Portals and CMS –
Why You Need Them Both
[email protected]
Route map
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•
•
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Environmental scan
What is a CMS?
What is a Portal?
How does the CMS relate to the Portal?
Demo (maybe some magic, if there’s time)
Some reflections
True confessions …
• We don’t (yet) have a centrally supported
CMS
• We don’t have an institutional portal
• We plan to have made decisions on both by
August 2002
• What follows is a mix of vaporware,
prototypes and incomplete understanding
Environmental scan I
• From the viewpoint of a research-led University
say five years ago:
– The Web is not life threatening
– The Web is another hassle – what is it replacing?
– We’re over-subscribed with well qualified
candidates
• “It’ll be very expensive to put a server in
Mexico”
The pre-millennial Web
• A hobby for someone
• Apache on a file system
• Highly manual methods of content creation and
maintenance
• In effect a read-only medium
• A spot of Perl
• A Webmaster
• Let the “professionals” get back to serious computing
• “Three clicks away from crap”
Environmental scan II
• From the viewpoint of a research-led University
today:
– DDA 1995 & SENDA 2001
– September 2002
– Perhaps the Web is career threatening?
• Let’s re-do the Web to make it accessible
• Let’s re-paint the Forth Road Bridge again and again and
again
• Let’s work harder rather than smarter
The pre-millennial Web can’t scale
• The pre-millennial Web is broken
• We need a Web Content Management
System:
– A web site is like a dog – it’s for life
– We need to move beyond the “Freds in the
Shed”
– We need a dynamic, automated, write-enabled,
de-skilled Web …..
– ….. supported by a multi-skilled Web Team
(who never touch the content)
The content life cycle
The defining features of a CMS
• A CMS has substantial overlaps with DMS,
VLEs, Groupware, Weblogs, Portals ….
CMS Portal
• Browning & Lowndes (2001)
– Versioning (checkout/in, rollback)
– Workflow
– Integration (“joinupability”)
√
√
√
• Not a finished product; a concept, a set of
processes, a framework
x
x
√
The most desirable features of a CMS
(IWMW, 2000)
1. Template-based self-service authoring for non-technical
content providers (‘frictionless publishing’)
2. Roles-based security
3. Workflow management - submit, review, approve, archive
4. Integration with existing data/databases and user
authentication systems
5. Metadata management
6. Flexible output - write once, publish many times
The Prospectus in 5 BC
(Before Cms)
E-mail
Web pages
Word
Fax
Word
Page
Maker
Printer
Fag packet
Annotated copy
of last year’s
Departments
Fourth party
Admissions
Marketing
Third party Webmaster
The Prospectus in 5 AC
(After Cms)
Browser
Web pages
Standard
Browser
Browser
Printer
CMS
Browser
Robot
Text-tospeech
CD-ROM
Browser
Departments
Admissions Marketing
Web Team
CMS in 2002
• If you haven’t got one or aren’t thinking
about getting one then you either:
– Have a web site of less than 100 pages or
– Have a web site with less than three authors or
– Are probably dead meat
Portal = MLE = VLE + CMS
Portal
Managed Learning Environment (MLE)
Student Information System
Digital
Library
Virtual Learning
Environment (VLE)
eTools
Content Management System (CMS)
eStrategy = an institutional understanding of these relationships?
What is a portal?
A portal:
• Aggregates information and applications one stop
shop
• Is personalised or ‘groupilised’ one size does not
fit all
• Aspires to be your desktop on the Web Webtop
Examples of portals
TABS
•
•
•
•
•
Law Intranet
Blackboard
Amazon
Tesco
LSE for You
CHANNELS or PORTLETS
The benchmark? LSE For You
Modules (=“channels”) already implemented
Room Booking
Student Photo Boards
Tuition Fees
Address Maintenance
Emergency Contacts
Private Accommodation
Exam Results
Reprographics Usage
Reprographics Jobs
Mailing Lists
Teaching Timetable
Payslips
Examination Details
Class Mailer
Locate a Study Room
Transcripts
DPA Consent
LSE Experts
Application Progress
Collect Network Account
Alumni Employment
The benchmark? LSE For You
Room Booking
Teaching Timetable
The benchmark? LSE For You
Address Maintenance
Tuition Fees
What is a portal architecture?
Why bother?
Before (i.e. now) …..
User confusion?
PIMS
IRIS
BOFINS
BORIS
Coda
Lots of stovepipes of
variable length …
Dolphin
Invisible
Desktopped
Pseudowebified
Webified
After …..
What is a portal architecture?
Aggregation
Happy User
PIMS
IRIS
Portal
framework
BOFINS
Portal
BORIS
Coda
?
?
Dolphin
Desktopped
Pseudowebified
Extending, bending
and merging the
stovepipes …
Webified
PORTALISED
What is a portal architecture?
Personalisation
After …..
= “stickiness”
Prospective employee
Prospective student
Casual visitor
Portal
framework
Portal
Multiple views depending
on user and/or device
Show Room http://www.bris.ac.uk
Back Office https://www.bris.ac.uk
Student
Staff
HoD
Ahem …. don’t some CMS do …
• Aggregation (a.k.a. syndication)?
• Personalisation?
• And other bits of a portal framework?
Yes ….
