From the category archives:

Governance

Too few people are talking about what it takes to manage and govern a successful CMS project and web platform.

Stop letting people use your CMS

Seth Gottlieb at Content Here is on a roll lately with some great thinking.
His post on The Myth of the Occasional CMS User was timely based on some conversations we’ve been having around the office. There is a lot to unpack in it, and of course anything with Myth in the title catches our attention.
Seth [...]

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What can three wise web monkeys teach us about CMS?

I’m in muggy Orlando for a few days to present at Synergy09, Ektron’s world-wide user conference. By good fortune, I sat next to web operations guru Lisa Welchman at lunch, and then caught her keynote on ‘the three wise web monkeys.’
I find myself nodding along to pretty much whatever Lisa says, and today was no [...]

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Two Years On: Still Puncturing Myths & Taking Names

We started the CMS Myth two years ago, riding into the Boston Gilbane Content Management Conference wearing our white hats, guns blazing (sort of), and raising the alarm against an epidemic of poorly planned and ultimately failed web content management projects.
That’s pretty much been our focus for the past 24 months: take the combined 50+ [...]

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CMS post-launch lessons for improving your website

The road to a web content management implementation in tandem with a website redesign can be long and rocky. So it’s not wonder there’s usually a palpable sense of relief when your site goes live with CMS at the center of your content efforts, website user experience, and your online marketing and sales initiatives.
But avoid going [...]

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The five stages of CMS grief

An enterprise web content management project may look good on paper, but it’s not all rainbows and roses for everyone in the organization. In fact, there are folks probably getting along just fine managing their own web fiefdom.
While a unified CMS strategy can be smart for the organization, it takes control away from independent web [...]

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Life After the redesign with CMS

We wrote an article last month about what happens after your big website redesign project wraps up.  Large interactive initiatives can take so much effort there is often nothing left in the tank for the more meaningful ongoing work.
This is especially relevant to web content management projects where success is likely defined by how your [...]

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A False Choice for Web Content Management

Today we welcome a guest MythBuster. Heather Hanson, interactive project manager and our colleague at ISITE Design, offers sage advice on balancing “fast, good, and cheap” in a CMS initiative. Heather knows of what she writes: a project roster rich in CMS has gained her official (and unofficial) product-certified status on a number of platforms [...]

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How Many People Does it Take to Screw in a Content Management System?

I was in a meeting last week where someone remarked that he thought web development has become too specialized. Meaning  that us agency types may be over complicating projects by having ultra-specialized roles that create awkward handoffs, increase project costs and result in less efficient processes.
I’m the first to agree with limiting the number of cooks [...]

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Are You Making the Right CMS Promises?

With the primary elections officially upon us, candidates are making promises that they will be expected to keep if elected. 
In the same spirit, web content management projects are full of promises. More so than a lot of web initiatives in fact.
We talk a lot about the expectation gap between vendors that beat the [...]

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