Articles - Page 154

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Here's Why CMS Is Your 'Unsung Hero' in 2025

janus-boye

We have completed sorting through the incredible number of nominations that came in for the People's Choice for Best Website Builder and we are proud to announce the following nominees for this year's award.
This is a new category just added in 2013 and the response has been massive!
We are looking forward to seeing who comes out on top from the People's Choice perspective and don't forget, we've also got a Critics Choice portion which will be selected by a panel of judges, so if your favorites weren't shortlisted this time, they may be for the next portion of the awards.
Without further delay, here are the nominees for Best Website Builder (People's Choice).
<h3>Adobe Business Catalyst</h3>
Business Catalyst (BC) is an all-in-one business website and online marketing solution, built for web designers. Using our unified platform and without back-end coding, you can build everything from amazing websites to powerful online stores, beautiful brochure-ware sites to lead generation mini-sites.
<a href="/products/adobe-business-catalyst/">Learn more.</a>
<h3>Jimdo</h3>
Jimdo is the easiest way to create a website. With a simple, intuitive interface, Jimdo enables anyone to create a unique website with a blog and online store. Our motto—Pages to the People!—sums up our mission: Put the power of website creation into everyone's hands. Whether you want to start a business, promote your music, or simply share photos with your friends and family, you can create your home on the web with Jimdo.
<a href="/products/jimdo/">Learn more.</a>
<h3>Squarespace</h3>
Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders on the market. With an extremely easy to use interface that's sleek and “gets out of your way”, they are definitely a top contender. For those on the fence, they offer a free trial with no credit card required. Most people who get the free trial end up buying so they must be doing something right!
<a href="/products/squarespace/">Learn more.</a>
<h3>Ucoz</h3>
UCoz is a website builder that offers integrated ecommerce, blogging &amp; more. It is one of the top sites for Russian Speaking users and currently, there are over a million websites hosted on the uCoz platform.
<a href="/products/ucoz/">Learn more.</a>
<h3>Webydo</h3>
Webydo is a professional web suite that enables graphic designers to create and manage exceptional HTML websites, without writing code. With this sophisticated online software, designers can bring any design to life and with a click of a button, publish an advanced HTML website with a friendly built-in CMS for the website owner.
<a href="/products/webydo/">Learn more.</a>
And there you have it, folks! Our nominees for Best Website Builder in the People's Choice portion of our CMS awards. Check back on the 1st of September to begin voting. Best of luck to all of the nominees.

Announcing the People's Choice for Best Website Builder Nominees!

mike-johnston

This is the first year we've had this category and we had tons of participation from the various ECommerce vendors on the market and those who use them. Thank you for making this nomination period such a great success. Some of the nominations were a close call but we've broken it down to the final nominees for the People's Choice award for Best ECommerce Solution for 2013.Here they are:<h3>3dCart</h3>3dcart is a powerful online store builder and e-commerce solution that offers a staggering list of features for those looking to transact business online. If you are in the market for an exceptional platform for your store, this is a great product to consider. They offer a 15-day free trial that allows you to play around with their excellent software to see if it suits your needs. With 24/7 free premium technical support, quick setup, and no transaction fees, 3dCart is definitely a solid option to consider.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.shift4shop.com/">Learn more.</a><h3>AspxCommerce</h3>AspxCommerce offers a complete e-commerce solution that allows you to build and run your fully functional online store in minutes. You can create your storefront; manage the products through categories and subcategories, accept payments through credit cards and ship the ordered products to the customers. We have everything set up for you so that you can only focus on building your own online store.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.aspxcommerce.com/">Learn more.</a><h3>BigCommerce</h3><a target="_blank" href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/">Bigcommerce</a> is an excellent online store builder that offers a plethora of features ranging from your own custom domain name to a ton of great integrations with products such as MailChimp, analytics and more. As with most, they offer a free trial as well so you can see how the product works.<a href="/products/bigcommerce">Learn more.</a><h3>Magento</h3>Magento is an open-source e-commerce web application that was launched on March 31, 2008. Magento uses several key coding practices that make the system both versatile and adaptable both as a web platform and as an e-commerce platform.<a href="/products/adobe-commerce">Learn more.</a><h3>Shopify</h3>Shopify is an excellent choice for those in search of the best online store out there. They offer a 14 day free trial on all of their plans and they offer a number of reasonable pricing plans for any size of online store.<a href="/products/shopify/">Learn more.</a>Congratulations to all who were nominated. Remember, voting starts September 1, 2013, so be prepared to vote for your favorites!

