EPiServer announced the addition of a complete, integrated e-commerce platform to its existing web content management and community platform. Through a strategic partnership with Mediachase, the EPiServer platform will provide commerce, content and community, and is aimed to enable companies in the retail and B2B vertical markets to deliver a compelling online experience. The Mediachase .NET e-Commerce Framework (ECF) provides an agile best practices architecture, with user experience controls, loosely coupled subsystems, like catalog management, order management, customer management, merchandising, promotions, and a fully exposed .NET developer framework (API). Combined with the extensible EPiServer content management system (CMS) and EPiServer Community platform, .NET web developers can build and deploy online stores, including multi-branding, multi-language, and multi-channel capabilities. Marketing tasks are streamlined through the interface and new capabilities to correlate visitor feedback and experience with store operation and order status at every step of the process. The EPiServer and Mediachase platforms are available now. The EPiServer integrated e-commerce platform is expected in the first half of 2010. http://www.episerver.com
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 134 of 478)
This category includes editorial and news blog posts related to content management and content strategy. For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.
Content management is a broad topic that refers to the management of unstructured or semi-structured content as a standalone system or a component of another system. Varieties of content management systems (CMS) include: web content management (WCM), enterprise content management (ECM), component content management (CCM), and digital asset management (DAM) systems. Content management systems are also now widely marketed as Digital Experience Management (DEM or DXM, DXP), and Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) systems or platforms, and may include additional marketing technology functions.
Content strategy topics include information architecture, content and information models, content globalization, and localization.
For some historical perspective see:
https://gilbane.com/gilbane-report-vol-8-num-8-what-is-content-management/
Content Management Professionals is pleased to announce the call for nominations to the CM Pros Board of Directors. Nominations for election to the board will be open on December 11, 2009. Nominations close on January 6, 2010. More information about the Election Timeline is available on the website. The board is seeking enthusiastic candidates to run for three seats, bringing the board to five members. To qualify as a candidate, you must be a member “in good standing” of CM Pros. This is an opportunity for anyone who is passionate about content management in its many forms to help define the future path of the organization. The CM Pros Board of Directors is both strategic and tactical. Each position may require a time commitment of up to 5–10 hours per week, including attendance at a weekly conference call meeting. To nominate yourself or someone else who you believe would make a great candidate, please see the How to Nominate page on the CM Pros website and email the Elections Oversight Committee at elections@cmprofessionals.org before Wednesday, January 6, 2010. http://www.cmprofessionals.org
Atex announced the latest release of its Polopoly Web content management system, designed to support a widget plug-in framework for adding third-party components to a website with little software development required. The new release, version 9.14, represents the latest phase of the Atex “Polopoly as a Platform” initiative, where media companies can pick and choose the applications to add to websites, aimed to give more control and flexibility over how sites are built and deployed. Software developers can create and exchange elements with other developers using the Polopoly widget plug-in model. This could help reduce the overall cost of Polopoly website development as companies can acquire new elements instead of building them in-house. Atex plans to create a “storefront” to sell and swap digital components. Atex has a plug-in available to allow connectivity between Polopoly and its A-Series Digital Asset Management system so that editors can instantly publish archive material online. Polopoly 9.14 sites can also take advantage of products offered by third-party vendors to provide fully packaged and validated integrations. Services like video streaming, social media apps, content gating, pay-per-view models, and other Internet functionalities can be added via Polopoly widget plug-ins. http://www.atex.com/
Open Text Corporation announced that it has expanded its portfolio of ECM solutions for Oracle Applications with the introduction of new content access and accounts payable solutions. Using these Open Text offerings, enterprises can associate Oracle transactions with business content. Open Text Content Access for Oracle is a new offering that provides a single point of access to Oracle and non-Oracle data and content assets from either the Oracle user interface or from the Open Text ECM Suite to enable companies to organize and manage all content, including legacy content, in virtual folders and provide a way to archive documents. This approach helps eliminate bottlenecks and distributes workload by allowing the people “in the know” to review, approve, and enter the invoice data directly into the Open Text solution without the need for direct accounts payable involvement. Open Text is a partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork. http://www.opentext.com/
