xBlog: The visual thinking weblog » Content management

The “Light” CMS Trend

Bill — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:24:49 +0000

Nice roundup of lightweight content management systems and web page editors:

CMSs are beautiful things. Just as CSS allows us to abstract the design away from the markup, a CMS allows us to use a database to abstract the content away from the markup. There are a zillion of them, each with different backend UI’s and different ways to doing things.

But CMSs are for web people. Even my beloved WordPress can be challenging to train/explain to someone who has no experience working with websites. Perhaps this is the motivation toward a new trend in CMSs I’m calling “light” CMSs. Each of them attempt to make the task of updating content on a website easier and more intuitive. This is largely at the cost of features. These are for simple, otherwise static websites where updating content is the name of the game.

Cargo

Bill — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:52:58 +0000

I just got beta access and can’t wait to try out this visually-oriented CMS:

The Cargo platform powers a variety of creative communities in the fields of Education, Design, Research, and Conceptual Art — currently under development… Cargo evolved out of the system that runs the SpaceCollective community. We found it remarkably successful and efficient in creating visual content on the web, placing a strong emphasis on design, layout, image quality and typography. Our goal is to dramatically increase the accessibility and exposure of creative individuals on the Internet, while aspiring to build a networked context that will contribute to the culture as a whole.

Drupal.org, Design Iterations, and Designing in the open

Bill — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:06:08 +0000

“It’s been a good while since I announced we’re working on the redesign of Drupal.org. Two months, a couple of presentations, and seven iterations of the prototype later, a glimmer is at the end of the tunnel.

On thing is for sure, in this instance, Design by Community works.

I said, when we embarked on the process of designing this site, that Design by Community is the only way we could approach it. Since those initial thoughts, Leisa and I have continued to push a process that many thought would fall flat on its face. I’m not sure if this would be specific to the Drupal community, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. This process is working, and really well.”

Redefining content management

Bill — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 02:22:39 +0000

“We live in a time where people have an amazing amount of power when it comes to publishing. Blogging, podcasts, vidcasts (or whatever you call ‘em) and more have been put into the hands of millions and it’s changing the way we live and work. Despite all of that, content management for the web remains a huge pain point for many individuals and businesses. The amount of time, effort and money that’s involved (and often wasted) to do things that are seemingly rather straightforward is astronomical. I mean, how hard does it have to be?”

Shopify: A shop in minutes, a business for life

Bill — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:13:17 +0000

“Shopify is an application that we host which allows you to setup an online store to sell your goods. You can accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all the perks of a physical store without the hassle.”

Zeldman.com Reloaded

Bill — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:31:42 +0000

“With a book half-written, two conferences looming, and waves of client work smashing the levees, it seemed a good time to change hosts and funnel this old hand-tooled site into a modern content management system. The site is now powered by WordPress and hosted by Media Temple. The hand-rolled summaries feed has retired.”

Eating away from below: what’s happening to enterprise software

Bill — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:35:53 +0000

“Though definitely not as sexy to talk about as tagging, and mashups, and whom Yahoo acquired today, I think that the trends we’re witnessing in enterprise software will have a far greater impact than much of what’s being discussed. And the most obvious trend is that the enterprise software market is being eaten away from below. My favorite case in point is Movable Type, the software which enables me to publish this blog. With a few modifications, it enabled Adaptive Path to publish it’s site. And then, as this post makes clear, with a fair bit of modification, it powers the site for SEED Magazine. What this demonstrates is what we’ve known all along — Movable Type isn’t a blog publishing tool — it’s a lightweight content management system. Blog publishing was essentially a trojan horse toward rethinking how to enable publishing on the Web. In my world, content management systems (CMSes) have long been the enterprise software that has been the biggest pain in the ass to deal with.”

Another Enterprise Roadmap

Bill — Mon, 23 May 2005 15:59:11 +0000

“James Melzer has developed an impressive roadmap (268Kb PDF) for Enterprise Content Management in Context. After your initial review you may be overwhelmed, as I was, but don’t worry: take a deeper look and you’ll find it quite useful.”

Making A Better Open Source CMS

Bill — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 15:20:50 +0000

“Open source content management software sucks. It sucks really badly. The only things worse is every commercial CMS I’ve used. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. I did some research recently at OpenSourceCMS.com — a fantastic site that lets you play with dozens of CMS installations — and left pretty depressed. What I experienced was obtuse and complex software that was packed with gratuitous features at the expense of usability and user experience.”

CM Pros

Bill — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:06:55 +0000

“We believe that content management is essential to organizations of every type. It harvests and promotes both financial and human value for the companies and organizations that can tap its potential. CM Pros is a membership organization that fosters the sharing of content management information, practices, and strategies. We seek to improve content management practices within all organizations…”