Farewell, Editorially
With a heavy heart, the team here at the CMS Myth bids farewell to Editorially. You have provided us with a collaborative, seamless, and effortless way to create elegant ‘web ready’ content and you will be missed. Editorially improved the content author experience while simultaneously making it easier to move written content from authoring through collaborative workflow and into content management systems. It truly raised the bar and we hope the industry was watching.
The CMS Myth tends to focus on strategy, people, and processes. Occasionally (hopefully more often in the future) we like to explore adjacent solutions. Particularly when this effort helps us fulfil our promise of making content management work.
Our interest in Editorially was both as content authors and as consultants keenly interested in the author experience. In fact, our editorial calendar this year includes an examination of the state of this critical aspect of web content management. We believe the author experience has lagged behind other areas of innovation in this industry.
To that end, we would like to hear from you, our readers. What are some of the tools you’re using to avoid copy and paste content management? What are the features and/or innovations you would like to see in content management systems? How would you make the author experience better?
Oh, and the first person to share their idea gets a free ‘I am the CMS’ tee shirt.
Comments
5 responses… read them below or add one.
May I share a blog post I recently authored for the Australian Sitefinity CMS community: Web Content Management without a Browser.
I would welcome any opportunity to demonstrate further to the CMS Myth team and it’s readers.
There are too many things that need improving in CMS authoring interfaces. I wrote a Principles of AX starter list a little while ago.
Or, as it has evolved:
* Fit for purpose language
* Content accessibility
* Associative structured content
* Rules-based presentation (incl. indicative previews)
* Content management tools
* Self-aware content
Well, I’d like to see that CMS can be so good in text editing and wysiwyg, that you don’t need Word to create copy. And that we can already see in some blogs – I bet that all those fashion or food bloggers do not use Word while creating copy.
It’s just that the huge websites need so heavy CMS that it lacks usability. The user interface is so — …I can’t even describe it. If the bosses of those poor web editors were supposed to use it even for a single day, we would see huge development with usability!
I’ve been seeing this issue for years as a web developer working with clients, and I’ve recently shifted most of my work to improving this experience. I like to term it as “client” user experience as I see the issue touching everything the client’s staff touches, website management as well as content creation.
I believe we need more than better authoring tools. We need a new approach. When I imagine what the ideal client/author experience should be, I conclude that it requires [1] a different interface than what we use to develop the site and [2] a tailored UX that meets the needs and capabilities of each client (including the content creators). That means that web development must take on additional work and nurture a new discipline in delivering this different and tailored UX for our clients. And the new tools are those that enable the web developer to create and tailor this client-centric interface to site and content management. …that’s my mission for this year.
Andrew, I’d be happy to get a demo and I will follow up with you via email.
Rick, thanks for being the first to comment an idea! We’ll follow up with you via email regarding a tee-shirt. I’m going to read your entry on the subject as well.