|
Every company has unique needs so there is no one set of optimal functions. To define the functions needed particularly for you it is essential that relevant IT groups, business units, specialists and end users are involved. Managers from the companies that develop and sell/distribute CMS are capable to help you determine the best set of functions and save a lot of time. Main CMS features and tools are: Integrated managing environment. Contemporary CMS enables not only text editing, but also drawing tables, inserting objects etc; Multi-user support. The CMS will have many simultaneous users. Features such as record locking ensure that clashing changes are prevented; Separation of content and presentation. It is not possible to publish to multiple formats without a strict separation of content and presentation; Easily reusable content. A single page (or even paragraph) will often be used in different contexts, or delivered to different user groups; Metadata creation. Capturing metadata (creator, subject, keywords, keyword indexes, subject taxonomies, topic maps, etc.) is critical when managing a large content repository; Powerful linking. Authors will create many cross-links between pages, and these must be stable against restructuring; Non-technical authoring. Authors must not be required to use any technical knowledge when creating pages; Ease of use and efficiency. For a CMS to be successful, it must be easy to create and maintain content. Understand the needs of your authors: they will be doing all the hard work; Version control and archiving. These are necessary for backup and disaster recovery; Security. If you manage not only common but confidential information also, the CMS must ensure the secure information is delivered to authorised users only; Integration with external systems. A CMS is typically only one of a number of systems used to present information on the intranet or website. CMS will only be successful if it can be cleanly integrated with existing business systems; Usage statistics. The CMS must allow comprehensive usage statistics to be gathered, including: most popular pages, daily usage, and search engine usage. This information allows the success of the site to be tracked, and any usability issues identified.
|
