Content Is Not Data

I’ve had this article by Seth Gottlieb open for a while now but quite frankly don’t have much I could add except to say go read it. The idea that content is more than just data because of how real people perceive and work with it leads to a huge difference in how you design user interfaces for content management systems. A content management system should be more than just a web interface to some great big database, it shouldn’t make users think the way the database is laid out, it should let them focus on the content and the true messages that it conveys.

In other words, content management systems shouldn’t just manage content, they should enable people to create and evolve content.