Tricks to deploying a new CMS

There are tricks to quickly deploying a CMS that make the business side of organizations very thankful because the new site is up and running quickly and efficiently - and make the IT side of the business happy because it doesn't involve changing the architecture, a lot of extra resources, downtime or troubleshooting.  Here are a few tips and tricks I have learned and implemented over the years:

• Create high content turnover pages in your new CMS. In one organization I worked for we separated the homepage from the rest of the website. With its custom CMS on the homepage and first few pages, we were able to upload and change high volume content rapidly without interfering with the java application that ran the rest of the site.

• Business Benefits: Resulted in a win-win for the business side that could rapidly and easily change content at any time. Technical side win-win with a readily deployed CMS.

• Insert your new CMS site into the existing corporate site. When your site is created in the new CMS, simply insert it into the existing corporate website or intranet by relinking.  Usually a new site built in a CMS consists of a few layers: homepage, Level 1, 2 and 3 webpages. These pages can be inserted within the existing corporate site or intranet then linked to other pages within the existing corporate website or intranet.

• Business Benefits: Branding and layout for the new CMS is set up to look the same as the corporate site or intranet, so for the client or user it is a seamless experience. This trick saves months and sometimes years of development effort.

The Essentials to Adopting a new CMS and Self-Publishing

One of the biggest hurdles after implementing a CMS in organizations, is preparing for the rollout and user adoption by self-publishers who have little or no HTML or coding skills. To increase internal user adoption by non-coders, your goal should be easy,  intuitive self-publishing. The easiest ways to do this is to strip down the admin interface to the bare essentials, after that, create a really terrific and engaging user tutorial. Doing both will reduce the never-to-be-underestimated "intimidation factor" of learning new software and processes.

Of course there are other needed requirements to adopting a new CMS like creation of a user support site, coaching, email support and of course a great CMS to begin with, but the two essentials for adopting and using a new CMS internally are:

- a user-friendly, intuitive CMS admin interface
- a user-friendly, engaging, step-by-step CMS user tutorial

What's the right CMS for your organization?

That depends on a number of factors like:

What Business Are You In?

If you're a large and dynamic multimedia company with content-rich productions being streamed on the web, then your CMS will need back the backbone and flexibility to deliver media rich productions in a variety of formats.

If you're a large information rich company that produces a variety of research and data, then your CMS will need to have the flexibility for top-notch metadata and easily create user-friendly URLs to optimize your content for search engines (SEO) for users to easily find your specific information searching in Google or other search engines.

How Deep are Your Pockets?

A simple CMS such as Wordpress costs next to nothing and offers Web2.0 functionality like easy updates, instant publishing, and plug-ins to a variety of formats to extend site functionality.

Open Source CMS like Drupal and Joomla are free of charge for the software, but the services component to develop and add modules has to be factored in. It gets more expensive depending on the complexity of the requirement. Free is not free unless used "out of the box" - and most sites and users want some form of customization. The good news is they can be deployed quickly reducing total cost of ownership, they are scalable, and a variety of modules can be added to extend functionality to meet any requirement.

Enterprise class CMS's such as Interwoven Teamsite, Sharepoint, Oracle are very expensive due to the cost of licensing software and cost of services, integration and configuration. Some can take years to deploy properly. And some still require HTML coders after all that.

Then there are the mid-range CMS offerings like Sitecore and HotBanana. Software is licensed and needs an integrator to deliver but they can be very viable solutions depending on your business needs.

Check out:

• CMSWatch for a list of vendors and CMS classes.
• My other posts on CMS best practices.

Fast track to Web Channel strategy learnings: 2010

It's been awhile since I posted last. Life and work took me off and away. And now I'm back.

Next week I release a new CMS and government of Canada website that's filled with best practices for user experience based on user tasks and usability.

And this is the first time that I have worked with all of the winning conditions:  a budget, open source CMS software (Drupal), a smart, talented and dedicated team: specialists in web design, information architecture, content, SEO, and importantly, a client who sees the absolute potential of the web to transform business process and operations.

It's a unique site the hails the beginning of user task websites. My next few entries will be based on this, so stay tuned...

Successful Interwoven Teamsite CMS deployment

Imagine that! There is a successful Interwoven Teamsite CMS deployment in the Canadian federal government. Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) deployed Interwoven with the Teamsite module.

Check out a successful deployment of Interwoven in the federal government: HRSDC website

HRDC has over a 100 self-publishers - so integration and user adoption were skillfully handled at HRDC. Congratulations to HRDC's IT and business teams. Quite an accomplishment!

2010 Update: Self-publishing in this instance required a two-person team per publishing division: an html coder and a web communications advisor. No WYSIWG editor was installed meaning specialized coding skills still required.

The search continues for the best-in-class enterprise CMS for non-coders!!!

What You Should Look for in a CMS

While there are many things to look for when considering a content management system (CMS) there are a four considerations that are the most important:

1. Quick and easy installation with a helpful user community
2. Simple administration interface to ease user adoption
3. Add-on modules that easily add extra functionality as required
4. Simple template design

Choosing a CMS

I have used a lot of Content Management Systems (CMS) over the years, everything from a custom developed CMS, to a simple CMS, to an industry standard CMS, to open source CMS. There are key factors to choosing, deploying, using, and widely adopting a new CMS. The most important factors relate to technology integration and self-publishing user adoption:

Technology integration

1. Review your existing technology environment. What technology stack are you using? Research and choose a CMS that integrates and deploys easily because integration will be one of the biggest sources of failure - and the biggest financial cost to your organization. Enterprises CMSs that I have used are Sharepoint and Interwoven. 

2. Your other choice is an Open Source CMS which can be deployed stand-alone to quickly migrate existing content and get your new site easily deployed. Once deployed you can spend the time integrating with the existing technology stack. Good open source options that I have used are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. This CMS Rating Guide accurately describes how users rate the many OpenSource CMS options.

User adoption

Other than how easily your existing techology integrates, the only big thing you have to think about is how easy it will be to have internal users adopt and self-publish in your new CMS. This should be treated as a separate project, after the new site(s) is deployed.  Best practices include creating:

• governance for your new CMS
• publishing workflows
• training guides and tutorials
• first and second level user support
• user support site
• CMS rollout schedule starting with internal users who are eager to be your champions
• simplified admin panel

The big thing here is making sure the admin interface is easy to use - strip or comment out any fields that aren't required. Your users will thank you and your user adoption/self-publishing success rate will sky-rocket.
Check out the CMS best practice links posted on the side of my blog.