The Future of
Content Management
Rachel Andrew: Smashing Conference 2012
Slide 2
Slide 2 text
edgeofmyseat.com
Slide 3
Slide 3 text
grabaperch.com
Slide 4
Slide 4 text
Question.
Who here generally develops sites using some form of
content management system?
Slide 5
Slide 5 text
Why don’t we talk about
this more?
Slide 6
Slide 6 text
The trouble with content
management systems.
Slide 7
Slide 7 text
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.”
Slide 8
Slide 8 text
No content
Slide 9
Slide 9 text
No content
Slide 10
Slide 10 text
No content
Slide 11
Slide 11 text
No content
Slide 12
Slide 12 text
No content
Slide 13
Slide 13 text
Clients love to do a little
bit of web-designing.
Slide 14
Slide 14 text
“Make the logo bigger!”
No.
Slide 15
Slide 15 text
“I want to use 24 point
Comic Sans”
No.
Slide 16
Slide 16 text
“I want to edit my site in
Microsoft Word!”
oh go on then ...
Slide 17
Slide 17 text
Web designing.
Just one of my
many skills.
Slide 18
Slide 18 text
Why are we doing this?
Slide 19
Slide 19 text
We should not be giving content editors a
tool to use to destroy their site.
Slide 20
Slide 20 text
If you provide something better than the
Word experience of website content-
editing. Your users stop asking for Word.
Slide 21
Slide 21 text
No content
Slide 22
Slide 22 text
No content
Slide 23
Slide 23 text
We cannot expect non-developers and
designers to make sane decisions about
document semantics.
Slide 24
Slide 24 text
No content
Slide 25
Slide 25 text
No content
Slide 26
Slide 26 text
A CMS is not a website
design tool.
Slide 27
Slide 27 text
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?
Slide 28
Slide 28 text
Your CMS should be entirely focussed
around creating great quality content.
Slide 29
Slide 29 text
Content editors are often the forgotten
users when we deploy a CMS.
Slide 30
Slide 30 text
This is not a new problem.
Slide 31
Slide 31 text
This is why we can’t have nice things
Slide 32
Slide 32 text
(probably not) Henry Ford.
“If I had asked people what they wanted,
they would have said faster horses.”
Slide 33
Slide 33 text
What should the CMS
user experience be like?
Slide 34
Slide 34 text
1. The CMS helps content editors make
good decisions.
Slide 35
Slide 35 text
A CMS is often as much an enemy of good
content as it is of good design.
Slide 36
Slide 36 text
- 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.”
Slide 37
Slide 37 text
2. The CMS allows the designer to make
semantic decisions so the editor doesn’t
have to.
Slide 38
Slide 38 text
No content
Slide 39
Slide 39 text
3. The CMS protects the design and
architecture decisions made for the site
Slide 40
Slide 40 text
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.
Slide 41
Slide 41 text
If content editors are not worrying about
how it looks. They can add better content
more quickly.
Slide 42
Slide 42 text
You keep control of document semantics -
can add Aria Roles, HTML5 elements,
format dates for international audiences.
Slide 43
Slide 43 text
Content is stored based on what it means
rather than how it looks.
Slide 44
Slide 44 text
Structured content can be easily
repurposed - on the site or for email,
RSS, social media, another website.
Slide 45
Slide 45 text
A big textarea to fill in page content is a
terrible user experience.
Content editors are our users too.
Slide 46
Slide 46 text
An example.
a structured content approach to image management
Slide 47
Slide 47 text
greenbelt.org.uk
Slide 48
Slide 48 text
greenbelt.org.uk
Slide 49
Slide 49 text
greenbelt.org.uk
Slide 50
Slide 50 text
Requirements
Make it easy for content editors to explore the archive
and choose images without needing to maintain their own
folder of images.
Slide 51
Slide 51 text
Requirements
When an image is used, if the template changes, we need
to be able to regenerate the image at the new size.
Slide 52
Slide 52 text
Requirements
Provide a browseable library of images on the website,
direct from the archive, that again could be regenerated
if the templates changed
Slide 53
Slide 53 text
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.
Slide 54
Slide 54 text
Greenbelt Media Server
Slide 55
Slide 55 text
Greenbelt Media Server
Slide 56
Slide 56 text
greenbelt.org.uk
Slide 57
Slide 57 text
Structured Content
not a silver bullet.
Slide 58
Slide 58 text
strong, emphasis, links, blockquotes,
lists, inline images and files
Slide 59
Slide 59 text
Avoid raw HTML being inserted into your
content at all costs.
Slide 60
Slide 60 text
Your CMS should actively be removing
HTML elements added by content editors
(unless you really love 1997 markup)
Slide 61
Slide 61 text
Markdown
Slide 62
Slide 62 text
markitup,jsalvat.com
Slide 63
Slide 63 text
We are solving the
wrong problems.
Slide 64
Slide 64 text
Our customers ask for
faster horses.
Slide 65
Slide 65 text
Our customers ask for a
better WYSIWYG.
Slide 66
Slide 66 text
Trying to make the CMS behave ‘like
Word’ is solving the wrong problem.
Slide 67
Slide 67 text
Pouring energy into solutions that tie the
content to one design or one output is
solving the wrong problem.
Slide 68
Slide 68 text
Turning a content management system into
a site building tool rather than a content
creation tool is solving the wrong problem
Slide 69
Slide 69 text
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.
Slide 70
Slide 70 text
The future of CMS?
Slide 71
Slide 71 text
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.”
Slide 72
Slide 72 text
Use structured content wherever possible
Slide 73
Slide 73 text
Avoid directly inserting HTML into content
Slide 74
Slide 74 text
Treat content editors as your most
important user.
Slide 75
Slide 75 text
Craft better experiences for content editors
within the tools you use
Slide 76
Slide 76 text
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.
Slide 77
Slide 77 text
Difficult problems
Slide 78
Slide 78 text
Hoe can we create a more elegant layer
on top of structured content?
Slide 79
Slide 79 text
Can we enable offline editing?
Slide 80
Slide 80 text
Multilingual content?
Internationalized sites.
Slide 81
Slide 81 text
Let’s talk about this.
Slide 82
Slide 82 text
Photo credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/7018116723/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jk_too/3300092780/
Thank you
@rachelandrew
http://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/smashing-conf