Providing Original Content and News Feeds

Given that this site, CMS Report, is less than six months old...I am truly amazed with the number of visitors the site receives in a day. While the number of visitors may be small compared to other well known sites, this is the first time I've had a site of my own that has drawn some attention. What a cool experience this has been!

I was flattered to see Drupal blogger, Greg Knaddison, mention CMS Report in one of his posts. Mr. Knaddison could have chosen for discussion so many other Drupal sites but for whatever reason he likes what he sees here. However, as postive as his message was for CMS Report, he also indicated through his post that the current mix of original content and aggregated news isn't for him.

With a tip of the hat to CMSReport. CMS report aggregates lots of content about all CMS, but they also have some original content. I'd prefer more of the latter and less of the former, but that's just me.

While CMS Report still needs to evolve and mature, its purpose was defined from the beginning. The primary mission of the site is to inform readers of the latest happenings in the world of content management systems. Now how that job gets done is another matter and readers have preferences.

Currently, I see providing this information through three sources:

  1. Aggregated news feeds (RSS/Syndicated news)
  2. Original content written by me
  3. Original content written by others

For myself I've always liked the mix of original content and links to other sources of news. This format seems to work well for sites such as Linux Today (I'm a big fan of this site) and even CNet.com where they provide a "More news from around the Web" section on thier news pages.

CMS Report alone can't provide all the stories needed to keep readers informed about content management systems. When CMS Report can't provide it's own story, the news aggregator allows me to send readers to other sites that contain the stories I think they would like reading. I promise visitors of this site that the postings of syndicated articles on the front page are posted because I think they are of interest to CMS users. The syndicated articles are not posted to generate ad revenue or content for the search engines.

Finally, I do hear you about the need for original content. I sometimes get tired reading my own posts and would be glad to see other writers join in and submit their articles for posting here at CMS Report. Eventually, I would like to formalize the process of allowing registered users to submit their articles directly as content for this site. However, I won't be ready for such a venture until later this year. Until then, if you have a story you would like to see posted here, please feel free to use the Submit Story link on the left menu. Submitting an idea for a story is just as good. This is exactly what mojoPortal's developers did and the article still remains in the top five read articles here at CMS Report.