Announcing the People's Choice for Best ECommerce Solution Nominees!

A new release of Umbraco CMS has been made available. Version 6.1.4 is primarily a bug fix but also includes some performance enhancements.
For those who are interested, the full release log can be found here: <a href="http://our.umbraco.org/contribute/releases/614">http://our.umbraco.org/contribute/releases/614.</a>
From the announcement:
<blockquote>There is one config change between 6.1.3 and 6.1.4 (assembly redirect for HtmlAgilityPack in the web.config). If you're upgrading from a different version make sure to do a merge (use WinMerge for example) of all of the config files, especially the web.config.
A little bonus for the NuGet lovers out there: If you are using the Publish-feature in Visual Studio you should be happy to know that we now have a build script included that makes sure to copy the umbraco and umbraco_client folders (which are not included in the Visual Studio solution) to the deploy package or file system.</blockquote>
Want to learn more about Umbraco? <a href="/products/umbraco/">Visit their profile page</a> in our CMS directory.

Umbraco 6.1.4 Released

We are proud to announce our latest addition to the site! Our new CMS Directory which is now available for use. When we decided to start putting this together, we wanted to ensure it offered value to our readers so we incorporated some very cool functionality and data that should be able to help you in your CMS selection process.
Here's how the directory looks when you first visit it (and we encourage you to do so):
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cms_directory1010x0.jpg" alt="cms directory" />
As you can see, we have a list of featured vendors in a slideshow, followed by a number of ways you can sort the directory to help find the products you need. For instance, you can sort by directory (or click on one in the right-hand column) and in the instances where you don't know what an acronym means, we've also listed the definition underneath it. You can filter the list by items such as Free, Hosted, On-Premise and Commercial. You can filter based on programming language and you can sort by a number of items such as specific ratings, number of likes, date added and more!
We're really worked hard to give you as many options as possible as you can tell.
The ratings you'll find on each CMS are assigned by CMS Critic based on our impressions of the product and may change as new versions are released. These are here to give you an idea as to which areas the software is strongest. We've also got a new “Like” system which doubles as a means to create a shortlist. For example, if you browse the directory and click like on a few products, you'll see a link appear on the right sidebar that looks like this:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cms-likes.jpg" alt="cms directory - likes" />
Clicking on the CMS Products you liked link will take you to a page that allows you to view your likes and also email yourself a list of them.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2013-08-23_at_7_32_14_am.png" alt="cms directory - likes" />
This is super handy for creating a shortlist of products as you browse the directory and then emailing them to yourself for further research. Pretty cool isn't it?
Here's what a directory page looks like (keep in mind that some will not contain all of this data as not all companies offer screenshots or videos but we did our best to catch as much as we could and are continually improving the listings):
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2013-08-23_at_7_34_30_am.png" alt="cms directory - listing" />
As you can see, it's chock full of information. We've included social links, RSS feeds automatically pulled from the company and displayed in the right column, screenshots of the product (where we were able to find them anyway), videos of the product from Youtube or Vimeo, full ratings in a number of areas, likes, links to product demos on the companies website and much more!
You can also comment on each page and leave your thoughts and see all related posts (and reviews!) we've written about the products!
We hope you love it as much as we do and if there's anything you think we can add that would help make it better, please let us know. If we've missed something that should be listed, use the Add a new CMS link, fill out the form and we'll have it up as soon as possible.
Thanks everyone and enjoy the brand new <a href="/products/">CMS directory</a>!

Announcing our latest addition to the site, our CMS Directory!

