Silverlight Centrally Managed Content

Sunday, March 16, 2008

In my previous posts about creating a Silverlight site that plays well with search engines I have only focused on SEO and SEA. There are a lot of other benefits to this model and I hope to map them out in a few posts. The difficulty is in finding out where to start.

The main crux of this idea came from the Server Unleashed site that I was working on at the time has a separate HTML version of the site. This was particularly frustrating to me because I am a firm believer in the write once and test it then never write it again. That includes content. Content in one place makes it easier to make changes as they come in, and it actually makes it easier to localize a topic I’ll get into in a few posts.

There are thousands of Content Management Systems (CMS) on the market. I would even be willing to bet that every day sees the birth of at least one more. My own web site that you are reading right now uses a custom CMS that I wrote because I wanted bragging rights. Now I see the trouble with doing your own custom CMS is that you have to maintain it. Maintaining a site for someone that is willing to pay time and materials is one thing, but finding time to make changes to your own code is a bit more difficult. That’s why there are some issues with this site that haven’t been updated in a few years.

I digress. If your CMS is a static HTML file or if it’s Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as long as your content exists in one place you are in good shape to maintain the content moving forward. If you find that your content needs updating you only have to make the change and test it in one place.

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