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Best Practices for Implementing RedDot CMS
Introduction
All content management systems hold out a set of gleaming promises - reduced IT involvement in content publishing, streamlined workflow and approval processes, simple rollback features and reduced costs of operation. In real life, getting a content management system to deliver on these promises requires you to make very good decisions, very early in the implementation process.
RedDot CMS is an ideal solution for the mid-market. It is easy to use and relatively straight-forward to implement. But as is the case for all content management systems, you have decisions to make during implementation. Good decisions will make your life easy; bad decisions can wreak havoc for years to come.
Our RedDot implementation experience falls into two categories:
- Large scale implementations undertaken for international companies and government organizations
- RedDot "rescue missions" where we have been retained by clients to help them recover from a failed or failing implementation undertaken by other vendors or in house staff.
This has given us two types of insight. In implementing RedDot "from scratch" we have gained experience with the types of implementation decisions you will need to make. In rescuing failing implementations, we have witnessed the wreckage that bad decisions can cause. In this document, we attempt to summarize our experience in a set of straight forward recommendations.
We need to make one large caveat: this document focuses specifically on technical decisions made during implementation of a RedDot system. It is designed for technical and semi-technical staff faced with the challenge of making a content management system work.
For many organizations, success or failure is determined by questions of governance and content management process. We will be releasing publications addressing these issues in the coming months. But they are outside the scope of this discussion of technical best practices.
This document is divided into three sections:
Section One: Avoiding future headaches
- These three tips won't change your life today, but someone down the road will sing your praises. Or, at least, not take your name in vain.
Section Two: Work smarter, not harder
- You can spend an infinite amount of time on any IT implementation - but none of us has that long. Three keys to using your time wisely.
Section Three: Making it work
- It doesn't matter how good the technology is, if it is never used - steps you can take to deliver real-world success.
But before we start….
The remainder of this document assumes familiarity with the RedDot content management server. If you are comfortable with RedDot concepts and terminology feel free to skip this section. If, on the other hand, you have little or no experience with RedDot, than this brief overview of RedDot concepts should render the rest of this document at least vaguely intelligible.
Variants
Like most mature content management systems, RedDot CMS allows you to separate content from presentation. In addition, RedDot allows you to separate both content and format from navigational structure. These variations are called, appropriately enough, "variants."
- A "project" variant defines a site structure. The same content can be delivered to different projects. An example may clarify this. A company might operate both an extranet and a publicly accessible web site. In both cases, they want their press releases to be published online. By defining the extranet and web site as separate projects, RedDot can publish these news releases to two locations and into two completely different site navigation structures.
- A "template" variant defines the visual representation of the page into which content is inserted. The same content can be generated as an image-intense page suitable for viewing over high-bandwidth, a low-bandwidth variant designed for dial up access, and a wml variant suitable for viewing over a wireless device.
- "Language" variants allow you to maintain the exact same site in multiple languages. Each site will differ only in the language of content - not in navigation or site structure.
Importantly, templates can be "pre-assigned" for sections of the site. When an author creates a page in a section, they will be limited to choosing from the templates "pre-assigned" for that section.
A "foundation" template.
RedDot documentation does not address the concept of a "foundation" template or page, but we find it to be a powerful and universally applicable concept.
A foundation template is the initial document from which you create all pages within a project. Each new page created from the foundation page template inherits the characteristics defined within this foundation template. As we note in the first tip below, you can create several foundation templates. But you probably shouldn't.
Some RedDot Terminology
Like all software systems, RedDot has adopted specific terms to describe its features and interface. These are the most important
SmartEdit and SmartTree
RedDot allows access to CMS-content via one of two interfaces - SmartEdit and SmartTree. SmartEdit was designed specifically to meet the needs of content creators and editors. SmartTree allows for easy, intuitive administration of the site. The SmartEdit view allows authors and editors to browse the web site until the find the content they want to edit. As the browse the site, they will see "red dots" on any item that they have permission to modify. In contrast, the SmartTree mode represents the site according to its logical structure. This "tree" navigation allows administrators to create and group templates or content, and to apply a variety of rules for any section or template.
RedDot Query Language (RQL)
One of the great advantages offered by RedDot is the extensibility enabled by its XML-specified API. RQL allows a trained developer to integrate individual, external applications into the RedDot CMS, or to customize features or functions within RedDot. By creating "plugins" using RQL and a server side scripting language such ASP, a trained developer can manage unique feature needs or integration requirements quickly and efficiently.
Read the full whitepaper
The whitepaper "Best Practices for Implementing RedDot CMS" is designed as a pragmatic guide to managing realword implementations of the software.
Copies can be obtained here...05/2004, Cathy Bath & Randy Woods
| | Cathy Bath, a senior non-linear creations' developer, has delivered more than 20 RedDot implementations. Randy Woods, non-linear creations' co-founder, has been managing content management activities for clients since 1995.
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