CS3051: Digital Content Management

CS3051: Digital Content Management

Lecturer: Adrian O’Riordan

Office: Room G.71 WGB Email: a.oriordan@cs.ucc.ie

Course Webpage: http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~adrian/cs3051.html

Lectures 1 & 2: Course Overview and Introduction to CMSes

CS3051 Overview

• 5 Credit course on Content Management and Content Management Systems

– Pre-requisite: CS2051 Introduction to Digital Media or equivalent

– Lectures: 2 lectures in Period 1 – Tuesdays 11-12am and Wednesdays 3-4pm – Labs: to be announced, starting in week 4?

– Tutorials: as required

Assessment will consist of an end-of-year written examination (80%) and continuous assessment during the year (20%).

You have to pass combined total. There is a re-sit in the autumn – your continuous assessment mark is carried forward.

CS3051 On-line

Webpage at http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~adrian/cs3051.html

Will contain:

• Course Overview: module content, etc. • Notices

• All lectures slides (as course progresses) • Reading list and Web links

CS3051 Learning Outcomes

According to Book of Modules:

• Understand the issues associated with managing digital content

• Appreciate the underlying content storage and delivery technologies • Apply the skills learned to the design of multimedia websites.

Teaching Methods

It is important that you attend both the lectures and labs.

• Labs will use the PHP programming language and a free open-source Content Management System.

• Assignments and exercises will be placed on the course webpage during the year.

• No textbook covers all the material exactly. See the list of books/Websites on course Website.

Course Contents

• Content Management Systems Overview • PHP Programming and form processing • Content indexing, discovery, and search • Web publishing and syndication

• Content storage – file-based, XML, Relational DB • Putting it all together

CS3051 Useful books and Websites

Further reading list on course Website:

http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~adrian/CS3051books.html (to do)

And relevant Web links

CMSes

• A Content Management System is software or a suite of software applications and tools that enable the creation, editing, reviewing and publishing of electronic text and multimedia content.

• They are used in a lot of large Websites

– informational sites, e.g. news, and e-commerce sites (shopping), and blogging sites

• It is the term used to represent a broad scope of systems.

• In most CMSes maintenance is via a central interface, such as a Web-based GUI, enabling publishers to access the CMS online using a Web browser.

Content and publishing

• Content

– text, images, video, etc. used for electronic publication on the Web. – content often has associated metadata

• Content is often marked up or tagged in formats such as HTML, XML

• Multichannel publishing means delivering a publication to your readers in many ways (channels)

Why can’t I just use plain HTML?

• Doesn’t scale well for large sites that can have thousands of documents with images, video, etc.

• Difficult to search for content or to reuse content • Difficult to maintain content

• How do you handle multiple versions of the same object? • How to you deal with different user devices, e.g. desktop and

mobile?

CMSes to the rescue

• Avoid the need for hand coding (writing the actual HTML/XML) • Allow users with little knowledge of Web programming

languages or mark-up languages to create and manage Website content

• Support multiple content formats • Support content reuse

CMS layers

• A presentation layer displays the content to website visitors • An application layer with the CMS features

• A data layer uses a content repository or a database to store page content, metadata, and other assets

Architecture of CMS

CMS features

• CMSes vary widely from simple file-based systems to complex enterprise systems

• Most CMSes support features such as

– management of text and multimedia

– indexing, search, and retrieval

– revision (version) control

– separation of presentation and content

Separation of presentation and content

• Design philosophy and a methodology applied in the context of various publishing technology

• Make a distinction between the actual meaning of a document, and how this meaning is presented to its readers

• Example: HTML (content) and CSS (presentation)

Example: HTML and CSS

<p>Every paragraph will be affected by the style.</p>

<p id="para1">Me too!</p> <p>And me!</p>

</body>

</html> ₁₆

Every paragraph will be affected by the style.

Me too! And me!

Types of Content Management Systems

• Web Content Management System

– managing and delivering content to Web sites

• Digital Asset Management System

– managing multimedia components and their corresponding metadata

• Document Management System

– managing whole documents rather than the actual content itself

• Enterprise Content Management System

– managing all aspects of content within an organization (i.e., e-mails, business documents, and more); used throughout the enterprise.

