Summary and Conclusions.

Appendix A: A Smart File System.
Appendix B: A Workflow Design for Formal Hand Off Between Groups.

Appendix C: A Workflow Design for Predetermined Time Schedules.

Appendix D: Basic Process Steps of a Best-Practice Content Management Process.

Resources.