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Future of Content Management

Future of Content Management

Talk given at Smashing Conference in September 2012

Rachel Andrew

September 17, 2012
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Transcript

  1. 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.”
  2. If you provide something better than the Word experience of

    website content- editing. Your users stop asking for Word.
  3. 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?
  4. (probably not) Henry Ford. “If I had asked people what

    they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
  5. A CMS is often as much an enemy of good

    content as it is of good design.
  6. - 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.”
  7. 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.
  8. If content editors are not worrying about how it looks.

    They can add better content more quickly.
  9. You keep control of document semantics - can add Aria

    Roles, HTML5 elements, format dates for international audiences.
  10. Structured content can be easily repurposed - on the site

    or for email, RSS, social media, another website.
  11. A big textarea to fill in page content is a

    terrible user experience. Content editors are our users too.
  12. Requirements Make it easy for content editors to explore the

    archive and choose images without needing to maintain their own folder of images.
  13. Requirements When an image is used, if the template changes,

    we need to be able to regenerate the image at the new size.
  14. Requirements Provide a browseable library of images on the website,

    direct from the archive, that again could be regenerated if the templates changed
  15. 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.
  16. Your CMS should actively be removing HTML elements added by

    content editors (unless you really love 1997 markup)
  17. Pouring energy into solutions that tie the content to one

    design or one output is solving the wrong problem.
  18. Turning a content management system into a site building tool

    rather than a content creation tool is solving the wrong problem
  19. 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.
  20. 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.”
  21. 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.