Introducing the Major Parts of a CMS

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Introducing the Major Parts of a CMS

• Chapter 7 of Content Management Bible

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In This Chapter

• A high-level view of CMS features
• Collecting content
• Managing content
• Publishing content using templates

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A CMS Overview

• A content management system (CMS) is responsible
  for the collection, management, and publishing of
  chunks of information known as content
  components.
• Notice that although logically separate, the
  three parts of the system can involve large
  physical overlaps
• The management system can serve as part of the
  collection system
• The management system can serve as part of the
  publication system
• The publication system can serve as part of the
  collection system

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A Schematic Overview of a CMS
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The Collection System
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An Overview of the Collection Process
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An Overview of the Collection Process (Cont.)

• Authoring Here someone creates the content from
  scratch.
• Acquisition Here you gather the content from
  some existing source.
• Conversion Here is where you strip unnecessary
  information from the content and change its
  markup language.
• Aggregation You edit the content here, divide it
  into components, and augment it to fit within
  your desired metadata system.
• Collection services These services are CMS
  programs and functions that aid the collection
  process. For example, the collection services
  produce the Web forms into which you enter the
  content for components

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Authoring

• Authoring refers to the process of creating
  content from scratch
• A CMS can help the author work efficiently and
  effectively by doing the following
• Providing an authoring environment (either a full
  application or extensions to the author's native
  environment).
• Providing a clear purpose and audience for the
  author's efforts. In a CMS, you direct authors to
  create particular content components that already
  are defined in terms of their basic purpose and
  audiences.
• Providing aids for including standard
  information. The CMS can easily fill in the
  create-date and author's name, for example, to
  save the author effort.
• Providing templates that break down the content
  the author creates into its constituent elements.
  You may provide authors with a Microsoft Word
  template (a DOT file), for example, that already
  includes places to type a title, summary, and
  body for the component's author to create.
• Providing workflow, status, and version control
  for content that's in process.

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The authoring process is an essentially human
process of creation and revision
Low volume buthigh quality
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Acquiring

• Acquiring is the process of gathering information
  that wasn't originally created for your CMS
• This process might be partly manual or fully
  automated.
• Two types of acquired content
• Syndications Syndications are sources that are
  designed for reuse.
• The information is delivered in a generally
  useful binary format (XML, for example)
• The information is already segmented and has
  metadata attached.
• Source files any sort of preexisting information
  that a computer stores.
• Include non-electronic sources such as paper
  photographs, analog video, and printed text that,
  after you digitize them, end up in files as well.
• Generally aren't designed for reuse and require
  work on your part to transform into a usable
  form.

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Acquiring is the process of gathering information
that was created for some other purpose
High volume but low quality
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Converting

• If the information that you create or acquire
  isn't in the format or structure that your system
  requires, then you must convert it to match the
  accepted standards of the content system
• The conversion process consists of the following
  three logical steps
• Stripping remove and discard unneeded
  surrounding information such as page headers and
  footers, unnecessary content, and unwanted
  navigation.
• Format mapping change the information's binary
  format to a standard one that the CMS supports.
  In addition, you separate its rendering format
  from its structure.
• Structure mapping make the information's
  structure explicit or change it as necessary.
• The result of a conversion process is information
  that conforms as well as possible to the
  standards you develop for format and structural
  tagging

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Aggregating

• Aggregation is the process of bringing disparate
  information sources into one overall structure
  through
• Editorial processing styling, consistency, and
  usage
• Segmentation processing break the information
  into chunks (content components)
• Metatorial processing add metadata to content
• The metadata that you apply to the content
  enables the system to effectively store and
  retrieve it
• This system consists of the rules that you create
  for how to supply metadata values for each new
  piece of content that you bring into the system
• Aggregation is often a part of the conversion
  process

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Aggregating comprises editorial processing,
segmentation, and metatorial processing
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Editorial Processing

• All professional publishing groups use an
  editorial framework to guide their work
• Correctness rules check generally accepted
  standards (punctuation, word usage, grammar)
• Communication rules ensure that the content
  projects a specific image and targets a specific
  audience
• Voice of the content (active, passive, first
  person, third person), other stylistic rules,
  ways to communicate with the intended audience
  (such as the right vocabulary to use).
• Consistency rules ensure that you apply all the
  other rules evenly across the entire content base
  and that, after you define it, you always use a
  term the same way
• Editors can attempt loosening the constraints on
  the content, so that you can use it in the widest
  variety of contexts

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Segmentation

• Segmentation is the process of dividing content
  into convenient and useful chunks (components)
• The process that you use to create components
  depends on the source of the components, as the
  following list indicates
• Components that you author you can create as you
  author them.
• Components that you acquire you can segment
  after, or as part of, the conversion process.
• How well marked each component is in its source?

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Segmentation (Cont.)

