Latest Web Publishing News & Articles

Paul Boag wrote an article a while back entitled "The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS" over on Vitamin/Carsonified and I really thought it was a useful item to ponder over as a CMS user. Then I thought, "This totally applies to digital asset management software as well, somebody should write up the same thing for DAM." So here goes (with all due respect to Mr. Boag).

Newly updated, K4 is a German-originated product shipped in America by MEI. It offers tighter control of the publishing process with task-based workflow giving specific instructions on each user's tasks to keep them on the ball.

There has been a lot of discussion around what is better, integrated analytics or third party analytics solutions. But the discussion doesn't start there. It should start with just how well you use your analytics to drive your business decisions and user experience improvement decisions.

And thus our question for you this week is this:

The poll will be open through Sunday, February 14th, so have your say now. Stay tuned for the results of our Top DAM Challenges poll from last week.

It is time for marketers and communicators to stop treating customers like little children and start treating them like intelligent adults.

WoodWing Software (news, site) just updated their Smart Catalog productivity plugins. The tool, which is used for the rapid distribution of publications that rely on external data (TV guides, price lists, etc.) can now utilize the formatting power of Adobe inDesign and InCopy.

How would you feel if you knew Facebook and Twitter usage at the workplace was costing your economy upwards of 2 billion dollars per year in lost productivity?

 Open source Web content management provider XOOPS (news, site) is making some solid headway—a fact recently highlighted by Alexa.com. According to the Web information company, XOOPS’ reach increased by 57% over the last three months:

Modern organizations have armies of people trained in producing and publishing information, but there is a huge and growing lack of people who are skilled at organizing, analyzing and prioritizing it.

It is easy to see why most companies struggle with the CMS selection process. The market is flooded with hundreds of products and there does not appear to be a "safe", market-leading choice.

Ultimately, you want to select a content management system that supports your requirements and that your users will find usable.  But evaluating CMS software for functionality and usability takes time.  You don't want to waste your time getting intimate with the wrong products, yet battling your way to a reasonable short list is easier said than done. There are some shortcuts, here's how to get started.

In this week’s web publishing roll up, Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair and Talk, wants you to know that “American newspapers are dying mostly because they were so dull for so long a whole generation gave up on them” and not because the internet is killing them.

If you swear allegiance to both Internet Explorer and Google Apps, as of March 1st you may find yourself in an uncomfortable predicament, and frankly speaking, we're rather happy about all this. Google's recent decision will effect apps ranging from GMail to Google Docs. Enterprise folks, pay attention.

In full support of the rapidly growing e-reader trend, Atex (news, site) has just announced that their Web CMS offers direct publishing to devices all the way from the Kindle to the iPad.

WoodWing (news, site) showed their love for Apple yesterday by announcing the development of a set of iPad-friendly tools.      

Firstly, WoodWing's Content Station for planning and publishing content has been extended to support the iPad's special type of digital publication. The support will allow everyone to get involved with Apple's new toy, as in addition to smoothing out the workflow for creating such content, the team will also offer a native iPad app for consumers to enjoy it. 

"Apple's iPad is most certainly going to boost the success of media consumption through handheld devices," explained Hans Janssen, CEO of WoodWing Software. "This offers a host of possibilities for publishers to create new sources of income. It's our task as a software supplier to provide them with the right tools for that job."

The new iPad tools will be unveiled on March 3 during the first stop of WoodWing's World Tour at the New York City. Can't make it? We got you. 

iBook. iPod. iPhone. iPad. Apple’s evolution is astounding. It’s like you can actually see the ape man begin to walk upright.

Dries Buytaert of Drupal (news, site) hopped up on his soap box today to announce the launch of Drupal Gardens into private beta.

Drupal Gardens is a hosted version of the content management system with aim to please. As Buytaert put it, “Think of it as Wordpress.com or Ning, except that it comes with the power of Drupal. Equipped with multi-user blogging, commenting, forums, custom content types, and advanced user management, Drupal Gardens should be a great tool for organizations that want to build social sites."

Voila:

Needless to say it's a pretty big move for the platform, and it will certainly be interesting to watch how it does next to popular alternatives.

Sick of losing sleep over installations or upgrades? The team plans to release more registration codes during the next few months, so make sure to request on here.

Ladies and gentleman, Anil Dash has officially left the building.

As the very first employee at blogging and social media software maker, Six Apart (news, site) and a seasoned blogger himself (10 years!), Dash has been intrinsic to the company as well as the online writing discussion since the beginning. Consequently, his departure throws up a little red flag for some of us — what does this mean for blogging? Or for Six Apart? Well we asked him, and this is what he had to say:

Most of us apply various forms of metadata when we create or manage content. This metadata helps make our brilliant creations findable. But text-based content has life easy — search engines can also accurately index it. So findability is not so big of a challenge for text assets and parsable documents.

But the content we manage is not all text-based or parsable. We use a lot of opaque assets like video, audio and images. Indexing technologies cannot (yet) effectively crawl these items directly — they must rely on the explicit application of metadata in order to derive the semantics and context which make the assets findable.

Choosing a great DAM solution is fine, but it's not going to solve all your findability and reuse problems. Thoughtful taxonomy development and the practical application of metadata is critical for such success. Towards this end, Earley & Associates are holding a free webinar — part of their Digital Asset Management Jumpstart Series — this Thursday.

Running on January 28 at 2pm ET the Practical Asset Reuse – The Role of Taxonomy and Metadata webinar will walk you through the ins and outs of taxonomies and metadata for digital assets. Stephanie Lemieux, Taxonomy Practice Lead at Earley and Associates and Diane Burley, Industry Specialist working with Nstein Technologies are two of the speakers in this session.

If making DAM work better is a priority in your organization, then head on over and register now.

As we await the official announcement of the Apple tablet, the silence and unanswered questions has given us time to ponder the ways that the Apple tablet may impact the future of ePublishing.

With ever shrinking budgets, many organizations are finding digital asset reuse a growing organization imperative. Effective use of metadata and taxonomies in the context of a DAM solution can facilitate great reuse patterns. Here's a start down that path.

WordPress (news, site) just launched their own Superman. Labeled the WordPress Foundation, the non-profit org is designed to “democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.”

In other words, and straight from the horse’s mouth:

The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come. As part of this mission, the Foundation will be responsible for protecting the WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks.

The goals of the software projects they plan to promote are:

• The software should be licensed under the GNU Public License.
• The software should be freely available to anyone to use for any purpose, and without permission.
• The software should be open to modifications.
• Any modifications should be freely distributable at no cost and without permission from its creators.
• The software should provide a framework for translation to make it globally accessible to speakers of all languages.
• The software should provide a framework for extensions so modifications and enhancements can be made without modifying core code.

Examples of projects that embrace the philosophy include WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, BuddyPress, and of course, the Web CMS itself. 

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