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The Web CMS Report 2009 looks at... Template Development

"Some CMS packages employ their own set of proprietary tags...to extend HTML and give page designers direct access to some of the dynamic features within the system. This is a blessing and a curse:..."

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Glossary

Apache

A popular Web server that is freely available under an open-source license. The current version runs on most UNIX-based operating systems, UNIX/POSIX-derived, and on Windows 2000. It is estimated that more than 50% of all websites run on Apache servers.

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Asset Management

The purpose Asset Management (AM) is to enable companies whose life blood revolves around their digital assets -- such as entertainment companies -- to organize and repurpose those assets to streamline costs and enhance revenues.

AM systems are especially suited to managing multimedia content, and tend to offer hooks into specialized desktop media authoring systems.

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Caching

Caching refers to the process of temporarily storing files in a repository for quick access. When a file, such as a Web page, is stored on a cache, it can be accessed without returning to the original server, thus reducing server load and response time. A cache can exist in a section of a computer’s main memory or as an independent high-speed storage device.

Large organizations or institutions use large caches to distribute and update data that is frequently accessed by users. Caching is important for ensuring adequate response times in CMSs because serving custom pages on the fly can be extremely process-intensive, even on low-traffic sites.

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Document Management

The purpose of Document Management (DM) is to help companies better manage the creation and flow of documents -- in particular structured documents -- through the help of databases and workflow engines that encapsulate metadata and business rules. Much of what we know about automated editorial workflow comes from the DM world.

A critical drawback to DM products, however, is their limited traditional understanding of content as files, as opposed to discrete chunks of information.

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E-commerce

Conducting business online, though typically refers to concluding actual business transactions.

The worlds of e-commerce and content management are slowly converging.

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Java

An object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java programs are portable across a network, and can be built to run on either the server, browser, or special client.

Java is written in bytecode, a type of source code that must be processed by a Java virtual machine. The virtual machine interprets the bytecode into code that will run within the constraints of a specific computer’s hardware system. Therefore, as long as a platform is equipped with a Java virtual machine (as are most of today’s servers are), Java applications will run on any operating system.

Because of its portability, Java has made substantial inroads into Enterprise computing, and, not surprisingly, commercial WCM vendors have been leveraging it both to expand their own capabilities across multiple platforms as well as integrate with other Java-based systems. The pre-eminent Java standard is “J2EE,” which prescribes a range of functions, but most notably for our purposes, lays out a set of Web publishing and application tiers ranging from Java Server Pages – JSP (for presentation and basic interactivity) to Servlets to Java Beans, where corporate business logic is stored.

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Localization

Localization refers to the process of adapting a software, product or service for different languages, countries, or cultures.

In addition language considerations, such as support for foreign character sets, localization may require adaptations for currency, time zone, national holidays, cultural assumptions and sensitivities, dialect, color scheme, and general design conventions.

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Metadata

A definition or description of data, often described as data about data. For example, the data of a newspaper story is the headline and the story, whereas the metadata describes who wrote it, when and where it was published, and what section of the newspaper it appears in. Metadata can help us determine who content is for and where, how, and when it should appear. For documents online, important metadata elements include its author, title, date of publication, and subject area.

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Object-oriented database

A database that classifies information as “objects”; that is, structures that include both data and the functions that can be performed on that data. An object-oriented system organizes the classes of objects, the inheritance of class properties, and methods by subclasses and their objects.

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Open Source

Open Source Open source is a term applied to certain packages and tools, like Linux and Perl, that are distributed free of charge under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software (source code and all) freely.

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Personalization

Generating custom content or presentation for web users. There are at least three types of personalization.

Affinity or profile-based: customizes content for groups, rather than individual users. In this typ of personalization, collaborative filtering pages are developed based on the behavior and preferences of a group. Those customized pages are delivered to the individual users within the group.

Preference-based: customizes pages based on explicit, user-provided preferences.

Behavior-based: monitors user behavior and inferrs how to customize pages to suit individual interests and needs.

Personalization is fundamentally about mixing and matching content elements, and many CMS packages wandered into this space. But most major CMS packages are now returning the personalization function to the application server or 3rd party personalization engines.

Why? Because personalization is very resource-intensive from a design and publishing perspective. It takes a lot of effort to define and implement business rules against various permutations, and serving up custom pages adds more cycles to what may already be a very dynamic publishing process.

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Python

A script programming language noted for its portability and clear syntax. It is an object-oriented language that incorporates modules, exceptions, dynamic typing, very high level dynamic data types, and classes. Extensions to Python can be written in the C or C ++ programming languages. It is available under an open source license.

