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Do You Need CMS?
Solve webmaster bottleneck problems and keep your Web site in tip-top shape using CMS.
by Scott Jamison

How is your Web site content managed? Are your content creators required to e-mail proposed news stories and other content to your webmaster for translation to HTML and (eventual) publishing to the production Internet site? Or is the Web site a free-for-all, causing a situation where the pages are out of control and inconsistent? Web sites without a process in place can become a mess. Web sites with an e-mail-the-content-to-the-webmaster approach can create bottlenecks and delay the publishing of your newsworthy content or cause business users to feel like they're at the mercy of the HTML gurus. There's got to be a better way … enter content management systems.

A content management system is a system put in place to help manage the content of a Web site. By content, I mean the actual news articles, images, links, and other items available to viewers of your Internet, intranet, or extranet site. A content management system enables non-technical users to author Web content, while preserving IT control over the Web site through the use of templates and a workflow-based approval system. Microsoft's content management offering comes in the form of a .NET Enterprise Server called Content Management Server (CMS) 2001. Microsoft acquired the product through a purchase of nCompass Labs and rebranded its nCompass Resolution 4.0 product into CMS 2001.

A Typical Scenario
Let's take a look at a typical scenario in a company that uses CMS 2001. Say there's a marketing manager who wants to keep the corporate Web site up-to-date with press releases. She can:

1. Navigate to the page she's interested in using her browser.
2. Sign onto the site using her credentials, knowing she's part of the authoring security role.
3. Click the "Go to Edit Site" button that appears simply because she's an author.
4. Using her context-sensitive tools menu (added by CMS), add a new press release using an easy-to-use form.
5. Select an image from the CMS resource gallery, indicating mouse-over text and other Web elements.
6. Indicate the publish start and end dates, which will automatically add or remove the content from the site based on date.
7. Submit the page for approval.

All of this is done within the browser, using easy-to-follow forms and menus that a non-technical business user can follow. The webmaster then simply logs onto the site, reviews any pending changes, and approves the content. This releases the page to the Web without requiring any HTML coding changes. The beauty of the system is that because the webmaster created images, templates, and personalization rules up front, the end user can update content at an instant without technical knowledge of HTML from then on.

Technically Speaking
From a technical perspective, CMS runs on Internet Information Server 5.0 and provides its functionality through the use of an ISAPI filter. CMS provides a COM-based API that enables custom development and integration with other products. CMS's server requirements include Windows 2000 Server, IIS 5.0, a Pentium III or higher processor, and 512 MB of RAM. You'll also need Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or 2000, which is used to provide the content repository.

Microsoft Content Management Server 2001 is a great way for companies to streamline updates to their corporate Web sites by empowering the end users who create the site content. This improves efficiency, reduces the load on webmasters, and keeps your Web site content consistent and up-to-date. For more information, visit the CMS home page at http://www.microsoft.com/cmserver.

About the Author
Scott Jamison is technical director at Plural, a full-service, nationwide solution development consulting firm. Scott leads development teams that use .NET to build solutions. He is the author of several books and is a frequent speaker at Microsoft conferences. Reach him at .