This was the real test of how well we had done on the information architecture. Once GCCA started to enter content, we found that we had got most of it right but there were some content types that we hadn’t accommodated, eg, articles that spanned more than one page or contact details. Also, we thought that the article content type would be flexible enough to handle event information but when we saw how it looked on the site, we found that it didn't quite work and that we needed to provide another content type just for events. There were other things like page anchors that we take for granted in static sites but aren't as easy to accommodate in a CMS.

GCCA had prepared for the content population phase by taking all the content on their current site and saving it in Microsoft Word files in folders to reflect the new structure. But in this process they discovered that it wasn't as easy as cutting and pasting from one site into the other. They found replication in their existing site and had to edit some of their content to make sure it fitted.
To get GCCA started we conducted a training session on how eZ publish worked. The administration screens were very user friendly and we found that it took only an hour or two for people to be comfortable enough to find their way around and enter content. The difficulty was not so much entering content but understanding how that content would end up in the website, ie. understanding the separation of content from presentation.

During the content population phase we had a few issues to resolve but all in all, it went quite smoothly. The biggest issue was the amount of HTML formatting that had to be done to the content and the other ‘buggy’ problems with the version of eZ publish being used (release candidate 2). This version lacked the online wysiwyg editor and had other minor bugs like adding extra white space making previewing difficult without publishing the article, reviewing and re-editing to get it right.

All of these problems were solved when the code based was upgraded to the final version of eZ 3 a few months later.