It's a fact that many CMS implementations fail because not enough time is dedicated to analyzing an organization's current body of content. Its very easy to lose focus on content by being too wrapped up in the technology and design of a new web project. Additionally, CMS vendors tend to be fixated on the functional aspects of their software, without being able to give any sound advice for a content migration strategy. One of the first steps in any CMS implementation should be a Content Inventory.

The list below contains 6 ways a content inventory will help the success of your CMS Implementation:

  • Assess the state of the content on the site. Is your content up-to-date? Do you have information ROT (Redundant, Outdated or Trivial information)? Even the best-kept sites have it. Now is the time to identify the content that needs to be updated and make those changes before migrating it into the CMS.
  • Identify who is responsible for editing and approving the content on your site. You’ll need this information to set up the workflows in the CMS.
  • Establish a set of keywords or topics for each page. This information will become the keyword metadata in the CMS.
  • Determine how frequently the content should be updated (daily, weekly, monthly, each semester, annually, etc.) and use this information to set up automatic review notices in the CMS.
  • Identify content that can be reused within the site or on other sites.
  • Organize your site so that menus and breadcrumbs can be automated in the CMS.

For more insight and discussion on this topic, please view the following article….

Performing a Content Inventory
A content inventory is a tool to help you review and prioritize site content (text, photos, audio/video, documents, etc.) for migration into the content management system (CMS). It is also a way to gather information that will be used to set up site templates and workflows in the CMS environment. While many refer to this as a “mind numbing experience,” it is critical to the success of your migration project and doing the work up front can save a lot of development time later on.