Portal Solutions Chart August 2001 PDF Format [9k]

In fact, for the past five years the true definition of such systems have been made up at will depending on what the client was looking for, and these types of solutions were built and sold by the high end Fortune1000-targeted consultant services and integrators who charge six figures just to wake up in the morning. Companies like Interwoven and Vignette have this stratospheric plane pretty much to themselves.

More recently a crop of "affordable" solutions have entered the marketplace, or have relaunched themselves to reflect the more sober realities of the current Internet-based business climate. Also, several once-clunky open source solutions have grown in scope and ability due to a wealth of private developers who have tackled the client products eschewed by the "big guys," and in so doing have shared many of their accomplishments through the wonderful open source movement. All of these newer and more realistic solution providers are targeting the "lower end" of the marketplace, meaning those companies and organizations with budgets under $20K for a complete content publishing solution.

Content not Commerce

One of the things that make defining this type of solution so difficult is the expectation of what will be done with it. Many people seem to think that Web portal publishing and content management involves taking existing printed content and pressing a button to build a Web site replete with context-based advertising, related files, and pagination (multiple pages linked from a single article). Some kind of mythical cross-media solution worthy of a cool name and arcane marketing terms. Not so, grasshopper!

Prevailing wisdom with these kinds of solutions is that Web content is not print content, and should not be considered the same thing. "We believe fundamentally that writing a book is different than writing an article, which is different than writing an online article," says Dorian Cougias, CEO of Zapwerk, the company that was originally P-Ink, and then GoLive (before selling that venture to Adobe), and now offers the SiteYard portal system.

"Books give you great depth. Magazine articles probe. Web articles must by necessity of 'screen fit' be short and to the point. I don't ever think that War and Peace would be read on a screen at someone's home or office."

Additionally, a Web portal tool is NOT an e-commerce solution, so deep personalization via complex databases (as seen on sites like Amazon.com) don't really need apply. "We take the tack that 90% of the web content written on sites should be presented as is, without having to do any special tailoring for each person. Sort of like writing a magazine. You don't write an individual copy for each reader," adds Cougias.

Tag Teaming

Undoubtedly the primary benefit of any of these kinds of systems is in managing the group publishing process not only locally, but in then seamlessly publishing the resultant content through an approval-then-publish process. In simple collaborative systems like using Dreamweaver on a local network, one of the primary developers must still make the materials "live," and editorial edits must be done using a layout product.

With Sitestream, Macromedia has come up with a solution that hits most of the bases in offering template-based development; allowing an editor to build and approve content without using programming or design tools. It still maintains compatibility with designers and developers that do want to use Dreamweaver and/or UltraDev for more complex portions of the portal than writing and editing the live story text.

According to Sitespring's product manager, Erik Larson, "Our product helps Web teams manage their projects and files while working efficiently with clients, managers or other contributors outside the team itself. With an approachable user interface and a simple file versioning system it allows licensed team members to collaborate more efficiently and can also work along side dynamic publishing and content management tools."