It is well known that ‘CMS’ stands for Content Management System. But few people know that CMS aren’t actually enough to manage content. There litterally are hundreds of CMSs out there, each of them suitable for specific purposes. There are also in house built CMSs, developed to fit a particlular organisation needs. But none of them can magically make content management easier and more efficient.

A CMS is a system that helps to manage content by storing content in a database. Such tools have facilities to create, edit and publish content. They make website manager life easier thanks to template managed pages and quality control (eg links check). CMSs are also useful to content contributors, they can organise their work with workflows and amend content in WYSIWYG editor. These systems help to give consistency to a website content and layout, and allow to manage in one place content published to several websites.

From the previous list of features, it transpires that CMSs are not magic though. Here is a non extensive list of what they can’t do:

• define content categories and categorise it,
• decide who is liable for each part of content,
• know which are strategic pieces of content,
• find out when to review a particular sub section of the site…

Here is the bottom line: CMSs are tools, one kind of tool which is only part of the full tool kit of any accomplished Content Manager.

Managing a CMS project is a process highly dependent on the kind of organisation the project takes place in. However, once the CMS itself has been chosen, there are a few milestones to go through, whatever the size or the goal of your company. The best way to explain these is to list the deliverables you should come up with to make your CMS project a success.

1 - Content ownership: this document basically answers the question “Who is responsible for the content?”. For each section of the website, establish who is the person able to gather and make decision regarding online content. Make sure each page of the website falls under one of these sections. Content owners will also be part of the users group, a good way to make sure every service/department is represented.

2 - Content map: this is the actual list of every single page of the website. Group the pages by section, as established for the content ownership phase. Don’t be afraid to comment on content of the page, status (e. g. live vs. to be created), secondary sections it belongs to, etc. Depending on the scale of your site it may be a long work, but such a document will prove extremely useful for the rest of the project.

3 - Content typology: break down content in types to get an in depth knowledge of the pages to create in the CMS. A lot of criteria can be used to do so: static vs frequently updated, more or less strategic, commercial vs legal information… This typology will allow you to set up a strategy for content creation and maintenance. For instance addresses are highly sensitive, can show on several pages and will change often. That is why they should be managed in only one place and displayed on several, and regularly reviewed.

4 - Workflows: these are the sequences of basic tasks which lead to content publication. Even if your CMS don’t feature workflow (it shouldn’t happen if you’re dealing with a large website), identifying detailed procedures and accurate contributors is a good idea. Ask users group to imagine every case they could come across: correcting a typo is quite quick, sending live a new legal section may require a lot of validators, updating the news section involves image manipulation, etc.

5 - Quality statement: contributors are usually not familiar with content quality and consistency. This is your role to explain that typing text in WYSIWYG editor is not enough. Accessibility and usability rules should be declined in plain English to allow every one to create good quality content. For instance: how to use META, why text colour should not be changed. The quality statement is also the document in which corporate rules are listed: logo usage, correct spelling for company name, etc. The quality statement is kind of a contract signed by each contributor, it should be used by them as a reference, and should therefor be related in some way to CMS user guide.

6 - Planning: once you have a better view of pages to be built, start the actual organisation. Planning is a complex process and can be done in a lot of ways I can’t extensively describe here. What you have to do is found out the phases it takes to implement one section into the CMS. Classic ones would be: templates development, content preparation/gathering, validation… The tricky part would be to come up with sensible timescales. And don’t forget to include plenty of time for testing.

7 - Section ID card: get content owners to state every information that could help to maintain content to high quality level. The ID card should tell what the content is like, who can actually update it, what tool should be used to do so and when updates should occur. A good rule of thumb is the document is complete if anybody not familiar with the content can use it to update the section. This document helps content owners to get a better overview of update tasks, and may bu very useful if usual updater is missing.