Different Styles of Content Management
Site-wide Content Management Site-wide content management systems allow you to adjust any page on your web site, as well as the sites navigation.
Typically, you are able to view an online file manager-like interface as well as an in-depth page editor that allows you to set colors, fonts types, sizes and content.
This form of content management provides the most flexibility with regards to the content on your site.
Typically the developer will setup your content management system and then design your site to fit the requirements and constraints (if any) of the system.
You can then add content to the site and the content will be integrated into the system.
Some of the drawbacks of this form of content management is that you are giving too much control of the content to a number of different users, therefore you are leaving the opportunity open for someone to break the design consistencies of your site, making the web site look unorganized, and reflect a poor image for your company.
As well, having this type of system can require a large part of training for your staff, as the editor can sometimes be quite complicated.
Design-Oriented Content Management Design-oriented content management systems are built around the design of the site.
While the web site is being designed, the developer will develop a consistent style for the content and navigation pages within your web site and the content management system will then use simple forms to plug the information/content you enter into the page.
This typically does not provide you with an editor-like interface as with the site-wide content management, so you lose some flexibility, but with a properly and professionally designed web site you shouldn't run into any of these problems.
The interface for a design-oriented content management system will typically include simple forms with a number of textboxes, listboxes, or other form elements and a submit button.
Once you hit the submit button the information is logged in the database and the page is written to the server.
This keeps the design and layout of the site consistent as you are only entering the information and the content management system will place the information within your web site as intended by the designer.
Because of the simple interface for these systems, the system will style all content internally, leaving no chance for inconsistency errors.
When you have a large number of users updating different areas of the website, this is the single most significant benefit of a design-oriented content management system, as you won’t have different styles for the content from different users updating the web site, as you may with a site-wide content management system.
One drawback of a design-oriented content management system is cost.
Essentially every system is customized for the company as it is built around the custom design of the web site, rather than based off an original platform which makes for more setup work.
Component-based Content Management Often clients do not require the need to update every area on their website.
In this case component-based content management is the most efficient, and most cost-effective method.
This form of content management allows you to modify various componentsof your web site only, for example, a news releases or articles area of your web site.
This is common if you have a web site that requires you to update quite often, but only 1 or 2 areas of your web site.
If you have an area of your web site that requires you to update on a regular basis, but the rest of the site is left on its own, then this situation is right for you.
Essentially, a component-based system is just like the design-oriented system but on a smaller scale.
Rather than maintaining the entire website, users can only maintain one area, which may be all they require for their web site, making a component-based content management system perfect for their needs.
Potential Issues with any form of Content Management Statistical Errors and Inconsistencies Often companies will develop content management systems to work solely through a database, and use ID numbers to display content on your site.
For example, if every page on your web site is http://www.
domain.
com/page.
php?pid=12345 or some other ID number, then your web site really only consists of only 1 page.
That one page grabs content from the database and displays it, while each link throughout the site just sends a different ID number for the page to display.
This is usually OK with smaller component-based content management systems because it only affects one URL, however when an entire site is built this way, every entry in your web server log files will be for that one page.
Then when you look at your log files, you’ll see that you’ve received all your visits to page.
php and that’s it! This makes the information totally unusable, so you’ll need some other form of stats tracking to view your web site’s traffic and any other visitor focused information such as navigation paths, bounce rates, and entry and exit points.
You should always have more than the basic log file analysis when it comes to your web stats, but often nothing more than the basics is provided by your web host.
In this case, we recommend free stats services like Google Analytics or ClickTracks Appetizer.
Search Engine Compatibility Having URLs that are ID-based does not tell search engines anything about the page, and makes it more difficult for search engines toanalyze your content.
Having an address such as http://www.
domain.
com/page.
php?id=234234 does not tell search engines anything about what your page is about, and Google even says not to use ID in your URLs.
If you can name your page [http://www.
domain.
com/services.
html] then that makes it a little more obvious to search engines what your trying to say on that page.
A fix for both of these two problem is to ensure that your content management system does not use the ID-based form of URLs, and actually writes the static HTML page to your server.
Technically, it is not much more work, and isn't complicated, however, a lot of content management systems do not write each page to the server.
Database Failure/Lag Time If all of your content is being stored in a database, and not written to the server, then what happens if your database server fails? On smaller sites this may not be an issue as the database will be on the same computer as the web server, however when you store your database on a separate machine, that adds 1 more point of failure that can bring down your entire web site.
It is best to ensure that your pages are actually written to the web site so that in the event of a database crash your web site will still be operational.
Also, the time to display a page is drastically slowed down when all the content is retrieved from a database, as the server has to make a request to the database each time it is displayed.
The site may also need to request the navigation from the database, and product information...
With the files being written to the server, there is no need to constantly make requests for the content from a database, making the time to display the page much faster.
Conclusion Based on your web site needs, you may fall into any of the above-mentioned categories.
Commonly, we find that smaller businesses with a limited budget only need component-based content management systems as they are only updating a couple sections of their web site frequently.
Larger web sites with a limited number of people maintaining the site work best with site-wide content management as there won’t be any consistency problems with only a single user updating the web site.
Design-oriented content management works best for large organizationswith multiple users making updates to the web site.
This allows for users to enter their content, while the system handles the design andlayout of the content, so their won’t be any inconsistency in thedisplay of the content on the web site.
I hope it was also made clear that if you are using a design-based or site-wide content management system it is imperative that your files are written directly to the web server.
