How evolving content management technologies helped facilitate Web 2.0
As an erstwhile Web developer and Web software engineer (and now occasional ‘hobbyist’), I can remember some of the content management solutions on offer in the mid to late nineties.
Usually, they were piecewise solutions built up from various chunks of ‘this document management system’, and ‘that back-end database interface’ - all augmented with some bits of interface code cooked up by an overworked developer.
Often such systems required content data to be manually imported and exported – with some kind of human initiated conversion taking place – to go from one subsystem to another.
When data portability tools such as XML and XSLT emerged onto the scene, with DTD (data type definitions) and schemas to facilitate template-based content feeds, many of the previously stodgy data portability problems that had plagued content rich websites began to dissipate, as perhaps did the dangerous stress levels of many a database admin and content manager (to be replaced by other tech-curve headaches, no doubt).
With XML (extensible markup language), text based content from different sources – say multiple different news vendors – could be formatted according to a standard data definition and channeled through a common engine for publishing. This kind of evolution in content manipulation matured into what we now know as RSS feeds.
Fully fledged Web 2.0 was still as far away as the broadband and mature content management systems that would ultimately be necessary to facilitate it. However, there were other powerful dynamics that resulted in the emergence of what we now know as Web 2.0.
Firstly, the need for fresh, constantly changing content became evident early in the history of content rich portals and Websites. Generating and sourcing content at the necessary rate of turnover could mean implementing dozens of syndicated and other external feeds, each one without the control of the Website owner.
Then, with the advent of forums, blogs, and chat rooms, it became evident that actual Website visitors - users - could contribute enormously to content – in terms of both interest and volume. No longer did Website have to rely on externally managed sources which could break data format rules or go off-line.
Web 2.0 content only stops flowing if users become disinterested and disengage.
Now we can’t move on the Web for internet dating services, and forums and blogs about everything from literature to mental health, to cooking and scientific theorems. However, it is often overlooked that what happens when users contribute to Website this way, the are in fact (albeit in a limited and highly controlled way) updating and managing content – their own.
Contemporary content management systems have become extremely powerful and well integrated. They often allow Website owners to control everything from the text in animated presentation, to the placement of the presentation itself. Making some of this ‘power to update’ available to the world at large was key to the success of Web 2.0.
