For years, the creation and management of web content fell under the auspices of one or two individuals within an organization. They may have been marketing managers, IT managers, or the once-ubiquitous “webmasters”. The advent of web content management systems (WCMS) changed all of that years ago, but many companies and organizations still rely on a disproportionately small number of staff to keep their website content moving.
website building
Webiva Launches SaaS Hosting Platform for Open Source Rails-based Content Management System
BOSTON, Mass. – Webiva, an open source Ruby on Rails content management system (CMS) designed to compete with the likes of Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, today launched a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosting platform. Webiva.com allows web professionals to build websites on a load-balanced, backed-up and replicated cloud without the hassle of installing and maintaining a Ruby on Rails installation.
“Webiva has been absolutely critical to the growth of our business. We reviewed dozens of platforms to adopt, and have found nothing that compares in quality to Webiva,” said Jonathan Karush, CEO of Liberty Concepts, the nation’s largest provider of campaign websites to U.S. congressional candidates. “It has powered some of the nation's most recognizable advocacy campaigns over the past two years.”
Built from the ground up with a designer’s and a developer’s needs in mind, Webiva is a web 2.0 open-source website building system (WBS) that allows web professionals to build custom websites that look and operate the way they want them to. Based on a Ruby on Rails framework from a software perspective, Webiva does its best to build on the concepts and methodologies that Rails creates. It has an extensible module system that allows additional functionality to easily be dropped into the system. Webiva offers support for forums, e-commerce, social networking other mediums needed by web professionals building top-of-the-line websites.
“Until recently there were two CMS options: a blog engine that’s user-friendly but limited, or a full-stack CMS that’s powerful, but complex to manage,” said Webiva Partner and Developer Pascal Rettig. “Webiva offers the best of both, a Rails-based system with the accessibility of a blog engine and all the features of a big CMS on the back-end.”
With 18 years of combined web development experience, Pascal and Martha Rettig are the inventive developer-designer team behind Webiva’s creation. They have been using the system for more than four years. Every feature available on Webiva was added in response to a specific requirement that arose during its use. Key benefits to web professionals using Webiva include:
- Easy-to-Use - A user-friendly interface similar to a blog engine with all the features of a powerful open-source CMS
- Non-CMS Aesthetic Appeal - Webiva is transparent from a site’s front end, giving designers full control and easy access to site HTML and CSS with built in editors.
- Quick Click Site Creation - Build and deploy dozens of sites from a singe install- no need to FTP templates and assets.
- Well documented, Open-source Platform - Built-on and extensible with Ruby on Rails, web professionals can use core modules (including e-commerce, social networking, forums, etc.) or write their own.
EPiServer introduces their next generation Web CMS
CHICAGO, IL – March 23, 2010 – Businesses today are challenged with creating online experiences that engage web users at every turn. To meet the changing needs of today’s competitive online environment, EPiServer (http://episerver.com), the world’s fastest growing provider of platforms that drive online engagement, today introduced its next generation content management system (CMS). EPiServer CMS delivers a powerful suite of solutions via an open, intuitive platform, including a new OnlineCenter that makes it easy for businesses to develop, manage and measure all aspects of their online presence.
“To stand out on the web, we need tools that increase traffic and keep visitors coming back,” said Tom Kracht, CTO of The Bancorp, Inc., a bank holding company that operates The Bancorp Bank, an FDIC-insured online commercial bank that delivers a full array of financial services and products nationally, both directly and through private-label affinity programs. “EPiServer CMS lets us quickly develop a compelling online presence and easily manage that presence to ensure we are meeting the needs of our customers. The new EPiServer OnlineCenter provides a centralized dashboard that allows us to be efficient in utilizing all aspects of our website, so that we may support our current clients while growing our business."
EPiServer CMS is the only platform on the market today designed to support content, commerce and community. It goes beyond traditional content management systems to deliver a powerful set of solutions that include social media and community applications, as well as SEO, personalization and rich internet applications. OnlineCenter was designed into the platform to make it simple for web developers, editors and content owners to monitor, manage and measure numerous sites and online communications channels via a customizable dashboard. Instead of merely storing content and publishing online, EPiServer CMS delivers extended functionality that enables businesses to more effectively engage with target audiences at the right time to improve sales conversions.
