Quoting IT: Blogging is not a Business

"There are people who can call a blog as their business. In this case, their revenue is mainly from ad sales on their blog. But, that is not a very sustainable or long term business approach you should have. Your online business must solve a person’s problem."

- Marieke Hensel, Why Blogging is Not a Viable Business Mode", Branding Personality, January 30, 2012

Four Things to Consider to Ensure the Sustainability of your Content Management Investment

2012 may indeed be the “Year of Web Content.” Actually, so was 2011, 2010, 2009… But this article on the Forbes Marketwatch blog describes how some big brands are attacking content marketing and content curation to help fulfill their brand promise.

Amongst content management insiders, there has been an ongoing acronym war over what the technology systems should be called that help companies manage their content online -- which quite frankly, end users care very little about.

At the end of the day, the companies mentioned in the Forbes article, and countless others, want to use content to engage with their customers and prospects to drive their business goals. And they want their content technologies to help them achieve those goals, not get in the way--regardless of what it’s called.

However there’s a growing disconnect between what’s expected and what’s actually being delivered when it comes to implementing those content systems and the associated costs. Increasingly, companies are questioning what capabilities (or lack of) they’re receiving from their web content systems investments. As well as, what additional costs of services they’ll need to incur to support, maintain and upgrade what becomes a very complex, highly customized system.

According to a post by The Real Story Group this past spring, web content management system implementation costs have risen to 7-8 times the cost of software licensing. Perhaps most galling to buyers, the increased ratios are simply stipulated as a fact that buyers should just prepare for. We have heard some form of the following countless times:

Systems are becoming more complex, and to deploy complex systems, it takes time, and your services dollars, and that’s ok.

My 1.5 seconds of fame on CMS Connected

With a smile on his face, Scott Liewehr sent me a tweet the other day letting me know that he briefly plugged my name while co-hosting CMS-Connected. CMS-Connected is a 60-minute monthly news show, streamed live on the TPN Network with a focus on the web content management industry and includes CMS related news and commentary from leading CMS expert analysts and participating guests. It's a very good video production and well worth your viewing time if you have any interest in content management.

My "plug" on CMS-Connected can be found about 41 minutes and 30 seconds into the January show, Web CMS Industry 2011 Year In Review. This video also includes host Tyler Pyburn and Seth Gottlieb as guest. The inside joke is that Scott didn't intend to mention my name, but was referring to Acquia's VP of Marketing, Bryan House. I've met Bryan a few times and lets just say he deserves better recognition than to be confused with me. Luckily, Scott caught himself and it didn't take him long to give Mr. House his proper dues.

My 1.5 seconds of fame put a smile on my face because it is a reminder to me that people with a passion for content management are drawn together for a reason. I've always said that a content management system is more than a product. If you don't get that a CMS is also about people, business, and information systems you'll never understand the power of a CMS. People like Scott Liewehr and Deane Barker get this.

More Scalable Than Ever: Joomla 2.5 Released

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected. Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.

As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to joom.la/25features. But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.

Local Media Goes Paywall

Yesterday, the Argus Leader announced that they will be moving toward a subscription model for their online content. Readers no longer will be able to visit ArgusLeader.com and expect to be able to read all the content for free. I didn't visit the website too often, but I'll miss the freedom to come and go as I please without being an online subscriber.

By now, most of us and have seen this paywall subscription model being offered by various news sources. Until recently, subscriptions were required from some larger print publications but rarely were part of the local or regional online news ecosystem. When a paper from a relatively small city such as Sioux Falls, SD moves in this direction it isn't difficult to acknowledge this as the trend we'll be seeing followed by more newspapers in the coming years. The move toward a subscription model was inevitable, as research as shown time and time again that publications haven't seen the same revenue through online advertisement as they once did in the print media world of yesterday.

Revenue from online ads for niche sites like mine that have little overhead is enough. But real publications producing high quality content on a wider scope have genuine revenue concerns when providing you their content. Randell Beck of the Argus Leader acknowledged this in Sunday's edition of this paper.

