Web content lifecycle
Encyclopedia
The web content lifecycle is the multi-disciplinary and often complex process that web content
undergoes as it is managed
through various publishing
stages.
Authors describe multiple "stages" (or "phases") in the web content lifecycle, along with a set of capabilities
—such as records management
, digital asset management
, collaboration
, and version control—that may be supported by various technologies
and processes
. One recognized technology for managing the web content lifecycle is a web content management system
.
Concepts often considered in the web content lifecycle include project management
, information management
, information architecture
, and, more recently, content strategy
, website governance
, and semantic publishing
.
, revision
, distribution, and archiving. The lifecycle processes, actions, content status, and content management roles may differ from model to model based on organizational strategies, needs, requirements, and capabilities.
emphasizes three major parts: collect (creation and editing is much more than simply collecting), manage (workflows, approvals, versioning, repository, etc.), and publish. These concepts are graphically displayed in a Content Management Possibilities poster developed by Boiko. The poster details such content management
concepts as metadata
, syndication
, workflow
s, repositories
, and database
s.
Gerry McGovern also sees three "processes," designating them creation, editing, and publishing.
argues for four "components": authoring, repository, assembly/linking, and publishing.
In Managing Enterprise Content,
Ann Rockley argues for the planning of content reuse through four stages: create, review, manage, deliver. A stage can have sub-stages; for example, the "create" stage has three sub-stages: planning, design, and authoring and revision. She notes that content is often created by individuals working in isolation inside an enterprise (the coined term is the Content Silo Trap). To counter this content silo effect, she recommends using a "unified content strategy," "a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers’ needs."
The State government of Victoria (Australia) produced a flowchart with a diagrammatic view of the web content lifecycle with five stages: Develop, Quality Approval, Publish, Unpublish, and Archive. Some of the stages include sub-stages (for example, Archive consists of Storage, Archived, and Disposed) intended to further delineate content status. In addition, this model depicts three aspects—Status, Process, and Roles—as part of the flow for web content. The four roles in this model are content author
, content quality manager, business quality manager, and records manager
.
The AIIM
speaks of managing content “to achieve business goals”. AIIM ECM 101 Poster from 2003, and the AIIM Solving the ECM Puzzle Poster from 2005, present the same five stages: Capture, Manage, Store, Deliver, Preserve.
Each step contains sub-steps. For example, step 1, Plan, consists of Align, Analyze, Model, and Design; and step 2, Develop, consists of Create, Capture, Collect, Categorize, and Edit.
Doyle argues for seven stages based on the psychologist George A. Miller
's famed magical number "seven plus or minus two "
limit on human information processing. He notes this is merely a suggestion and that one should "add or subtract a couple of your own favorites."
More recently, Halverson has humorously suggested 15 discrete steps in the web content lifecycle: Audit, Analyze, Strategize, Categorize, Structure, Create, Revise, Revise, Revise, Approve, Tag, Format, Publish, Update, Archive.
as a business strategy might incorporate web content management:
A web content management system
can support and enhance certain processes because of automation, including document management, template
s, and workflow
management.
describes the "organization of and control over the structure, processing, and delivery of information." The goal of information lifecycle management
is to use policies, operations, and infrastructure to manage information throughout its useful life. However, businesses struggle to manage their data and information.
Using semantic markup in the publishing process is part of semantic publishing
. Tim-Berners Lee's original vision for the Semantic Web
has yet to be realized, but many projects in various research areas are underway.
Web content
Web content is the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations....
undergoes as it is managed
Content management
Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
through various publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
stages.
Authors describe multiple "stages" (or "phases") in the web content lifecycle, along with a set of capabilities
Capability
Capability is the ability to perform actions.As it applies to human capital, capability is the sum of expertise and capacity.It is a component within the theories of:* Capability-based security and Capability-based addressing in computing...
—such as records management
Records management
Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
, digital asset management
Digital asset management
Digital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...
, collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
, and version control—that may be supported by various technologies
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
and processes
Business process
A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product for a particular customer or customers...
. One recognized technology for managing the web content lifecycle is a web content management system
Web content management system
A web content management system is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease...
.
Concepts often considered in the web content lifecycle include project management
Project management
Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...
, information management
Information management
Information management is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information...
, information architecture
Information Architecture
Information architecture is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming,...
, and, more recently, content strategy
Content strategy
Content strategy has been growing as a practice within the industry of web development since the late 1990s. It is recognized as a field in user experience design but has also drawn interest from practitioners in adjacent communities such as content management, business analysis and technical...
, website governance
Website governance
Website governance may be defined as an organization's structure of staff ; technical systems; and the policies, procedures, and relationships such staff have in place to maintain and manage a website...
, and semantic publishing
Semantic publishing
Semantic publishing on the Web or semantic web publishing refers to publishing information on the web as documents accompanied by semantic markup...
.
Stages
Various authors have proposed different "stages" or "phases" in the content lifecycle. Broadly speaking, the stages include content creation/developmentDraft document
Drafting is the preliminary stage of a written work in which the author begins to develop a more cohesive product. A also describes the product the writer creates in the initial stages of the writing process.In the drafting stage, the author:...
, revision
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, distribution, and archiving. The lifecycle processes, actions, content status, and content management roles may differ from model to model based on organizational strategies, needs, requirements, and capabilities.
Two stages
In 2003, McKeever described "two iterative phases": "the collection of content, and the delivery or publishing of that content on the Web." She also explains a Web Content Management (WCM) "four layer hierarchy"—content, activity, outlet, and audience—intended to illustrate the breadth of WCM.Three stages
Bob Boiko's Content Management Bibleemphasizes three major parts: collect (creation and editing is much more than simply collecting), manage (workflows, approvals, versioning, repository, etc.), and publish. These concepts are graphically displayed in a Content Management Possibilities poster developed by Boiko. The poster details such content management
Content management
Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
concepts as metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
, syndication
Web syndication
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary or update of the website's recently added content...
