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<channel>
	<title>The CMS Myth</title>
	
	<link>http://www.cmsmyth.com</link>
	<description>Making web content management work</description>
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		<title>Stuck inside of Mobile with the CMS Blues Again</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheCmsMyth/~3/Uw0nHoaH5Ao/</link>
		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/stuck-inside-of-mobile-with-the-cms-blues-again/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 22:55:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Eckman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Content Management's Greatest Hits]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2692</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For Mythbuster May, a bad pun about one of the key challenges for content managers, and one of the main themes of all the various CMS related conferences: mobile, or more accurately, multi-channel multi-device content publishing. How often have you clicked (touched?) a link, only to be either: a) sent to the mobile version despite [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2010/01/ready-to-find-a-new-web-cms/' rel='bookmark' title='Ready to find a new web CMS?'>Ready to find a new web CMS?</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/08/cms-survival-in-higher-education/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS survival in higher education'>CMS survival in higher education</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/08/cms-mythbuster-report-devcon2011/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS MythBuster Report @DevCon2011'>CMS MythBuster Report @DevCon2011</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/category/cms-greatest-hits/"><img src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/cms-greatest-hits.jpg" alt="Content Management&#039;s Greatest Hits" width="620" height="193" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1886" /></a></p>
<p>For Mythbuster May, a bad pun about one of the key challenges for content managers, and one of the main themes of all the various CMS related conferences: mobile, or more accurately, multi-channel multi-device content publishing. </p>
<p>How often have you clicked (touched?) a link, only to be either: a) sent to the mobile version despite being on a desktop, b) sent to the &#8220;full site&#8221; version despite being on a mobile device and finding no mobile-friendly experience, c) sent to a &#8220;please download our mobile app&#8221; interrupt, sometimes with no way of getting around it to the page you requested, or d) sent to a &#8220;content not available in requested format&#8221; style page. </p>
<p>Our platform assumptions are getting in the way of our experiences, a feeling Bob sums up well:</p>
<p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/25499686" width="500" height="375" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/25499686">Bob Dylan &#8211; Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user7552252">kovacsmaff</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>The song is full of references to content that for one reason or another just can&#8217;t get its point across:</p>
<blockquote><p>Oh, the ragman draws circles<br />
Up and down the block<br />
I&#8217;d ask him what the matter was<br />
But I know that he don&#8217;t talk
</p></blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote><p>Well Shakespeare he&#8217;s in the alley<br />
With his pointed shoes and his bells<br />
Speaking to some French girl<br />
Who says she knows me well<br />
And I would send a message<br />
To find out if she&#8217;s talked<br />
But the post office has been stolen<br />
And the mailbox is locked</p></blockquote>
<p>And my favorite: </p>
<blockquote><p>Now the preacher looked so baffled<br />
When I asked him why he dressed<br />
With twenty pounds of headlines<br />
Stapled to his chest</p></blockquote>
<p>How many sites have you run across which seem to have 20lbs of headlines stapled to their chests? </p>
<p>The refrain reminds us all that we&#8217;ve been here before &#8211; we&#8217;re stuck in a single platform:</p>
<blockquote><p>Oh, Mama, can this really be the end<br />
To be stuck inside of Mobile<br />
With the Memphis blues again.</p></blockquote>
<p>OK, so he doesn&#8217;t actually say &#8220;with the CMS blues again&#8221; but it is what I sing every time I hear it. Now, hopefully, next time this happens to you you&#8217;ll find yourself saying (sometimes out loud) &#8220;Oh, Mama, can this really be the end . . . &#8221; </p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2010/01/ready-to-find-a-new-web-cms/' rel='bookmark' title='Ready to find a new web CMS?'>Ready to find a new web CMS?</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/08/cms-survival-in-higher-education/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS survival in higher education'>CMS survival in higher education</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/08/cms-mythbuster-report-devcon2011/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS MythBuster Report @DevCon2011'>CMS MythBuster Report @DevCon2011</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>CMS Expo: Content (Management Systems) Everywhere</title>
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		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/cms-expo-content-management-systems-everywhere/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 17:06:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Eckman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Content]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vendor Selection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cmsx]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2669</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week, hundreds of content management system users, developers, designers, administrators, and strategists gathered in Evanston for CMS Expo 2013. CMSX has its roots in the local user group community, which makes it feel more like a multi-platform user group meeting than a vendor-driven sales conference. It&#8217;s like a DrupalCamp, WordCamp, and Joomla Camp all [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/content-on-all-the-things-responsive-design-and-content-management-systems/' rel='bookmark' title='Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems'>Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/cms-real-world-style-at-cms-expo/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Real World Style at CMS Expo'>CMS Real World Style at CMS Expo</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/05/revisiting-wordpress-as-a-cms-again/' rel='bookmark' title='Revisiting WordPress as a CMS (Again)'>Revisiting WordPress as a CMS (Again)</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/"><img src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/home-logos-e1369148881197.jpg" alt="home-logos" width="600" height="200" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2670" /></a></p>
<p>Last week, hundreds of content management system users, developers, designers, administrators, and strategists gathered in Evanston for <a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/" title="CMS Expo 2013">CMS Expo 2013</a>. CMSX has its roots in the local user group community, which makes it feel more like a multi-platform user group meeting than a vendor-driven sales conference. It&#8217;s like a DrupalCamp, WordCamp, and Joomla Camp all ended up at the same hotel, which makes for some interesting cross-platform discussions. John and Linda have also really made big strides in shifting the conversation to include not just the platforms but also business strategy and content strategy. This directional change was even more in play this year, with fewer small track sessions in the am and more large sessions attended by the whole audience. </p>
<p>The major theme this year was the arrival of mobile, and how the impact of mobile goes well beyond just responsive design: structured content, content strategy, adaptive content, reactive technology were all discussions stemming from this root.<br />
<span id="more-2669"></span><br />
Many of the highlights were those I had expected: </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/mbloomstein" title="Margot Bloomstein">Margot Bloomstein</a> (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/mbloomstein/cart-meet-horse-content-strategy-for-content-management" title="Cart, Meet Horse: Content Strategy for Content Management">Cart, Meet Horse</a>)</li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/eaton" title="Jeff Eaton">Jeff Eaton</a> (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/eaton/prepare-for-the-mobilacalypse" title="Prepare for the Mobilacalypse">Prepare for the Mobilacalypse</a>)</li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/sarahbeckley" title="Sarah Beckley">Sarah Beckley</a> (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sebeckley/how-to-future-proof-your-business-contentcms-expo-2013" title="Future Proof your Business Content">How to Future Proof your Business Content</a>)</li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/daponovich" title="David Aponovich">David Aponovich</a> (Five Secret Weaknesses of your WCM)</li>
</ul>
