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“When I grow up, I want to be an information architect.” Bet you wouldn’t have heard a kid say that 15 or even 10 years ago.

I remember the first time I heard the term. Actually, I think my boss at the time (now a well known content management guru) made it up. When describing my role on multimedia projects, he said, it’s kind of like being an architect, but not for buildings, for information. “Ah,” I said, “an information architect.” That’s what I want to be.

This was back in about 1995. Little did I know that the term was already spreading as fast as the Internet, and the field of information architecture was born.

A recent discussion on among CM Professionals brought up an interesting question—namely, what is the relationship between information architecture (IA) and content management? And, beyond that, what about the emerging discipline known as user experience (UX)?

• User Experience (previously known as User Interface Design) is the creation of the architecture and interaction models which impact a user's perception of a digital device or system. In content management, you want to keep the desired user experience strongly in mind when designing both your authoring interfaces and your end publications (Web sites or other types.) So, UX plays a very important role in content management.
• Information Architecture is the practice of expressing an information model, or concept for information. In content management, the task of analyzing the content, breaking it down into the appropriate chunks, defining of structure for how it will be stored, accessed, and presented is all information architecture. Again, IA is a critical aspect of content management.

I’m a big advocate of user-centered design, so, for me, the user experience helps shape many aspects of a content management solution, ranging from which system to choose (one that’s intuitive for authors, developers, and end customers), to the information architecture (how your audiences want consume your information...in small chunks, as full documents that they can print, as videos?)

One thing to remember, though: While UX and IA are important aspects of content management, there’s a lot more to it. Content management has equal parts of process and structure. UX and IA focus more about how to structure content, which is good. Add a few doses of workflow planning, like roles, tasks, and permissions, plus business rules to the mix and you have a decent recipe for content management.

Rita Warren of ZiaContent, Inc. is a veteran of the software and digital media industries with more than 10 years experience helping companies deliver content in compelling and sensible ways. Well known in her field, Rita served as technical editor of the first edition of Bob Boiko's acclaimed book, the Content Management Bible. She is a frequent speaker at national conferences and contributor to content management industry publications.

Posted by Rita Warren at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web 2.0 is all the rage these days. In the last blog entry we went back to the source (O'Reilly, what is Web 2.0?) to define what it really means. In his explanation, Tim O'Reilly provided some specific examples of concepts and technologies from the "old" Web and how they've been reincarnated as the "new" Web:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

Some of O'Reilly's comparisons are a bit of a stretch, but if you look closely, you have to agree that a lot of Web 2.0 is just applying fancy new names to established technologies.

• RSS is Really Simple Syndication. "Syndication" of content on the Web has been around since XML was created.
• Wikis are based on server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web content using an entry form in a browser. The concept of a user-generated knowledge bases like this is not new.
• Blogs are similar to Wikis, in that they are just another way of using browser-based authoring tools to post your thoughts, opinions, or activities. The technology behind blogs is basic CMS functionality that originated back in the mid '90s.
• Mash-ups are akin to a longtime practice called screen scraping-"borrowing" content from other sites (for example maps, or news, or data) and combining it with your own content to create a unique Web experience.

The point is that rather than getting caught up in the new terminology, to effectively incorporate these ideas, look at what they really are and what benefits they offer—like better ways to connect with customers, faster development cycles, and getting your message out to the world as efficiently as possible.

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The term “Web 2.0” annoys me. And I’m not the only one who feels that way. Nonetheless, having a term to describe the fact that the Web is evolving is a useful. I’m getting used to it, and it’s definitely influencing my thinking about content management.

So, here’s why Web 2.0 bugs me. It implies that there was some defining moment that marked the shift from the original Web to the next Web. It did help to read the O’Reilly article that explains What Is Web 2.0? (Tim O’Reilly originally coined the term.) In this article, he cites the dot-com crash as that defining moment. Everything before the bubble burst was 1.0, everything after is 2.0. Ok. I’ll can sort of buy into that.

Realistically, though, the shift in the Web was not a point in time. It was a blur—as is every natural evolution.

In my opinion, Web 2.0 is an evolution of:

• Information conceived as pages – to – Information as components to mix and match
• The Web being shaped by large organizations – to – The Web being shaped by its users
• Relying on structure to find content to – to – The content being inherently findable
• Customers at the mercy of vendors – to – Vendors having to listen to customers
• A one-way conversation – to – a two- or three, or four-way conversation

Overall, this evolution is very positive. It empowers us as users, it increases knowledge sharing, and it’s scary, too. Too much central control can be bad. Not enough control can also be bad. It’s known as chaos. I predict that this Web 2.0 evolution will follow what I call the “Big Bang Theory of Business”—which is another topic that I’ll write about in the coming weeks—basically a pattern of expanding and collapsing as a way to find the optimal state of being.

In the meantime, even if you also think Web 2.0 is an unfortunate name, I encourage you to take the time to read more about it from O’Reilly and elsewhere. If nothing else, it’ll upgrade the way your think about the Web.

Here are just a few resources and other (similar) opinions on the subject:
- http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html"

- http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html

- http://www.andybudd.com/dcontruct05/

- http://blog.del.icio.us/blog/2005/11/there_has_been_.html

Rita Warren of ZiaContent, Inc. is a veteran of the software and digital media industries with more than 10 years experience helping companies deliver content in compelling and sensible ways. Well known in her field, Rita served as technical editor of the first edition of Bob Boiko's acclaimed book, the Content Management Bible. She is a frequent speaker at national conferences and contributor to content management industry publications.

Posted by Rita Warren at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Does the person who has the biggest influence over choosing your CMS know HTML? Has he or she ever written code? Do they know what XML is? If so, then perhaps that person should not be the one taking the lead in making the decision.

Contrary to how most technology decisions are made, when it comes to a CMS, the users of the system ought to have a big say in what tool will work for them. Sure, features for system administrators and developers are important, but, not necessarily more important than usability.

One promise of CMS technology is enabling distributed authoring. In other words, you eliminate the IT bottleneck and let the people responsible for the content directly update and publish it. There’s huge benefit in taking the tech team out of the loop. The pitfall, of course, is partially losing control over what’s on the site to people who may or may not submit “good” content. This is why a CMS with a strong user interface and behind the scenes control is key.

Some thoughts on authoring and editing interfaces:

• So easy a 5th grader can do it? A good system provides an easy-to-use authoring and editing interface for non-technical users. Someone who knows how to do the basics in word processing software should be able to figure out how to edit content in the CMS without a week long training session.
• Is what you see really what you get? WYSIWYG editing is another common feature. In theory, this is the best kind of editing tool because most of us prefer to see what our content changes will do to the page as we make them. But, sometimes these types of editors add extra code to pages that cause errors, making the experience more frustrating than compelling.
• How does Times New Roman 14 pt. in lavender sound? Some CMS editing tools reinforce the rules of good design by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Others do not. It’s great to let the users get in there and do the work themselves, but sometimes unleashed creativity needs to be tamed.

So, if you’re the one who’s leading the evaluation of a CMS, but you don’t represent the average user, what do you do? Fortunately, there’s a great solution. Many CMS tools provide evaluation versions of their software.

Try before you buy is now a viable option and highly recommended. It may take you a bit of time to set up and configure the trial software, but it gives you an opportunity to have various users take it for a spin while you watch for their reactions. It’s a great way to find out if the tool lives up to its promises…or if using it turns out to be “the pits”!

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)