We had a huge number of participants and tons of vendors nominated in the Best Open Source CMS category (in fact, it's the most popular category in the entire <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">awards </a> ) and we're pleased to be able to announce this year's nominees for the People's Choice Award.
Keeping in mind that the voting stage begins on September 1, 2013..
Here are the People's Choice nominees for Best Open Source CMS for 2013:
<h3>MODX</h3>
MODX is a free, open-source content management system and web application framework for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets. MODX allows for full segregation of content (plain HTML), appearance and behavior (standards compliant CSS and JavaScript), and logic (PHP snippets).
<a href="/products/modx/"> Visit their profile. </a>
<h3>DNN Platform</h3>
DNN Platform, formerly known as DotNetNuke Community Edition, is a business solution that helps bring your website to life with captivating content and engaging interactions. Users can add and edit content through a standard browser with no IT support.
<a href="/products/dnn-platform/"> Visit their profile. </a>
<h3>Liferay</h3>
Liferay Portal is an open-source enterprise portal written in Java and distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and proprietary licenses. It is primarily used to power corporate intranets and extranets.
<a href="/products/liferay/"> Visit their profile. </a>
<h3>Processwire</h3>
Build bigger, faster, stronger, easier. ProcessWire is a free PHP5 open source CMS built to save you time and make development fun at any scale. It works the way you do.
<a href="/products/processwire/"> Visit their profile. </a>
<h3>E107</h3>
e107 is a Content Publishing Solution for Website Pages, Documents, Menus, and Links powered by PHP and MySQL which gives you a totally dynamic and professional website “out of the box”.
<a href="/products/e107/">Visit their profile. </a>
Good luck to all who are nominated and be sure to check back on the 1st of September to begin voting for your favourites!

Announcing the People's Choice for Best Open Source CMS Nominees!

Choosing a content management system for a mobile platform is vital for companies that are looking to get the most out of their marketing efforts. This is due to the proliferation of mobile phones and devices, and the fact that most of us use Android, Apple iOS or Windows platform powered devices to access the internet. There are various factors you need to look into when choosing your ideal mobile CMS, and we’ll be exploring a few of these in this article.It Starts With AnalyticsTo begin with, you need to know what the figures are in regards to your target audience that are accessing your site via mobile phones or other hand-held devices. A great place to start would be Google Analytics, a free tool that displays all the pertinent data to give you an idea of whether going mobile would make financial sense in the long run. Metrics found onGoogle Analytics helps you answer questions such as:–    What are mobile visitors searching for (keywords)? –    Is the structure and information flow in your site mobile-friendly (site search, page depth, conversions and site speed)? –    Are they having trouble finding information (landing page bounce rates and average time on page)?…and so on. Armed with this information, you can start creating a CMS that’s able to get you better conversions as well as boost your visibility online.A mobile CMS should be basic, intuitive and minimalist. However, there’s the problem of having different needs for different mobile platforms that makes it necessary to have a mobile CMS that can have the same effectiveness across all platforms. For example, things like presentation style, interaction style and software stacks are all important things to pay attention to when creating your ideal mobile CMS.Device Agnostic vs Device Specific CMS DevelopmentThere are two approaches to mobile CMS creation: device agnostic and device specific development. Device agnostic basically means that the CMS is not tied to a particular device, or it is machine-independent. This means that it won’t need manual modification in order to make it work across devices and platforms. Device specific mobile CMS development provides unique mobile experiences depending on the device your target customer is using to access your site or app.Device Plans and MatrixesWhen you’re developing a mobile CMS, you need to have a device plan right from the very start if you’re going to ensure that people accessing your content or platform have the best possible experience. For example, the device matrix for mobile browsers stretches from A to F, meaning that you will need to do due diligence from the data you’ve collected so you can know what class of browser your audience is using to access your mobile site.User InteractionUser interaction should also be another thing that needs to feature in your plans while creating your ideal mobile CMS. Your CMS should thus have this functionality or allow for a plugin to be used to provide it. At the very least, your CMS should give you the ability to post forms and record responses even on a mobile platform. If you’re shopping around for a good mobile CMS provider, Magnolia is a great option given its popularity, ease of maintenance, flexibility, and scalability.Do you have any questions or comments regarding mobile CMS development? Please take some time to leave your thoughts in the comment box below.