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RDBMS

Relational Database Management System

A collection of programs that allows you to create, store, modify, and administer a relational database. An RDBMS stores data in related tables, and information can be extracted from the database through structured query language (SQL) statements. Because the data in a relational system is spread across tables, rather than housed in a flat file, the same database can be viewed in many different ways. Almost all complex databases today use an RDBMS, including most business databases.

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Syndication

Regularly publishing content to other websites.

Syndication offers benefits for both the publisher and subscriber. Publishers can extend the reach and value of their content by displaying it in multiple venues. Subscribing sites can elevate the level of content they offer visitors by drawing on outside resources.

However, syndication presents content management challenges for both publisher and subscribers. Publishers must guarantee a steady stream of consistently-structured content, according to some sort of agreed-upon format. Subscribers must be able to import and absorb this information within their own content management and presentation systems.

Various third party services have emerged to help both publishers and subscribers, including syndication aggregators and technology vendors, some of whom have licensed their solutions to CM vendors.

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Taxonomies

In science, taxonomy allows people to precisely identify any organism by its kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. Taxonomy, as it relates to content management, does the same job. It describes a classification structure for content. This structure, typically highly regimented, impacts the data model, directory structure and file naming conventions for a given implementation of a content management system. Taxonomy can also be language-oriented, as in specifications for subsets of XML, such as ebXML.

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Workflow

Workflow as it applies to content describes the process of breaking down a high-level task into a series of orderly, pre-defined steps that answer these questions:

• What needs to be done?
• Who needs to do it?
• Who needs to approve it?
• When must it be completed?

There are two general types of workflow: Approval and task.

A task-oriented workflow centers on the tasks that must be done by different resources, or people, to complete the task. For example, the graphic designer completes graphics production, the HTML producer creates the template using those graphics, and the editor produces pages based on that template.

An approval-centered workflow tracks the approval chain of command on a piece of content, no matter what the form – from a press release to a video clip of a speech. For example, the PR Director, the Legal Department and the President must approve all press releases. These people are all "approvers" in this context.

These two types of workflow can mingle at some point, creating the need for a more complex workflow and some additional cost for product customization.

Find out more about workflow as it applies to more than just content. The Workflow Management Coalition (http://www.wfmc.org/) works closely with the Workflow and Reengineering International Association (http://www.waria.com/) to set standards in workflow and its automation.

"e-workflow, the workflow portal" (http://www.e-workflow.org/) is sponsored by the above organizations and provides information about the evolution of workflow, the product arena, news about the industry, white papers and handy definitions of workflow terminology.

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XML

XML is a markup language created so that richly structured documents can be described, exposed, shared, and modified over the web.

Since XML describes the underlying information and its structure, content can be separated from look-and-feel. This overcomes a severe limitation of HTML, which merely describes content presentation for a particular set of HTML-compliant applications (like Web browsers).

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Twenty Leaders to Watch in 2004

by Tony Byrne
27-Jan-2004

Welcome to our 2nd annual "PeopleWatch" list, where CMSWatch identifies 20 people who could make a difference on the CMS landscape in 2004. Some write columns that are closely watched by CMS analysts like us. Others hold key positions in software companies for whom 2004 will represent a critical year in their impact on the industry as a whole.

We'll be watching, and maybe so should you...

1. Mark Baker, Principal, Analecta Communications
   A longtime Omnimark/Stilo specialist, Mark Baker has become one of the more perceptive commentators you'll find on managing structured content and the proper role of XML in an editorial environment. Though he has strong technical credentials, Baker's real gift is addressing issues from a writer's perspective. Check out his lucid presentation on content re-use vs. single sourcing...
   "Re-use is Not Single Sourcing" (PDF)
   
   
2. Peter Brown, Head of Information Resources Management, European Parliament
   Oh boy does the European Parliament have an Information Architecture problem: the different languages, the multivariate legislation, the record-keeping requirements, and so on... Who better to solve it than the author of Information Architecture with XML? Here is one of the first real test cases of the semantic web -- Brown's team is mapping new relationships in previously uncharted areas...
   Read More About Their Journey
   
   
3. Mark Fasciano, President and CEO, FatWire
   FatWire was a smallish CMS vendor when it stumbled upon a windfall. divine's bankruptcy put a longstanding (and well-respected) CMS product, Content Server, on the auction block, and FatWire (with additonal VC backing) pounced. A risky move, perhaps, because FatWire already peddled a similar, Java-based CMS. But with Content Server, FatWire now offers a much more robust platform. Fasciano's challenge in 2004 will be to persuade the installed customer base to upgrade, and prove FatWire's corporate credibility to an increasingly diligent marketplace...
   Check out FatWire
   
