RE: Multi-surfacing of articles within a site and replication of site fragments

Matt,

Your client's request is not a usual one (at least from my experience).
The scenario you provided as an example seems a bit extreme, but none
the less we have had numerous requests for this type of functionality
and are able to handle them very nicely within our CMS.  

This should be a very straight forward capability for mid-range to
high-end CMS systems (likely many low-end CMS systems as well).  Sharing
(or multi-parenting) content is especially common in CMS systems that
were designed with Knowledge Management, Web Development or e-Learning
in mind, as each of these areas tends to have significant needs for
viewing content via multiple categorizations or linked into multiple
areas of a site. 

My detailed experience with other CMS systems is limited, but from what
I have seen the user experience for sharing content into various
locations can vary significantly.  Our system uses a server side
clipboard approach that allows the user to copy individual pieces of
content or entire sections and then share (or duplicate) them to other
areas of the site.

The interface that enables this feature will likely be more critical
(enable or inhibit use) to the customer than how the back-end system
handles the content.  This is not to say that IT won't require the
back-end system to handle the sharing of content elegantly (and without
excess use of resources).

Hope this helps!
  
------------------------------------------
Gregory M. Stark
VP of Marketing
(952) 401-8008
(612) 532-4426 (cell)
www.ittrium.com
 
-----Original Message-----
Message: 23
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 15:18:44 -0000
From: "Matt Hopgood" <[email protected]>
To: <cms-list-/[email protected]>
Subject: [cms-list] Multi-surfacing of articles within a site and
replication of site fragments

Hello,
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This is my first post, so forgive me if you've covered this topic before
or I'm simply rambling.
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My headaches are being caused by: Multi-surfacing of articles within a
site and replication of site fragments.
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I'll ask my questions about these issues seperately and try to be
concise.
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1. Multi-surfacing of content.
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Explanation - An article is produced on 'Coffee' and lives in the
'Beverages' section of a site. However, the front-end information
architecture of the site is based around topics and categories that
overlap in a matrix fashion and so our article on 'Coffee' also exists
in; Breakfast drinks, Stimulants and 'Dark heady drinks'. So in total
our single article is displayed in the front-end in four different
locations albeit with differing contexts.
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I have two questions:
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 - Is this a normal and straightforward action for most content
management systems?
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- Is there a user experience aspect to this in respect to content
duplication (and are there many site which follow this model)?
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2. Replication of site fragments
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This is an extention of of the previous scenario which replicates not
simply single articles but fragments of the site. For example, our
'Coffee' article is now an entire section, consisting a 'Coffee
homepage', four 'Coffe related sub-home pages' and 25 different 'Coffee
articles'. In this scenario this entire site section is found in four
differing locations in the front-end information architecture.
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Questions:
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- Has anyone come across this before?
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I'm looking for some help in responding to what feels like slightly odd
client requests.
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Thanks
=20
Matt Hopgood


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