A No-Frills Guide to Choosing Your Mobile CMS

Since the birth of the Internet, website builders have always endeavoured to create online communities. Naturally, the emergence of Facebook marked the beginning of a new era in social networking, helping to bring people together in new, more innovative ways.
Ning, is a powerful, well balanced CMS which can offer you the perfect platform to create your very own social network.  With over 2 million online communities already supported, you can be sure that your online social project is in good hands.  
 Using Ning, you can design, structure and control your online community in a variety of ways. Customizable templates and branding options allow you to make your social network unique, whilst extensive admin control features allow you to dictate the way in which users can view and interact with content. Ning also takes care of your hosting needs, helping you to launch a social network as part of an existing website, or even as a brand new venture, in a matter of minutes.
<h2>The Right Image</h2>
As with most websites, aesthetically pleasing design is vital. Moreover, when it comes to building a social network, you'll have to ensure that the overall feel, quality and professionalism of the platform, as well as the various interfaces, all work well together. After all, a social network should be easy to use for all its members, in order to increase their activity within the community.
Ning allows you to brand and personalise your network in any way you wish. Your fan base or community will no longer need to go through third-party platforms in order to view or discuss your content. Essentially, your social network will look and feel the part – and that's always a good thing.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-1700x0.png" alt="Ning" />
When it comes to actual design, Ning enables you to choose from a range of expertly pre-designed themes, whilst giving you the option to customize them to your hearts content. All of Ning's themes make use of HTML5 and are also responsive, ensuring that visitors can enjoy your community on any device.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-3700x0.png" alt="Ning" />
Although design and usability are important, they are of little use if there is a severe lack of features and activities for users to get involved with. Thankfully, Ning offers a wide range of community based mediums to enable your visitors to enjoy the overall interface of the website in a socially constructive way. These features include forums, user profiles, photos, liking, sharing and more.
These different social functions will not only enhance the beauty of your Ning website, but will also invoke a strong sense of community amongst regular users. 
<h2>Controllable Communities</h2>
One of Ning's strongest features, is the amount of control given to you as an administrator. Building your community is one battle, but being able to control and selectively give access to different member groups is something else entirely.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-2700x0.png" alt="Ning" />
Using you admin powers, you can make your community completely public, completely private, or create sections for public and private mingling. You can make individual members moderators, and even charge membership fees in order for users to gain access to unique features.
Additionally, Ning allows you to integrate your social network with Facebook, Google+, YouTube and Twitter, enabling users to sign in using their existing accounts, with full access to their time line or feed. These social media integration options are also helpful when it comes to geting the word out about your own community. 
<h2>A Handy Head Start</h2>
With giants like Facebook and Twitter roaming the social networking world, it's safe to say that building your own online community from scratch will get a little challenging at times. However, whether you're looking to create a community, or simply looking to build a new home for an existing one, Ning offers you the best head start you could ask for.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/6700x0.png" alt="Ning" /> Once you sign up, you'll have access to discussion boards powered by Ning's 2 million strong user base, all of whom are looking to share ideas, tips, tricks and answer any general queries. What's more is, Ning offers further support options by giving you the chance to ask questions to their in-house experts, who are always on hand to help.
To polish off their well-rounded support system, Ning's securely hosted platform ensures that your website stays up and running over 99.9% of the time, without you ever needing to worry about extra hosting costs.
Sound Good? Check out <a href="https://www.ning.com">Ning's 14-day free trial</a>.