<p>There were also way more sessions I wanted to go to but couldn&#8217;t, including: <a href="http://hobbsontech.com/" title="David Hobbs">David Hobbs</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/AveryCohen" title="Avery Cohen">Avery Cohen</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/skarjune" title="David Skarjune">David Skarjune</a>, <a href="http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/" title="Digital Clarity Group">Scott Liewehr &#038; Robert Rose</a>, and many others. </p>
<p>One unexpected highlight for me was <a href="http://twitter.com/kevindrewdavis" title="Kevin Drew Davis">Kevin Drew Davis</a>&#8216;s keynote, which was a model of clarity and vision without getting bogged down in technical details. He touched on the importance of Star Wars (the first one, now retroactively known as Episode IV)  as the first presentation of a &#8220;used future&#8221; in which the world wasn&#8217;t all shiny and new. (Though the Star Wars geek in me was tempted to remind the speaker that Star Wars is technically set in the past not the future). We tend to keep thinking that when the next new thing comes all the old things stop being valuable, or that at some point we&#8217;ll stop inventing more new platforms and formats, but instead these new things just accrete. We add more devices but we&#8217;re reluctant to give up old ones. We need to stop thinking of our users as using &#8220;a&#8221; platform and recognize all users use multiple platforms in multiple contexts. </p>
<p>I also really enjoyed <a href="http://www.jenkramer.org/" title="Jen Kramer">Jen Kramer</a>&#8216;s take on &#8220;<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jen4web/reactive-technology-cms-expo-2013-21176912" title="Reactive Technology">reactive technology</a>&#8221; &#8211; her attempt at a buzzword to replace &#8220;responsive design&#8221; and try to bridge the gap in understand that responsive suffers right now (in that it means something very specific to developers but business owners haven&#8217;t yet really understood all their options for mobile). Her mode of presenting the variety of options (from mobile sites to adaptive options to responsive and potentially mixtures of all of these options) helps back out of the &#8220;responsive design is the answer to all mobile problems&#8221; mentality that can result from a superficial discussion. </p>
<p>WordPress was well represented this year, on the multi-cms &#8220;can your CMS do this&#8221; and &#8220;can your CMS do that&#8221; panels as well as through a series of presentations by:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/AaronJHolbrook" title="Aaron Holbrook">Aaron Holbrook</a> (<a href="https://speakerdeck.com/aaronholbrook/wordpress-is-a-cms-dammit" title="WordPress is a CMS">WordPress is a CMS</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://lisasabin-wilson.com/" title="Lisa Sabin-Wilson">Lisa Sabin-Wilson</a> (Exploring Multi-Site, Creating Community)</li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/jakemgold" title="Jake Goldman">Jake Goldman</a> (<a href="http://10up.com/blog/publishing-workflows-wordpress/" title="Publishing Workflows in WordPress">Publishing Workflows and Tools</a>)</li>
<li>Me (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jeckman/beyond-posts-and-pages-revised" title="Beyond Posts and Pages: Structured Content in WordPress">Beyond Posts and Pages</a>, <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jeckman/were-on-a-mission-wordpress-for-nonprofits" title="We're on a Mission: WordPress for Non-Profits">We&#8217;re on a Mission</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p>Meetup Monday even included an appearance by WordPress lead developer <a href="https://twitter.com/nacin" title="Andrew Nacin">Andrew Nacin</a> talking about what&#8217;s upcoming in WordPress 3.6.</p>
<p>While it&#8217;s certainly important to recognize that selecting a platform is just one part of the broader content management <del datetime="2013-05-21T15:36:33+00:00">problem</del> opportunity (see <a href="http://www.isitedesign.com/insight-blog/12_04/cms-selection-myth" title="CMS Selection Myth">the selection myth</a>), it&#8217;s also very valuable to be at a conference like CMS Expo and interact with people beyond the tribe where you spend most of your time. If you work on a specific platform (as a developer, designer, consultant, or client) it&#8217;s incredibly valuable to see what solutions other platforms rely on as they face the same challenges. </p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/content-on-all-the-things-responsive-design-and-content-management-systems/' rel='bookmark' title='Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems'>Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/cms-real-world-style-at-cms-expo/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Real World Style at CMS Expo'>CMS Real World Style at CMS Expo</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/05/revisiting-wordpress-as-a-cms-again/' rel='bookmark' title='Revisiting WordPress as a CMS (Again)'>Revisiting WordPress as a CMS (Again)</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>DrupalCon: Lessons From the Intersection of Project Management and Content Strategy</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheCmsMyth/~3/qVckiwe74GI/</link>
		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/drupalcon-lessons-from-the-intersection-of-project-management-and-content-strategy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 13:48:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jake DiMare</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Strategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2591</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[DrupalCon 2013 in Portland Oregon is right around the corner! I’m so excited for my talk: “So Happy Together (Content Strategists and Project Managers Are)” on Wednesday, May 22nd at 10:45AM. During this session we’ll discuss how much we CMS Mythbusters respect and appreciate the rapidly emerging discipline of content strategy. Ironically, after all these [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/06/so-happy-together-content-strategists-and-project-managers-are/' rel='bookmark' title='So Happy Together &lt;br /&gt;(Content Strategists and Project Managers are)'>So Happy Together (Content Strategists and Project Managers are)</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/07/the-content-building-blocks-of-web-content-management/' rel='bookmark' title='The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management'>The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/12/gilbane-boston-planning-for-a-cms/' rel='bookmark' title='Gilbane Boston &amp; planning for a CMS'>Gilbane Boston &#038; planning for a CMS</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Drupalcon-speaker.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2592" alt="DrupalCon speaker badge" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Drupalcon-speaker.jpg" width="160" height="310" /></a></p>
<p>DrupalCon 2013 in Portland Oregon is right around the corner! I’m so excited for my talk: “<a href="http://portland2013.drupal.org/node/518">So Happy Together (Content Strategists and Project Managers Are)</a>” on Wednesday, May 22<sup>nd</sup> at 10:45AM.</p>
<p>During this session we’ll discuss how much we CMS Mythbusters respect and appreciate the rapidly emerging discipline of content strategy. Ironically, after all these years building CMS driven websites, there is one thing we still wish people were more aware of: content matters. Sounds silly right? After all, the ‘C’ in ‘CMS’ stands for…Well, <i>content</i>.</p>
<p>However, project stakeholders are often so wrapped up worrying about technical risks or marveling over new designs that content can nearly be forgotten or worse…Treated as an unimportant ‘detail’ to be figured out later (queue Lorum Ipsum).</p>
<h3>Content Strategy Meets Project Management</h3>
<p>We&#8217;ll take a look at tools of the trade in content planning and strategy, discuss when and how to integrate content strategists and some of the consequences of ignoring this important aspect of designing and building new web properties. We’ll also be handing out *exclusive CMS Myth prizes* so you won&#8217;t want to miss this one!</p>
<p>P.S. &#8211; If you’re a regular CMS Myth reader and you recognize the title of this session, your eyes are not deceiving you…It’s based on a<a title="So Happy Together" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/06/so-happy-together-content-strategists-and-project-managers-are/"> blog post </a>I wrote last year.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/06/so-happy-together-content-strategists-and-project-managers-are/' rel='bookmark' title='So Happy Together &lt;br /&gt;(Content Strategists and Project Managers are)'>So Happy Together <br />(Content Strategists and Project Managers are)</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/07/the-content-building-blocks-of-web-content-management/' rel='bookmark' title='The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management'>The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/12/gilbane-boston-planning-for-a-cms/' rel='bookmark' title='Gilbane Boston &amp; planning for a CMS'>Gilbane Boston &#038; planning for a CMS</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>From Blobs to Chunks: Structured Content in WordPress</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheCmsMyth/~3/g77WdAHi9LA/</link>