I-Metrics CMS
The I-Metrics CMS is a complete web content management system that can be used for start-up businesses, blogs, personal sites. It includes advanced features to create, group and associate text pages and image lists, effective SEO modules, a plugin manager, a helpdesk and various tools to manage a webiste.
The base web engine of the I-Metrics CMS is osCommerce MS2.2 simplified and striped of e-commerce features. The package is extremely light, very easy to learn and expand, suitable to both novice and advanced web-developer.
Using Wordpress city saves $19,000
This is a really cool story on how local governments can improve their presence on the Internet and save money using open source software. The City of Albert Lea needed to improve their website but the small Minnesota city was facing project costs of $10,000 to $30,000. In walks Wordpress being utilized as a full content management system. As reported by the Albert Lea Tribune:
Some cities pay a consultant $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 for a
Web-based content-management site that looks professional and is
consistent through and through. Fairbault is one instance.Albert Lea, however, paid $720 to local resident Jeshua Erickson
last December, she said. Kauffmann was in charge of the site’s
revision, and last October she put together a committee of city
officials to advise her.She said the committee decided to shoot for a site using a content
management system — or CMS — but it was outside of her Internet skills.
The city began seeking estimates from Web design companies. When the
estimates returned, they realized the city couldn’t afford it.“We just didn’t feel we could justify spending $20,000-plus on a Web
site,” Kauffmann said. “I happened to run into Jeshua Erickson on the
Pelican Breeze one day, and we talked about Web sites and how he was
developing them using WordPress.”
I'll have to say that even though Wordpress is open source and "free", this city got a steal with getting a website for under $1000. While Albert Lea is a small city, developing government sites can become big projects with lots of complications. Either the city was kind to the developer and his hours or he felt some civil duty to give the city's taxpayers a good deal. An example of this developer doing such a good job, Albert Lea's website is currently running Wordpress 2.7 which is the latest available version of Wordpress. Very well done Mr. Erickson.
Mailbag: Sitemasher
I spent part of the weekend clearing my emails. Ron Moravek sent me an email about his company's all-inclusive Sitemasher.
Hello, we are a relatively new product that includes both a professional design tool and a full featured CMS. We would like to get evaluated when you get a moment....:)
www.sitemasher.com
Ron, to be honest, I have quite a few CMS related articles to write about and I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to review your Sitemasher. However, this is a good chance to give readers the opportunity to hear more about Sitemasher. From the overview page:
A complete website solution. One online platform.
Website builder + content management + analytics + search engine optimization + managed hosting!
Sitemasher provides a fully managed, hosted website solution that seamlessly integrates a website building and publishing environment, a content management system (CMS), analytics, and search engine optimization (SEO)…all within a single platform.
More details about the features of the Sitemasher platform.
Information Week: Joomla Rocks
"Working in a garage-based company that's looking to create its first killer Web site? Or maybe you're toiling in the bowels of a behemoth corporation, wondering why you're mired in an old-fashioned, "waterfall" software-development process when all you wanna do is board that Web 2.0 train, and quickly. Well, I've got the answer for you, and it's called Joomla."
Complete Story, Link found via Joomlatools
New Drupal 6 Book Published
Following the latest release of Drupal 6 in February 2008, Packt Publishing is pleased to announce an update to David Mercer’s best selling Drupal 4.7 book. Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6 is as much of an overhaul of the original book as Drupal 6 is over Drupal 4.7.
Drupal is a hugely popular and widely celebrated open-source Content Management System that is day-by-day becoming the first choice of people for building blogs and other websites. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Hillary Clinton, and many others utilize Drupal to fulfil their online requirements.
The updated book meets the booming demand for well presented, clear, concise, and above all practical information on how to move from establishing the need for a website all the way through to designing and building it like a pro, and finally successfully managing and maintaining it.
Drupal Tech Talk at Google
A couple days ago, a fantastic video giving an overview of Drupal was made available at Drupal.org. I was impressed enough with the video that I thought it was worth mentioning here. While the video gets technical, but I think anyone who has interest in content management applications (most of my site visitors) should be able to follow along just fine.
