Hear, hear! Emad's reply (reproduced below) to the question of "What is CMS" (often broached on this list, naturally) is clear-headed, vendor-neutral and timely. It reminds us of what is often incorrectly assumed to be a commonly understood paradigm.
We've all read plenty of suppliers' and clients' answers to this question on the list over the years. They they often (though, not always) fall prey to the desire to either push a product or vault off toward the esoteric margins. No-one would argue that debate on the nature of CMS and the relative ability of products to deliver to that is unneccessary - it's the list's raison d'etre after all. However, distinguishing between the management engine, the delivery layer and the dynamically generated "product" underpins the understanding of whether what is hawked as a CMS really is a CMS. As vendors merge, clients' information architectures and processes mature and CMS philosophies coalesce (hopefully toward some useful standards), it's worth re-examining the core attributes of content managment. If you're new to the world of content management or need reminding of the basic (and most robust) philisophies, read on. -j ---SNIP--- From: "emad Sarhan - Arab IT" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [cms-list] new to list/cm - What is CMS????? Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 23:28:58 -0800 What is CMS? No one until now know what is Really CMS Some vendors provides application for web site management or page management and they think they are providing CMS When you see a system that only give you the ability to create pages depending on Template and, manage the created pages, you are working with design or HTML editing tool If you see, in addition to that, a Workflow and authorization that can be assigned to these pages, you are working with web or pages management tool But if you see a system that work with content elements and give you the ability to use or re-use these content elements to create different type of content blocks that can be used to create different format of unlimited number of pages with workflow and authorization assigned to them, you are working with CMS And also, if you see a system that in addition to all above enables you to create personalization and content delivery, you are working with extended-CMS or portal solution This is CMS CMS must help you define you content elements as you need CMS must help you sharing and publishing information in different format CMS must help you create as many pages as you want form specific content element CMS help users create and edit content NOT pages CMS Create Pages from content NOT content from Pages CMS Manage the pages that are created by CMS itself NOT by user CMS provide Workflow and authorization in the content element itself NOT in Pages Thanks Emad Sarhan Tech Manager - Arab IT __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
