A NEW INTERNET BASED COMMUNICATION FRAMEWORK FOR THE CIPA 
COMMUNITY 
C. Lichtenberg“, Prof.-Dr. G. Pomaska b 
Heidestraße 16, 32584 Löhne, Germany, cl@datatrace.de 
b Technical University for Applied Sciences Bielefeld, Artilleriestrasse 9, 32427 Minden, Germany, gp@fh-bielefeld.de 
WG VII 
KEY WORDS: Intemet/Web, Organization, Structure, Content Management, CMS, Community, communication, media 
ABSTRACT: 
Because of the international attitude of the CIPA it is important to present the results, projects and information’s in a modem and 
easy to use layout on the internet. Both, the members and the users, expect an easy to use, high performance system to place or to 
retrieve information’s. According to this, the article tries to show up the benefits for the community by using a Content Management 
System (CMS) for their Internet presentation. By describing the main aspects from a common point of view on how to implement a 
CMS, we try to show up the advantages of such a system, especially for scientific workgroups. Furthermore we want to show up, that 
the limitations about using a CMS are more and more decreasing. Thus the decision for a CMS or against it could be decided under 
technical and organizational aspects without emotions. In the last part of the paper we will have a close look on what is necessary to 
bring a CMS to success. Especially the question how the organization of the community correspond with structure presented by the 
CMS and what changes in the organization might be necessary will be discussed. 
1. BASICS 
1.1 Definitions 
Before discussing the opportunities a “Content Management 
System” (CMS) could offer, we first have to discuss what a 
CMS is. On the German website www.contentmanager.de it is 
defined as a “Software System for the administration of Web 
Content by offering controlled processes to generate content 
and elements based on a strict separation of content and 
structure (layout).” 
Another common and very important aspect of a CMS is the 
strict separation of content and layout. The content could be a 
text, media file or something else. The layout is the frame in 
which these elements will be presented to the public. Often the 
layout is implemented by a HTML-Template and corresponding 
Cascading Style Sheets' (CSS). Thus the user of the system is 
enabled to place content of any kind into the website without 
keeping special HTML programming or formatting constructs in 
mind. 
Because the CMS generates the different elements of a 
publication dynamically into the given layout the user can focus 
on the input of the content. This means the user can primarily 
concentrate on his intention and don’t have to worry about the 
design or the formatting of the elements. Furthermore the 
system is responsible for the right presentation of content and 
the correct links to the different pages. Thus the systems 
generates the corresponding links and navigation structure. This 
is very worth full to avoid broken or blind links and the user 
don’t have to worry about binding his pages into the system or 
to bring up the navigation structure. 
In this context we have also to define the different user groups 
of a CMS. First of all we have the user himself. The user of a 
CMS writes articles and place them into the CMS. To separate 
the user from the other involved people we would like to call 
him “author”. Often you find a controlled process to place 
content into a CMS in that way that an author writes an article 
and another author (the “chief author”) has to activate the 
article. The article goes online when the “chief author” gives the 
permission to activate the article. Furthermore we have the user 
group of Administrators. The persons of this user group are 
responsible for technical and general aspects of the system. Last 
but not least there is the visitor of the website. So we have the 
following user groups which build up the community: 
Administrator(s) 
Chief Author(s) 
Authors 
Visitors 
Depending on the status a user has and his membership in the 
different user groups a CMS has to offer different levels of 
access rights to the users. Most of the available CMS offers this 
feature. 
The next question to answer is: “Why should a community use a 
CMS?” and “What are the advantages of CMS?” 
1.2 Advantages of a CMS 
To show up the advantages a CMS can offer let us have a look 
on a basic content lifecycle: 
For more information on Cascading Style Sheets visit 
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/