Managing Content with MCMS - An Introduction
(Microsoft Content Management Server)

By: Rajput Yogendrasinh H

Introduction: This are the question which came into my mind as a new to MCMS guy. I guess they will be there in your mind also. Answers are in very brief and quick to read.

Abstract: This article describes 'must know' about content management and a little bit of Microsoft Content Management.

What is Content Management ?

Here 'content' means digital information.

Managing content is about performing create, update, publish, translate, archive and retire operations on the content.

What is Content Management System ?

Content management system facilitates a group of user to management content collaboratively with increased authoring productivity and easier management using user roles.

Types of Content Management System:

1. Web Content Management System (or Web-CMS). We will discuss this type of CMS in details with MCMS.

2. Transactional Content Management (TCMS) System for management of e-commerce transactions.

3. Publication Management System for management of publication content life cycle.

4. Learning Management System (LMS) for management of web based learning content life cycle.

5. Enterprise Content Management System (ECMS) is like Web-CMS++. In ECMS you get combination of Web-CMS with other CMS system (it may Transactional or TCMS)

What are the types of CMS users ?

There are four main roles of CMS except the end user.

1. Content Authors

2. Editors. Refines the postings posted by the content authors.

3. Publisher. Publisher authorizes the postings and makes them available on to the end users.

4. Administrator. Administrator is responsible for all issues regarding security, disaster management and system.

In General, what facilities a CMS provides ?

Your Content Management System (CMS) may provides some or all of these features:

1. Support for categorization of content. A sample short hierarchical repository structure is shown in figure below.

2. Role based site maintenance and tools.

   
   

3. Security and role management

4. Content Version/History Management

5. Support for workflow implementation

6. Easy content creation using template system

What is MCMS ?

Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 is web-CMS which provides a faster way to create, deploy, and maintain mission-critical, content-rich web site.

What basic features are provided by MCMS ?

MCMS Provides role based security and content management, efficient storage mechanism and supports template based web-site authoring.

What is not provided with MCMS which my web-site may need ?

1. MCMS doesn't provide any inbuilt search functionality. For such functionality, you will have to rely on Microsoft Share Point Portal Server or any other searching tool which can be tightly integrated with MCMS.

2. MCMS doesn't provide any inbuilt functionality for catalog management, content profiling, personalization or web analytic system. Microsoft Commerce Server can be used for such purpose. You need Microsoft Internet Business Server (MSIB) for integration of MCMS with Microsoft Commerce Server.

What are the steps to create MCMS web site ?

These are the steps which you have to follow (after installation of MCMS) in order to create a web site using MCMS:

1. Create a channel structure using MCMS Site Manager

2. Create templates using Visual Studio .net

3. Create users and roles, then assign access rights using site stager.

4. Author the site.

What are MCMS Channels ?

Like you organize your data into separate folders, MCMS also provides capability to manage your site content that way. If you relate MCMS channel with your data organization schema than channel means folder. Organization of this type gives you flexibility to manage user rights (e.g. different editors or authors for each channels). Site authoring also becomes easier with properly organized channel structure.

Although you have to be very careful while deciding the channel structure if you want to take advantage of dynamic menu generation.

What is dynamic menu generation ?

I think this is very essential feature of any serious Content Management System. Whenever you add or remove any page, the link should be added or removed from the menu item of you site.

What is MCMS Template and Placeholders ?

MCMS Templates are very similar to any word processor template where you have to put contain into some container. Placeholders are nothing but these containers. A template may have zero or more placeholders.

How to create Templates and Placeholders ?

First of all, you don't need to create any placeholders. You just have to drag and drop the any of the default placeholders from Visual Studio IDE. You can build you custom one but most probably you will not need it.

MCMS is tightly integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio .net and template can be made using ASP or ASP .net (DOT NET).

How to author a page using MCMS ?

Authoring a page is MCMS is very simple. There are two main ways for web authoring using MCMS.

1. Browser Based authoring: You can author using Internet Explorer 5+ by putting content in proper placeholders.

2. You can use Microsoft Word 2000 or above to author. But to enable this on you computer, you will have to install a small utility called “MCMS Authoring Tool”. This tool will create a menu item in 'file menu' to create, update or replace a page.

Are the web pages created by MCMS browser independent ?

Most things depends upon you because templates will be written by you in ASP/ASP .net. First of all you must follow HTML standards. If you keep any error in template than error will be reflected in all the pages created using that template. Although it also sometimes depends upon the page author also if the HTML editing is allowed to web authors. You can cleverly use cascaded stylesheets (CSS) for uniform look.

One more thing. Pages authored using Microsoft Word may suffer more problems as in that case even the author don't have any control over the HTML code and Microsoft Word (at least upto MS Office 2003) don't produce standard specific code. Please let me know if you come to know any interesting thing about this.

How to add link in MCMS Site to edit the page ?

Again. You need not to do it. When you create a new 'MCMS Web Application' project using visual studio, by default it creates a console (a user control). You can drag and drop this user control to you MCMS template. Default console provides facility to access site approval management system, history management system apart from page creation, deletion or alteration. You can change this default console according to your need.

How does the MCMS supports the relative URLs ?

Unfortunately relative URLs are not supported with MCMS 2002. Although there are ways to come out of this problems. Like creating a configuration file and storing prefix of the URLs. But it's really a headache.

What are good books for MCMS ?

Ranked according to my understanding.

1. Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

   • A book for beginners. Covers MCMS 2002. It's for C# but as you know it doesn't make much difference for VB programmers.

2. Microsoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide

   • You can see content and more here. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0321194446/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-7404153-2422233#reader-link. This is also good for beginners.

3. Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development

   • Many advanced topics are covered. The book is for serious programmers.

See here for updates.

Good Links .... ?

Lots of information is available about MCMS on web. Best place is MSDN but for many reasons you will wander around. I am giving few links with the description or purpose. You must go through all these links in order to master MCMS.

1. http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/2/5/4250f79a-c3a1-4003-9272-2404e92bb76a/MCMS+2002+-+(complete)+FAQ.htm

   • Correctly named as a complete FAQ.

2. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_2003_ta/html/ContentManagementServer.asp

   • If the above one was the complete FAQ than this is complete tutorials. Use Internet Explorer to take advantage of tree view of help (left frame). Crawl through it...

3. http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/111-Microsoft-Integration

   • Integrating MS CMS and Commerce Server is explained here very simple way. If you want to use personalization, profiling or catalog management you must read this.

4. http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.cmserver.general&lang=en&cr=US

   • Best Place to ask questions about MCMS.

Last Updated: 29-12-2005