Content Management Bible. (Bible (Wiley)) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

It's certainly not a dummies guide and it's not the strategic musings of the latest e-guru: it is practical, applicable, sensible, informative, authoritative, realistic and, despite the 900+ pages, eminently readable. A great balance of process and practice. And, as you would expect, well organised and cross-referenced.

Content management is a BIG topic and if you haven't come up against it yet, you will. Without it, all those buzz words like `eCRM', `community' and `personalisation' just aren't possible. Content management addresses big, and growing, problems as well as opening up exciting new opportunities for multi-platform, personalised publishing. This big book is the best thing I've yet read to help you on your way.

Ashley Friedlein
CEO, e-consultancy
Author, "Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites"

First, he delves into a very thorough discussion about the more 'phylosophical' topics of content (what it is, what is data, what is metadata, etc.) and content management at large. If you haven't gotten your feet wet with a CMS project before, the first 10 chapters (175 pages) will get you soaked with the type of dilemmas you are bound to face when you work on a CMS.

Then, he provides what could be considered a "recipe" to put together a CMS successfully (though no two CMS projects are ever alike, but a lot of them have similar characteristics). There are a number of chapters and sections specifically devoted to the steps required to ensure a successful outsourcing of the project, but the framework he provides is not limited to it: you can perfectly apply it to an in-house implementation. Also, he tends to paint the largest possible picture (with all staff possible, etc.) but you can very easily scale it down to the size and shape of your organization.

In general, his framework goes back once and again to the concept of the "Wheel of Content Management" where he connects the spikes that allow the 'wheel' to move: goals and requirements, audiences, publications, authors, acquisition sources, workflow and staff and access structures, all revolving around the central content component classes with metadata as the outside of the wheel, serving as a container for it all.

He doesn't wrap up the book without devoting enough space to XML and its close cousin, the DTD. He even provides a small VB app to convert Word content to XML, and that's still "only" on page 788. If you haven't noticed by now, this book is MASSIVE, and if there's any issue with it, that would be it: the fact that you will need to devote a long time to processing it. But all in all, the book with its companion web site is an invaluable tool for all Project Managers who have in their hands the responsibility of giving birth to a CMS for their organizations.

This book was a godsend. Almost every page has something that's relevant. Almost every page, I find myself thinking "I know exactly what you mean", or "Hey, we could really use that idea".

But despite all the useful information, it remains very generalised and extremely readable. Unlike many books of this kind, it doesn't dwell on specific products (or even programming languages) that will likely be out of date in twelve months. The focus is very much on concepts and best practices that will stand the reader in good stead for a long time.

I would go so far as to say this is the most helpful IT book I have bought in the past 12 months. Highly recommended.