Typical features of a CMS solution

Sethu Iyer — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:54:58 GMT

Current revision posted to Content Management by Sethu Iyer on 3/20/2009 8:54:58 PM

Some of the basic features available in most content management systems include

Content Creation Capability: The core feature of a content management system is the ability for users to create and manage content. Most content management systems provide this capability through an editing interface also known as a content input form (CIF). For enterprise class content management systems these CIF are configurable and would contain one or many form fields including fields for capturing content metadata such as authors name, date, and embedded WYSIWYG editing interface for editors to create and edit content.
Content Acquisition/Consumption: This can be defined as the ability to consume structured and unstructured content from third party sources. For example ability to directly consume Microsoft Word documents, PDF documents etc.
Content Transformation: is typically referred to as transformation of XML through XSLT, but can also mean the ability for on demand PDF conversions (on the fly), dynamic content assembly such as content from a database and file system assembled to provide a single unified view to the end-user etc., or in the world of digital asset management could mean resampling of image and audio files to transcoding of video to multiple formats.
Library Services: this includes capability such as check-in and check-out of content to ensure there are no conflicts during content editing, and multi-stage content approvals.
Versions: ability to store multiple versions of the same content object with capability to roll back to previous versions as and when required. Many CMS solutions also provide capabilities for visual comparison of versions.
Workflow: is the process used to manage content through its life cycle from content creation, authoring to content reviews (example editorial review, technical review, and legal review) through to publishing and ensuring the content is retired on its expiration date.
Audit Trails: ability to log any changes made to a content item such as edits, deletes, versions changes etc.
Notifications: these are triggers sent out based on predefined events such as content edits, or for notifying any workflow tasks.
Search: ability for users to search based on various attributes such as content title, metadata, author, publish date, content body etc.
Metadata Management: ability to appropriately tag a content item such that it can be easily classified and categorized. Extensible metadata management ensures easier content storage and retrieval.
Taxonomy/Categorization: ability to categorize content based on predefined attributes. There are several types of taxonomies but the typical ones are the hierarchal organization of content based on a parent child relationship. Some search engines too have capabilities to dynamically generate taxonomies based on occurrences of frequently used tags and keywords.
Publishing: is the process of delivering the content to the right end-point (or website) such that users may be able to view the content. The end-points in this case are also known as Content Delivery Applications (CDA). This is one of the core features of a content management system. High-end or enterprise class content management systems are capable of delivering content to multiple end-points/sites, while in the lower end ones the Content Management and Delivery happens in the same application.There are several checks and controls required when publishing involves physical delivery of content from a CDA to CMA. This includes capabilities such as guaranteed content delivery, automatic error handling, ability to configure publishing queues etc.
Archival: this is the ability to store the content after its expiration date to an archival database prior to its disposition.
Disposition: is the process of removing content objects from a datastore at on a predefined schedule after expiration. Legal/Compliance needs may dictate the need for an objective evidence of content disposition.
Analytics: there are several type of analytics such as content operational metrics to web analytics. Operational Metrics show the efficiencies of the content management process such as the cycle time from content creation to publishing clearly identifying bottlenecks in the process. Web Analytics shows statistics such as content usage, most used content; least used content, general traffic patterns, page views, number of hits etc. This is usually done with a web-analytics tool, and some of the high end tools have capabilities to narrow down collection of data for individual page elements/components, and may be used for marketing purposes such as A/B tests and multivariate testing etc.
Security: Content security has several connotations, but at a minimum it means the ability to ensure that only user with sufficient privileges are allowed to see content items that they are entitled to. Typically content management systems filter the content based on user privileges that are stored to database or LDAP repository.