Web Content Management

Chapter 10. Other Features

In prior chapters, we’ve discussed edge cases, which are usage patterns at the outside edge of what a typical user might do. Edge cases are the bane of software developers because they have to be accounted for, even though they occur infrequently. And sometimes the level of work that goes into handling an edge case will equal or exceed the level of work that goes into developing something that every user does, all the time.

One of the problems with writing complicated, feature-rich software is that any individual user of the software might only use 25% of its total features. But everyone uses a different 25%. Which means that beyond the basic, core functionality, everything becomes an edge case to some extent.

Once a platform’s user base hits a significant size, every edge case can be a huge problem. If 30,000 people are using your software, and a feature is used by only 1% of them, that’s still 300 people who expect it work with the same level of polish as everything else.

These users don’t know that this is an edge case. They don’t know that very few other people are using the feature. Just ask any vendor who has tried to remove a feature it didn’t think anyone was using, only to be greeted with howls of protest by a small subset of users who were depending on it.

In the previous four chapters, we’ve discussed the core features of web content management:

• Content modeling

• Content aggregation

• Editorial workflow

• Output management

It can be safely ...