Content management, or CM, is a set of processes and technologies that support the evolutionary life cycle of digital information. This digital information is often referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content. Digital content may take the form of text, such as documents, multimedia files, such as audio or video files, or any other file type which follows a content lifecycle which requires management. Look up content in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The process of content management

The digital content life cycle consists of 6 primary phases: 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. Publishing may take many forms. Publishing may be the act of pushing content out to others, or simply granting digital access rights to certain content to a particular person or group of persons. Later that content may be superseded by another form of content and thus retired or removed from use.

Content management is an inherently collaborative process. It often 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, including translation and localization.
• Publisher - responsible for releasing the content for use.
• Administrator - responsible for managing access permissions to folders and files, usually accomplished by assigning access rights to user groups or roles. Admins may also assist and support users in various ways.
• Consumer, viewer or guest- the person who reads or otherwise takes in content after it is published or shared.

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. Revision control is an aspect of documentation control wherein changes to documents are identified by incrementing an associated number or letter code, termed the revision level, or simply revision. It has been a standard practice in the maintenance of engineering drawings for as long as the generation of such drawings...

Another equally important aspect of content management involves the creation, maintenance, and application of review standards. Each member of the content creation and review process has a unique role and set of responsibilities in the development and/or publication of the content. Each review team member requires clear and concise review standards which must be maintained on an ongoing basis to ensure the long-term consistency and health of the knowledge base.

A content management system is a set of automated processes that may support the following features: A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. ...

• Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
• 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 to support access to the content. Increasingly, the repository is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates enterprise search and retrieval.

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.

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Computer program. ... A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. ... A workflow is a reliably repeatable pattern of activity enabled by a systematic organization of resources, defined roles and mass, energy and information flows, into a work process that can be documented and learned. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A document management system (DMS) is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. ... Single source publishing or single sourcing allows the same content to be used in different documents and in various formats. ...

See also

• Enterprise content management
• Content management system (includes links to system providers)
• Information architecture
• Website architecture
• Web design
• Digital asset management
• Content engineering

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is any of the strategies and technologies employed in the information technology industry for managing the capture, storage, security, revision control, retrieval, distribution, preservation and destruction of documents and content. ... A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Website architecture is an approach to the design and planning of websites which, like architecture itself involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria. ... Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface (GUI). ... Digital asset management consists of tasks and decisions surrounding ingesting, annotating, cataloguing, storage and retrieval of digital assets, such as digital photographs, animations, videos and music. ...

External links

• IBM's File Net.