Granted Patent B2

US 8,805,878 · App. 10/681,710 · Granted Aug 12, 2014

Abstract

Claims (56)

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium carrying computer-executable program instructions implementing a content management application, wherein the instructions are configured to cause a data processor to perform:

creating hierarchical site structures that provide a level of abstraction from a content repository storing content items shared by a number of sites, each site of the number of sites associated with a hierarchical site structure and having a domain name and hardware serving the site, wherein the creating comprises, for each hierarchical site structure:

defining one or more content objects;

linking each of the one or more content objects to a corresponding actual content item contained in the content repository to thereby represent or target the actual content item;

defining one or more channel objects for organizing the one or more content objects by channel; and

defining a site object for organizing the one or more channel objects under a site;

wherein each channel object of the one or more channel objects represents a channel and contains a plurality of references;

wherein the plurality of references includes references to content items that are in the channel and a reference to the site to which the channel belongs;

wherein the channel is a subdivision of the site;

wherein each of the site, channel, and content objects has an associated set of content services;

wherein each of the site, channel, and content objects is instantiated from a class that inherits the content services from a parent class; and

wherein the plurality of references defines a relative position of the channel object in the hierarchical site structure, allowing the content items that are in the channel to be deployed by deploying the channel object from an enterprise environment to a site environment over a network.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the data processor to perform:

incrementally deploying one or more of the site, channel, and content objects, wherein deployed objects contain associations to other objects with which they are associated in the hierarchical site structure.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein one or more of the content services are selected from the group consisting of: versioning; restoring; deploying; workflow; approval; authorization; archiving; reporting; categorizing; and business process modeling.

4. A system for managing site content comprising:

a content repository containing actual content items shared by a number of sites, each site of the number of sites having a domain name and hardware serving the site;

a processor; and

a content management application embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium and comprising instructions executable by the processor for:

creating hierarchical site structures that provide a level of abstraction from the content repository, wherein the creating comprises, for each hierarchical site structure:

defining one or more content objects;

linking each of the one or more content objects to a corresponding actual content item contained in the content repository to thereby represent or target the actual content item;

defining one or more channel objects for organizing the one or more content objects by channel; and

defining a site object for organizing the one or more channel objects under a site;

wherein each channel object of the one or more channel objects represents a channel and contains a plurality of references;

wherein the plurality of references includes references to content items that are in the channel and a reference to the site to which the channel belongs;

wherein the channel is a subdivision of the site;

wherein each of the site, channel, and content objects has an associated set of content services;

wherein each of the site, channel, and content objects is instantiated from a class that inherits the content services from a parent class; and

wherein the plurality of references defines a relative position of the channel object in the hierarchical site structure, allowing the content items that are in the channel to be deployed by deploying the channel object from an enterprise environment to a site environment over a network.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein site objects, channel objects and content objects in the hierarchical site structures are individually deployable from the enterprise environment to the site environment over the network using the content management application.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein deployed objects contain associations to other objects with which they are associated in a particular hierarchical site structure.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the associations are defined by ownership of references to the other objects in the particular hierarchical site structure.

8. The system of claim 4 , wherein the content services comprise one or more of the group consisting of: versioning; restoring; deploying; workflow; approval; authorization; archiving; reporting; categorizing; and business process modeling.

9. A method comprising:

providing a content repository containing a plurality of actual content items shared by a number of sites, each site of the number of sites having a domain name and hardware serving the site; and

forming, by a content management application embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium and running on a computer having a processor, hierarchical site structures that provide a level of abstraction from the content repository, the forming comprising, for each hierarchical site structure:

defining one or more content objects,

linking each of the one or more content objects to a corresponding content item contained in the content repository to thereby represent or target the content item;

defining one or more channel objects for organizing the one or more content objects by channel; and

defining a site object for organizing the one or more channel objects under a site;

wherein each channel object of the one or more channel objects represents a channel and contains a plurality of references;

wherein the plurality of references includes references to content items that are in the channel and a reference to the site to which the channel belongs;

wherein the channel is a subdivision of the site;

wherein each of the site, channel, and content objects has an associated set of content services;

wherein each of the site, channel, and content objects is instantiated from a class that inherits the content services from a parent class; and

wherein the plurality of references defines a relative position of the channel object in the hierarchical site structure, allowing the content items that are in the channel to be deployed by deploying the channel object from an enterprise environment to a site environment over a network.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising incrementally deploying one or more of the site, channel and content objects, wherein deployed objects contain associations to other objects with which they are associated in a particular hierarchical site structure.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the associations between the site object and the one or more channel objects are defined by references and the references are owned by the one or more channel objects.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein one or more of the content services is selected from the group consisting of: versioning; restoring; deploying; workflow; approval; authorization; archiving; reporting; categorizing; and business process modeling.

13. The method of claim 10 , wherein the associations between the one or more channel objects and the one or more content objects are defined by references and the references are owned by the one or more channel objects.

14. The method of claim 10 , wherein the associations between the one or more channel objects and the one or more content objects are defined by references and the references are owned by the one or more content objects.

15. The method of claim 10 , wherein the associations between the site object and the one or more channel objects are defined by references and the references are owned by the site object.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the versioning is configured for maintaining prior versions of modified objects such that if a modified object does not function as expected, a prior version of the object can be restored.

17. The system of claim 8 , wherein the versioning is configured for maintaining prior versions of modified objects such that if a modified object does not function as expected, a prior version of the object can be restored.

18. The method of claim 12 , wherein the versioning is configured for maintaining prior versions of modified objects such that if a modified object does not function as expected, a prior version of the object can be restored.

Assignments (12)