When Workforce Magazine, an 80-year-old trade publication geared toward HR professionals, launched its site in June 1995, it set out with the belief that the site should not be a mere online rendition of its successful magazine.
Workforce wanted a site that would be a unique collection of content and functionality that made the best use of the Web for its more than 250,000 registered users. Recently acquired by Crain Communications, Workforce is a Costa Mesa, CA-based premier destination for HR professionals, concentrating on HR trends and tools for business results.
Three years later, it redesigned the site from the ground up and decided to custom-build a content management system (CMS). While the proprietary CMS worked well at first, by early 2001 it became apparent that the system was hindering Workforce's efforts in growing the site to meet the expanding needs of its readers and its own editorial team.
The proprietary code base of the CMS and peripheral systems prevented developers from extending functionality and, more importantly, from fixing bugs in the system--specifically those that occasionally erased all the content within the site. Usability was also a big headache; many of the screens presented long, unmanageable lists of assets, with no ability to sort or filter the results.
The organisation had little choice but to basically tear everything down and radically overhaul the existing technology architecture.
CMS is all about the process
Workforce wanted a sophisticated publishing system that could handle a high volume of content, but it didn't want to build a custom system again.
"With the installed CMS we had, we found that its problems quickly became site-wide issues," said Bob Dortch, VP of production at Workforce. "Because the system lived in the same environment as our live site, if the CMS went haywire and locked up the Web server, both our CMS and our entire live Web site went down at the same time." The problem with the installed solution was that it had created too great a co-dependency between the main business needs: serving our live site and building new content, he explained.
"We knew that selecting a new CMS would be a major undertaking, and based on our past experience, we knew a hosted solution would provide the separation and business security we were looking for."
Because Workforce had a limited budget, it didn't want to invest heavily in software and staff to support and manage a complex application. It also required an application that could integrate with other applications, including ad serving, bulletin boards, user authentication, and a search engine. And the organisation wanted an implementation partner that could perform the customisation it required, and that could (cost-effectively) continue to modify the application as requirements changed.