		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/rom-blobs-to-chunks-structured-content-in-wordpress/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 17:51:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Eckman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Content]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2538</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As the folks at CERN recently celebrated, it was twenty years ago that the core technologies and standards of the world wide web (including code for a web server and a line-mode client) were officially placed in the public domain. Tim Berners-Lee&#8217;s invention, designed to enable researchers to share research documents across multiple computing platforms [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/content-that-does-more/' rel='bookmark' title='Content that Does More'>Content that Does More</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/07/the-content-building-blocks-of-web-content-management/' rel='bookmark' title='The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management'>The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/april-showers-bring-may-mythbusting/' rel='bookmark' title='April Showers Bring May Mythbusting?'>April Showers Bring May Mythbusting?</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACopyright_Card_Catalog_Files.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-2546" alt="By Michael Holley Swtpc6800 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/card-catalog-e1368118635442.jpg" width="600" height="291" /></a> 
<div style="font-size: 0.8em; text-align: right;">Photo By Michael Holley Swtpc6800 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</div>
<p>
<p>As the folks at <a title="CERN" href="http://home.web.cern.ch/">CERN</a> <a title="CERN Celebrates 20 years of the free open web" href="http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2013/04/cern-celebrates-20-years-free-open-web" target="_blank">recently celebrated</a>, it was twenty years ago that the core technologies and standards of the world wide web (including code for a web server and a line-mode client) were officially placed in the public domain. Tim Berners-Lee&#8217;s invention, designed to enable researchers to share research documents across multiple computing platforms and formats, would quickly outgrow these academic beginnings to become a global force for business and social interaction.</p>
<p>It helps to remember this history, though, as we still struggle with one of the fundamental assumptions of early HTML (and its predecessor <a title="SGML" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language" target="_blank">SGML</a>):</p>
<blockquote><p>Content has its own internal structure separate from the specific presentations which might be made of it.</p></blockquote>
<p>This core notion of separation of content from presentation has been a challenge ever since. We just can&#8217;t seem to come to grips with the notion that the web is different than print, and that rather than trying to control the output across device types, contexts, and users, we ought to aim for flexibility. (In the 10 years between John Allsop&#8217;s <a title="The Dao of Web Design" href="http://alistapart.com/article/dao" target="_blank">The Dao of Web Design</a> and Ethan Marcotte&#8217;s <a title="Responsive Web Design" href="http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design" target="_blank">Responsive Web Design</a>, the majority of the industry &#8211; with some notable exceptions &#8211;  largely fell back into a pattern of fixed page designs for the desktop browser).</p>
<h2>Enter Content Strategy</h2>
<p>While the approaches like <a title="Designing with Progressive Enhancement" href="http://filamentgroup.com/dwpe/">progressive enhancement</a>, <a title="Adaptive Web Design" href="http://easy-readers.net/books/adaptive-web-design/">adaptive web design</a>, and <a title="Responsive Web Design" href="http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design">responsive web design</a> have helped the situation significantly, by helping realize the goal of flexible presentations rendering reasonably on various devices, form factors, and contexts, they only account for content presentation.</p>
<p><span id="more-2538"></span></p>
<p>Content strategists, most notably Karen McGrane (<a title="Content Strategy for Mobile" href="http://www.abookapart.com/products/content-strategy-for-mobile">Content Strategy for Mobile</a>) and Sara Wachter-Boettcher (<a title="Content Everywhere" href="http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/content-everywhere/">Content Everywhere</a>) have forced us all to recognize that without structured content &#8211; without forcing the content management systems and strategies we&#8217;re dependent upon to recognize, capture, and make use of structured content &#8211; we can&#8217;t ever truly be prepared for a world of adaptive content. The apparent flexibility of the WYSIWYG blob in fact prevents us from realizing the best presentation for each context; if we want true flexibility, we need structured content.</p>
<h2>Content Blobs</h2>
<p>WordPress has often been the poster child for &#8211; or represented the anti-pattern of &#8211;  unstructured content. McGrane wites:</p>
<blockquote><p>If your organization is using a blogging platform like WordPress as its CMS, you know what this looks like. Content creators get one big field for the body of their content, and it&#8217;s like their own personal playground.</p></blockquote>
<p>WordPress&#8217; focus on a WYSIWYG authoring experience and the legacy of posts/pages has been loved by authors and content creators, because it allows a great degree of flexibility, or what authors see as flexibility. In fact, one of Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s favorite features in WordPress is &#8220;<a title="Distraction Free Writing Mode" href="http://wpdaily.co/distraction-free/">distraction free writing mode</a>&#8221; in which everything but that &#8220;one big field&#8221; disappears into the background.</p>
<p>That apparent flexibility, however, comes at a longer term cost because the content it captures is not structured. What WordPress stores in the database is a messy melange of plain text, html markup, references to images and other assets like files, headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, and &#8220;shortcodes&#8221; which are specific snippets of text designed to be understood by plugins and transformed on display into consumable html.</p>
<p>WordPress plugins, themes, and templates can and will impact the presentation layer, adding styling onto that markup and processing shortcodes, but their ability to have structured, regularized, programmatic access to specific parts of the content (in order to execute rules) is very limited, because of the flexibility allowed to the person inputting the content.</p>
<h2>Making WordPress Chunky</h2>
<p>It doesn’t, however, have to be this way. If you have a content model, WordPress can be made to respect that model and provide interfaces for content creators which <del>encourage</del> require structured content and rich metadata.</p>
<p>Some basic structure and metadata are already built in, of course: title, body, excerpt, author, categories, tags, featured image, and (depending on what plugins you&#8217;ve elected) SEO-related metadata. Setting a featured image, for example, stores a specific relationship between the post or page and the media asset that can be presented different ways in different contexts: often, the featured image is included with the excerpt on list style pages in a smaller size, and becomes a hero image on &#8220;single article&#8221; type pages.</p>
<p>WordPress has also for a long time also allowed the notion of <a title="Custom Fields in WordPress" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Fields">custom meta data</a>, which requires some content modeling and some development, but enables users to add specific fields to content entries representing specific parts of the structure. For example, it&#8217;s a trivial exercise to add a subhead in addition to headlines, or to add a &#8220;pull quote&#8221; field to be treated visually in different presentation contexts. (Although it&#8217;s called custom meta data, and stored in a post-meta table, such information doesn&#8217;t have to be &#8220;metadata&#8221; in the purist sense; it can also be part of the content itself).</p>
<div style="width: 90%; margin: auto; border: .1em solid #dfdac9; background: #f9f8ef;"><a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/"><img style="text-align: center; padding: 5px;" alt="For $100 off a three-day conference registration at CMS Expo use code CMSX54417" src="http://www.openparenthesis.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/200x200-speaker.jpg" width="200" height="200" align="center" /></a><br />
For $100 off a three-day conference registration use code CMSX54417</div>
<p></p>
<h2>Beyond Posts and Pages</h2>
<p>This is where one of the talks I&#8217;m giving next week at <a title="CMS Expo" href="http://cmsexpo.net/">CMS Expo</a> in Chicago comes in: <a title="Beyond Posts &amp; Pages Structured Content WordPress" href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-248-Beyond_Posts_&amp;_Pages_Structured_Content_&amp;_Content_Types_in_WordPress_">Beyond Posts &amp; Pages &#8211; Structured Content and Content Types in WordPress</a>.</p>