Mass.gov redesigned state portal using Percussion WCM Software

I'm a huge fan of eGovernment and Government 2.0 initiatives. A few years ago we started seeing government sites adopting open data initiatives and adding features that allowed the public to provide more feedback to the government that served them. Changes such as these are good initiatives by governments as they continue their evolution into the digital age. Recently, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts redesigned their official website, Mass.gov, using the Percussion CM System.

Before I begin, let me confess that I don't know much about Percussion Software beyond what I read in their press releases. In fact, you'll find that some of the information here came straight out of one of their press releases and you'll want to continue your research beyond what you read here. However, personal experience has shown me that any redesign work done with government websites is hard work with my hurdles to cross. So after I took a look at the Mass.gov site, it didn't take much arm twisting from Percussion's marketing people to go beyond my comfort level and talk about a product I really should know a whole lot more about.

Hippo Inviting Others to Support Standards For Web Experience Management

There has certainly been a lot of debate about Web Experience Management. Some analysts like Janus Boye have called it "meaningless vendor jargon". Some others like Scott Liewehr of Gilbane have said that understanding Web Engagement Management is "crucial to your business". Forrester has attempted to create its own definition – calling it "customer experience management". And, finally, others such as Julie Hunt – have written how Web Engagement Management even extends into the intranet of Enterprise 2.0 – and how content should be utilized to engage employees.

So here’s my take on it:

The trend in Web Content Management for the last couple of years has been Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - and it was all about getting your audience to your site. Period. Just make sure they find you. But then what? What happens once they get there? How do you keep them on your site? How do you make sure they come back later, how do you get them to start doing business on your site? How do you make your visitors fall in love with your site?

That’s Web Experience Management. It’s whatever comes after they’ve found you.

Community Edition of Liferay Portal 6.1 Released

A few days ago, the Liferay product and engineering teams announced the release of Liferay Portal 6.1 CE. Last fall, during the Liferay West Coast Symposium, CMS Report was able to get a sneak peak of the features that Liferay Portal 6.1 had to offer. We were impressed then and we're even more impressed now with the changes that have been made since then.

Liferay Portal ships with broad product capabilities and provides more function than you would expect from a traditional portal. Besides having the capability as a web platform, Liferay Portal is also capable of supporting content and document management (including Microsoft office integration). Additional capabilities include:

Web Publishing and Shared Workspaces
Enterprise Collaboration
Social Networking and Mashups
Identity Management

Liferay logo and banner Liferay issues their portal software under two licenses, an open source community edition and an enterprise edition. The Liferay community edition we're talking about in this article is specifically designated as Liferay 6.1 CE GA1. In addition to the numerous bugs that have been fixed since 6.0 GA4, many new features and improvements have gone into this release.

Joomla 2.5 to be released soon

The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.

Joomla! Logo The general availability of the official Joomla 2.5.0 release is due on January 24, 2012. Also, in case you missed it, Beta 1 of Joomla 2.5 was released just as the holidays were getting in full swing. You can also expect another beta and a release candidate from the Joomla developers between now and Release 2.5.0.

For those new to software development, the beta and release candidates of software typically is not suitable for production sites and should be used only for testing purposes. Testing the pre-release software isn't only a great way for you to get to know Joomla 2.5 better but it is also a great way to help the developers identify and fix bugs in the software.

CMS Report's Ten Additional Stories for 2011

The problem I have with top ten lists is that inevitably there is a story that should have made the list but didn't. Last week, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2011 and wished I could have included additional stories. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles and they aren't always an indication of my personal favorites.

In case you missed these stories the first time around, below are ten additional content management articles we published in 2011. Every article deserves a second chance to be highlighted or tweeted again.

CMS Report

Putting focus on today's Content Management Systems

You are here

Hippo CMS in the Cloud, a step-by-step tutorial

For the novice: 7 Content Management Systems

Featured Stories