Category Archives: Content Management

AMS-CMS Integration Audio Download

Posted on by David
Reply

You may recall that I did an audio conference a couple weeks ago with Wes Trochlil on the potential and pitfalls of integration association and content management systems. The session was very well received by our attendees at the live event.

I am pleased to now make the program available as a download: Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems Audio Product. For $99 you will receive an MP3 file of the audio and a PDF of the slides. A sample of the audio is available in this post.

And here is a special one week offer to my blog readers: use this code when you buy the product and get 40% off! This code will be good until one week from today (May 24, 2006). Enter this code in the shopping cart to receive your discount: V823R4E1 Please feel free to share the code with anyone you think might benefit from this unique program.

Learn more about the audio program.

http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=P31bc3801ea0660e0757bb7158480fa6eYF97SlREYmN2&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21

One CMS to Rule Them All?

Posted on by David
2

A couple of good posts this month on whether a single CMS can be used to manage both your public and intranet web sites. Short answer: usually, no. For more detail follow the links.

I agree with those authors that more often than not, a single CMS will not be appropriate for your public site and your intranet site. The requirements for each are going to be pretty different once you get past basic authoring and content management features. Even for associations, whose public web sites could be considered more intranet-like than the usual corporate web site, are going to be hard pressed to find a single tool that effectively supports both.

Dabble DB Demo Blows Away Meeting Industry Functionality

Posted on by David
Reply

This seven minute demo of the Dabble DB web application should put the fear into conference web site providers. In a mere seven minutes, they take a comma-delimited file of session information and create a highly usable web interface for searching, displaying and modifying the data. Seven minutes! And to make it worse (or better, depending upon your point of view), the Dabble DB is for working with any data, not specifically meetings.

Usability failure is eventually going to be the death of many companies serving the association space. The barriers to entering the web application market are so low that the current players’ interfaces aren’t going to cut it for much longer.

(Via Paul Bissex.)

Can you get a bad grade on a Wikipedia entry?

Posted on by David
8

I believe that Dave Winer would give me a low one based on his reaction to my incorrect attribution of coining the term ‘unconference’ to him rather than Lenn Pryor in the unconference entry I started. Sorry about that Lenn!

John Robb points out that Dave could have easily made the edit in addition to just complaining about it. A few folks have jumped in to clean up the entry some more since Dave’s post.

I think the point here is not that I didn’t approach writing a wikipedia article like writing a research paper. The point is that I got the ball rolling in about 5 minutes for a topic that really deserved an entry. 20 other people can each spend five minutes improving it and eventually you’ll have a nice solid piece. Is this a bad thing?

Update: Dave responds in the comments to John’s post discussing his concerns with Wikipedia.

Using the Bottom of Your Page

Posted on by David
Reply

Derek Powazek had a nice post a while ago on how to reward visitors who read an entire page:

When you’re designing pages – specifically content pages – what is the best possible thing that could happen? I mean after the user has bought a computer, gotten internet connectivity, figured out how to use a browser, and somehow found their way to your site … what is the single best thing that they could do?

Read. That’s right, read. And read all the way to the bottom of the page. In this business, a user that actually reads all the way to the bottom of a page is like gold. They’re your best, most engaged, happiest users. You know, because they haven’t clicked away. They did the best possible thing they could do, and now they’re at the bottom of the page. And how do you reward them?

With a copyright statement. Maybe, if they’re lucky, some bland footer navigation.

If you ask me, that’s just rude.

Read the rest of the post for the ideas on to provide value at the bottom of your pages.

Mambo Schism!

Posted on by David
Reply

Looks like the open source content management system, Mambo, has had a split among its developers, resulting in a fork of the code. Here is a nice summary from Enter Content Here: Mambo, Joomla

This kind of split is one of the risks of open source projects. I think it can also be a healthy, long-term, survival mechanism as well although it certainly adds some chaos in the short run.

Leading from the Middle

Posted on by David
Reply

Here is a nice piece from CMS Newswire on how web professionals often have to take on a leadership role: Why Web Managers are Leaders.

You’re in a delicate situation. You need to show leadership for your website, while at the same time not being seen to usurp the leadership of your senior managers. How do you bring them along? How do you make them feel that they are still the ‘real’ leaders?

This is a common theme in association management to begin with: how to lead while appearing to be led. Usually it is about working with volunteer leadership but the same techniques can be used internally by mid-level web leaders who are trying to get their execs to get behind the best ideas for the site.

New Article: The Association Web Job Description

Posted on by David
Reply

I have just posted an article I wrote that went out in ASAE’s Technoscope newsletter a while ago: The Association Web Job Description. The article identifies the major areas that should be considered when designing positions to support an association web site, including sample language.

You may also want to see the sample interview questions for content management positions that I posted a while ago.