<p>Since version WordPress 2.9 (which is to say since late 2009), WordPress can not only be made to think about posts and pages in a chunkier fashion, and to gather richer metadata about the content it is being used to manage, but to create and manage other types of content. Developers have the capability to create custom content types (which WordPress refers to as <a title="Custom Post Types" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Types#Custom_Post_Types">custom post types</a>, often abbreviated CPT). Sites managed in WordPress can leverage a fairly rich content model, including multiple custom content types, different <a title="Custom Taxonomies" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Custom_Taxonomies">custom taxonomies</a> for each of those content types, specific meta data or content chunks for those content types, and even (via <a title="Post 2 Post Plugin" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/posts-to-posts/">plugins</a>) relationships between those content types.</p>
<p>In the talk I will walk through a specific example &#8211; a site built during <a title="Code it Forward - New England GiveCamp 2013" href="http://newenglandgivecamp.org/">New England GiveCamp</a> a few weekends back by a small team for a non-profit focused on encouraging youth understanding of and participation in civic action. We&#8217;ll cover:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 13px;">Registering (which means &#8220;creating&#8221;) a custom post type via theme or plugin</span></li>
<li>Template hierarchy and styling custom post types</li>
<li>Custom taxonomies and permissions</li>
<li>Custom fields and meta boxes for adding/editing them &#8211; controlled vocabulary or free form</li>
<li><a title="Secondary HTML Content" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secondary-html-content/">Secondary HTML content</a> areas</li>
</ul>
<p>I will also discuss some of the limitations and challenges of doing complex content types in WordPress: search, alternative outputs, and relationships. It&#8217;s definitely a WordPress specific talk but many of the core concepts we&#8217;ll be discussing will be helpful for those modeling content in other platforms as well.</p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/content-that-does-more/' rel='bookmark' title='Content that Does More'>Content that Does More</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/07/the-content-building-blocks-of-web-content-management/' rel='bookmark' title='The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management'>The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/april-showers-bring-may-mythbusting/' rel='bookmark' title='April Showers Bring May Mythbusting?'>April Showers Bring May Mythbusting?</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheCmsMyth/~4/g77WdAHi9LA" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Mythbuster May Begins</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 20:38:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katie Del Angel</dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Project Management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2520</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This month is a busy one for the CMS Myth team &#8212; from Philadelphia to Chicago to Portland, the Mythbusters will be out in force! The CMS Myth will be represented at J. Boye, CMS Expo, Drupalcon, and WebVisions, as John mentioned last month. I took a minute (forty, actually) to pick the brains of [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/02/the-cms-myth-team-now-on-google/' rel='bookmark' title='The CMS Myth Team: Now on Google+'>The CMS Myth Team: Now on Google+</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/05/confab-content-challenge-this-sign-needs-your-help/' rel='bookmark' title='Confab Content Challenge: This Sign Needs Your Help'>Confab Content Challenge: This Sign Needs Your Help</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/05/the-cms-myth-lands-at-confab-2011/' rel='bookmark' title='The CMS Myth Lands at Confab 2011'>The CMS Myth Lands at Confab 2011</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><img class="aligncenter" alt="The CMS Myth Hangout logo" src="http://neptunetc.com/google-plus-image-2.png" width="620" height="340" /></p>
<p>This month is a busy one for the CMS Myth team &#8212; from Philadelphia to Chicago to Portland, the Mythbusters will be out in force! The CMS Myth will be represented at J. Boye, CMS Expo, Drupalcon, and WebVisions, as John <a title="Mythbuster May" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/april-showers-bring-may-mythbusting/">mentioned last month</a>.</p>
<p>I took a minute (forty, actually) to pick the brains of some of our favorite Mythbusters on where they&#8217;ll be, what they&#8217;ll be talking about, and what they&#8217;re looking forward to at the conferences they&#8217;re heading off to.  Check it out in the G+ Hangout below:</p>
<p>&nbsp;<br />
<iframe width="600" height="338" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uyqSlLuPaLA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>True, I won&#8217;t be out and about this month, but I&#8217;m eagerly awaiting my turn to get to Confab Minneapolis, which is just a month away! In the meantime, I&#8217;ll be brushing up on some new <a title="Content Everywhere" href="http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/content-everywhere/">reading </a>and continuing to head up the <a title="Team Content" href="http://www.isitedesign.com/insight-blog/12_06/building-culture-content">Team Content</a> charge back in Beantown.</p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/02/the-cms-myth-team-now-on-google/' rel='bookmark' title='The CMS Myth Team: Now on Google+'>The CMS Myth Team: Now on Google+</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/05/confab-content-challenge-this-sign-needs-your-help/' rel='bookmark' title='Confab Content Challenge: This Sign Needs Your Help'>Confab Content Challenge: This Sign Needs Your Help</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/05/the-cms-myth-lands-at-confab-2011/' rel='bookmark' title='The CMS Myth Lands at Confab 2011'>The CMS Myth Lands at Confab 2011</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheCmsMyth/~4/QBp__1WG5eA" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>CMS Real World Style at CMS Expo</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheCmsMyth/~3/aIYQYnjDq4Q/</link>
		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/cms-real-world-style-at-cms-expo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 17:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Eckman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Content]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Strategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2488</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In just a few weeks the CMS Myth will once again be attending, speaking at, and covering the CMS Expo in Evanston, IL. CMS Expo is a unique conference in a number of ways: Real world experience While other conferences give you talking heads, marketing department representatives, and sales pitches, CMS Expo focuses on real [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

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<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/11/gilbane-boston-09-focus-on-content-collaboration-and-customers/' rel='bookmark' title='Gilbane Boston 09: Focus on Content, Collaboration and Customers'>Gilbane Boston 09: Focus on Content, Collaboration and Customers</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2010/04/cms-world-evolves-at-gilbane-san-francisco/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS World Evolves at Gilbane San Francisco'>CMS World Evolves at Gilbane San Francisco</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><a href="http://cmsexpo.net/"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2446" alt="cms_expo" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cms_expo.png" width="339" height="125" /></a></p>
<p>In just a few weeks the CMS Myth will once again be attending, speaking at, and covering the CMS Expo in Evanston, IL. CMS Expo is a unique conference in a number of ways:</p>
<h2>Real world experience</h2>
<p>While other conferences give you talking heads, marketing department representatives, and sales pitches, CMS Expo focuses on real practitioners. Over three days you&#8217;ll find plenty of opportunities to connect directly to practitioners familiar with both a broad number of technical problems and (more importantly) non-technical challenges you either have encountered or will soon.</p>
<p>CMS Expo gives you the opportunity to talk to other business, content, design, and technology practitioners about how they&#8217;re identifying and solving these challenges. Attendees come from non-profits, higher education, small businesses, and enterprises, publishers, agencies, and government &#8211; but they all share membership in the content management tribe and a recognition that there&#8217;s gotta be a better way.<br />
<span id="more-2488"></span><br />
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2489" alt="Real_World_26_title" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Real_World_26_title.jpeg" width="500" height="280" /></p>
<h2>It&#8217;s not just technology</h2>