• Conversant, Frontier (News/magazine type)
• Vignette, Broadvision (E-business/e-commerce type)
• Zope + CMF (Framework type)
Which is why you need to be clear about
the join between the CMS and the portal
Dog’s dinner alert I ….
• what follows are just sketches
• by someone with a poor sense of screen design
• aimed at demonstrating some concepts
• a future portal will not look like this!
The “back office” – student1
University of Bristol
Search
STUDENT
ph0044
MyBristol
Library
Tools
News and Events
Timetable
Courses
Progress File
Transcript
Exams
Bookmarks
Filestore
My home
address
EDIT
My term
address
EDIT
My debt
PAY
Publish
The “back office” - staff
University of Bristol
Search
STAFF
MyBristol
Library
Tools
News and Events
Timetable
Courses
Porpoise
BOFINS
Bookmarks
Filestore
My home
address
EDIT
My next
of kin
EDIT
My parking
PAY
Publish
The “back office” – student2
University of Bristol
Search
MyBristol
Library
Tools
Publish
The “back office” – a customisable Webtop
View of CMS and other
University
of toBristol
content
repositories
which
editing into
CMS
MyBristol
Tools
Publish
youSearch
have write
access Library TTW
wyziwyg
We got 15 five-stars!
The portal is
fundamentally
content-free – the
CMS holds the
content
Tools to automagically
upload, convert and publish
Office files
zlave
Publish Office file:
What makes a good portal
framework?
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•
•
•
•
•
Interoperable (open standards)
Agnostic
Secure
Flexible (incl. “skins”)
Stable, scaleable, supportable
Future proof
Candidate portal frameworks?
• Blackboard Level 2 
• Blackboard Level 3 - Now BB Learning System
£32k/annum + <= £60k consultancy for set-up?
• Zope 
• Long list of payware options 
• Short list
– Oracle Portal ?
– uPortal ?
Demo
• Is there time?
• If not, and you’d like see it,
then back here @ 17:30
Oracle Portal demo
• Glasgow Caledonian
uPortal demo
• Delaware
Dog’s dinner alert II ….
• what follows is a proto-prototype
• constructed by staff with other day jobs and some students
• no concessions made w.r.t. usability or presentation
• running on a desktop PC
• aimed at demonstrating some concepts:
• Aggregation
• Integration
• Personalisation
• Customisation
• a future portal will not look or work like this!
uPortal demo
• Bristol out of the box
• Bristol prototype
What is a portal architecture?
Content
Application
server
“Browsers”
Portal channel
PIMS, etc
Database CMS
The portal(Zope)
is
File system
fundamentally
Message store
content-free
– the
CMS
holds
the
News store
content
WAP
Servlet container
Portal framework
XML/XSLT
RSS feeds
Anything XML
Authentication
service
PDF
Disabled
Applicant
Views depending on
user and/or device
LoadsaX’s to get our heads round
• XML
• XSLT
• XHTML
Browser
Printer
WAP
XSLT
XML
Application
or Data
We all need a Sebastian Rahtz! XHTML
uPortal
Some reflections
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•
•
•
•
•
CMSPortal
Siloware vs. Glueware
Senior managers
Who’s the CTO?
IWMW 2003
Putting lipstick on bulldogs
CMSPortal
How we’d like things to be ….
SIS
Digital
Library
Portal
framework
CMS
DNER
Agnostic, open
standards compliant
– plugs and sockets
… but how it often is
Siloware
Digital
Library
SIS
Portal
framework
DNER
CMS
just sockets –
“do it our
way”
Doncha love Senior Managers?
• Why can’t we just use Google?
• We don’t need a portal – we just need a
well-designed Web site
• Our SIS is ‘Best of Breed’ so it must be
good
• Why can’t we just use Outlook and
Exchange?
Who’s the CTO?
• Your Director of IT Services?
• UCISA? Siloware is often golfcourseware
– “It gets sold to senior executives by smooth-talking
sales executives who claim their products solve every
conceivable business problem, is a doddle to install,
standards compliant, holographic user interfaces,
everything.”
•
•
•
•
•
SCONUL?
ALT?
JISC?
eEnvoy?
Who’s the CIO?
We need to be investing in
glueware and the people
who can use it
The Scaleable Web
(IWMW 2003)
• Making it easy for the end-user means more
complexity behind the scenes
• The increasing dynamic Web will start to fail
as sites get busier
• Who in your institution is looking at:
– Load balancing
– Clustering
– Cacheing
• Amazon & Tesco have
• Overlaps with the GRID?
The technology is the easier bit
"The worst thing you can do is to Webenable a bad process," said Friedlein.
"As a client once put it: 'There's no
point in putting lipstick on a
bulldog,'" he added.
Getting content management strategy right, ZD Net UK,
Dec 12th, 2001, Geoff Choo
From Information Strategy to eStrategy?
Future performance target:
Four clicks away from 7x24 crap
From Desktop to Webtop
An Information Systems Strategy?
stellar
Many readers,
some writers
Maintrix
CARB
PIMS
eclipse
fsb
IRIS
DataHub
VIOLET
Dolphin
Coda
DataHaven
Casual visitor
Prospective student
Prospective employee
HERO
Show Room http://www.bris.ac.uk
Back Office https://www.bris.ac.uk
The Portal
User
Web
Application
server
Aleph
Envision
Multiple views,
depending on role
Sports
Operational
processing
Corporate
information
Information
deployment
Student
Staff
HoD
HESA