Content Management

The psychological theory of the Paradox of Choice states that the presence of too many options causes cognitive distress and often results in less than optimal decisions being made. Given the pure number of tools, platforms, features and functionality that comprise today’s Digital Marketing landscape, the selection process can be overwhelming. So what should you really care about when assessing tools and making technology selections? Let’s look at why your search should start, and end, with tools that boast a decoupled architecture.

Experience Management

Last week, when WordPress announced that Version 4.2 was available, I planned to take my time upgrading my site. Then I saw this from theme developer Photocrati in my Google Stream:

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In times of war, you may be asked what you can do for your country. In modern times, your country may be asking you to do your part by updating your WordPress plugins.

The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), through the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), issued a public service announcement last week recommending website administrators to update their Wordpress sites. More specifically, the bureau wants you to update your third-party WordPress plugins.

At the beginning of 21st century, the open-source CMS started to enjoy widespread popularity, which in turn helped open web content creation to a larger group. Within this group of content creators, a variety of skillsets and end goals existed, which meant different CMSs ended up targeting and occupying different niches of the market. Drupal became a solution for websites that needed a more complex structure, so they developed their core features to satisfy the needs of complex content organisation and user roles. On the other hand, Wordpress targeted users looking to create simpler websites that could be easily developed. In addition to these main forces in the CMS market, a lot of proprietary solutions spawned.

CMS Report doesn't usually mention software point releases that only fixes bugs and brings no features to the CMS users. However, I screwed up last month. I failed to mention the February release of Joomla 3.4. So let me make up for that oversight by mentioning the release of Joomla 3.4.1. With 3.4.1, Joomla's developers have resolved nearly 150 issues with Joomla 3.4. If you're curious to which bugs have been fixed, you can check out Joomla's list at GitHub.

Digital Business is driving adoption of Magnolia.

Basel, Switzerland - December 12, 2014 - Magnolia International, the company behind the award winning Magnolia CMS today celebrated a landmark year with numerous industry awards, strategic partnerships and global brands using the Magnolia platform for digital business. Magnolia continues strong license growth in Europe and North America. It has increased its global workforce by 30% and now has over 75 channel partners.

When I talk about Drupal, information technology and the weather all in the same breath, I'm known to be very enthusiastic and opinionated in such discussions. I can't help myself. I'm biased toward Drupal as it is one of my favorite content management systems. I'm also a former meteorologist working in information technology for a very large organization that is heavily involved with the weather. Needless to say, a year or two ago when I heard that The Weather Channel started using Drupal to meet the needs of it's customers and meteorologists, it caught my attention.

Earlier this week, I questioned whether social media could replace my need to blog. In my article, I mentioned that Google+ and LinkedIn as social network platforms are able to provide near blog-like functions. Since that article posted, I've already heard comments from my Facebook and Twitter friends that no one uses Google+. I respectfully disagree with my friends. While people like to call Google+ a ghost town the numbers would indicate otherwise.

A few months ago, I had a problem. After eight years of non-stop writing, I found myself exhausted of all enthusiasm to blog. Let me tell you, it's a sad day in Web City when an advocate for content management systems has no real desire to author new content. I was also questioning in this age of "always on" social media whether the traditional blog had lost value not only to me but my readers. If content is no longer king, why should I spend so much effort creating new content? So as summer approached, I decided to take a break from blogging.

This week, Kentico Software announced the release of Kentico 8.1. According to the company, Kentico 8.1 features a variety of new enhancements that bring greater website performance and ease of use to the digital marketing activities of today’s digital agencies and professional marketers. With new “Buy X, get Y” discount capabilities, Kentico 8.1 promises to offer customers new ways to maximize their online sales.