<p>As we&#8217;ve always said here at the Myth, <a title="What is the CMS Myth?" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/what-is-the-myth/">Content Management is not a technology problem</a>. While there&#8217;s no shortage of technical expertise at CMS Expo, there&#8217;s also tremendous breadth into content strategy, business strategy, governance, design, measurement, and marketing. This is a conference that recognizes your goal isn&#8217;t just to get a site launched but to operate a successful business. Everyone on <a title="How to staff a winning CMS team" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/02/how-to-staff-a-winning-cms-team/">the team</a> will find conversations on familiar problems and (even better) a few they haven&#8217;t yet started to consider.</p>
<h2>Finding the opportunity to dive deeper</h2>
<p>There&#8217;s something about spending three full days in suburban Evanston that opens up the opportunity for longer conversations. Often the best part of any conference is the hallway conversations between sessions and outside the scheduled program. CMS Expo offers the opportunity to identify folks you want to get to know and really explore more deeply the challenges and opportunities ahead of you.</p>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23465812@N00/8517774304/in/photostream/"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2507 aligncenter" alt="Photo by davecito under CC-BY" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/evanston-300x220.jpg" width="300" height="220" /></a></p>
<p align="center">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23465812@N00/">davecito</a> under CC-BY</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>
<h2>Broad platform coverage</h2>
<p>Last year&#8217;s CMS Showcase included <a title="CMS Expo Showcase" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/05/cmsexpo-day-one-were-gonna-need-more-tables/">fifteen platforms</a>. This year&#8217;s lineup is more modest, including Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, OpenText, Jahia, and SageFrame &#8211; though undoubtedly many of the other platforms will be topics of discussion throughout the week as well.</p>
<p>As someone who spends lots of time involved in platform-specific conferences (DrupalCons and Camps, WordCamps, and Sitecore meetups in particular) it&#8217;s refreshing to be at a conference which includes a breadth of solutions and doesn&#8217;t segment the audience off into their own content tracks but encourages and forces cross-platform discussion and friendly rivalry.</p>
<h2>Great speakers and sessions</h2>
<p>This year&#8217;s agenda is full of sessions I want to see, and speakers I either want to meet or reconnect with. Here&#8217;s just a quick sample of some of the folks I&#8217;m looking forward to:</p>
<ul>
<li><a title="Sarah Beckley" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-165-Sarah_Beckley">Sarah Beckley</a>, who will be talking about <a title="Future Proof Your Business Content" href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-198-Future_Proof_Your_Business_Content">Future Proofing your Business Content</a> and <a title="Making your Content Dance" href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-222-The_Dreaded_Matrix_How_To_Make_Your_Content_Dance">Making Your Content Dance</a>. (Leave it to the content strategists to come up with the best talk titles)</li>
<li><a title="Jeff Eaton" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-89-Jeff_Eaton">Jeff Eaton</a>, a long-time favorite speaker in the Drupal community and one of our <a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/01/five-more-content-management-blogs-you-should-be-reading/">Five (More) Content Management Blogs You Should be Reading</a>impending Mobilocaplyse.</li>
<li><a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-163-Margot_Bloomstein">Margot Bloomstein</a> on <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-201-Cart_Meet_Horse_Content_Strategy_for_Content_Management">Cart, Meet Horse: Content Strategy for Content Management</a>. (See <a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/making-content-strategy-work-author-interview-with-margot-bloomstein/">our interview with Margot about her book Content Strategy at Work</a>).</li>
<li><a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-100-Tony_White">Tony White</a> on <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-274-Lunch__%7C__Keynote_Are_You_Using_The_Right_CMS?">Are you Using the Right CMS?</a> (Will be interesting to see how he handles the <a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/04/the-cms-selection-myth-stop-the-insanity-and-focus-on-what-really-matters/">CMS Selection Myth</a>).</li>
<li><a title="David Hobbs" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-162-David_Hobbs">David Hobbs</a> on Content Migration (see our <a title="Interview with David Hobbs Part Two" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/avoiding-content-migration-train-wrecks/">two part</a> <a title="Tacking Website Migrations Part One" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/02/tackling-website-migrations-an-interview-with-david-hobbs/">interview with David</a>)</li>
<li>A series of WordPress presentations from <a title="Aaron Holbrook" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-174-Aaron_Holbrook">Aaron Holbrook</a>, <a title="Jake Goldman" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-177-Jake_Goldman">Jake Goldman</a>, <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-176-Lisa_SabinWilson">Lisa Sabin-Wilson</a>, and <a title="John Eckman" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-66-John_Eckman">me</a>.</li>
<li><a title="David Aponovich" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/a-wave-to-cms-veteran-david-aponovich/">Mythbuster Emeritus</a> <a title="David Aponovich" href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-167-David_Aponovich">David Aponovich</a> on the Five Secret Weaknesses of your WCM</li>
<li><a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-189-Tom_Wentworth">Tom Wentworth</a>, now Acquia&#8217;s chief marketing officer, formerly in marketing at Ektron and before that Interwoven (that&#8217;s a unique background).</li>
<li><a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-64-Robert_Rose">Robert Rose</a> and <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-87-Scott_Liewehr">Scott Liewher</a> from <a href="http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/">Digital Clarity Group</a></li>
<li>A <a title="Media and Publishing Panel" href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-267-Why_Media_and_Publishing_Companies_Use_Drupal_for_Effective_Content_Management_Platforms">media and publishing panel</a> featuring the Associated Press (Paul Caluori) and The Nation (John Cary)</li>
</ul>
<p>I hope to see some CMS Myth readers &#8211; do say hello if you get a chance. For $100 off a three-day conference registration use code CMSX54417</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/"><img class="size-full wp-image-3394" alt="For $100 off a three-day conference registration at CMS Expo use code CMSX54417" src="http://www.openparenthesis.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/200x200-speaker.jpg" width="200" height="200" /></a></p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/04/cms-expo-one-big-web-content-management-jamboree/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Expo: One Big Web Content Management Jamboree'>CMS Expo: One Big Web Content Management Jamboree</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/11/gilbane-boston-09-focus-on-content-collaboration-and-customers/' rel='bookmark' title='Gilbane Boston 09: Focus on Content, Collaboration and Customers'>Gilbane Boston 09: Focus on Content, Collaboration and Customers</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2010/04/cms-world-evolves-at-gilbane-san-francisco/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS World Evolves at Gilbane San Francisco'>CMS World Evolves at Gilbane San Francisco</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>A Wave to CMS Veteran David Aponovich</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:46:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeff Cram</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2456</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s been a big week in the CMS world with Forrester Research publishing its much-anticipated 2013 Forrester Wave for Web Content Management. This research report from the venerable Cambridge-MA headquartered think tank published every year or two can move markets, make (or break) vendor reputations, and inform the CMS short lists of the Fortune 1000 [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/02/now-driving-cms-adoption-customer-experience/' rel='bookmark' title='Now driving CMS adoption: Customer experience'>Now driving CMS adoption: Customer experience</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/01/why-customer-references-are-a-gigantic-missed-opportunity-in-selecting-a-cms/' rel='bookmark' title='Why Customer References are a Gigantic Missed Opportunity in Selecting a CMS'>Why Customer References are a Gigantic Missed Opportunity in Selecting a CMS</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/02/cms-wisdom-from-the-trenches/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Wisdom from the Trenches'>CMS Wisdom from the Trenches</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>It’s been a big week in the CMS world with Forrester Research publishing its much-anticipated <a href="http://www.forrester.com/The+Forrester+Wave153+Web+Content+Management+For+Digital+Customer+Experience+Q2+2013/fulltext/-/E-RES82462">2013 Forrester Wave for Web Content Management</a>.</p>
