Multi Mania: The Future of Content Management

As presented at Multi Mania conference in Belgium, May 2013

Transcript

1. The Future of Content Management Rachel Andrew: Multi Mania 2013 Tuesday, 14 May 13
2. edgeofmyseat.com Tuesday, 14 May 13
3. grabaperch.com Tuesday, 14 May 13
4. Question. Who here generally develops sites using some form of content management system? Tuesday, 14 May 13
5. Why don’t we talk about this more? Tuesday, 14 May 13
6. The trouble with content management systems. Tuesday, 14 May 13
7. 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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13. Clients love to do a little bit of web-designing. Tuesday, 14 May 13
14. “Make the logo bigger!” No. Tuesday, 14 May 13
15. “I want to use 24 point Comic Sans” No. Tuesday, 14 May 13
16. “I want to edit my site in Microsoft Word!” oh go on then ... Tuesday, 14 May 13
17. Web designing. Just one of my many skills. Tuesday, 14 May 13
18. Why are we doing this? Tuesday, 14 May 13
19. We should not be giving content editors a tool to use to destroy their site. Tuesday, 14 May 13
20. If you provide something better than the Word experience of website content- editing. Your users stop asking for Word. Tuesday, 14 May 13
21. Tuesday, 14 May 13
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23. We cannot expect non-developers and designers to make sane decisions about document semantics. Tuesday, 14 May 13
24. Tuesday, 14 May 13
25. Tuesday, 14 May 13
26. A CMS is not a website design tool. Tuesday, 14 May 13
27. 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
28. Your CMS should be entirely focussed around creating great quality content. Tuesday, 14 May 13
29. You (the web designer) are not the primary user of CMS software Tuesday, 14 May 13
30. Content editors are often the forgotten users when we deploy a CMS. Tuesday, 14 May 13
31. This is not a new problem. Tuesday, 14 May 13
32. This is why we can’t have nice things Tuesday, 14 May 13
33. (probably not) Henry Ford. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Tuesday, 14 May 13
34. What should the CMS user experience be like? Tuesday, 14 May 13
35. 1. The CMS helps content editors make good decisions. Tuesday, 14 May 13
36. In small business and organizations the website content is just a small part of the job of a busy person. Tuesday, 14 May 13
37. A CMS is often as much an enemy of good content as it is of good design. Tuesday, 14 May 13
38. - 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
39. 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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41. 3. The CMS protects the design and architecture decisions made for the site Tuesday, 14 May 13
42. 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
43. If content editors are not worrying about how it looks. They can add better content more quickly. Tuesday, 14 May 13
44. You keep control of document semantics - can add Aria Roles, HTML5 elements, format dates for international audiences. Tuesday, 14 May 13
45. Content is stored based on what it means rather than how it looks. Tuesday, 14 May 13
46. Structured content can be easily repurposed - on the site or for email, RSS, social media, another website. Tuesday, 14 May 13
47. A big textarea to fill in page content is a terrible user experience. Content editors are our users too. Tuesday, 14 May 13
48. An example. a structured content approach to image management Tuesday, 14 May 13
49. greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13
50. greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13
51. greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13
52. 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
53. 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
54. 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
55. 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
56. Greenbelt Media Server Tuesday, 14 May 13
57. Greenbelt Media Server Tuesday, 14 May 13
58. greenbelt.org.uk Tuesday, 14 May 13
59. Structured Content not a silver bullet. Tuesday, 14 May 13
60. strong, emphasis, links, blockquotes, lists, inline images and files Tuesday, 14 May 13
61. Avoid raw HTML being inserted into your content at all costs. Tuesday, 14 May 13
62. Your CMS should actively be removing HTML elements added by content editors (unless you really love 1997 markup) Tuesday, 14 May 13
63. Markdown Tuesday, 14 May 13
64. markitup,jsalvat.com Tuesday, 14 May 13
65. We are solving the wrong problems. Tuesday, 14 May 13
66. Our customers ask for faster horses. Tuesday, 14 May 13
67. Our customers ask for a better WYSIWYG. Tuesday, 14 May 13
68. Trying to make the CMS behave ‘like Word’ is solving the wrong problem. Tuesday, 14 May 13
69. Pouring energy into solutions that tie the content to one design or one output is solving the wrong problem. Tuesday, 14 May 13
70. 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
71. 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
72. The future of CMS? Tuesday, 14 May 13
73. 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
74. Use structured content wherever possible Tuesday, 14 May 13
75. Avoid directly inserting HTML into content Tuesday, 14 May 13
76. Treat content editors as your most important user. Tuesday, 14 May 13
77. Craft better experiences for content editors within the tools you use Tuesday, 14 May 13
78. 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
79. Difficult problems Tuesday, 14 May 13
80. Hoe can we create a more elegant layer on top of structured content? Tuesday, 14 May 13
81. Can we enable offline editing? Tuesday, 14 May 13
82. Multilingual content? Internationalized sites. Tuesday, 14 May 13
83. Let’s talk about this. Tuesday, 14 May 13
84. 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