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Architectural frameworks for content in WCM
Portal
Portal provides the basic framework services for content aggregation, role-based access, personalization and security. The underlying J2EE platform provides low-level middleware services such as enabling security with a user registry and session management. These underlying services coupled with the basic services supported by the portal framework can be effectively used to provide content life cycle management in terms of content authoring and content delivery. Different roles, such as author, reviewer, and approver, can participate in their capacity to move the content from authoring to delivery. The content management and delivery framework embedded into Portal can be used in tandem with the other features, such as personalization and content aggregation, which provides an effective layer for presentation services in the architecture. The information architecture can be a combination of the content management and delivery interspersed with other portal navigable pages to render content from different back-end systems.
Traditional
Traditionally, content is prepared in pure HTML format by using different HTML editors, and the content is hosted on a Web server for the presentation. The URLs are exchanged with the reviewers and approvers for verification and validation over e-mail. The hosting platform is lean and provides no functionality in terms of content management. The dynamic applications came into existence with CGI scripts but had lots of limitations. The evolution of the J2EE platform has brought in a new dimension to display content on Web sites. Static Web content is coupled with the dynamic content generated through servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSPs). One aspect that cannot effectively be provided through this framework is content management.
Internal facing
Internal facing sites are those meant for the employees of an organization. Apart from being simple but easily accessible (through effective navigation), there must be an important application for the employees to visit the site. Typical entities on such an intranet are news, alerts, and role-specific content. Apart from the content, in terms of production, such sites benefit immensely if the intranet users are provided access to applications that are useful for day-to-day activities, such as sales management, defect tracking, customer relationship management, or technical support. The challenge is to intersperse the content by using a content management framework, such as Lotus Web Content Management, with Portal (pages and portlets).
External facing
On external facing sites, the content must be updated because the public view decides the image of the organization. The taxonomy of the site should be well defined, and the content should be easily accessible either through browsing or search. The site needs to be fast enough and within the limits of the users' response time perceptions. Any response times more than 5 seconds are perceived to be slow by the users. The framework should support caching techniques at various levels to enhance the response times for different scenarios. The user can have a unique ID with the site, and the content can be personalized according to the profile of each of these users. The architectural and design frameworks should consider how these content management, search, caching, and personalization services can be provided to the user, with the goal of attracting and keeping the attention of the users.