<p>This research report from the venerable Cambridge-MA headquartered think tank published every year or two can move markets, make (or break) vendor reputations, and inform the CMS short lists of the Fortune 1000 set.</p>
<p>The byline on the 2013 report should ring familiar for longtime readers of the CMS Myth. David Aponovich was a key contributor to the 2013 edition as a Senior Analyst on the Application Development &amp; Delivery team at Forrester.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/a-wave-to-cms-veteran-david-aponovich/david-aponovich/" rel="attachment wp-att-2461"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-2461" alt="David Aponovich" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/David-Aponovich.png" width="155" height="150" /></a>David of course was a collaborator of ours at <a href="http://www.isitedesign.com">ISITE Design</a> for almost six years as a web content management strategist and CMS Mythbuster contributor. And not just any run-of-the-mill-cape-wearing-mythbuster either. David helped create and establish the CMS Myth brand and blog five years ago after some backroom conversations at a Gilbane show out West. Any CMS insider knows the real plans for industry world domination are hatched at the hotel bar during Gilbane’s annual gathering.</p>
<p>In reading the Wave report this week, I realized we never gave David a proper Mythbuster sendoff on this blog when he left to join Forrester last August. Overnight, our loyal readers were left with a huge void when he got the (well deserved) tap on the shoulder from the “major leagues” and took his talents to the global technology marketplace via North Cambridge.</p>
<p>David’s stellar reputation in the CMS industry of course preceded his time here. He was a marketing executive at a leading CMS vendor and had numerous roles covering technology for analyst firms and publishers. And don&#8217;t get him started about his days as a good-old-fashioned beat reporter in the then thriving print newspaper industry. Talk about publishing 1.0.</p>
<p>Forrester is fortunate to have such a pragmatic thinker on its team. Watching the last eight months of his activity, I can already see the positive mark he’s having on <a href="http://blogs.forrester.com/david_aponovich">their research and thought leadership</a>.</p>
<p>David’s contributions to the Myth leaves a “long tail SEO-rich legacy” of <a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/author/david/">nearly 50 blog posts</a>, not to mention dozens of presentations and I’m not even going to count tweets. He was often the first responder when a reader would call or e-mail with a heartfelt story of CMS pain or breakthrough success. Being a Mythbuster is one part analyst, one part practitioner and three parts therapist.</p>
<p>Here are a few of my personal favorites of David’s from the archive:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/06/stop-the-rfp-silly-season-for-web-projects/">Stop the RFP Silly Season for Web Projects</a>: A candid look at the insanity behind the vendor/client dance orchestrated by the great wall of procurement.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/04/avoiding-the-cms-death-spiral/">Avoiding the CMS Death Spiral</a>: Informed by one too many organizations reaching out for help as a last gasp of a failed CMS implementation. A blog post I still get calls about two years later.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/02/cms-wisdom-from-the-trenches/">CMS Wisdom from the Trenches</a>: Primary research done by David and team on the lessons learned from more than 50 organizations that recently went through a CMS implementation.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/10/cms-marketing-suites-sweeter-in-2010/">CMS Marketing Suites: Sweeter in 2010</a>: David picked up on this now red-hot trend more than three-and-a-half years ago posing questions about the merits of best of breed vs. integrated suites. The topic has come full circle as a big theme in the recent Wave report.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2007/10/the-origins-of-the-cms-myth/">The Origins of the CMS Myth</a>: David’s first post on the site and about as close as you will get to a founding story on how the blog got started. This post is so old you can see the fonts are all jumbled as it was ported and re-ported through a series of blog face lifts and WordPress updates. At this point we think it adds character, so we’re leaving it.</li>
</ul>
<p>The hits of course don’t stop here. He’s <a href="http://blogs.forrester.com/david_aponovich">continuing to blog</a> in his new role at Forrester, backed by one of the better research groups in the business. It certainly makes our Mytbuster operations look like the minor league Toledo Mud Hens.</p>
<p>We’re excited to continue following David and I’m glad that we can still connect regularly to talk shop and swap stories about the industry, and of course our beloved <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1829675/marketing-crashes-fenway-parks-100th-birthday-party">Boston Red Sox</a>. David will also be <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-167-David_Aponovich">keynoting CMS Expo May 14-16 in Chicago</a> where <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-66-John_Eckman">Mythbuster John Eckman</a> is also speaking.</p>
<p>Raise a pint with me to thank David for his generous contributions on the CMS Myth and wish him continued success in his role at Forrester.</p>
<p>Cheers, David.</p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/02/now-driving-cms-adoption-customer-experience/' rel='bookmark' title='Now driving CMS adoption: Customer experience'>Now driving CMS adoption: Customer experience</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/01/why-customer-references-are-a-gigantic-missed-opportunity-in-selecting-a-cms/' rel='bookmark' title='Why Customer References are a Gigantic Missed Opportunity in Selecting a CMS'>Why Customer References are a Gigantic Missed Opportunity in Selecting a CMS</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2011/02/cms-wisdom-from-the-trenches/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Wisdom from the Trenches'>CMS Wisdom from the Trenches</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>April Showers Bring May Mythbusting?</title>
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		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/april-showers-bring-may-mythbusting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:03:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Eckman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Content]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2442</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Now that the Northeast is gradually thawing out from a belatedly snowy and cold winter, it&#8217;s time to start up the mythbuster van and get on the road. This May offers a number of opportunities to meet the mythbusters in person, and maybe even win some of the long-rumored CMS Myth apparel line. First up [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

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<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/cms-mythbusting-at-drupalcon/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Mythbusting at DrupalCon'>CMS Mythbusting at DrupalCon</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/web-experience-management-in-drupal/' rel='bookmark' title='Web Experience Management in Drupal'>Web Experience Management in Drupal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/content-that-does-more/' rel='bookmark' title='Content that Does More'>Content that Does More</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>Now that the Northeast is gradually thawing out from a belatedly snowy and cold winter, it&#8217;s time to start up the mythbuster van and get on the road. This May offers a number of opportunities to meet the mythbusters in person, and maybe even win some of the long-rumored CMS Myth apparel line. </p>
<p><a href="http://philadelphia13.jboye.com/"><img src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/jboye-300x44.png" alt="J. Boye | Web &amp; Intranet Conference" width="300" height="44" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2445" /></a></p>
<p>First up is <a href="http://philadelphia13.jboye.com/" title="J. Boye">J. Boye 2013</a> May 7th-10th in Philadelphia, where Jeff Cram will be running a workshop on <a href="http://philadelphia13.jboye.com/tutorial/creating-a-digital-experience-strategy/" title="Creating a Digital Experience Strategy">Creating a Digital Experience Strategy</a> and Dave Wieneke will be presenting on <a href="http://philadelphia13.jboye.com/session/digital-disruption-in-the-age-of-the-customer/" title="Digital Disruption in the Age of the Customer">Digital Disruption in the Age of the Customer</a>. (No word yet on whether he will be bringing <a href="http://delight.us/delight-2012-dave-wieneke-keynote/" title="Wield the Axe of Customer Experience">his axe</a>). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/"><img src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cms_expo-300x110.png" alt="cms_expo" width="300" height="110" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2446" /></a></p>
