The Content Management Bible Podcast
Since June 2020, I’m doing a podcast reading of the entire Content Management Bible, 2nd Edition, originally published back in 2000 or so.
I read the book shortly after the 2nd Edition was published in 2005. It was early-ish into my career in content management, and it introduced me to a level of architecture and concept that I hadn’t experienced before.
Up to that time, I had been doing small projects in Classic ASP with Microsoft Access databases, but the book revealed a completely different world. Slowly but steadily after this change in perspective, my career evolved in this direction.
I’m very interested in CMS history, and I’m trying to analyze the book to identify what has changed in the industry, and what challenges are so transcendent that we’re still struggling with them today.
This book has 1,063 numbered pages (excluding the index), and another 48 pages of front matter, spread among 40 numbered chapters in five parts, along with a foreword, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, and epilogue.
The length of chapters varies considerably, from 7 to 75 pages. I’ll likely split some of the larger chapters up into multiple episodes. There will be additional episodes for the front matter, the epilogue, and hopefully a wrap-up at the end with some lessons learned and comparison to where the industry stands today.
It seems reasonable to estimate that there will be 50 episodes.
Front Matter
Some meta background on what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it. Or, how I found a weird side project during the COVID19 pandemic.
The introduction chapter, where Bob reflects on the idea of “e-business” and the three reasons for doing content management.
Part 1: What is Content?
Chapter 1. Defining Data, Information, and Content
Pages 3 - 13 (11)
- What data is
- How data differs from content
- How the purpose of the information turns data into content
- How to turn information into content by adding data
A deep and sometimes confusing discussion of the three concepts in the chapter title. Pour a fresh cup of coffee for this one.
Chapter 2. Content Has Format
Pages 13 - 19 (7)
- Why the storage (or file) format is important
- How rendering (or visual format) must be separated from its content
- Why formatting can prove such a pain for the content manager
- The types of formatting you’re likely to encounter and how to categorize them
Chapter 3. Content Has Structure
Pages 21 - 29 (9)
- Understanding the importance of structure
- Structuring your content (and inherent difficulties in doing so)
- Categorizing different kinds of structure
Chapter 4. Functionality Is Content, Too!
Pages 31 - 40 (10)
- The definition of functionality
- How to produce functionality in small pieces that you can share
- How the division between functionality and information blurs
- How you can treat functionality as just another kind of content
Chapter 5. But What Is Content Really?
Pages 41 - 62 (22)
- A CMS manages content as well as content
- How content purpose leads to organization
- How naming is the basis of content management
- A trip from data all the way to wisdom
Part 2: What is Content Management?
Chapter 6. Understanding Content Management
Pages 65 - 83 (19)
- The different perspectives from which you can define content management
- The business value perspective
- The organizational forces perspective
- The disciplinary perspective
- The process perspective
- The technical perspective
- The Content Management Industry
Chapter 7. Introducing the Major Parts of a CMS
Pages 85 - 112 (28)
- A high-level view of CMS features
- Collecting content
- Managing content
- Publishing content using templates
Chapter 8. Knowing When You Need a CMS
Pages 113 - 129 (17)
- What having a lot of content means
- How your sources of information affect your need for a CMS
- How much change warrants a CMS
- Publications and personalization and their effect on your CMS
- How you can roughly estimate your need for a CMS
Chapter 9. Component Management versus Composition Management
Pages 131 - 146 (16)
- CM systems can be modular or linear, or some of both
- Component composition, and schema-driven systems compared
- Which system is right for you?
Chapter 10. The Roots of Content Management
Pages 147 - 172 (26)
- How collections and publications came about
- How document management could have captured content management
- Where the IT department leaves off and content management picks up
- What the multimedia industry started
- Content management in the documentation back room
- Why librarians are the gurus of the future
- How programmers stand behind all of CM
- What the marketing mentality has to do with content management
Chapter 11. The Branches of Content Management
Pages 173 - 198 (26)
- How content management enables personalization
- How a CMS supports the creation of advanced Web sites
- How a CMS supports the creation of multiple publications
- How e-commerce is enabled by content management
- How content management underlies knowledge management
- How online communities are built on content management
- What other kinds of management have in common with CM
Part 3: Doing Content Management Projects
Chapter 12. Doing CM Projects Simply
Pages 201 - 215 (15)
- Why create a minimal CMS?