Examples of Web CMSes

• Popular content management systems include – Wordpress – Joomla – Drupal – Magento – TYPO3 – Microsoft SharePoint® – Alfresco

• These are all free open-source software except SharePoint

– free because software costs €0

– open source because source code is made available.

– Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

CMS Market Share

data from https://www.gavick.com/blog/wappalyzer-and-cms-including-joomla collected using Wappalyzer, an addon for Firefox and Google Chrome browser

Drupal

• Drupal is a free and open-source content management system for publishing Web content https://www.drupal.org/

• Available under GNU General Public License v2 • Written in PHP

• Runs on any platform that supports a Web server capable of running PHP such as Apache

• Initially released in 2001; Current version is 8 • Available in 100+ languages

Drupal continued

• Data stored in database

– such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, or Microsoft SQL Server

• Supports more than 32K community-provided Modules (expansions) and 2K Themes that alter and extend the core capabilities and

appearance of a Drupal site.

• Basic Web site installation and administration of the framework require no programming skills.

• Used by thousand of Websites

– e.g. cbsnews.com, nbc.com, TheWhiteHouse, Le Figaro newspaper online, Typepad, weather.com, androidcentral.com, economist.com, hollywood reporter, utexas.edu, Columbia.edu, telecomitalia.it, royalmail.com, menshealth.com,

Example Site: The Weather Channel

(weather.com)

Joomla!

• Joomla! is another free and open-source content management system for publishing Web content https://www.joomla.org/

• Free open-source software available under GNU General Public License

• It is also written in PHP

Joomla! continued

• Backend storage in MySQL, MS SQL Server, or PostgreSQL

• Extensions available from Joomla! Extension Directory (more that 7.5K)

– five types of extensions: components, modules, plugins, templates, and languages

• Used by thousand of Websites

– e.g. Harvard University (educational), Citibank (financial institution intranet), The Guggenheim Museum (museum), Everything Peru (tourism), Peugeot.com (car manufacturer)

Wordpress

• Wordpress is a blogging tool and a CMS (wordpress.org)

– Wordpress started live as a blogging tool but was expanded to a full CMS

• Wordpress is the most popular CMS but not as powerful as Joomla or Drupal

• It’s free open-source software available under GNU GPL v2

• Uses PHP programming language and MySQL database system • Wordpress can be extended using plugins

Benefits of CMS for an Organization

• Centralized and shared content

– content is not scattered throughout the organization, which would result in erroneous content, duplication and content in many different formats

• Secure content

– privileges are assigned, so only authorized people can access content

• Quick creation of new publications

– content can be organized, searched, retrieved, and reused

• Timely delivery of publications

– single-source content can be updated once and send to multiple media channels

Choosing a CMS I

• Cost

– many are free although extensions may not

• Features

– certain features may be required, e.g. Collaboration ─ allowing content to be retrieved and worked on by one or many authorized users

– others desirable but not essential

• Performance

– response time

• Scalability

Choosing a CMS II

• Extensibility and Integration

– CMS of your choice should easily integrate with other technology and platforms

– often CMSes can be extended with plugins/modules

• Works reliably

– bug rate and update schedule

• Ease of Use

– A CMS should be usable by non-technical people

• Customizable

Choosing a CMS III

• Security features such as Access control • Multisite support

• Mobile support

– Android, iPhone

• Training/Support

• Cost of maintenance

– maintaining CMSs may require license updates, upgrades, and hardware maintenance.

Drupal or Joomla or Wordpress?

• Wordpress in simpler and often used for small sites

• Joomla has been favoured by medium business market largely due to the ease in theming (source: CMSwire)

• “Drupal has some (out-of-the-box) features and functionality that makes it a more natural choice in the enterprise”, Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal

• see e.g.

Digital asset management (DAM)

• Management of annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets, multimedia content

• Can include other features such as managing workflow, policy tracking, backing up, rating, grouping, and archiving

• Assets can include text documents, images, video, audio files, animations

• Asset have associated metadata

– metadata can describe means of encoding/decoding (e.g. MPEG 4), ownership; rights of access, and many other features

DAM continued

• Assets can be stored in the file system, or in a database • Workflow Automation streamline content creation and asset

handling

• Specialized software for DAM includes

– WebDAM (Shutterstock) www.webdam.com