Things We Hate About Content Management Irina Guseva: Random Thoughts on CMS, WCM, ECM and Other Acronyms.

Business Issues

Where you are buying into something that you may very well need to change or integrate with there is strongbenefit in considering Open Source. Open Source usedto frighten commercial software companies but we have come along way on that road to understand thatcommercial organisation canoperate inanOpen Source world and benefit. Thisdoes notnecessarily mean thattheirprized system needs to be fully opened up, but taking thespirit ofit to mean that you are completely open to people seeingand learning from your codehowitoperates.

Exactly what you need to see opened up varies. In a CMStheremay bea subsystemthat stores the content or one that allows a Rich Text Editor.These arguably don’t need tobe opened up, but when a CMS ships with modules for, for example,anRSS feed widget, calendaring tool, prebuilt webforms, users who then want avariation on this modulecanbenefit fromseeinghow the “pros” didit,they can then useit as a starting point for their own differentimplementation.

Wereally don’t needvendorsthatpaylip service to the buzzwords. When theythink the new CMS buzzword “engagement” is just a screenshot of Google Analytics. Or when they add an image picker and callitDAM. And a cross-over betweenWCMand ECM?Don’t thinkWCMislikeECM and it’saboutorganizing content, not abouteffectively communicating withtheaudience. And don’t thinkthat if you organize the content, you canautomatically communicate effectively.

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