• Components are generally marked in source files
  in the following ways
• By a file boundary files for office location
  fact sheets
• By a database record boundary database full of
  employee data ? Employee Profile components
• By explicit markup international restaurant
  menus from a good XML syndication source (ltMenugt)
  
• By implicit markup printed product catalog ?
  each new product is marked in the catalog by a
  hard page break
• Not marked Suppose that the print-product
  catalog that you receive marks each new product
  with the font Times New Roman, 12-point, Bold

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Collection Services

• Help get content into the repository
• Authoring components directly into the CMS
  repository
• Loading previously created components into the
  repository one at a time or in bulk
• Authoring components
• Web-based form
• Allow an author to type blocks of text, enter
  metadata, and upload images and other media
• Tight control and validation
• Application such as Microsoft Word
• Usually one file one component
• Flexibility
• Need to create template that authors must follow
  (example file, DOT)

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The Management System
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An Overview of the Management System

• Responsible for the long-term storage of content
  components and a range of other resources
• Capable of
• Details about your content, including what kinds
  of components you have and where in its
  life-cycle each is.
• How well utilized your staff is and what
  bottlenecks are coming up.
• How you're using components in publications and
  which content is unused or ready for removal.
• Who has access to what content and who's
  contributed the most

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An Overview of the Management System (Cont.)

• A management system contains
• Repository a place to store the content
• Administration an administration system for
  setting up and configuring the CMS
• Workflow defined sets of steps for doing the
  work necessary on the content to get it ready to
  be published
• Connections a set of connections (hardware and
  software) to other systems within the
  organization, ranging from networks and servers
  to data repositories

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The Repository

• The repository is the set of databases, file
  directories, and other system structures (for
  example, custom settings for the CMS) that store
  the content of the system as well as any other
  data associated with the CMS
• Components and other CMS resources come into the
  repository via the collection services, and the
  publishing services extract them
• The repository can contain the following
  components
• Content databases and files
• Control and configuration files

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The repository contains the CMS databases as well
as other storage and retrieval mechanisms
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Content Databases and Files

• Content databases and files hold the system's
  content components.
• Content databases can consist of standard
  relational databases or XML object databases (or
  hybrid)
• RDB one table per component class, one row per
  component instance, and one column per component
  element
• XML component classes, instances, and elements
  all have their own tags, which a DTD brings
  together into a complete system

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Content Databases and Files (Cont.)

• Content files hold content outside of any
  database
• You can store media as binary files and link them
  to database records.
• Files such as word-processing files and
  spreadsheets, as well as other files such as PDF
  files, which are intended for use by the CMS in
  their existing format, you can store and
  distribute as files.
• In this case, the CMS is functioning more as a
  DMS than a CMS
• Rather than using a database at all, the main
  content storage facility may consist of one or
  more XML files that the CMS services manage.

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Control and Configuration Files

• Control and configuration files are the
  non-content files that you manage within the CMS
  repository.
• Input and publishing templates
• Staff and end-user data files and databases
  (profiles)
• Rules files and databases hold the definitions
  of component types, workflows, and
  personalization routines.
• Meta information lists, content index files, and
  databases augment the metadata that you store
  directly in the content files and DB
• Log and other control files and structures (such
  as system catalogs and registries)
• Scripts and automated maintenance routines
  programs that the CMS uses to help manage content

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The Administration System

• Responsible for setting parameters and structure
  of CMS
• The administration system affects all the parts
  of the CMS
• Collection system
• Staff configuration roles and access rights
• Metatorial configuration metadata fields and
  lists
• System configuration structure and workflows of
  the CMS
• Management system
• Database administration tasks user maintenance
  and permissions, backup, and archiving
• Content-specific tasks creating content types,
  performing metadata reviews, and creating
  workflows.

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The Administration System (Cont.)

• The administration system affects all the parts
  of the CMS (Cont.)
• Publishing system
• Ensure that all the HW/SW for displaying content
  is working according to plan.
• Example for Web publications ? ensures that the
  Web server, application server, content
  management application objects, databases, and
  other associated programs are always running and
  never overtaxed

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The administration system affects all three parts
of a CMS
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The Workflow System

• Responsible for coordinating, scheduling, and
  enforcing schedules and staff tasks.
• The workflow system affects all three parts of
  the CMS
• Collection
• Workflows for content collection, creation, and
  aggregation tasks
• In most cases, the workflow follows a particular
  kind of content from creation until it's ready
  for publication
• Management
• Workflows for standard administrative tasks such
  as backup and archiving
• Workflows for reviewing, changing, and verifying
  the usefulness of content.
• Workflows for scheduling data-mining and
  synthesis tasks
• Workflows for managing the connection between the
  management system and other non-CMS systems that
  provide data to the CMS.

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The Workflow System (Cont.)

