CMS 2021

[rviscomi]

Part III Chapter 16: CMS

If you're interested in contributing to the CMS chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac, please reply to this issue and indicate which role or roles best fit your interest and availability: author, reviewer, analyst, and/or editor.

Content team

Lead	Authors	Reviewers	Analysts	Editors	Coordinator
@alonkochba	@alonkochba @logicalphase	@saterchris @jdevalk	@TosinArasi	-	@logicalphase

Expand for more information about each role

• The content team lead is the chapter owner and responsible for setting the scope of the chapter and managing contributors' day-to-day progress.
• Authors are subject matter experts and lead the content direction for each chapter. Chapters typically have one or two authors. Authors are responsible for planning the outline of the chapter, analyzing stats and trends, and writing the annual report.
• Reviewers are also subject matter experts and assist authors with technical reviews during the planning, analyzing, and writing phases.
• Analysts are responsible for researching the stats and trends used throughout the Almanac. Analysts work closely with authors and reviewers during the planning phase to give direction on the types of stats that are possible from the dataset, and during the analyzing/writing phases to ensure that the stats are used correctly.
• Editors are technical writers who have a penchant for both technical and non-technical content correctness. Editors have a mastery of the English language and work closely with authors to help wordsmith content and ensure that everything fits together as a cohesive unit.
• The section coordinator is the overall owner for all chapters within a section like "User Experience" or "Page Content" and helps to keep each chapter on schedule.

Note: The time commitment for each role varies by the chapter's scope and complexity as well as the number of contributors.

For an overview of how the roles work together at each phase of the project, see the Chapter Lifecycle doc.

Milestone checklist

0. Form the content team

• May 31: The content team has at least one author, reviewer, and analyst

1. Plan content

• June 15 The content team has completed the chapter outline in the draft doc

2. Gather data

• June 30: Analysts have added all necessary custom metrics and drafted a PR (example) to track query progress

• July 1 - 31: HTTP Archive runs the July crawl

3. Validate results

• September 30: Analysts have queried all metrics and saved the output to the results sheet

4. Draft content

• October 31: The content team has written, reviewed, and edited the chapter in the doc

5. Publication

• November 15: The completed chapter and all required metadata and figures are converted to markdown and submitted to GitHub

• December 1: Target launch date 🚀

Chapter resources

Refer to these 2021 CMS resources throughout the content creation process:

📄 Google Docs for outlining and drafting content
🔍 SQL files for committing the queries used during analysis
📊 Google Sheets for saving the results of queries
📝 Markdown file for publishing content and managing public metadata

[jdevalk]

I’d be happy to be an author of (a part of) this chapter!

[rviscomi]

Thanks @jdevalk! Tentatively adding you as a reviewer while we gather interest from other authors.

[rviscomi]

📟 paging 2019/2020 contributors: @amedina @ernee @westonruter @mor10 @sirjonathan @alexdenning @GregBrimble

Would any of you be interested to contribute to the 2021 chapter? I'd especially like to see more 2019/2020 authors become 2021 reviewers to help ease the transition and similarly I think prior reviewers would make great 2021 authors, being familiar with the process already. And prior analysts would make excellent 2021 analysts 😁

Or is there anyone new you'd like to see?

[mor10]

I'm already pledged to the Jamstack chapter. I urge you to pursue diversity in your quest here so a broader spectrum of voices can be heard. This chapter is uniquely suited for contribution by a broad range of people from all over the world and with different sets of expertise. It would be valuable for example to see parts of the chapter contrasting CMS use and expectations in different regions of the world, multilingual and non-LTR language challenges and adoption, etc.

[saterchris]

Also happy to help out here, probably best suited as a reviewer but may also be able to assist with some authoring.

[rviscomi]

@jdevalk thanks for your interest in authoring this chapter! As the content team lead, you'll be responsible for the scope and direction of the chapter and keeping it on schedule. We automatically monitor the staffing and progress of each chapter based on the state of the initial comment so please keep that updated as you add new contributors and meet each milestone.

We've created a Google Doc for this chapter, which you're encouraged to use to collaborate with the content team on the initial outline, metrics, and ultimately the final draft.

Next steps for this chapter are:

• Due May 31: Complete Milestone 0: Form the content team by finding contributors to help with the analysis and any other reviewers/coauthors as necessary
• Due June 15: Get started on Milestone 1: Plan content by brainstorming some content ideas in the doc (you may need to request edit access)

There's not currently a section coordinator for this chapter, so I'll be periodically checking in with you directly to make sure the chapter is staying on schedule. Reach out here in this issue if you have any questions about the process.

More information about the content team lead and author roles and responsibilities are available for reference in the wiki if needed.

To anyone else interested in contributing to this chapter, please comment below to join the team!

[logicalphase]

Hello to the CMS team. I see familiar folk here and look forward to assisting the team however I can with focus on hitting those milestones. Please let me know if I can help along the way, and thank you for helping to make the next release the best ever!

