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Web CMS Content Classification and Taxonomy Integration

PaperThin, a mid-market Web Content Management (CMS) vendor has announced advanced content classification and discovery capabilities in their CommonSpot Content Server version 4.6. The product’s taxonomy module now provides out-of-the-box taxonomy management for Web content administrators and contributors. New features include a taxonomy term editor and a taxonomy API, along with a facet-based navigation element.

“The overload of data on many Web sites today makes managing content a cumbersome process,” said Todd Peters, founder and president of PaperThin. “At the same time, visitors to a site often find it difficult to access information that is pertinent to them. Our new taxonomy functionality addresses these inefficiencies by allowing organizations to easily classify and manage their content. And, it gives users the ability to intuitively ‘find and discover’ information within subject areas. We believe this functionality further differentiates PaperThin in the marketplace and will deliver real business value to our customers.”

The taxonomy term editor lets organizations build and manage flexible taxonomies directly within CommonSpot. Each taxonomy defines one or more facets or hierarchical views into the data by defining ‘broader than’ and ‘narrower than’ relationships between terms.

Terms can also be defined to have other relationships in accordance with the ANSI Z.39 standard, allowing for the definition of taxonomies that meet critical business requirements. Content can then be rapidly assigned to terms using the taxonomy classification custom metadata field. Taxonomies can be easily refined as an organization’s classification needs evolve over time.

The taxonomy API allows developers to programmatically access any of the terms and relationships within a taxonomy. This capability enables easy development of unlimited custom-interfaces to related content.

CommonSpot’s new facet-based navigation element leverages content classification by allowing users to navigate through a defined taxonomy. Users can easily browse and discover information within topic areas based on one or more selected facets within a taxonomy.

By narrowing terms under a facet, a filtered subset of narrower terms and possibly other related ‘see-also’ references are presented. Facet-based navigation enhances the user experience and facilitates a faster information discovery process by only displaying content that is relevant to the user.

“Having the ability to directly manage a taxonomy and change and expand the navigation as our site grows from hundreds to thousands of pages is critical. The taxonomy has allowed us to tag pages and target content to specific audiences,” said Paul Davis, Senior Programmer & Analyst, Cornell University, College of Engineering.