• The workflow system affects all three parts of
  the CMS (Cont.)
• Publishing
• Publication cycles and their associated workflows
  to ensure that, each time you create a
  publication, it's as good as is humanly possible.
  
• Example your Web site operates on a daily
  publishing cycle, during which you update news
  and special announcements.
• You may create a workflow that includes steps
  such as those for reviewing all pending content,
  performing test builds of all affected pages,
  testing personalization rules against new
  content, and changing status to publish.

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Connections

• Connect the management system to various
  infrastructure and data systems
• The organization's LAN and WAN environments
• The organization's user-management system
• Company metadata systems
• Enterprise data systems

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The Publishing System
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An Overview of the Publishing System

• Responsible for pulling content components and
  other resources out of the repository and
  automatically creating publications out of them
• Publishing templates programs that build
  publications automatically
• Publishing services a set of tools for
  controlling what is published and how it is
  published
• Connections tools and methods used to include
  data from other (non-CMS) systems in finished
  publications
• Web publications the most common output for most
  CMS
• Other publications other non-Web publications,
  including electronic, print, and syndications

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Publication System
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Publishing Templates

• Publication templates are files that guide the
  creation of a publication from the content stored
  in the repository.
• CMS templates are programs that specify
  publication-building logic
• Templates include the following components
• Static elements text, media, and scripts that
  pass directly through to the publication without
  further processing.
• Calls to publication services retrieve and
  format components and metadata from the
  repository and perform other necessary functions
  such as running personalization rules, converting
  content, and building navigation.
• Calls to services outside the CMS integrate
  publications into a wider organizational
  infrastructure by calling in enterprise data and
  functionality and other Web services.

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The publication template is a program that builds
publications from the content in the repository
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Publishing Services

• Publishing services are the application logic and
  business services that a CMS provides that aid in
  the creation of publications from the content and
  metadata in the repository.
• Load and execute templates These services
  process the personalization, conversion, content
  extraction, and navigation-building calls that
  the templates make to create a publication.
• Provide publication-specific services These
  services include output to PDF for print
  publications or incremental updates to a Web
  site.
• Provide a bridge to non-CMS services These are
  services that you need to call and that provide
  data that you need to include in publications.

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Publishing Services (Cont.)

• How to trigger publishing services?
• Dynamic publication (e.g. live Web site) invoke
  the publishing services via a request from a
  browser and produce a single page
• Static publications (e.g. static Web sites and
  other publications) a staff member or a
  prescheduled automation routine triggers the
  publication services, which then produce a
  complete publication.
• You may create part of a publication by using
  services that aren't part of the CMS by having
  the publishing services call them as independent
  software objects.
• Non-CMS services generally provide e-commerce
  transactions and access to enterprise data and
  other resources not under the control of the CMS.

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Connections

• Maintains connections to other (non-CMS)
  enterprise data systems
• Examples ERP application data, user data
• Data from these systems can be read live from the
  source at the time that you create a publication,
  and you lay it out appropriately on the
  publication page at that time as well.
• You can also load enterprise data periodically
  from the source to the CMS repository ("acquired"
  content)

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Web Publication

• Web publications are Internet, intranet, and
  extranet sites that a CMS produces.
• Dynamic Web publication the CMS produces these
  sites one page at a time, in response to user
  clicks.
• The user's click passes a page request to the Web
  server that triggers the CMS publishing services
  to do the following
• Load a template
• Pass it any parameters that came along with the
  user's request
• Execute the code in the template to produce a
  finished page
• Pass the finished page back to the Web server for
  display in the user's browser

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Web Publication (Cont.)

• Static Web publication the CMS produces them all
  at once and serves them as HTML files.
• The CMS administrator triggers a build of the
  static site using some user interface in the CMS.
  
• The CMS then calls the appropriate publishing
  services and templates to produce all the pages
  of the site.
• Especially in dynamically built sites, the CMS
  publishing services are embedded within a Web
  server and an application server.
• The Web server is software that takes care of the
  basic function of receiving requests from the Web
  user and sending her the results.
• The application server is software that provides
  caching, database connection pooling, and other
  services that help the CMS scale and increase its
  performance.

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The Web-publishing system can produce a fully
dynamic site
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Other Publications

• You can potentially use the same templating
  engine that produces Web publications to create
  other publication formats
• Publications that aren't destined for the Web
  include the following
• Print publications
• FrameMaker (MIF) file (goes to a printer for
  publication), QuarkXPress, and (PDF)
• Electronic publications Static Web sites that
  you distribute on CD-ROM or any other type of
  CD-ROM- or network-based multimedia system.
• Microsoft Help files, e-mail files,
• Syndications sets of content components that you
  publish for distribution and reuse in
  publications outside your CMS.
• The most useful format for syndication is XML,
  but the most common format is ASCII, with a
  header that contains metadata for each syndicated
  component