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The Metatorial CMS Planner™ (Version 1.0)
A Complete Sample Analysis with Planning
Templates
(Payment through
PayPal)
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The CMS Metatorial Planner is a
comprehensive, hands-on companion to the Content Management Bible, designed to
help your team through the content analysis and planning phases of implementing
a content management system.
The CMS Metatorial Planner sells for $200.
To buy a planner, you can pay by credit card through the PayPal system. As soon
as you make payment via PayPal, you will link to a page that will allow you to
download the planner directly. You can start working with it today!
Email us (planner@metatorial.com)
if you would rather pay by check or wire transfer or if you use a purchase
order system and need an invoice. We would be happy to answer any additional
questions you might have. Note that the planner depends on the information in
the CM Bible, so you will need to have this book available when you use the
planner.
To get a closer look at the planner,
Download a
planner sample (PDF).
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Is the Planner for
You?
If you have found the information in the CM Bible useful and your
task is to pull together a content management system, the planner will be of
interest to you. The planner works through a complete analysis for a fictitious
company called TimeBandits (They help you steal back your precious
time!). The TimeBandits example will help you work through your own content
and system analysis.
The CMS Metatorial Planner includes:
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A Complete Sample Analysis takes TimeBandits through a
complete planning process. The analysis follows the "Plan" sections of the CM
Bible and ties into the background information in the book.
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Analysis Worksheets in Microsoft Word format that you can use
for your own planning.
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A Report Template that helps
you gather your planning worksheets into a full design document that can be
used as one of the "blueprints" for your CMS implementation.
The
planner was developed by Bob Boiko of Metatorial Services Inc. and Rita Warren
of ZiaContent. The creators of this planner have been working together since
1995 charting the world of content management. In the process, we developed a
methodology for gathering the critical pieces of information that are needed to
successfully implement a content management system (CMS).
Planner
LicensingThe planner is sold under these licensing arrangements:
- You are free to use the planner as you like within your own
organization.
- You may not redistribute the planner to anyone outside
your organization without the written consent of Metatorial Services Inc.
- You may not create your own planner from the files we provide without the
written consent of Metatorial Services Inc.
- You may not use the
planner to provide commercial services to any third party without the written
consent of Metatorial Services Inc.
If you want to make use of
the planner for any purpose other than planning your own CMS, let us know and
we will work out a special agreement with you.
Introduction from the
Planner
Here is an excerpt from the planner introduction to help you
decide if the planner is for you.
What is your role in this
process?
If you find the topic of content management
particularly interesting—and relevant enough to your job that you took the step
of obtaining this planner—it’s a pretty sure bet you have some responsibility
for a content management project. Your task is likely to pull together a
process and a team to design and implement a content management system. For the
purposes of this planner, we will call you and your team the “CMS Project Team”
because your end goal at this point is to successfully complete the CMS
implementation.
What kind of content management are we talking
about?
While your initial goal is probably to use content
management to manage and publish Web-based content, we ask you to broaden your
view to the wider concept of publications. We call this enterprise content
management. There is a huge amount of power and flexibility in a well-designed
enterprise content management system. With imagination (and some custom
programming) you can publish to many formats besides the Web—print formats,
PDAs, databases, and so on. Thinking in these terms will prepare you for the
inevitable day when a Web site is just one of the publications that your CMS
produces. If your target for now is simply Web content management, and you are
only interested in publishing a large Web site, the planner will still help
you. Just pay less attention to the parts that have you plan for multiple
publications.
What stage are you at?
Content
management projects happen in various ways. Some organizations select a CMS
product, purchase it, and then get started on project planning and content
analysis. Others analyze and plan first and then find the product that is most
appropriate to their needs. Still others gather the requirements they need to
build their own CMS.
In any case, the planner can help. The
planner assumes that you will do analysis and planning
before selecting what system to use.
Essentially, the analysis and planning is a requirements gathering process.
Just as you would create a comprehensive set of requirements before selecting
any major enterprise application, you do the same for a CMS. Regardless of what
stage you're at, the CMS Metatorial Planner can be useful in defining the goals
and constraints of your system. If you decide to build your own custom system,
the information you gather here can form the basis for the software
requirements definition.
What can you expect from CMS Metatorial
Planner™?
We created this planner to help you uncover and
organize the needs and constraints of your particular situation so you can
approach content management implementation armed with solid and relevant
information about what you need.
No matter which way you
go—developing your own system, or customizing a commercial CMS product—you
cannot avoid the detailed work of analyzing and dissecting your content. This
planner helps you do that. When you are ready to implement your CM solution,
you can then incorporate the knowledge and data you have collected in the
planner into your system.
Using the Planner and the Worksheets
Each section of the planner has you first review some
introductory information in a section from the Content Management Bible
(if you need to), then look at an example, and finally, complete worksheets
that are provided as Word templates. Each of the numbered and named examples in
the planner corresponds to a template you will complete.
The
planner is made up of 15 sections. Here's how we recommend proceeding through
each section:
- Read through the Background Information in the
Content Management Bible if you feel that you need to.
- Look at the
"Think" questions and jot down notes about how you might answer the questions
for your organization.
- Review the Example, the completed worksheet for
each section, to get an idea of how to fill in your own worksheets.
- Complete the corresponding Plan worksheet(s), saving them a in a directory
where you are storing all of your CMS planning documents. Refer back to the
example worksheets in this planner if you are unsure how to fill in any of your
own.
- Look at the Integrate questions and, again, jot down notes. If
you determine that any of the information in your worksheets needs to change
based on new findings, work with your team to agree on the changes and update
the information as appropriate.
At the end of this
planner, we provide instructions for creating a comprehensive report that pulls
together all of your findings into a format that is ready to review and
use.
How to get started
To get started, we suggest
that you read through the planner, and use it as a basis for creating your
project plan for the content analysis and planning phases of the project. You
may also choose to print and bind copies of the planner to distribute as
workbooks for yourself and others on your team.
How long will it
take?
If you're highly organized and efficient (and aren't
dealing with a huge amount of content) you may be able to work through the
planner in a few weeks. However, try to set a realistic timeline. It's a lot of
information to gather and there are many decisions to make. The process can
take many months, depending on your scope and the decision-making processes in
your organization.
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