   
4. Frank Gilbane, CEO Bluebill Advisors
   Every truly worthy community boasts a genuine eminence grise. For the content management analyst community, that person is surely Frank Gilbane. From his perch at Bluebill Advisors, Frank publishes the Gilbane Report, organizes the Gilbane Conference on Content Management conferences, and serves as advisor to the XML & e-business Integration Forum and Documation events in France. Look for an interview with Gilbane in these pages later this year...
   Read the Gilbane Report
   
   
5. Dana Hallman, Content Management Program Lead, OCSC/FirstGov, U.S. General Services Administration
   No one knows how many public-facing web pages the U.S. federal government publishes today. Estimates range from 60-80 million, just for the civilian sector. Uncle Sam clearly has a serious web content management challenge. Fortunately, a growing cadre of civil servants is beginning to tackle the problem, working agency by agency to improve the way electronic information is disseminated to citizens. One emerging leader in the group is Dana Hallman of FirstGov.gov, who coordinates a cross-agency effort to improve web content management practices...
   Peruse FirstGov
   
   
6. Erik M. Hartman, CEO, Hartman Communicatie BV
   If you want to understand the CMS scene in Europe, talk to Erik Hartman. As a consultant, analyst, and publisher Hartman tracks the European CMS landscape from his company's offices in Zaltbommel. Hartman is working with Dutch government on CMS strategies for public sites, and his portal on CMS topics is very well-regarded (among those who speak Dutch -- Erik promises an English version of the CMS Overview shortly)...
   Check Out Hartmann's CMS Portal (in Dutch)
   
   
7. Jim Howard, CEO, CrownPeak Technologies
   For hosted CMS vendors like CrownPeak, it is the best of times and the toughest of times. The best of times because CMS buyers are turning to ASP solutions in droves. The toughest of times because those same customers are looking for interactive tools and capabilities far beyond basic web content management, and they want those other features outsourced too. This puts big pressure on hosted providers to build partner networks to provide holistic solutions. Jim Howard at CrownPeak has been especially aggressive in lining up other ASPs to work together for big customers...
   Visit CrownPeak
   
   
8. Vernon Imrich, CTO, Percussion Software
   As a self-described "pure" XML vendor and early adopter of Web Services, Percussion Software necessarily must undertake more than its share of evangelizing. Chief proselytizing duties fall to CTO Imrich. He does a good job of connecting Percussion's technical prowess to broader industry trends. His challenge -- and Percussion's -- is to make a stronger case for re-use in a world drowning in unstructured content...
   Check out Percussion Rythmyx
   
   
9. The In-house Guru, at a Major Enterprise Near You
   Enterprises everywhere are trying to consolidate their CMS projects and deliver integrated content management, often as a central service. But this is actually quite hard. More than reliable or scalable software, it requires CMS-specific expertise close at hand. Behind every successful "ECM" project, we almost always see an experienced in-house guru, because while it's one thing to extend an enterprise-wide FileNet or Interwoven license to three new departments, it's entirely a different matter for those departments to obtain real value from what will surely comprise a significant implementation and learning curve. That's where in-house gurus all over the world are stepping up to provide project templates, content inventory and modeling tools, and migration advice. There might be one at your company; perhaps you should find her before you begin a new CMS project...
   
   
10. John Mancini, President, AIIM
    Does "ECM" actually mean anything? AIIM, the grand old imaging association now reborn as the "Enterprise Content Management Association," seems to think so. AIIM helpfully points out that ECM does not represent a technology but rather, a set of inter-related professional disciplines. We agree. Mancini will have to work hard to keep the organization's focus on propagating best practices at a time when software vendors increasingly dominate industry messaging...
    Consider Joining AIIM
    
    
11. Jane McConnell, senior consultant, NetStrategyJmc
    Since 1997, McConnell has commuted monthly from her home in southern France to Paris, where she hosts "Executive Working Breakfasts" for website decision-makers from major French corporations. Over baguettes and good coffee, they discuss the challenges of running large, distributed intranets and public sites, many of them pan-European and multilingual. McConnell, not surprisingly, has become something of an expert in the management of multinational portals and intranets. She also has a thing or two to say (in French or English) about the CMS marketplace in France...
    Check out McConnell's Work
    
    
    
12. Conleith O'Connell, CTO, Vignette
    Like most of its peers, CMS vendor Vignette shrunk dramatically during the dot-com bust. The company is growing again, largely through acquisitions. This creates a two-fold engineering challenge: integrating new products and development teams, while back-filling Vignette's ambitious V7 web content management solution. The latter represented a complete code overhaul from V6, but, not surprisingly, was quite undercooked at initial release and remains a bit too pink in the middle for our liking. CTO Conleith O'Connell -- one of Vignette's original developers -- represents the company on various standards bodies and speaks frequently to external audiences. We think in 2004 he'll have his work cut out for him at home...
    Visit Vignette
    