, workflow
Workflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
s, repositories
Repository (publishing)
A repository in publishing, and especially in academic publishing,is a real or virtual facility for the deposit of academic publications, such as academic journal articles....
, and database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
s.
Gerry McGovern also sees three "processes," designating them creation, editing, and publishing.
Four stages
JoAnn Hackos' Content Management for Dynamic Web Deliveryargues for four "components": authoring, repository, assembly/linking, and publishing.
In Managing Enterprise Content,
Ann Rockley argues for the planning of content reuse through four stages: create, review, manage, deliver. A stage can have sub-stages; for example, the "create" stage has three sub-stages: planning, design, and authoring and revision. She notes that content is often created by individuals working in isolation inside an enterprise (the coined term is the Content Silo Trap). To counter this content silo effect, she recommends using a "unified content strategy," "a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers’ needs."
Five stages
Nakano described five "collaboration operations": Submit, Compare, Update, Merge, and Publish.The State government of Victoria (Australia) produced a flowchart with a diagrammatic view of the web content lifecycle with five stages: Develop, Quality Approval, Publish, Unpublish, and Archive. Some of the stages include sub-stages (for example, Archive consists of Storage, Archived, and Disposed) intended to further delineate content status. In addition, this model depicts three aspects—Status, Process, and Roles—as part of the flow for web content. The four roles in this model are content author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, content quality manager, business quality manager, and records manager
Records manager
The Records Manager for an organization is the person responsible for the management of records in the organization. This role has evolved over time and takes many forms, with many related areas of knowledge required for professional competency....
.
The AIIM
Association for Information and Image Management
The Association for Information and Image Management or AIIM is a non-profit organization that provides education, research, and best practices for document management and enterprise content management...
speaks of managing content “to achieve business goals”. AIIM ECM 101 Poster from 2003, and the AIIM Solving the ECM Puzzle Poster from 2005, present the same five stages: Capture, Manage, Store, Deliver, Preserve.
Six stages
The Content Management Lifecycle Poster devised by CM Pros suggests six "steps":- Plan
- Develop
- Manage
- Deploy
- Preserve
- Evaluate
Each step contains sub-steps. For example, step 1, Plan, consists of Align, Analyze, Model, and Design; and step 2, Develop, consists of Create, Capture, Collect, Categorize, and Edit.
Seven stages
Bob Doyle suggests seven stages of the Web content lifecycle:- Organization
- Creation
- Storage
- Workflow
- Versioning
- Publishing
- Archives
Doyle argues for seven stages based on the psychologist George A. Miller
George A. Miller
George Armitage Miller is the author of one of the most highly cited papers in psychology, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" published in 1956 in Psychological Review...
's famed magical number "seven plus or minus two "
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
"The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. It was published in 1956 by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Princeton University's Department of Psychology in Psychological...
limit on human information processing. He notes this is merely a suggestion and that one should "add or subtract a couple of your own favorites."
Governance rather than workflow
In a 2005 article, Woods addressed governance of the content lifecycle. In his model, there are categories of issues to address, rather than a simple, cradle-to-grave pathway. He writes that most content governance questions fall into one of the following categories:- Legacy Content Migration
- Template Considerations
- New Content Creation
- Content Modification and Reuse
- Version Control and Site Rollback
- Content Rotation and the End of the Road
- Monitoring Progress, Managing for Success
More recently, Halverson has humorously suggested 15 discrete steps in the web content lifecycle: Audit, Analyze, Strategize, Categorize, Structure, Create, Revise, Revise, Revise, Approve, Tag, Format, Publish, Update, Archive.
Role of technologies
Enterprise content managementEnterprise content management
Enterprise Content Management is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization's documents, and other content, that relate to the organization's processes...
as a business strategy might incorporate web content management:
A web content management system
Web content management system
A web content management system is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease...
can support and enhance certain processes because of automation, including document management, template
Template
Template may mean:*a stencil, pattern or overlay used in graphic arts and sewing to replicate letters, shapes or designs...
s, and workflow
Workflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
management.
Role of information management
Information managementInformation management
Information management is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information...
describes the "organization of and control over the structure, processing, and delivery of information." The goal of information lifecycle management
Information Lifecycle Management
Information Lifecycle Management refers to a wide-ranging set of strategies for administering storage systems on computing devices. Specifically, four categories of storage strategies may be considered under the auspices of ILM.-Policy:...
is to use policies, operations, and infrastructure to manage information throughout its useful life. However, businesses struggle to manage their data and information.
Using semantic markup in the publishing process is part of semantic publishing
Semantic publishing
Semantic publishing on the Web or semantic web publishing refers to publishing information on the web as documents accompanied by semantic markup...
. Tim-Berners Lee's original vision for the Semantic Web
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
has yet to be realized, but many projects in various research areas are underway.
See also
- Website governanceWebsite governanceWebsite governance may be defined as an organization's structure of staff ; technical systems; and the policies, procedures, and relationships such staff have in place to maintain and manage a website...
- Content managementContent managementContent management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
- Information managementInformation managementInformation management is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information...
- Semantic publishingSemantic publishingSemantic publishing on the Web or semantic web publishing refers to publishing information on the web as documents accompanied by semantic markup...
- Web content management systemWeb content management systemA web content management system is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease...
Further reading
- In an April 2009 research article Semantic Publishing: the coming revolution in scientific journal publishing, David Shotton described recent developments in Web technologies can be used for semantic enhancement of scholarly journal articles.