[hidde]

I would be interested in helping authoring. I am involved in a project around the accessibility of CMSes, this may be an interesting angle to cover. Legislation worldwide says website owners should have accessible sites, CMSes with accessibility features can help them get it right.

[rviscomi]

Welcome @hidde! I'll defer to @jdevalk as the content team lead for this chapter to onboard you as coauthor/reviewer as needed. Meanwhile you can get started by requesting edit access to the draft doc and adding your ideas.

[logicalphase]

Checking in this evening. Thank you @hidde 👍

[hidde]

Thanks for the warm welcome, just requested access to the doc.

[rviscomi]

@jdevalk as we continue looking for an analyst to join the chapter, would you have any interest in taking on the analyst role? I know you've been familiarizing yourself with the dataset so it could work out if you have the extra time. I was last year's analyst for this chapter so I can help get you up to speed and answer any questions if needed.

[alonkochba]

Hi, I would be happy to assist and participate in the CMS chapter as a reviewer.
I lead many of the performance efforts at Wix and the performance of CMSs across the web is very interesting for us.

[rviscomi]

⚠️ @jdevalk just checking in. This chapter seems to be pretty far behind in terms of the milestones. How can we help?

The outline hasn't been started, and that puts this chapter at risk of not being able to get new metrics implemented before the July crawl starts, which is what all chapters will refer to in their analysis. You'll still have access to everything analyzed in 2019-2020, but not necessarily new metrics. Have you been working on an outline in another doc by any chance?

I'd encourage you to coordinate with the rest of your content team to immediately start brainstorming content/metrics for the outline. As of now @saterchris is the only reviewer listed in your chapter metadata but I see a few other people have also volunteered (@hidde and @alonkochba). Remember to please keep the metadata updated by adding new contributors and checking off milestones as you complete them. (it helps us track all chapters' progress at a glance)

This chapter is also missing an analyst, which is holding it back from completing Milestone 0. I'm happy to step up to help as needed here, but I'll defer to other contributors if they're available.

And if your situation has changed where you're no longer able to commit to leading the chapter, no worries, just let us know ASAP so we can make alternate plans.

Thanks for your help getting this chapter back on track!

[jdevalk]

Yeah sorry about this people. I do think I can run most of the analyses needed, but would love some help from @hidde on the outline and maybe everyone else here who has ideas on what to cover. I saw @mor10 had input / ideas on topics and would love to discuss those either here or in the Google doc.

I'll get started on an outline myself right now using the input above.

[rviscomi]

Thanks @jdevalk. Glad to hear you're able to take on the analysis work. Let me know (or ping #web-almanac-analysts) if you have any questions or need any help. I've put your name down as the team analyst in the chapter metadata and checked off Milestone 0 for you.

I've left a couple of comments in the outline. Thanks for kicking that off!

[logicalphase]

Hey @jdevalk - Can you confirm that you're good to go on gathering metrics for analysis? If so, I'd we'd like to mark item #2 as complete. Thank you again for your assistance.

[rviscomi]

⚠️ @jdevalk @saterchris @alonkochba @logicalphase @TosinArasi

Hi everyone, given that we haven't heard from @jdevalk in a while, we're going to have to move forward without him. I sincerely wish @jdevalk the best.

After speaking with @alonkochba and @logicalphase here and via Slack, I think the best course of action is to assign @alonkochba the role of content team lead. He and @logicalphase will be coauthors.

@saterchris will continue to review and we can move @jdevalk into a reviewer role if/when he returns.

@TosinArasi has kindly stepped up to help analyze the data.

I'll update the chapter metadata accordingly.

👉 @alonkochba as the new team lead, can you take command of the day-to-day logistics to get this chapter's analysis completed ASAP and get started on writing? The draft of the chapter is due in 4 weeks so things will have to move quickly.

Appreciate everyone's flexibility to make sure we can launch a CMS chapter this year!

[logicalphase]

Thanks @rviscomi! @alonkochba please let me know when we can get together on a slack chat, etc. I'm here to help take with the remaining authoring tasks. Cheers!

[alonkochba]

Thanks, will start looking at the content this week.
I think I will start with last year's article as a template, with updated data, and if we will have time we can add more interesting breakdowns. A lot of this data is already available in the Tech Report, so just need to write about it.

I also want to use some of the newer metrics you included @rviscomi (JS size, image size etc.)

@logicalphase let's try to chat this week, I'll open #web-almanac-cms now - I'm in Israel but we'll try to sync across timezones :)

[logicalphase]

Done. Left message there. 👍

[rviscomi]

Reopening until we complete the editing

[rviscomi]

@alonkochba @logicalphase @saterchris @jdevalk @TosinArasi

🎉 This chapter is fully written, reviewed, edited, and ready to be launched on Wednesday! Thank you to all of the contributors who put in the time and effort to make this a great chapter.

When you get 5 minutes, I'd really appreciate if you could fill out our contributor survey to tell us (the project leads) about your experience. It's super helpful to hear what went well or what could be improved for next time. 🙏

Congratulations and thank you all again. I'm excited for this to launch soon!