Planning your Content Management System

Before we begin, perhaps a brief description of what a Content Management System (CMS) is or does would be appropriate. A Content Management System is a system used to organize and facilitate digital content. Originally as simple as a rolodex or encyclopedia, today’s content management systems are elaborate software/database applications designed to store and process large amounts of complex information.

A CMS is usually comprised of a database, the data or images that make up that database, and a web based front end or application for managing the content. The result is a web site that uses the content to dynamically create web pages in a web site.

There are many CMS applications available for web site applications today. In fact, WordPress is a form of CMS in that it stores the content for the blog and displays it in a dynamic manner. I myself am currently involved in a project to build a CMS for a medical tourism company, and it is no small challenge.

My experiences over the last few months have taught me a lot about certain elements of a CMS that I didn’t realize were so important to the larger picture. For example, it has been made clear to our development team that the Sales people refuse to learn or use the CMS to create content to resell on the site. So we have had to revise an internal process that lets our sales people create content in their favorite application and pass this onto a CMS Team to add the content into the site and keep it updated. The result was additional resource and additional cost to run the system.

This is just one instance of the many challenges we have faced. But I found this little gem in my search for some assistance on CMS planning and implementation. This article, Better Content Management through Information Architecture by Massod Nasser, helps to define the elements critical to deploying a CMS. While some of these issues may not be as critical for a one-man shop, the strategies and planning methods outlined are worthy of consideration for anyone contemplating, or currently deploying a Content Management System.

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