Want to Build a Social Network? Try Ning

Hannon Hill releases its latest version of its flagship product, Cascade Server 7.6. <a href="/products/cascade-cms/">Cascade Server</a> is an enterprise CMS used by thousands of organizations in the education, government and non-profit, technology, and healthcare industries. The latest rollout from Hannon Hill provides Cascade Server users with new levels of speed and ease for content management and content strategy.
<h2>What's New in Cascade Server 7.6?</h2>
The two major improvements include an end-user advancement — drag-and-drop addition — as well as an enhancement for developers.
<ul>
<li>Drag-and-drop functionality for uploading files into the CMS. Adding files to the CMS is a breeze, providing an easy drop-zone for embedding or inserting files. Dropping a text file, however, does something that few CMSs do. It automatically parses the text into the HTML text editor, eliminating those all-too-familiar headaches when you copy/paste text. When you insert an image, the CMS will automatically place the image inline into the editor, then allow you to adjust it according to your preferences using the image editing tools.</li>
<li>Include one velocity templating format into another. With the update, now when a developer writes a Velocity Format, they can easily reuse it in other Velocity Formats elsewhere as needed. Velocity scripts can be reused like blocks and added to any area of a web page. Child formats can be recalled from parent formats anywhere on a site with a single macro string. This dramatically reduces the amount of time required to code portions of a site, especially when it may be necessary to do so over and over again. Plus, this improvement prevents coders from needing to copy/paste code, which will likely cut back on the number of errors and bugs introduced into the code.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Improvements to Cascade Server</h2>
In addition to these new benefits, the CMS received a sweeping overhaul of the many other tools its customers know and love.
<ul>
<li>Velocity Locator Tools — Easily access metadata and data definition tools with no index block.</li>
<li>Site Import/Export Speed Improvements — Process improvements and quicker upload times.</li>
<li>Google Analytics Connector Overhaul — The new OAuth compliant connector requires that an access token from Google be used in order to verify a site.</li>
<li>SQL Server 2012 support – Now supporting SQL 2012, Cascade will be phasing out support of older SQL versions</li>
</ul>
Atlanta-based Hannon Hill is the clear leader in CMSs for higher education. Thousands of colleges and universities use Cascade Server for its power, freedom, and advanced capability. Cascade Server uses a friendly interface, multi-site management, and rapid implementation, which is perfect not only for educational institutions, but also government, healthcare, and technology organizations. Cascade's continual improvement signal its continued leadership role.
Check out the following video that highlights a few of the new features:
<a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Release-Notes/7.6/">Read all the details on the new release by checking out the Cascade Server 7.6 Release Notes.</a> Hannon Hill’s customers have been notified of the release and can download and install the newest version by visiting the <a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/downloads/cascade/index.html">Cascade Server Downloads Page</a>.
To find out more about Cascade Server, and the powerful CMS suite from Hannon Hill, <a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/products/index.html">visit the Cascade Server site</a>.

Cascade Server 7.6 Released

daniel-threlfall

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

#ffffff

This year, we've added a few new categories to our amazingly popular <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">Critics Choice CMS Awards</a> and one of the new categories is Best Forum Solution.We had tons of nominations and we've sorted them out to figure out who you've chosen as the Peoples Choice Nominees for this year's awards.Keeping in mind that the voting stage begins on September 1, 2013.. here are the nominees for Best Forum Solution.<h3>Vanilla Forums</h3>Vanilla allows you to create a customized community that rewards positive participation, automatically curates content, and lets members drive moderation. Vanilla provides hosted and open source community forum software that powers discussion forums on 666,836 sites.<a target="_blank" href="http://vanillaforums.org/">Visit their website.</a><h3>NodeBB</h3>NodeBB is a next-generation forum software using a groundbreaking web technology stack – Node.js, Redis, and WebSockets. We’ve designed it to be easy to set up. NodeBB will always be free and open source, allowing creative programmers and designers the freedom of building cool features and themes in a modular framework.<a target="_blank" href="http://nodebb.org/">Visit their website.</a><h3>Simple Machines Forum</h3>Simple Machines Forum — SMF in short — is a free, professional-grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the layout of your message board and with our unique SSI – or Server Side Includes – function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.SMF is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database. It is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software – and best of all it is and will always remain completely free!<a target="_blank" href="http://www.simplemachines.org/">Visit their website.</a><h3>VBulletin</h3>vBulletin 5 Connect provides unparalleled capabilities for building community websites. The software facilitates increased content creation, more engaging content discovery and simplified site management.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.vbulletin.com/">Visit their website.</a><h3>Invision Power Board (IP.Board)</h3>Invision Power Board (abbreviated IPB, IP.Board or IP Board) is an forum software produced by Invision Power Services, Inc. It is written in PHP and primarily uses MySQL as a database management system, although support for other database engines is available.While Invision Power Board is a commercially sold product, there is a large modding community and many of these modifications are free. In addition, many groups offer the download or design of free and paid skins.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.invisionpower.com/">Visit their website.</a>Good luck to all who are nominated and be sure to check back on the 1st of September to begin voting for your favourites!