- How to cut staff to the core
- What planning, design, and implementation tasks to do – and not do
- How to say no
- How to deploy a minimal CMS
Chapter 13. Staffing a CMS
Pages 219 - 241 (23)
- A brief perspective of CMS jobs
- How content managers and staff members control the overall project
- How a CMS ties to the business through a business analyst
- The role of information architects
- The role of the CMS administrator and other infrastructure staff
- The role of the programmers in a CMS
- The CMS staff positions that create publications
- The staff you need to convert content
Chapter 14. Working Within the Organization
Pages 243 - 270 (28)
- The overlap between a CMS and the goals of the organization
- How you can harvest the flow of information in your organization
- What each major group has to add to a CMS
- Some ways you can organize a CMS effort across the enterprise
- How to get the scalability you may eventually need
- A few of the many hurdles you might face in getting a CMS initiative going
Chapter 15. Getting Ready for a CMS
Pages 271 - 288 (18)
- How a CMS project is similar to and different from a usual software or system development project
- How to measure information pain, and other assessment techniques
- The readiness assessment and other preliminary deliverables
Chapter 16. Securing a Project Mandate
Pages 289 - 302 (14)
- What it means to have consensus on a CMS project
- How to recognize and understand project sponsors
- The project statement and other mandate process deliverables
Chapter 17. Doing Requirements Gathering
Pages 303 - 313 (11)
- A simpler sort of requirements gathering process than you might be used to
- Techniques for doing requirements
- The types of deliverables that result from requirements
- The people you may want to include in your requirements gathering
Chapter 18. Doing Logical Design
Pages 316 - 339 (24)
- The concept of logical design
- Techniques for doing logical design
- The types of deliverables that result from logical design
- The people you may want to include in your logical design process
Chapter 19. Selecting Hardware and Software
Pages 341 - 397 (57)
- The dilemma that CMS product companies face in trying to meet customer demands
- The build, buy, or rent decision and the selection process
- The deliverables that you may create as part of the system selection
- The staff that you want to involve in the selection process
- The criteria that you may use to select a CMS product
Chapter 20. Implementing the System
Pages 399 - 428 (30)
- Taking stock of the process and project so far
- Looking at the specifications and plans of a CMS implementation project
- Providing an approach to staffing and implementing the project
Chapter 21. Rolling Out the System
Pages 429 - 450 (22)
- A definition and overview of deployment
- Techniques for deployment, including how to power up your system
- Deployment deliverables, including documentation, training, and maintenance plans
Part 4: Designing a CMS
Chapter 22. Designing a CMS Simply
Pages 453 - 458 (6)
- Why you need logical design
- Understanding the CM entities at a glance
- Logical design made simple
Chapter 23. The Wheel of Content Management
Pages 459 - 489 (31)
- An introduction to the content management entities
- The information that you collect on all the entities
- The relationships that you need to forge among the entities
- How to start collection information in a logical analysis
Chapter 24. Working with Metadata
Pages 491 - 515 (25)
- The meaning of meta, metadata, and metatorial
- A way to categorize the various kinds of metadata
- How to collect and present metadata in a CMS
- The metatorial guide, metatorial processing, and the job of a metator
- Issues in metadata localization
Chapter 25. Cataloging Audiences
Pages 517 - 536 (20)
- Serving versus exploiting your audiences
- Looking at audiences through the lens of a CMS
- Collecting information about your audiences during logical design
Chapter 26. Designing Publications
Pages 537 - 558 (22)
- The definition of a publication from a CMS perspective
- How to analyze and design a set of publications
Chapter 27. Designing Content Types
Pages 559 - 608 (50)
- The definition of components and some analogies to help you understand them
- The definition and examples of component elements
- How to structure and store components
- The idea of a functionality component and an example
- The information that you need to analyze your components and design a content model
Chapter 28. Accounting for Authors
Pages 609 - 627 (19)
- A definition of authoring from the CMS perspective
- The choice between changing the author or changing the content
- Figuring out how to approach authors of various sorts
- How to analyze your author base and design your CMS authoring system
Chapter 29. Accounting for Acquisition Sources
Pages 629 - 646 (18)
- An overview of the content acquisition process
- The continuum between authoring and acquisition
- What you need to know to analyze and design the acquisition process in your CMS
Chapter 30. Designing Content Access Structures
Pages 647 - 682 (36)
- The definition and key considerations of the access structures
- Some methods that you can use to design a system of access structures
Chapter 31. Designing Templates
Pages 683 - 732 (50)
- Understanding dynamic and static content
- Using templates to build pages
- Creating Web, print, e-mail, and fax templates
- Doing template analysis
- Doing a competitive Web site analysis
Chapter 32. Designing Personalization
Pages 733 - 753 (21)
- How personalization relates to publications
- How to do a personalization analysis that you incorporates into your CMS logical design
Chapter 33. Designing Workflow and Staffing Models
Pages 755 - 789 (35)
- A definition and extended example of a workflow
- Details on the tasks, jobs, and steps that make up workflows
- The constraints that localization puts on workflow
- A full process for analyzing and designing a workflow system
- A full process for analyzing and designing a staffing system
Part 5: Building a CMS
Chapter 34. Building a CMS Simply
Pages 794 - 803 (10)
- What is physical design?
- Major systems and subsystems in a CMS
- How to go about physical design
- Understanding the technology taxonomy
Chapter 35. What Are Content Markup Languages?
Pages 805 - 819 (15)
- The origins of HTML and XML
- The difference between HTML, XML, and word processor markup
- Tricks of the markup trade
Chapter 36. XML and Content Management
Pages 821 - 843 (23)
- XML tagging up close
- XML in collection, management, and publishing
- Which staff members do what kind of XML work
- Programming in XML by using the Document Object Model
Chapter 37. Processing Content
Pages 845 - 865 (21)
- The idea and basic concepts behind content processing
- The relationship between content processing and a CMS
- The steps and deliverables of a processing project
- The mechanics of content and how to map from one format to another
Chapter 38. Building Collection Systems
Pages 867 - 916 (50)
- The features that allow you to originate content
- How to put together the process and tools behind a conversion system
- What you need to know to acquire content from files, Web sites, and databases
- The key features of an editorial metatorial system
- The parts of the interface between the collection system and the repository
Chapter 39. Building Management Systems
Pages 917 - 991 (75)
- The structure and function of the repository that stores all your content and associated information
- The theory and practice of versioning
- Source control and its relation to versioning and content sharing
- Support for localization in the repository
- The systems and features behind workflow
- A comprehensive view of what you need to be success in CM administration
Chapter 40. Building Publishing Systems
Pages 993 - 1060 (68)
- The necessary features of a templating system
- The subsystems and features of personalization
- Deploying built publication and files
- The features behind producing Web publications
- Print publishing technology
- E-mail as a form of publication
- Building a syndication system
- Forming publications for a variety of other channels
- The interface between the repository and the publishing system