<p>Then it&#8217;s off to the windy city for <a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/" title="CMS Expo 2013">CMS Expo</a> May 14th-16th, where the showcase CMS platforms this year include Drupal, WordPress, OpenText, Jahia, SageFrame, and Joomla!. In addition to covering the expo for the Myth, I will be giving two talks: <a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-248-Beyond_Posts_&#038;_Pages_Structured_Content_&#038;_Content_Types_in_WordPress_" title="Beyond Posts &#038; Pages: Structured Content &#038; Content Types in WordPress">Beyond Posts &#038; Pages: Structured Content &#038; Content Types in WordPress</a> and <a href="http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-269-Were_on_a_Mission_Using_WordPress_for_NonProfit_Organizations_" title="We're on a Mission: Using WordPress for Non-Profits">We&#8217;re on a Mission: Using WordPress for Non-Profits</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://portland2013.drupal.org/"><img src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/drupalcon-300x103.png" alt="drupalcon" width="300" height="103" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2447" /></a></p>
<p>Lastly, in the Myth&#8217;s other home town, Portland, May 20th-24th brings <a href="http://portland2013.drupal.org/" title="DrupalCon">DrupalCon</a> and <a href="http://www.webvisionsevent.com/portland/" title="WebVisions">WebVisions</a> running concurrently with joint tickets available. Jake DiMare will be speaking (at DrupalCon) on &#8220;<a href="http://portland2013.drupal.org/session/so-happy-together-content-strategists-and-project-managers-are" title="So Happy Together">So Happy Together (Content Strategists and Project Managers Are)</a>.&#8221; </p>
<p>If you&#8217;re at any of these events, please stop us, say hello, and share your war stories from the trenches or myths you&#8217;d like to see busted. </p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/cms-mythbusting-at-drupalcon/' rel='bookmark' title='CMS Mythbusting at DrupalCon'>CMS Mythbusting at DrupalCon</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/web-experience-management-in-drupal/' rel='bookmark' title='Web Experience Management in Drupal'>Web Experience Management in Drupal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/content-that-does-more/' rel='bookmark' title='Content that Does More'>Content that Does More</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>Content that Does More</title>
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		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/content-that-does-more/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Eckman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Content]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[User Experience]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2428</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;What we need is not more content, but content that does more&#8221; In many ways the core challenge of the content management industry has always been the separation of presentation from content, to enable the re-presentation of content in multiple contexts and devices, to different audiences, and in different formats. But, as Deane Barker and [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

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<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/08/state-of-content-management-delivering-results/' rel='bookmark' title='Delivering Results: The State of Content Management'>Delivering Results: The State of Content Management</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/05/the-best-25-tweets-from-jboye-2012-philadelphia/' rel='bookmark' title='The best 25 tweets from Jboye 2012 Philadelphia'>The best 25 tweets from Jboye 2012 Philadelphia</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/content-on-all-the-things-responsive-design-and-content-management-systems/' rel='bookmark' title='Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems'>Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><blockquote><p>&#8220;What we need is not more content, but content that does more&#8221;
</p></blockquote>
<p>In many ways the core challenge of the content management industry has always been the separation of presentation from content, to enable the re-presentation of content in multiple contexts and devices, to different audiences, and in different formats. But, as <a href="http://gadgetopia.com/" title="Deane Barker">Deane Barker</a> and <a href="http://angrylittletree.com/" title="Jeff Eaton">Jeff Eaton</a> discussed  <a href="http://www.lullabot.com/podcasts/insert-content-here-episode-6-deane-barker-on-cms-trends-and-content-geography" title="Insert Content Here Episode 6">late last year on Insert Content Here</a>, web CMS platforms in particular have tended to &#8220;leak that abstraction all over&#8221; &#8211; mixing content and presentation details together. Content editors, after all, really had a mental model in which they were producing web pages which looked a specific way, and the &#8220;broad reuse&#8221; goal fell by the wayside in exchange for WYSIWYG editors and embedded styles. </p>
<p>Mobile has (as <a href="http://karenmcgrane.com/" title="Karen McGrane">Karen McGrane</a> and others <a href="http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-content-video-slides-and-transcript-oh-my/" title="Adapting ourselves to adaptive content">have noted</a>) revealed for all to see that the emperor has no clothes, demonstrating just how poorly our desktop-web-design-oriented page layouts and systems handle change. When your content is stored in undifferentiated HTML-and-CSS-together blobs, it becomes impossible to future-proof and adapt to changing circumstances effectively at scale.  </p>
<p><a href="http://sarawb.com/2012/12/12/introducing-content-everywhere/"><img src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/content-everywhere-books-236x300.jpg" alt="content-everywhere-books" width="236" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2429" /></a></p>
<p>It was in this context I was so excited to see that <a href="http://sarawb.com/" title="Sara Wachter-Boettcher">Sara Wachter-Boettcher</a> was coming to speak to the <a href="http://www.meetup.com/Content-Strategy-NE/" title="Content Strategy New England">Content Strategy New England meetup</a> about her book <a href="http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/content-everywhere/" title="Content Everywhere">Content Everywhere</a> and more broadly the opportunity structured content offers and how organizations turn that opportunity into a challenge.<br />
<span id="more-2428"></span><br />
For me the key message of the night (for which there were many great contenders &#8211; see the <a href="http://storify.com/jeckman/not-more-content-content-that-does-more" title="Not More Content; Content that Does More">storify tweet recap</a> below) was that <em>we don&#8217;t need more content, we need content that does more</em>. Structured content, which has semantic structure and geography (set of relationships) is <em>the</em> concept which truly enables future-friendly content strategy.  </p>
<p>She also offered what I took as a nice improvement to standard definitions of content strategy (emphasis mine):</p>
<blockquote><p>Content strategy bridges the gap between executive vision and daily execution, defining how content will serve the organization <em>over time</em></p></blockquote>
<p>If you&#8217;re only thinking about your content strategy in the context of the current project, the current form factors, the current devices, or the current trends, you&#8217;re not building a sustainable model for the future. It may take a bit more investment up front to properly model content and understand its inherent structures and patterns, but not doing so will inevitably mean making choices that result in brittle, inflexible, and &#8220;fixed&#8221; solutions. </p>
<p>(Quick relevant plug: I&#8217;ll be speaking on <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/sessions/2-248-Beyond_Posts_&#038;_Pages_Structured_Content_&#038;_Content_Types_in_WordPress_" title="Structured Content and Custom Post Types">Structured Content and Custom Post Types in WordPress</a> at <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/" title="CMS Expo 2013">CMS Expo 2013</a> &#8211; other speakers include <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-89-Jeff_Eaton" title="Jeff Eaton at CMS Expo 2013">Jeff Eaton</a>, <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers/1-163-Margot_Bloomstein" title="Margot Bloomstein">Margot Bloomstein</a>, and <a href="http://cmsexpo.net/speakers" title="Speakers CMS Expo 2013">many others</a>).  </p>
<p><script src="//storify.com/jeckman/not-more-content-content-that-does-more.js"></script><br />