Announcing the Peoples Choice for Best Forum Solution Nominees!

<a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/">Magnolia</a> is an open source company that produces the popular enterprise content management system, Magnolia CMS. Recently, we were given an opportunity to interview Magnolia co-founder and CTO, Boris Kraft. For those unfamiliar with Magnolia CMS, <a href="http://www.betterfasterbigger.com/2007/03/magnolia-not-so-brief-history.html">this brief history</a> of the product (and company) will get you up to speed.
<h2>Who is Boris Kraft?</h2>
<img style="max-width:200px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/363f874.jpg" alt="Boris Kraft" />
Cofounder of Magnolia International Ltd., the Swiss company that develops Magnolia CMS, a commercial open-source Content Management System used by leading organizations around the world.
His goals are simply to develop the world's best Content Management System by building a company that attracts world-class talent and focuses on people first, technology second.
In summer 2007 he launched the New-York-based Magnolia Americas, Inc., to establish a stronger presence for Magnolia in the American market. He has won new clients like Sony Latin America, Johnson &amp; Johnson, J2 Global (efax) and the US Navy.
At Magnolia International, his current responsibilities include product management, business strategy, and marketing.
His experience as a speaker include the keynote speech at Magnolia Conference 2009, 2010, and 2012, talks about Magnolia for the Web Content Mavens, Washington, 2008, the Server Side Java Symposium in Barcelona 2006, Innovation &amp; Transformation, Washington DC, 2006, at OSCOM 2004 and at LOTS (Lets open the source) in 2004 and 2005. Earlier experiences include teaching computer science at the University of Cooperative Education Loerrach and presenting his parallel real-time simulation environment at the 8th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation in Edinburgh.
His career in IT includes object-oriented software development under NeXTSTEP, several years of active involvement in a leading Internet security company, the development of a distributed real-time simulation environment, the use of Oracle web technology, databases and CASE tools as well as programming the first ever intranet solution for Roche Vitamins AG.
Since 2002 he has been focusing on the development of Magnolia from a strategic and marketing perspective.
He likes to blog about all things Magnolia and regularly publishes articles in print magazines as well.
He lives in Switzerland with his wife and three kids.
<h2>The Interview</h2>
What do you think makes Magnolia unique in the industry?
That depends on the direction from which you look at us. From a business perspective, I think it is interesting to see that the company is led by its two founders (Pascal Mangold &amp; Boris Kraft), who make all strategic decisions jointly. It is also amazing to see that Magnolia has had no outside funding, no VC, no debt. Magnolia is independent in its best sense. We have found a business model that is sustainable: software licenses subscriptions – which in turn means that we can execute on our vision of building the worlds best CMS. This is no small endeavor, but given that that is no VC breathing down our necks, and that the business model works, we can move forward one step at a time and produce a product that is second to none in its quality, usability and focus.
Magnolia doesn’t compete with its partners. We don’t do project implementations – they do. That is why we have a rapidly growing partner network and a lot of trust between the implementation partner, us and our clients. It is a nice separation of concerns that is beneficial for our customers and our partners.
Technically, Magnolia 5 is the world’s first major CMS that has been rethought from the ground up to work on tablets as well as desktops. This opens up new horizons for its deployment for our customers, like its use for field services and intranet apps. We also happen to sport the world’s best Spring framework integration, something our high end customers benefit greatly from in their need to bring business logic &amp; applications to the web, for instance in the travel, finance or telecoms industry.
Magnolia also has a technological advantage by providing a sophisticated best practice templating framework called STK (<a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/stk" target="_blank">http://www.magnolia-cms.com/stk</a>) which reduces project risk and speeds up implementation time. It allows pixel-perfect sites both on mobile and desktop and is the reason many large enterprises see a very low TCO in their projects.
There is also the aspect that Magnolia is open source but vendor-driven, so you get the best of the proprietary support &amp; sales bundles with the quality and transparency of open source software.
What made you, as a company, choose to be an open source product?
Pragmatic decision, see <a href="http://www.betterfasterbigger.com/2007/03/magnolia-not-so-brief-history.html">history</a>. No ideology behind it. We originally wrote Magnolia because we wanted a product that focuses on usability and scales to enterprise requirements. There was no intention to sell the product, so why not open source it. In 2006 we started selling an Enterprise Edition, which at the time was a novum for an application. It changed our future.
