Content management
Content Management, also known as CM, is a set of processes and technologies supporting the evolutionary life cycle of digital information. This digital information is often referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content.
This digital content life cycle consists of six primary states: create, update, publish, translate, archive and retire. For example, an instance of digital content is created by one or more authors. Over time that content may be edited. One or more individuals may provide some editorial oversight thereby approving the content for publication. Once published that content may be superseded by another form of content and thus retired or removed from use.
Content management is an inherently collaborative process. The process consists of the following basic roles and responsibilities:
- Content Author - responsible for creating and editing content.
- Editor - responsible for tuning the content message and the style of delivery.
- Publisher - responsible for releasing the content for consumption.
- Administrator - responsible for managing the release of the content ultimately placing it into a repository so that it can be found and consumed.
A critical aspect of content management is the ability to manage versions of content as it evolves (see also version control). Authors and editors often need to restore older versions of edited products due to a process failure or an undesirable series of edits.
A content management system is a set of automated processes that support the following features:
- Identification of all key users and their roles
- The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to different instances of content categories or types.
- Definition of workflow tasks often coupled with messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in content.
- The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a single instance of content.
- The ability to publish the content to a repository in order to support the consumption of the content.
Content management systems take the following forms:
- a web content management system is software for web site management - which is often what is implicitly meant by this term
- the work of a newspaper editorial staff organization
- a workflow for article publication
- a document management system
- a single source content management system - where content is stored in chunks, within a relational database.