<noscript>[<a href="//storify.com/jeckman/not-more-content-content-that-does-more" target="_blank">View the story "Not More Content; Content That Does More" on Storify</a>]</noscript>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/08/state-of-content-management-delivering-results/' rel='bookmark' title='Delivering Results: The State of Content Management'>Delivering Results: The State of Content Management</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/05/the-best-25-tweets-from-jboye-2012-philadelphia/' rel='bookmark' title='The best 25 tweets from Jboye 2012 Philadelphia'>The best 25 tweets from Jboye 2012 Philadelphia</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/03/content-on-all-the-things-responsive-design-and-content-management-systems/' rel='bookmark' title='Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems'>Content on All the Things: Responsive Design and Content Management Systems</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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		<title>So you say you want a content management system…</title>
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		<comments>http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/04/so-you-say-you-want-a-content-management-system/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:03:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jake DiMare</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[content]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Content Management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[content strategy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Personnel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web content management]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cmsmyth.com/?p=2415</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about the importance of roles on a successful web content team again lately. However, unlike last year when I wrote this article about the various roles on the agency/integrator side&#8230;This time around I&#8217;m thinking more about long term content management roles on the client side. Specifically, how the lack of [...]<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>

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<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/02/how-many-people-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-content-management-system/' rel='bookmark' title='How Many People Does it Take to Screw in a Content Management System?'>How Many People Does it Take to Screw in a Content Management System?</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/03/why-metadata-matters/' rel='bookmark' title='Why metadata matters'>Why metadata matters</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2007/12/content-analytics-the-great-equalizer/' rel='bookmark' title='Content Analytics: The Great Equalizer'>Content Analytics: The Great Equalizer</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about the importance of roles on a successful web content team again lately. However, unlike last year when I wrote <a title="Link to previous article" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2012/02/how-to-staff-a-winning-cms-team/" target="_blank">this article</a> about the various roles on the agency/integrator side&#8230;This time around I&#8217;m thinking more about long term content management roles on the client side. Specifically, how the lack of experience around working with content management systems will affect long term organizational ability to effectively communicate online. Here&#8217;s a story that&#8217;s as old as the web, but keeps on repeating&#8230;</p>
<p>My team and I recently deployed a website for a truly beneficial and valued local non-profit organization. When we deployed the site and turned over the keys to the castle it was beautifully designed and moved the organization from a flat HTML web brochure to an impressive (by any standards) dynamic content platform with audience specific pathways, cross pollination of related content, an open source CMS, and responsive front-end experience. The organization, while incredibly adept at positively impacting the lives of those less fortunate in our community, couldn&#8217;t manage a web content management system if&#8230;Well, if their donations depended upon it. And as you can imagine&#8230;To some extent they do!</p>
<p>There&#8217;s nothing like the first time you go to check on the picture perfect design your team worked on for hundreds of hours and then deployed&#8230;Only to see what your client has wrought with improperly sized images, absurd combinations of font colors and sizes, and unnecessarily long navigation labels. It&#8217;s easy to be sensitive to this problem with an organization whose mission is to change the lives of the needy. Even though it would be a trivial task to demonstrate the return on investment in marketing resources, anyone can understand why non-profits are reticent to divert funds from their core activities.</p>
<p><b>Investing for the Long-Term</b></p>
<p>However, to all those regular, for-profit businesses out there who own a CMS or are thinking about owning a CMS, but don&#8217;t have the proper resources to manage it&#8230;Prepare for failure. And don&#8217;t expect your integration partner to be sympathetic. We say this a lot at the CMS Myth, but it&#8217;s another point well worth repeating: Modern, content managed websites are <a title="Your website is not a project" href="http://www.cmsmyth.com/2010/06/your-website-is-not-a-project/" target="_blank">PROGRAMS not PROJECTS</a>.</p>
<p>If you have invested in a content management system but don&#8217;t plan to update your content, you&#8217;ve overspent on technology. If you plan on updating your website regularly but don&#8217;t have the personnel to fulfill your goals, you&#8217;ve under invested on personnel. People are part of a content management system and some would say they are the most important part.</p>
<div id="attachment_2416" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 300px"><img class="size-full wp-image-2416" alt="Image of Leatherface" src="http://www.cmsmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/the_texas_chainsaw_massacre_image.png" width="300" height="225" />
<p class="wp-caption-text">I&#8217;m here for your widows and orphans.</p>
</div>
<p>It&#8217;s critically important to understand that a web content management system will not manage content on its own and it is dangerous in the hands of people who don&#8217;t know how to operate it. It&#8217;s a tool &#8212; much like a chain-saw in the wrong hands, it can truly turn a gorgeous website into a massacre.</p>
<p>So what&#8217;s a forward looking, thoughtful organization to do if you have nobody capable of working with a CMS? I wish this were easier to answer, but it depends on a lot of factors which must be considered. Issues such as, how often will the site be updated? Does your organization value continuous improvement based on measurement and analytics? Are you trying to serve multiple audiences? How big is your organization? How much content is there to be managed? Will this team also manage the content distributed via other channels such as the social web?</p>
<p><b>The Right</b> <b>CV for WCM</b></p>
<p>At the very least, a strong web content manager would be made up of a person (or combination of people for larger orgs) with the following skills (in no particular order):</p>
<ul>
<li>Copywriting for the web (understands the impact of content on search results, content geography, taxonomy)</li>
<li>Photoshop (or competence with some other image editing software)</li>
<li>Basic design skills</li>
<li>The ability to communicate effectively with designers</li>
<li>The ability to communicate effectively with developers</li>
<li>A basic understanding of the use and importance of tracking and analytics</li>
<li>A genuine desire to work with technology solutions (not the technophobic luddite who volunteered for the web job because they thought it equaled job security)</li>
</ul>
<p>Ideally these more advanced skills may also be beneficially handled in-house:</p>
<ul>
<li>Basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript</li>
<li>Content strategy</li>
<li>Expert ability with measurement and analytics</li>
<li>Expert ability with search optimization</li>
<li>Deep knowledge of the various social web ecosystems where your organization is represented (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p>The good news is many organizations are beginning to understand managing web content is a necessary consideration, and not a job for the person who usually lays out the print brochure. The other good news is as the millennial generation enters the workforce there will be plenty of digital natives who both intrinsically understand and appreciate the power of dynamic, on-demand publishing. That being said, there are still plenty of orgs who don&#8217;t get it yet&#8230;And so I&#8217;d genuinely like to know: What are your experiences dealing with understaffed web teams?</p>
<div class='yarpp-related-rss'>
<p>Related posts:<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2008/02/how-many-people-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-content-management-system/' rel='bookmark' title='How Many People Does it Take to Screw in a Content Management System?'>How Many People Does it Take to Screw in a Content Management System?</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2009/03/why-metadata-matters/' rel='bookmark' title='Why metadata matters'>Why metadata matters</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.cmsmyth.com/2007/12/content-analytics-the-great-equalizer/' rel='bookmark' title='Content Analytics: The Great Equalizer'>Content Analytics: The Great Equalizer</a></li>
</ol></p>
</div>
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