Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery

This book is a must for anyone considering moving to a content management system. Hackos lays out, clearly and step by step, the process you need to work through before you buy or build a content management system. Too many companies plunge into the technology of content management and end up with unusable and unused systems. Buy and read this book before you do that. With clearly written text and with lots of examples and stories, Hackos helps you understand your information, the people who write it, the people who use it, and how to bring that all together to form the basis for a content management solution.

Covers a broad range of issues, tools, technologies, and concepts. We are all new to some aspect of this emerging topic, and this book provides a point-of-entry for the new as well as experienced content manager.Particularly noteworthy (at least to me) is the chapter on making a business case for content mgmt, which is increasingly important for technical communicators.

No two companies have identical content management needs. That means applying a formula is likely to result in disaster. Along with a detailed exposition of how to manage content, this invaluable book shows companies how to adapt the methods to their unique situations. Ms. Hackos relates the creation of a high-level information model with the nitty-gritty details of establishing information types and the units of content composing them, how these units fit in a repository, and how to use various technogies to create, maintain and output from the repository.The book is studded with examples of how content management has been done, both what to emulate and what to avoid. I am sure the principles espoused will be of value, long after any particular technology has been superceded.The best (if not the only) book I have seen about this subject. Highly recommended.

If you are attempting to understand the steps required to move your technical documentation into a content management system... and what to do with such a system afterward, read this book. This book makes few assumptions about what you know about content management; as such it explains the basic material that other books gloss over. Make no mistake, however, this book is not just an introduction - if you follow the excellent examples and illustrations, you will have a good understanding between such items as "your information model" and "metadata" ... and why the relationship is important to content management. Separate chapters progress from beginning to end of the process to help you understand the steps necessary to move your content into a content management system. Roles and responsiblities of team members are discussed; activities such as task analysis are also identified at appropriate steps. If you are attempting to understand why content management is good and how to implement it, read this book; if you have you have implemented a system already and are not pleased with it, read this book to identify what might have gone wrong. Great practical information to understand before you implement your own system or before you discuss your needs with integrators and vendors.This may not be the last book you read on content management however it should be the first.

This book contains a lot of real-world advice about building a content management and publishing system that helps you deliver better information faster and cheaper. The author's direct experience really shows through, and the case studies are valuable too.