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The Content Management Process
Content
Management procedures enable the design, authoring, review,
approval, conversion, storage, testing, and deployment of the
content in an effective way. In any service, content
needs to be maintained, monitored, updated, and eventually expired
and archived.
Effective content management requires clearly defined roles and
documented workflow for all forms of content. This includes review
and approval processes and clear interdepartmental hand-offs. The
overall process of managing Web site content may or may not be
supported by specific commercial or in-house tools.
Common Functions of Web Content Management Process
| Design:
Design is part of the
initial phase of the content management process. The content to
be published on the Web site is defined here.
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| Authoring: This role is
performed by graphic artists, video-graphers, photographers,
technical writers, application developers, Web page developers,
marketers, or anyone else that produces original material for
the Web site. Authored content is often put under version
control through the use of document management systems.
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| Review: A review process is
required for all the content authored. Reviewer is responsible
for understanding the document flow throughout the content
deployment process.
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| Approval: Well structured
multi-level approval process is required as per the policies and
companies guidelines.
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| Conversion: Conversion process
is where the created content, such as images, multimedia, and
text documents are transformed to different formats and styles
by the developer, for example: transforming word processor
documents to formatted HTML text, modifying bitmapped images to
low band width formats to load faster on the Web, and modifying
database elements.
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| Storage: Content is usually
stored directly in file systems or version control systems.
Integrated application development systems store varied Web
content in the file system that replicates hierarchical
structure of the Web site.
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| Testing: Testing process may
include tests for various operating systems, browsers, speeds,
identifying broken or missing links; identifying slow loading
pages; load testing; component testing; database access; script
testing. The final integration test may occur on the staging
servers and should be comprehensive.
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| Staging: Large sites sometimes
differentiate between testing and staging servers. If this is
the case then the staging servers are used to assemble all
content after it has been thoroughly tested and before it is
replicated to the production system.
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| Deployment: Replication
to the production system is done in several ways so that all
content gets pushed to the live system, including middle-tier
components and transactional packages. Some e-commerce
enterprises have developed extremely sophisticated
multi-threaded replication mechanisms that automate the process
of deployment for multi-location Web farms.
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| Maintenance and Updates: The
content management process does not end when content is
published. The task of monitoring the content and updating
it when necessary will keep the site fresh and working properly.
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| Retirement and Archival: Having
old and out-of-date content removed from the production system
and archived for the future references. Old and out dated
misleading information on a public Web site could lead to legal
trouble.
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| Reporting and Analysis: Site
statistics and customer analysis needs to be an ongoing process
for implementing new features and a successful business. |
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