    
13. Michael Olson, President and CEO, Sleepycat Software
    Sleepycat Software supports Berkeley DB, a nearly ubiquitous embeddable database. Under Olson, the company has aggressively expanded into related opportunities, and the Sleepycat's vaunted engineering team recently released an embeddable XML database. In a world where many ECM vendors (and some open-source CMS packages) ship with their own proprietary "object store" repositories, we applaud the advent of a robust, open-source, embeddable XML data store. Nevertheless, adoption of native XML databases for CMS implementations has been slow -- it will be up to Olson and others to make the case for the benefits of native XML repositories...
    Check out Berkeley DB XML
    
    
14. Rob Page, CEO, Zope Corporation
    Sometimes open-source guys wear suits. For Rob Page, ex-U.S. Marine and head of Zope Corporation (founders of the open-source Zope platform), 2004 will likely be "all business" as the company sheds some of its extraneous Python R&D work to focus on content management modules. While much of the global Zope community's CMS development energy shifts to the lighterweight (but quite usable) Plone spin-off, Zope Corporation is placing a big bet on semi-commercial software add-ons -- under "visible source" licensing terms -- targeted for specific industries, like media and higher education. Software, unlike professional services, promises real equity valuations, which should please Zope's VC backers. Page will have to balance Zope.org's openness, quality, and growing cachet with Zope.com pitches to CMS prospects to shell out hard cash for value-add license fees...
    Read about the Zope Corp.'s Products
    
    
15. Brendan Quinn, Technical Architect, BBC New Media Applications
    When the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began a major CMS project, it reached half-way around the world for help. BBC tapped Australian Brendan Quinn (note the cricket-watcher's tan), an early CMS guru with particular experience implementing big packages at major news media outlets. Quinn joined a team that is currently implementing a complex, multichannel CMS project which may become nearly unprecedented in scope. Quinn and others from the BBC team will be traveling over the next couple of years to talk about it. Try to see them...
    Check out the breadth of BBC online properties
    
    
    
16. Charlie Reitzel, Project Administrator, HTML Tidy
    Charlie Reitzel is part of a small community of developers that manage "HTML tidy" -- an open-source utility for tidying up HTML and converting it to XHTML. Run as a client, Tidy parses and cleans all your HTML -- making the tool an essential adjunct to any serious Web content migration. Then operating on your server, it can help keep your new content nice and... well...tidy. You can buy books and read scores of white papers about how to get more value from your content in an organized repository, but this little tool from Reitzel and his collaborators could save you even more time and money down the road...
    The Tidy Project Page at SourceForge
    
    
17. Lou Rosenfeld, Information Architecture Guru
    Along with noted IA guru Peter Morville, Rosenfeld wrote the award-winning "Polar Bear" book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. But now Lou is working on a new and perhaps more ambitious publishing project centered around "Enterprise Information Architecture." We're not sure exactly what that phrase means yet, but Rosenfeld's answer could have a sizable impact on the success rate of nascent ECM projects everywhere...
    Find out more about Rosenfeld's EIA Seminars
    
    
18. Dan Ryan, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Stellent
    Stellent seems to cultivate an earnest, engineering-oriented culture, sometimes to a fault. Despite being a marketing guy, Dan Ryan fits right into the Stellent mold: he talks straight and levels directly. Ryan's challenge in 2004 will be to better communicate and differentiate his company's offerings, without coming off like some of Stellent's slicker competitors...
    Visit Stellent
    
    
19. Jon Udell, "Strategic Developer" Columnist, InfoWorld
    Although not explicitly his beat, few columnists cover content management with the technical depth and breadth that John Udell applies. He typically doesn't analyze specific CMS vendors, but rather, takes a hard look at the underlying tools and approaches that are changing the way organizations collaborate and publish across a variety of different software platforms. Udell's presentation at OSCOM 3, "CMS Lessons from Grade School," could become a classic...
    Read Udell's Grade School Presentation



20. Michael Wechner, CEO, Wyona, and Co-founder, OSCOM
    Michael Wechner scored a coup of sorts when he and Swiss compatriot Gregor Rothfuss converted a smallish XML publishing system, "Wyona," into an Apache subproject called Lenya. Lenya is chugging along, but Wechner's more important work, perhaps, has come in the form of evangelizing open-source CMS solutions more generally. He has been an effective and articulate spokesperson for the Open Source Content Management association, OSCOM, that Wechner co-founded with several other CMS project leaders...
    Visit Oscom

See the 2003 PeopleWatch list.

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About the Author

Tony is Founder of CMS Watch, a vendor-neutral analyst firm that evaluates content technologies and publishes reports comparing different solutions head-to-head. Tony serves as executive editor of all CMS Watch evaluation reports, each available for sale on this site.

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