Multi Mania: The Future of Content Management

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The Future of Content Management Rachel Andrew: Multi Mania 2013 Tuesday, 14 May 13

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edgeofmyseat.com Tuesday, 14 May 13

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grabaperch.com Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Question. Who here generally develops sites using some form of content management system? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Why don’t we talk about this more? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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The trouble with content management systems. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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http://storify.com/rachelandrew/cms-horrors “Has your client ever done something really odd using a CMS? Font horrors, giant images, crazy content? I'd love to know your stories.” Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Clients love to do a little bit of web-designing. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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“Make the logo bigger!” No. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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“I want to use 24 point Comic Sans” No. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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“I want to edit my site in Microsoft Word!” oh go on then ... Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Web designing. Just one of my many skills. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Why are we doing this? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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We should not be giving content editors a tool to use to destroy their site. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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If you provide something better than the Word experience of website content- editing. Your users stop asking for Word. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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We cannot expect non-developers and designers to make sane decisions about document semantics. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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A CMS is not a website design tool. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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If you wouldn’t give the client a copy of Dreamweaver & their site ﬁles, why give them a CMS that attempts to mimic that experience? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Your CMS should be entirely focussed around creating great quality content. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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You (the web designer) are not the primary user of CMS software Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Content editors are often the forgotten users when we deploy a CMS. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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This is not a new problem. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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This is why we can’t have nice things Tuesday, 14 May 13

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(probably not) Henry Ford. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Tuesday, 14 May 13

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What should the CMS user experience be like? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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1. The CMS helps content editors make good decisions. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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In small business and organizations the website content is just a small part of the job of a busy person. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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A CMS is often as much an enemy of good content as it is of good design. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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- Karen McGrane http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/08/08/karen-mcgrane-content-strategy-for- mobile/ “Let’s try to make the job for our content creators as easy as possible, and let’s build the tools and the infrastructure that we need to support them in creating great content.” Tuesday, 14 May 13

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2. The CMS allows the designer to make semantic decisions so the editor doesn’t have to. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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3. The CMS protects the design and architecture decisions made for the site Tuesday, 14 May 13

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When we stop trying to give content editors a web design tool, we can focus on a system tailored to the type of content they need to create. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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If content editors are not worrying about how it looks. They can add better content more quickly. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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You keep control of document semantics - can add Aria Roles, HTML5 elements, format dates for international audiences. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Content is stored based on what it means rather than how it looks. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Structured content can be easily repurposed - on the site or for email, RSS, social media, another website. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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A big textarea to ﬁll in page content is a terrible user experience. Content editors are our users too. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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An example. a structured content approach to image management Tuesday, 14 May 13

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greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13

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greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13

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greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Requirements Make it easy for content editors to explore the archive and choose images without needing to maintain their own folder of images. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Requirements When an image is used, if the template changes, we need to be able to regenerate the image at the new size. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Requirements Provide a browseable library of images on the website, direct from the archive, that again could be regenerated if the templates changed Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Requirements Leave the door open to provide a range of image assets for any one use of an image in a template - to enable retina images or different images for screen widths/ bandwidths. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Greenbelt Media Server Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Greenbelt Media Server Tuesday, 14 May 13

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greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Structured Content not a silver bullet. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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strong, emphasis, links, blockquotes, lists, inline images and ﬁles Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Avoid raw HTML being inserted into your content at all costs. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Your CMS should actively be removing HTML elements added by content editors (unless you really love 1997 markup) Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Markdown Tuesday, 14 May 13

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markitup,jsalvat.com Tuesday, 14 May 13

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We are solving the wrong problems. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Our customers ask for faster horses. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Our customers ask for a better WYSIWYG. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Trying to make the CMS behave ‘like Word’ is solving the wrong problem. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Pouring energy into solutions that tie the content to one design or one output is solving the wrong problem. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Turning a content management system into a site building tool rather than a content creation tool is solving the wrong problem Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Seeing ourselves as the user, or the visitors to the website as the user and ignoring content editors means we will continue to try and solve the wrong problems. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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The future of CMS? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Karen McGrane - http://karenmcgrane.com/2011/12/14/mobile-content-strategy/ “If we’re going to succeed in publishing content onto a million different new devices and formats and platforms, we need interfaces that will help guide content creators on how to write and structure their content for reuse.” Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Use structured content wherever possible Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Avoid directly inserting HTML into content Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Treat content editors as your most important user. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Craft better experiences for content editors within the tools you use Tuesday, 14 May 13

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If your CMS falls short tell the maker. Report user experience issues to open source projects & CMS vendors just as you would any other bug. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Difﬁcult problems Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Hoe can we create a more elegant layer on top of structured content? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Can we enable ofﬂine editing? Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Multilingual content? Internationalized sites. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Let’s talk about this. Tuesday, 14 May 13

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Photo credits: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/7018116723/ http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jk_too/3300092780/ Thank you @rachelandrew http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/future-of-cms Tuesday, 14 May 13