Kentico Software launched a new version of their Partner Program for Web design agencies, supported by a new Partner Portal. The new portal is used by 900 active Kentico Solution Partners located in 80 countries. The main goal of the new program is to support partners in delivering Web sites with Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. The Partner Program divides partners into 3 levels: Partner, Certified Partner and Gold Certified Partner, based on Partner Points. 39% of their partners come from Europe, 35% from North America, 11% from Asia, 10% from Australia, 3% from Africa and 2% from South America. The top 10 Kentico partners are: 1. Reed Business Information, Australia; 2. IBL-Software BV, Netherlands; 3. orange8 interactive ag, Switzerland; 4. DATA, Inc., USA; 5. Supremo Sp. z o.o, Poland; 6. Get Started Pty Ltd, Australia; 7. Gatesix Inc., USA; 8. Biznet IIS, United Kingdom; 9. Datacom, New Zealand; 10. DPS Technology, Czech Republic. http://www.kentico.com/
Canto announced the availability of Canto Cumulus 8.1, available free of charge to all customers on active software maintenance contracts with Canto or Canto Certified Partners. Cumulus 8.1 is the product line’s first scheduled upgrade since May’s release of Cumulus 8, which introduced a new core architecture. A new version of the Cumulus Client enables users to work with Cumulus Server-based catalogs, or catalogs created and stored locally for personal use. The metadata of Cumulus Server-based catalogs can be edited offline. Once reconnected to the Cumulus Server, local metadata edits can update the Cumulus Server, or vice versa. Included with Cumulus Workgroup, Enterprise and Complete systems, the new Cumulus Web Client helps users connect to Cumulus via Web browsers to find and download assets, edit metadata and upload new assets. The statistics and usage tracking introduced with Cumulus 8 includes new reporting options that include new report types and PDF output options. http://www.canto.com
Inmedius, Inc. announced the general release of iConvert, a comprehensive environment for the conversion of documents into structured eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The software supports conversion from legacy paper, Microsoft Word or PDF files. iConvert also comes pre-configured for XML conversion of original S1000D, 40051B and ATA documents, and supports any Document Type Definition (DTD) or XML schema. iConvert synchronizes the original document with the converted XML document in a multi-pane, on-screen display. This approach to XML conversion should allow for the continuous fine-tuning of document conversion rules for increased automated transfer. iConvert’s has modified its user environment and workflow design that guides the user through the XML conversion process. At the same time, iConvert provides a visual inspection of the original document that is synchronized with the configured XML output. During this step, the end-user should be able to drag and drop both unconverted pieces of data, as well as content that has been transformed properly. User defined rules files applied to create the original conversion are updated, allowing for a second pass with increased accuracy. http://inmedius.com/
At Gilbane we talk of “Smart Content,” “Structured Content,” and “Unstructured Content.” We will be discussing these ideas in a seminar entitled “Managing Smart Content” at the Gilbane Conference next week in Boston. Below I share some ideas about these types of content and what they enable and require in terms of processes and systems.
When you add meaning to content you make it “smart” enough for computers to do some interesting things. Organizing, searching, processing, and discovery are greatly improved, which also increases the value of the data. Structured content allows some, but fewer, processes to be automated or simplified, and unstructured content enables very little to be streamlined and requires the most ongoing human intervention.
Most content is not very smart. In fact, most content is unstructured and usually more difficult to process automatically. Think flat text files, HTML without all the end tags, etc. Unstructured content is more difficult for computers to interpret and understand than structured content due to incompleteness and ambiguity inherent in the content. Unstructured content usually requires humans to decipher the structure and the meaning, or even to apply formatting for display rendering.
The next level up toward smart content is structured content. This includes wellformed XML documents, content compliant to a schema, or even RDMS databases. Some of the intelligence is included in the content, such as boundaries of element (or field) being clearly demarcated, and element names that mean something to users and systems that consume the information. Automatic processing of structured content includes reorganizing, breaking into components, rendering for print or display, and other processes streamlined by the structured content data models in use.
Finally, smart content is structured content that also includes the semantic meaning of the information. The semantics can be in a variety of forms such as RDFa attributes applied to structured elements, or even semantically names elements. However it is done, the meaning is available to both humans and computers to process.
Smart content enables highly reusable content components and powerful automated dynamic document assembly. Searching can be enhanced with the inclusion of metadata and buried semantics in the content providing more clues as to what the data is about, where it came from, and how it is related to other content. Smart content enables very robust, valuable content ecosystems.
Deciding which level of rigor is needed for a specific set of content requires understanding the business drivers intended to be met. The more structure and intelligence you add to content, the more complicated and expensive the system development and content creation and management processes may become. More intelligence requires more investment, but may be justified through benefits achieved.
I think it is useful if the XML and content management (CMS) communities use consistent terms when talking about the rigor of their data models and the benefits they hope to achieve with them. Hopefully, these three terms, smart content, structured content, and unstructured content ring true and can be used productively to differentiate content and application types.
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