The Future of Content Management

Rachel Andrew: Smashing Conference 2012Thursday, 2 May 13

edgeofmyseat.com

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grabaperch.com

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Question. Who here generally develops sites using some form of

content management system?

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Why don’t we talk about this more?

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The trouble with content management systems.

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http://storify.com/rachelandrew/cms-horrors

“Has your client ever done something really odd using a CMS? Font horrors, giant images, crazy content? I'd love to

know your stories.”

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Clients love to do a little bit of web-designing.

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“Make the logo bigger!”No.

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“I want to use 24 point Comic Sans”

No.

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“I want to edit my site in Microsoft Word!”

oh go on then ...

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Web designing.Just one of my many skills.

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Why are we doing this?

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We should not be giving content editors a tool to use to destroy their site.

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If you provide something better than the Word experience of website content-

editing. Your users stop asking for Word.

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We cannot expect non-developers and designers to make sane decisions about

document semantics.

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A CMS is not a website design tool.

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If you wouldn’t give the client a copy of Dreamweaver & their site files, why give them a CMS that attempts to mimic that

experience?

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Your CMS should be entirely focussed around creating great quality content.

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Content editors are often the forgotten users when we deploy a CMS.

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This is not a new problem.

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This is why we can’t have nice things

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(probably not) Henry Ford.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

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What should the CMS user experience be like?

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1. The CMS helps content editors make good decisions.

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A CMS is often as much an enemy of good content as it is of good design.

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- Karen McGranehttp://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/08/08/karen-mcgrane-content-strategy-for-

mobile/

“Let’s try to make the job for our content creators as easy as possible, and let’s build

the tools and the infrastructure that we need to support them in creating great

content.”

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2. The CMS allows the designer to make semantic decisions so the editor doesn’t

have to.

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3. The CMS protects the design and architecture decisions made for the site

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When we stop trying to give content editors a web design tool, we can focus on

a system tailored to the type of content they need to create.

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If content editors are not worrying about how it looks. They can add better content

more quickly.

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You keep control of document semantics - can add Aria Roles, HTML5 elements,

format dates for international audiences.

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Content is stored based on what it means rather than how it looks.

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Structured content can be easily repurposed - on the site or for email, RSS, social media, another website.

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A big textarea to fill in page content is a terrible user experience.

Content editors are our users too.

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An example.a structured content approach to image management

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greenbelt.org.uk

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greenbelt.org.uk

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greenbelt.org.uk

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RequirementsMake it easy for content editors to explore the archive

and choose images without needing to maintain their own folder of images.

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RequirementsWhen an image is used, if the template changes, we need

to be able to regenerate the image at the new size.

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RequirementsProvide a browseable library of images on the website, direct from the archive, that again could be regenerated

if the templates changed

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RequirementsLeave the door open to provide a range of image assets for any one use of an image in a template - to enable retina images or different images for screen widths/

bandwidths.

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Greenbelt Media Server

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Greenbelt Media Server

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greenbelt.org.uk

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Structured Content not a silver bullet.

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strong, emphasis, links, blockquotes, lists, inline images and files

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Avoid raw HTML being inserted into your content at all costs.

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Your CMS should actively be removing HTML elements added by content editors

(unless you really love 1997 markup)

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Markdown

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markitup,jsalvat.com

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We are solving the wrong problems.

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Our customers ask for faster horses.

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Our customers ask for a better WYSIWYG.

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Trying to make the CMS behave ‘like Word’ is solving the wrong problem.

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Pouring energy into solutions that tie the content to one design or one output is

solving the wrong problem.

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Turning a content management system into a site building tool rather than a content

creation tool is solving the wrong problem

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Seeing ourselves as the user, or the visitors to the website as the user and ignoring

content editors means we will continue to try and solve the wrong problems.

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The future of CMS?

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Karen McGrane - http://karenmcgrane.com/2011/12/14/mobile-content-strategy/

“If we’re going to succeed in publishing content onto a million different new

devices and formats and platforms, we need interfaces that will help guide content

creators on how to write and structure their content for reuse.”

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Use structured content wherever possible

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Avoid directly inserting HTML into content

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Treat content editors as your most important user.

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Craft better experiences for content editors within the tools you use

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If your CMS falls short tell the maker. Report user experience issues to open source projects & CMS vendors just as

you would any other bug.

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Difficult problems

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Hoe can we create a more elegant layer on top of structured content?

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Can we enable offline editing?

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Multilingual content?Internationalized sites.

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Let’s talk about this.

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Photo credits:http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/7018116723/http://www.flickr.com/photos/jk_too/3300092780/

Thank you

@rachelandrew

http://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/smashing-conf

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