Take the humble onion. It's sweet, tasty and offers a bit of a bite. What could it possibly have in common with a content management system?
Actually, there's a strong similarity between the two. As Shrek famously said, "Onions have layers." The same can be said of content management systems (CMS).
When it comes to onions, it's common to cut straight through to the middle. When it comes to content management systems, it seems most users skim across the outer layers of their website tools, never diving into the crunchy goodness inside.
Think about your newsroom. How many on your staff even know that you have dedicated content management tools used to manage your site? In the vegetable world, that's like barely peeling the papery skin off the onion.
Chances are, a small handful of people in your newsroom post stories and images -- maybe even videos. But really they're only sinking their teeth into the first few layers of managing content.
Then you probably have just a couple of users who slice into the next layers of their CMS. They are the ones who dabble in slideshows, surveys, external links and the occasional PDF downloadable file.
Tasks like building new channel and section pages, or rearranging the homepage for a special event reveal much deeper layers of the system. Still, there always seems to be something more that your site's content management system can do.
That’s where you come in. Dig deeper into the capabilities of your newsroom’s online tools. Explore features that may seem daunting at first. Like the onion, there are plenty of tasty nuggets inside just waiting to be uncovered.
While the onion analogy holds true for pretty much any content management system, I've been impressed to see what many of our ambitious site users have done to tap into the deeper layers of our system, ibPublish 2. I would encourage users of any CMS to uncover that next layer of publishing.
As training manager, I get to see our users interacting with ibPublish 2 for the first time. Understanding the first few layers of the system is easy -- even intuitive. However, it's when users tap into the inside layers of the system that they start to see the real power and potential of their site.
It's great to see a site use dynamic publishing to create hyper-local sections. It's equally rewarding to help a site use scheduling functions to create special weekday and weekend editions. Moments like these are the truly rewarding parts in the training process.
Lately, we've been having lots of moments like these. As the builder of a CMS, we want our clients to make the most of their websites, and we're all too happy to help each site uncover the next layers of ibPublish 2.
If you have any questions or comments, please reach me at folson@ibsys.com.
Fred Olson
Training Manager
Internet Broadcasting
