Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach (Paperback)

by Russell Nakano (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A book about developing, managing, maintaining and deploying Web content solutions across the enterprise. Addresses the common questions that all small, medium and large enterprises encounter as they grow. Softcover.

From the Publisher
This is a book about content management, with an emphasis on Web content. More specifically, it's about developing, managing, maintaining and deploying Web content solutions across the enterprise. It addresses the common questions that all small, medium and large enterprises encounter as they grow:

• How can I manage my growing base of Web assets?
• How do I get information to my customers, employees, and suppliers quickly?
• How can I ensure that my Web site's content is dynamic?
• How can I get all my employees to become active contributors to my Web site's success?
• What do I need to do now to ensure my Web site is successful?

There have been many books written on managing a Web project, understanding Web technologies, building a Web property and ensuring usability. Each of these deals with the perplexing challenge of the Web by delving deeply into a specific aspect: processes, technology, or people. This book is a combination of all three. It has to be. Content management is a technology solution that's implemented using specific techniques (e.g. workflow analysis, deployment solutions) to ensure wide-scale usability (from Web developers to content contributors).

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (October 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201657821
• ISBN-13: 978-0201657821
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #889,217 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much needed book on an important subject, October 4, 2001

By	Linda Zarate "IT Ops Consultant" (Azusa, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This book is an essential resource for anyone who manages web sites of any size or complexity. I purchased this book to research current practices in content management thinking it was applicable only to large sites. I found out that the information was as useful for small sites, including my modest personal site with approximately 20 pages and a few dozen download files.

The book starts out with two parts devoted to context and basic mechanics of content management: Part I is a single chapter that discusses motivation for content management, and Part II consists of 7 chapters covering concepts and principles.

While Part I is self-evident, Part II is a thorough look at all facets of content management from the definition of an asset through managing multiple web initiatives. Some highlights of Part II include: (1) clear definition of versioning and control mechanisms (in principle they are the same as those used in software configuration management for source code), (2)best practices for collaboration, which includes a well-defined cycle of submit-compare-update-merge and publish process, version snapshots and test cycles, (3)workflow processes that cover people, project, process and business factors, and (4) deploying content, which mirrors to a large degree IT practices for releasing code changes into production. I especially liked the way this aligns to IT operations best practices by treating the process in the same manner as a mature change control process, including roll-back procedures. Also valuable about this Part of the book is the frequent inclusion of checklists.

Part III covers design and implementation of content management processes and tools. Here is where workflow, template system and deployment design is elevated from the discussion of concepts and principles in the preceding section into a working system. This part of the book also discusses future trends in content management. Appendices are in Part IV. Each is as valuable as the body of the book, but I particularly liked Appendix B-Workflow Design for Formal Hand Off Between Groups, and Appendix D-Basic Process Steps of a Best-Practice Content Management Process.

This book addresses an important subject because managing content on even a small site is no small task. The authors provide a straightforward method, complete with case studies and checklists, to get a handle on what is probably the most difficult aspect of web site management. The writing is clear and the book is exceptionally well illustrated. It is also completely consistent with traditional IT and software engineering practices for change control and software configuration management.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Insight without authority, May 27, 2002

By	David Walker (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As the dot-com boom recedes in memory, Web site managers are turning to away from technological whizz-bangery and towards duller but more crucial work - like the task of simply getting content onto sites and maintaining it as cheaply and simply as possible. This task goes by the name of "Web content management", and texts on it are now belatedly appearing, a tribute to our newly pragmatic times. One of the first volumes comes from a computer scientist named Russell Nakano.

The term "Web content management" covers a multitude of jobs - everything from figuring out how your pieces of content work with each other (data modelling), to creating content (authoring), to getting it onto a Web server (publication).

Nakano's chosen title - "Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach" - hits the mark in at least two ways. First, it shows Nakano is most interested in the team aspects of content management - letting several people edit content together (collaboration), letting the right people do the right things to it (workflow), keeping track of how it has changed (versioning and archiving). Second, it hints at the narrowness of Nakano's approach: he knows just One Good Way to do things. His book concentrates on a specific methodology.

That methodology is aimed at large and complex Web sites, typically consisting of more than 10,000 pages, and owned by large organisation who want to strictly enforce content rules. Such sites often need sophisticated workflow systems to move content from idea to carefully-polished corporate product. Nakano gives such sites the useful title of "states", since they require systems of formal responsibilities, rights and privileges. He distinguishes them from "chiefdoms" and "tribes", controlled less by formal structure than by informal agreement and social pressure.

More broad principles like this would be welcome. Most of the time, you read in this book of the One Good Way that's suited to a few big Web sites. Fortunately, in describing his One Good Way, Nakano still manages to illustrate many of the underlying principles of collaboration, workflow and versioning. What's peculiar is that these principles appear almost by accident, when they should be the core of the book. And that Nakano gives no hint that they're long-established principles at all.

Take versioning. Nakano's book describes a "WSE Paradigm", with WSE standing for "work area/staging area/edition". Neologism aside, this appears to be the standard software version-control system that smart developers long ago adopted to Web development. Users "check out" site assets, work on them, commit them back into the system and merge them together if necessary, all in a way that minimises the risk that a team will muck up the existing site or obliterate each other's work on the new one. (A quick Google search will find you a swag of documents on using the open-source Concurrent Versions System, Component Software's CS-RCS, Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe and other versioning tools to build Web sites.) If Nakano's paradigm goes beyond this old approach, he never explains how. Indeed, he takes pains not to mention the traditional version-control practices at all. He also avoids naming any software tools which you might use to implement his paradigm. There are some valuable lessons and examples here; they're just not as accessible as they might be.

A few chapters in, I began to suspect Nakano's book was created as a marketing and customer support tool for CMS vendor Interwoven. More than any other CMS, Interwoven specialises in collaboration, workflow and versioning for large sites. It is in some ways more a CMS component than a complete product. Nakano co-founded the company, and Interwoven's site promotes it heavily. If you're paying the $A500,000 price tag of a typical Interwoven installation, I'd thoroughly recommend "Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach". If you have a more modest implementation in mind, Nakano still has something to say - he's just not talking right at you.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent , Detailed Text on Corporate Editorial Workflow, October 28, 2001

By	Alden Globe (Parker, CO USA) - See all my reviews

Nakano has delivered clear, useful descriptions explaining the step-by-step "how to," for mapping editorial workflow for web-based publishing. This is critical to the success of the best corporate portals,intranets and .com sites. This approach is also a fundamental requirement for those seeking to get the most out of high-end, enterprise content management solutions their organizations may have purchased (ex:Vignette and Interwoven.) This book will be a strong tool for project managers, corporate subject matter experts, intranet staff and a variety of consultants.