CAA: A Content Adapter Architecture for Content Management Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a Content Adapter Architecture (CAA) for Content Management Systems (CMSs). A CMS is a software application that maintains and keeps track of every piece of content of a website. In the past, CMS has been mainly used in developing websites and portals for desktop PCs. For mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, the web content developed for PCs needs to be adapted in order to provide the best possible user experience due to different characteristics and constraints such as screen dimensions. This adaptation task can be time consuming and resource intensive. Most solutions resolve it by creating different resources or CMS plugins for different devices. This paper proposes a novel approach to adapt CMS content in a non-intrusive way, through the use of templates which specify how the content should be adapted. The CAA consists of a backend server and a front end client. The server is responsible for the adaptation and provides version control of content, amongst other features. The client, built as a web application, is a thin layer which provides interaction with the device features, and acts as a cache system to reduce data transfer.