Re: Versioning options

At 01:49 AM 18/05/2005, Julian Voelcker wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>What are the views of the panel on versioning?
>
>In addition to providing it for page contents, is it worth providing it
>for the page titles, keywords and descriptions as well?

There are two main reasons for versioning:

* reducing business risk (eg. demonstrating what was
   published if sued)
* compliance with recordkeeping requirements

The latter is a very big issue for the public-sector
(although Sarbanes-Oxley, etc is widening this to private
sector as well).

In the Australian public sector, there is a recognition
that CMS products should meet recordkeeping legislation.
Although this isn't well understood as yet, there seems
to be a consensus that there is a minimum amount of
versioning required.

This is what we helped a recent public-sector client
develop for their versioning requirements:

----

As an Australian Government agency, there is a requirement to meet
recordkeeping legislation. As a core part of this, the content
management system must provide powerful and robust versioning
capabilities.

Specific CMS requirements include:

* automatic versioning of all content
* versioning of all other assets within the CMS, including
   documents, images and stylesheets
* view a page as it appeared on a given date
* roll-back a page to a specific version
* compare versions of pages, visually highlighting differences
* view the entire site as it appeared on a given date
* full audit trail of all activity within the CMS

Note: it is not sufficient for the CMS to rely on server backups
to meet these requirements, and the versioning must be built into
the CMS itself. In addition, viewing the site on a past date must
present a fully-functional site exactly as it appeared at that point,
including all images, documents and links. It should not be necessary
to rely on a third-party application for the versioning capabilities.

----

Cheers,
James

-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
Knowledge Management / Content Management / Intranets

http://www.steptwo.com.au/
[email protected]