Core Functionality

Let us take a look at some of the common features available on most web content management (WCM) systems. This checklist can be easily used to create a basic request for proposal (RFP) for a web content management system (WCM or CMS).

  1. Content Modeling
    1. Does the system provide a mechanism to model content objects or content types
    2. Does the system provide pre-defined content types
    3. Does the system allow user-defined content types
    4. What type of attributes may be created for user-defined content types
    5. Are there any limitations with respect to metadata attributes
    6. What (if any) are the system attributes added to all content types
    7. How does the system handle binary files
    8. How does the system handle image files
    9. How does the system handle video files

     

  2. Content Taxonomies
    1. Does the system provide any functionality to manage content taxonomies
    2. Can multiple content taxonomies be created on the same system
    3. Does the system support linking between content types
    4. Can there be one-to-one , one-to-many and many-to-many relationships between managed pieces of content

     

  3. Content Collections
    1. Does the system support content collections that are explicitly defined by the content manager
    2. Does the system support rules based content collection that are automatically populated

     

  4. Dependency Control
    1. Does the system maintain the dependencies between related pieces of content
    2. Does the system support incremental publishing based on content dependencies
    3. Does the system leverage native RDBMS features for dependency control

     

  5. Library Services
    1. Does the system allow for content consistency across multiple updates
    2. Does the system lock content for editing implicitly
    3. Can a user explicitly lock content for editing
    4. Is there API level access for CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) operations
    5. Can an administrator forcibly override an edit in progress by one of the users in the system

     

  6. Multilingual content
    1. Does the CMS allow users to manage multilingual content
    2. Does the CMS allow searching for multilingual content
    3. Is there standard support for translation processes
    4. Are dates completely localized
    5. Are currencies automatically localized
    6. Can versions on the same content in multiple languages be compared and previewed side-by-side
    7. Is there are notion of a master language for
      1. Each project
      2. Each Content Category
      3. Each Content Type
      4. Each piece of content
    8. Does the system allow sorting of multilingual search results
    9. Is the user interface for managing content completely localized into multiple languages

     

  7. User Interface
    1. How many different ways can the system manage structured content
    2. How many different ways can the system manage unstructured content
    3. Are all these user interfaces localized
    4. Is there a browser based user interface
    5. Is there a separate user interface for administrators
    6. Is there a separate user interface for content authors
    7. Is there a separate user interface for developers
    8. Does the user interface require a client installation

     

  8. Versioning
    1. Does the system store versions of each piece of content
    2. Does the system store versions of logical groups of content
    3. Does the system store versions of content categories
    4. Does the system store versions of websites or projects
    5. Is there a limit in the number of versions stored
    6. Are the number of versions stored configurable for each content type
    7. Does the system store versions of each attribute within a content type
    8. Does the system provide the ability to rollback to a previous version of content
    9. Does the system provide the ability to rollback to the previous version of a whole project or website
    10. Does the system provide the ability to create, manage and release future versions of projects or websites
    11. Does the system provide a mechanism to compare the differences between past, present and future versions of content
    12. Is version comparison available at a content attribute level
    13. Is version comparison available for structured content
    14. Can the tool compare versions of binary files like images, word files and pdf  files