These don't make a huge amount of sense without the commentary. See http://allinthehead.com for a more formal write-up.

1. content management
(without the killing)
drew mclellan, edgeofmyseat.com

2. o hai!

3. edgeofmyseat.com
a specialist web development agency experienced
in building web applications from content
management systems, e-commerce applications,
to the systems that run your business.

4. so,
content management then.

6. http://flickr.com/photos/hddod/536392298/

7. http://flickr.com/photos/neilw/138493599/

10. a tool for preparing eggs should be
as simple as possible, but no simpler.
- Eggbert Einstein

11. eggxactly.

12. “A boiled egg makes an almost
perfect breakfast. It's the most
nutritional breakfast money can buy.
The downside is that it's a bit of a
hassle to prepare.
First you have to wait 5 minutes for
the water to boil, place the egg in
the boiling water, remembering to
set the timer, fish it out when it's
cooked and finally you have to wash
up the pan.”
- James Seddon

14. as simple as possible, but no simpler.

15. say when.

16. so controlling.
you’re not the boss of me

17. you don’t understand my needs
that’s all I’m saying

18. you’re not my type.

19. offline management

20. online management

21. build something, anything.

22. your site, your way.

23. it’s not you, it’s me.

24. common features.

25. /shiny/happy/urls

26. use readable, reliable
and hackable URLs
- Tom Coates

27. /news/technology/messy-urls-are-evil

28. data feeds

29. data stored in an open format

30. customisable and accessible
administration interface

31. search

32. multi-site support

33. multi-language support

34. caching

35. web 2.0 features
(cringe)

36. user generated content
(cringe)

37. off the shelf systems

38. weblog management systems

43. weblog management systems
• posts / articles
• categories and tags
• comments
• sections
• flat site structures
• simple to set up and use

44. beware the pimped out blog site
don’t launch a new site with a weblog cms already
stretched to its limits.

45. case study
webstandards.org

47. state of existing site
• CVS proving too awkward for casual edits
• Movable Type was painfully slow to publish
• wanted the ability to turn on comments
• considering a full redesign anyway

49. choice to use WordPress
• continued to be free of charge
• new ‘pages’ feature to handle site content
• integrated blog
• no republishing for comments
• moderation and spam filtering
• Matt Mullenweg was part of WaSP

52. lessons learned
• dynamic rendering is a lot more expensive
• the ‘pages’ feature was immature and slow

54. lessons learned
• dynamic rendering is a lot more expensive
• the ‘pages’ feature was immature and slow
• hacking WordPress was a bad idea

56. solutions
• unhack WordPress
• re-implement our hacks with the plugin API
• upgrade to faster hosting

57. avoid getting into an unsupportable
configuration at all costs.

58. medium scale content management

63. medium scale features
• weblogs, photo gallery, events calendar
• user / membership systems
• structure / hierarchy management tools
• more powerful search
• workflows
• versioning

64. beware!
• complicated way to cook an egg
• more power results in less simplicity
• set up / configuration
• maintenance and patching
• ease of use

65. enterprise level content management

66. building your own

67. case study
edgeofmyseat.com cms platform

68. edgeofmyseat.com projects
• content management at core
• bespoke requirements on top
• design-led
• built for phased development & future
expansion

69. our goals
• reusable core functionality
• avoid monotonous tasks
• decrease the skill level required
• be more competitive on smaller projects
• structured data
• high performance

70. buy or build?

71. we decided to build

72. platform
• PHP 5.2, MySQL 4.1
• good performance
• easy and inexpensive to host
• inexpensive to develop
• reliable
• in house expertise

73. design decisions
• flexible templating
• multiple levels of caching
• structured and extensible data types
• embeddable applications
• ability to exercise control of IA
• simple administrative concepts

74. planning for the future

75. top tips

76. know your plugins
authenticity, licensing & support

77. beware hidden costs
update charges & maintenance time

78. be a licensing boffin
know what you own & avoid lock-in

79. plan for the future
don’t buy it today

80. don’t push the limits from day one
leave room to expand

81. be aware of design constraints
design for the platform you have

82. avoid per-user licensing
you’re probably being ripped off

83. speak with existing customers
(everyone hates their cms)

84. know your exit route
understand the data import & export options

85. questions?

86. edgeofmyseat.com