Be absolutely sure to check for this when evaluating any content management system you may be implementing on your web site.
Typically, you are able to view an online file manager-like interface as well as an in-depth page editor that allows you to set colors, fonts types, sizes and content.
This form of content management provides the most flexibility with regards to the content on your site.
Typically the developer will setup your content management system and then design your site to fit the requirements and constraints (if any) of the system.
You can then add content to the site and the content will be integrated into the system.
Some of the drawbacks of this form of content management is that you are giving too much control of the content to a number of different users, therefore you are leaving the opportunity open for someone to break the design consistencies of your site, making the web site look unorganized, and reflect a poor image for your company.
As well, having this type of system can require a large part of training for your staff, as the editor can sometimes be quite complicated.
Design-Oriented Content Management Design-oriented content management systems are built around the design of the site.
While the web site is being designed, the developer will develop a consistent style for the content and navigation pages within your web site and the content management system will then use simple forms to plug the information/content you enter into the page.
This typically does not provide you with an editor-like interface as with the site-wide content management, so you lose some flexibility, but with a properly and professionally designed web site you shouldn't run into any of these problems.
The interface for a design-oriented content management system will typically include simple forms with a number of textboxes, listboxes, or other form elements and a submit button.
Once you hit the submit button the information is logged in the database and the page is written to the server.
This keeps the design and layout of the site consistent as you are only entering the information and the content management system will place the information within your web site as intended by the designer.
Because of the simple interface for these systems, the system will style all content internally, leaving no chance for inconsistency errors.
When you have a large number of users updating different areas of the website, this is the single most significant benefit of a design-oriented content management system, as you won’t have different styles for the content from different users updating the web site, as you may with a site-wide content management system.
One drawback of a design-oriented content management system is cost.
Essentially every system is customized for the company as it is built around the custom design of the web site, rather than based off an original platform which makes for more setup work.
Component-based Content Management Often clients do not require the need to update every area on their website.
In this case component-based content management is the most efficient, and most cost-effective method.
This form of content management allows you to modify various componentsof your web site only, for example, a news releases or articles area of your web site.
This is common if you have a web site that requires you to update quite often, but only 1 or 2 areas of your web site.
If you have an area of your web site that requires you to update on a regular basis, but the rest of the site is left on its own, then this situation is right for you.
Essentially, a component-based system is just like the design-oriented system but on a smaller scale.
Rather than maintaining the entire website, users can only maintain one area, which may be all they require for their web site, making a component-based content management system perfect for their needs.
Potential Issues with any form of Content Management Statistical Errors and Inconsistencies Often companies will develop content management systems to work solely through a database, and use ID numbers to display content on your site.
For example, if every page on your web site is http://www.
domain.
com/page.
php?pid=12345 or some other ID number, then your web site really only consists of only 1 page.
That one page grabs content from the database and displays it, while each link throughout the site just sends a different ID number for the page to display.
This is usually OK with smaller component-based content management systems because it only affects one URL, however when an entire site is built this way, every entry in your web server log files will be for that one page.
Then when you look at your log files, you’ll see that you’ve received all your visits to page.
php and that’s it! This makes the information totally unusable, so you’ll need some other form of stats tracking to view your web site’s traffic and any other visitor focused information such as navigation paths, bounce rates, and entry and exit points.
You should always have more than the basic log file analysis when it comes to your web stats, but often nothing more than the basics is provided by your web host.
In this case, we recommend free stats services like Google Analytics or ClickTracks Appetizer.
Search Engine Compatibility Having URLs that are ID-based does not tell search engines anything about the page, and makes it more difficult for search engines toanalyze your content.
Having an address such as http://www.
domain.
com/page.
php?id=234234 does not tell search engines anything about what your page is about, and Google even says not to use ID in your URLs.
If you can name your page [http://www.
domain.
com/services.
html] then that makes it a little more obvious to search engines what your trying to say on that page.
A fix for both of these two problem is to ensure that your content management system does not use the ID-based form of URLs, and actually writes the static HTML page to your server.
Technically, it is not much more work, and isn't complicated, however, a lot of content management systems do not write each page to the server.
Database Failure/Lag Time If all of your content is being stored in a database, and not written to the server, then what happens if your database server fails? On smaller sites this may not be an issue as the database will be on the same computer as the web server, however when you store your database on a separate machine, that adds 1 more point of failure that can bring down your entire web site.
It is best to ensure that your pages are actually written to the web site so that in the event of a database crash your web site will still be operational.
Also, the time to display a page is drastically slowed down when all the content is retrieved from a database, as the server has to make a request to the database each time it is displayed.
The site may also need to request the navigation from the database, and product information...
With the files being written to the server, there is no need to constantly make requests for the content from a database, making the time to display the page much faster.
Conclusion Based on your web site needs, you may fall into any of the above-mentioned categories.
Commonly, we find that smaller businesses with a limited budget only need component-based content management systems as they are only updating a couple sections of their web site frequently.
Larger web sites with a limited number of people maintaining the site work best with site-wide content management as there won’t be any consistency problems with only a single user updating the web site.
Design-oriented content management works best for large organizationswith multiple users making updates to the web site.
This allows for users to enter their content, while the system handles the design andlayout of the content, so their won’t be any inconsistency in thedisplay of the content on the web site.
I hope it was also made clear that if you are using a design-based or site-wide content management system it is imperative that your files are written directly to the web server.
Be absolutely sure to check for this when evaluating any content management system you may be implementing on your web site.
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