Web Content Management

Chapter 1. What Content Management Is (and Isn’t)

We tend to look at content management as a digital concept, but it’s been around for as long as content. For as long as humans have been creating content, we’ve been searching for solutions to manage it.

The Library of Alexandria (300 BC to about AD 273) was an early attempt at managing content. It preserved content in the form of papyrus scrolls and codices, and presumably controlled access to them. Librarians were the first content managers.

Fast-forward a couple of thousand years, and the Industrial Revolution and the rise of technology increased the accumulation of information exponentially. The problem of managing it became more critical. The early 20th century was full of great thinkers who examined the problem of communicating and managing information: S.R. Raganathan, Vannevar Bush,¹ Paul Otlet, Claude Shannon, and even Melvil Dewey, the father of the venerable Dewey Decimal System.

So, the need for content management didn’t begin with the World Wide Web, but simply shifted into fast-forward when the Web was born in the early ’90s. At that moment, the ability to create and publish content tumbled down from its ivory tower and into the hands of the masses. Almost anyone could create a web page about virtually anything.

Content subsequently exploded. I was a college student at the time, and was slightly obsessed with James Bond. Suddenly, I could find reams and reams of information on 007. The sheer amount of trivia was staggering. ...