More site changes: Comments and Related Stories
Ever since changing over to the new theme, I've been having fun by tweaking the site here and there.
- I've moved the comment submission form from below the post/comments to a separate page. In order to submit a comment you'll need to either click on the "Add new comment" just below the story or the "Reply" links below the comments. If I see a drop in the number of comments I'll assume the change causes leaving comments to be less inviting and will return the form back to the main page.
- I'm using the Similar By Terms module to post links to stories similar to the one being posted on the page. This is a contributed Drupal module and still in development so I'm not sure how well it's going to work for my site. I have a habit of placing a lot of categories/tags on my posts which could confuse the module. The related stories will be placed a the bottom of the content page.
I'm also doing some work on cleaning up some of the terms I'm using. Drupal's taxonomy is very flexible to configure. While flexibility in software is a good thing, I need to put some self-imposed structure in how I'm using my vocabulary and terms. Most visitors to the site will see no change to how the taxonomy is currently being used here at CMSReport.com
Quoting IT: The Webmaster
"It can happen anywhere, at any time. You’re doing your job, minding your own business, and it suddenly dawns on you: you’re the company’s webmaster."
--Shane Schick, "Accidental webmasters rejoice – help is on the way", GlobeandMail.com, September 5, 2007
Under the shadow of the news feed
This post you are reading has been saved unpublished for a few days as I have feared it reads too much as a rant. In this post, I'd like to discuss the difference between good and bad competition when it comes to similar "news sites" such as my own CMS Report. I also want to touch on about how a CMS such as Drupal and Joomla brings both the good and the ugly online. Unfortunately as with all technology, the modern CMS not only has been a blessing to sites dishing news for their writers and their users...but also a curse.
A Joomla 1.5 book on my doorstep
A couple weeks ago, I found on my doorstep Hagen Graf's book, Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1. The book was sent to me by the book's publisher, Packt Publishing, in hopes that I would review the book on the Joomla! content management system here at CMSReport.com. While I do not promise to review every book or Internet link that comes my way, I always appreciate the opportunity to do such reviews. In this case, I was eager to review the book since I have lost track of the new features introduced in version 1.5 since Joomla! 1.0 first arrived in 2005.
There was a time when I thought technical reference books would be a thing of the past. Why would anyone purchase a book when all you needed to do was go to your favorite Internet search engine and after a few clicks of the mouse find your answer? Lately though, I've found that the Internet is still no match for that thing we all call a book.
The problem with the Internet isn't that there is not enough information on the Internet but that at times there is too much information. For example, if you type in joomla components at Google.com you'll find around 2.17 million results. Joomla 1.5 Beta attempts to deliver information for the same keywords in less than 70 pages (Chapter 5 - "Components and Extensions"). Overall, the author does a good job in giving the reader the information he or she needs for developing a website with Joomla within the book's 360 pages.
Lorelle on Wordpress: Are you Blogging your Passion or Blogging your Blog?
So you want to write a successful blog? Or perhaps just have a successful Website that people actually visit? Lorelle reminds us just how to make your blog of interest to others.
Translation. If you want to make sure your blog interests others, be sure that the first person interested in the blog is...yourself.I have many friends raised within countries which still play by these rules, where you are and do what your father or mother did, and maybe your grandparents before you, not what you want to do. Where apprenticeship programs are the only way into a trade. Where you are tested and found competent for a specific job, not because your heart leads the way.
While many get preoccupied with how to make money blogging, we forget that online journaling and blogging began as a way to share our lives with others. To teach. To share as we learn. But most of all, to share our passions through our words, images, and sounds.
Building a newspaper site with Drupal
Moshe Weitzman and Barry Jaspan wrote a very detailed overview of their experiences using Drupal for the web site used by the New York Observer.
The New York Observer, a prominent New York City newspaper, has relaunched its web site using Drupal. The site features a gorgeous theme which pays careful attention to typography and whitespace. The Drupal craftsmen, Moshe Weitzman and Barry Jaspan, want to share a few of their innovative techniques with the Drupal community.
The original article was posted in the Drupal Showcase forum and has been given front page status at Drupal.org. For those of you who build sites using Drupal but haven't visited Drupal.org recently...this is a must read article.
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