Compton Communications

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Behind every 'smart'enewsletter is CMS

My idea of a "smart" enewsletter is one that writes itself, in a manner of speaking, by using a Content Management System (CMS) to gather and format the news and articles so that the editor can create a publication based on his reader interests. An online publication is dynamic, so the enewsletter is like a snapshot in time of contributions and editor choices.

A system like the New York Times daily email newsletter is assembled using the reader's choices of major news categories like technology. The TImes Content Management System gathers a daily quote, short advertisement, lead story snippet and five technology snippets each day. The stories are all linked to pages on the New York Times News Web site. This system is better for the reader because the editor does not have to guess the reader interests. Additionally, the reader can quickly scan the story headline and snippets for items of interests.

So what is a news content management system. Essentially, is a computer program that gathers pieces of content from various sources and in various categories. The content is formatted only at time of output according to a specific template or set of instructions for the media selected. Thus an article may appear as a HTML page on the Web site and as a headline and snippet in the enewsletter.

Gathering into a database requires that input be categorized as to headline, byline, news category, date, and story. These same elements can then be formatted for output to a specific media such as Web site or email newsletter.

Compton Communications recently installed a CMS system on a church Web site. The system allows contributors from the music department, adult education, social groups, and pastors to all add news items. The items are posted to Web pages in specific categories like music or education. The authors do not have to worry about style or format. The same news items appear as headlines and snippets on the main news page. Once all the news is collected via the Web site producing an enewsletter should be simply a matter of pushing the items out via an email system.

So the system flow diagram is shown below.

To see the system in operation go to http://www.cathedraloftherockies.org/main/news/newsheadlines.shtml

A backend web page is used to gather information items into a database. The database posts the news items to each section page and to this main news headline page.