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Objective and scope

The objective of this document is to support decision making in the choice of tools for managing contents and making them available on the web. In the context of CIARD, the requirement of making contents also as accessible and re-usable as possible is given special consideration.

By “contents” in this document we mean anything that can be made available through the web or identified through metadata available on the web: texts, documents, multimedia, data of any kind.

By way of example, and because they represent the most frequent types of contents that agricultural Institutions want to make available on the web, this document will focus on the management of generic web contents (articles, web pages), news, events and documents, touching on often needed additional functionalities like community features and collaborative editing features.

As an example of specialized content management with special requirements in terms of metadata standards and management workflow, this document will use the case of document repository management. Tools for the specialized management of other types of contents (geographic data, statistical data) can be covered in the tools matrix at a later stage, but the criteria for the selection of this category of tools will in most cases coincide with the criteria for selecting a specialized document repository management tool versus a generic content management tool that can be customized for document management. 

The first table identifies, based on specific Institutional contexts and content management requirements,  the most important features that a tool must have and the generic typology of tool that may best meet those requirements.

The second table presents, starting from the features/requirements identified in the first table and also additional non-functional requirements, some tools that meet the single requirements. Documentation on these tools and their matching against  the requirements will be managed through a wiki, so that users/experts on specific tools (or their owners/authors) can contribute useful information.

A more narrative version of table 1 is being prepared here.

See definitions and classifications at the bottom of the tables for further clarifications.

Decision Tree

Table 1. "Decision tree": context > requirements > recommended tool typology

Table 2. Software selection matrix: requirements > software tools

Notes on the structure

Since the objective of this exercise is to provide a practical instrument for decision making, the structure wants to be as similar to a decision tree as possible.

Being practical, this structure may lack systematicity. Some requirements / constraints apply at different levels, e.g. the requirement to be able to contribute data to a global database may be a (binding) Institutional requirement subsequent to a partnership agreement, and/or a functional requirement defined only at the level of a project.

The definitions and classifications below are provided in order to give some coherence to the potentially infinite ways to classify/group different types of requirements, of Institutional contexts and of tools. 

Definitions and classifications

Definitions 

CMS, WCMS, DMS, specialized CMS

a)  CMS vs. Web Content Management System (WCMS):

while it is quite common to consider a CMS an equivalent of a WCMS, i.e. a tool to manage a website, the definitions found in Wikipedia show that there is an agreement in distinguishing among them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system): a CMS manages virtually anything: "In a CMS, data can be defined as nearly anything: documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, and so forth. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation", while a WCMS "is a software system which provides website authoring and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage the site's content with relative ease".

In this document, we will refer to the CMS typology as a customizable generic CM tool, while WCMS are only considered a specialized tool for managing websites.

In case a CMS is going to be applied to the management of all Institutional contents and workflows, the CMS should also have the features of an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) tool.

b) Specialized CMS vs. generic CMS:

- specialized CMSs include document management systems (DMS), library management systems, project management systems, multimedia management systems, conference management systems and in general any management system that has a pre-defined content model and workflow optimized for the specific type of content managed: these tools have the advantage of being highly customized for specific needs and the disadvantage of usually not allowing to manage different types of contents in an integrated information system;

- generic CMSs (see definition above, point a) are generic CM tools that allow to define the content model and the workflows for potentially any kind of contents: these tools have the advantage of allowing to manage different types of contents in an integrated information system and the disadvantage of requiring some (or much, it depends on their flexibility) customization for highly specialized tasks;

- a third category could be considered: pre-customized CMS installations, which includes generic CMS platforms with custom installations that have a pre-defined content model and workflow optimized for one or more specific types of content, still allowing for the management of other content types; the level of specialization in these tools may of course not be as high as in the specialized CM tools mentioned above.



Content management

“The process of managing your content ought to include structuring, organizing, searching on, filtering, and easily modifying your content. It ought to include being able to quickly define new types of content. It ought to facilitate establishing meaningful relationships between disparate pieces of content. It ought to make your content more useful simply by virtue of the content being in the system.” (Croft 2006) 

“But most of all: when looking for a CMS, look for one that provides you a platform to do whatever you want. Don’t look for one that anticipates what you want and then makes you do it. Your CMS should be a platform upon which you can easily build and manage structured data of any type. You should never have to wedge a photo gallery into a blog entry form — you should be able to simply create a photo gallery object and associate with a particular blog entry. If your CMS can’t do this — or doesn’t at least provide enough of an extensible platform that you could add this kind of functionality with relative ease — then your CMS isn’t really managing your content at all. Instead, it’s getting in the way of you managing it.” (Croft 2006).

“a CMS is a bunch of powerful tools that add semantic richness to content, and that require customization to fit a specific project’s needs” (Kahn 2010) 

Resources 

...

“IM” and “IM staff”

...

  

Classification of tools

based on their MAIN scope - not secondary features - and their "packaging".

"Packaging": a) on-premise software / installation package: installed on the organization’s own network or by the organization on any hosting platform; b) Software as a Service (SaaS) / in the cloud: web access to the service managing the contents, which is made available and controlled by a 3rd-party provider.

- Specialized CMS

(document management systems (DM), library management systems, project management systems, multimedia management systems, conference management systems etc.)

---- on premise (DSpace, Fedora Commons, Jira, CiviCRM...)

---- in the cloud (Google Docs, Dropbox, ... [ask Meena?], Flickr...)

- Generic customizable CMS (or simply CMS)

---- on premise (Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla...)

---- in the cloud (Google Sites, Wordpress.com, ...)

- Pre-customized generic CMS

---- on premise (AgriDrupal, SADC AIMS, OneVision...)

---- in the cloud (AGRIS Metamaker, RSS generators...)

- Ad-hoc solutions

either programmed from scratch or based on frameworks (applications developed with Django, PHPnuke etc.) 

This classification has purely practical purposes, many tools may fall in different categories according to different perspectives and different use cases.  For instance, is Wordpress a generic CMS, a WCMS or a specialized blogging system with some additional features? Some tools that are usually considered WCMS are actually highly customizable generic CMSs. And so on.

Bibliography