What is the biggest advantage to using Magnolia over other products?
Our customers would say its flexibility and ease-of-use. Indeed given our history as a service provider and personal interest in usability, design &amp; architecture, this is understandable. When we started out we were clear in our ambition: write the world’s best CMS. Build something that is user-friendly and enterprise-grade. This has resulted in a highly flexible, usable and focused content management product, which is starting to be rare these days.
With the latest release of Magnolia, there seems to be a heavy focus on the user experience, can you address that?
Magnolia 5 has been on our minds for years, and when the mobile revolution and the rise of tablets came to the equation, we knew we had to drop how user interfaces of enterprise software are usually done and take a radical new approach. In our case, we were starting from the question “What would software (a CMS…) look like if we would write it for a tablet computer?”. This was an almost heretical approach. We started from scratch and did more than 3000 mock-ups for Magnolia 5. The result is an enterprise software unlike any other, which fulfills all our wishes regarding usability and extensibility. It is a platform for years to come, and in fact I believe that all enterprise software will  eventually take a similar path. At the core is its reduction to task focused apps – like on your smartphone. We have added to it a way to communicate between the system, apps, and users (called “the Pulse”) and a smart way to create custom task lists called “Favorites”. The result is outstanding and blows our customers away in its simplicity, flexibility, and usability.
With many vendors shifting their focus to online marketing, what changes are you making to stay competitive?
Vendors have always been shifting their focus. That is part of the problem. If you try to build the world’s best limousine and then realize that people are now starting to spend money on private planes, will you buy a wing manufacturer, attach the wings to your car and call it a plane? That is pretty much what the competition does. Except they wouldn’t call it a plane, they’d call it “airborne transportation vehicle” or “ATC”?
But back to us. Content Management is hard to do right. We have been on it for more than 10 years now. The web has developed rapidly, and so have our clients’ needs. You rightly point out a shift to marketing – that is understandable because much of the business now happens on the web. But what about the business part of it? How can you integrate those back end applications and bring them to the web and mobile?  You still need to pull that off. So I think the heart of your infrastructure should be able to do the right things right. That is what we work on with Magnolia.
There are a myriad of tools available for online marketing, and every day we see new ones pop up. Our approach to deal with that is what we call “open suite” – with Magnolia at the core, customers have the ability to plug in any new tool for marketing or business needs using Magnolia’s integration capabilities. With Magnolia 5, these third party tools can then be exposed as an app. This approach is unlike your typical “customer experience management” lock-in suite. Magnolia allows you to take one step at a time and add whatever is most relevant for your next digital endeavors.
Over the years our customers have added pretty much any marketing tool on the planet to Magnolia, and thus proven that it is great to have such an open platform.
If you were to choose the ideal target customer for a Magnolia deployment, who would it be, what industry would they be in and why?
Well, customers chose us, not the other way around. We are strong in the financial industry, travel, retail etc. Typically, our customers create considerable revenue from their online offerings. They have a strong java team in place which is valued and respected by business (and marketing) because they understand that these are the guys that provide their online offering with unique advantages. Whenever technicians with a need for Java evaluate the CMS space, Magnolia will be on their shortlist.
What do you consider your biggest accomplishment as a company?
Having survived for 16 years now, attracting great talent, making our customers happy.
Your biggest failure?
To educate more people out there why Magnolia really is the better choice.
What are your favorite Magnolia CMS-based websites that are still running it today and why?
The Ticket websites (Ticket.se and Ticket.no), which are the largest online travel retailer in Scandinavia. This is not our largest customer by any means, but the innovation that went into developing these sites, the work with the implementation partners, and the customers, shows the true strength of open source and collaboration.
By working with the customer to integrate Magnolia with the Spring Java Framework, we found one of our most talented new developers and created a new product, Blossom, which is currently one of our strongest selling points.
With Blossom, customers that have back-end systems created using the Spring Framework (and there are a lot at the high-end) can now just drag this code into Magnolia to expose them as secure services on the web and mobile devices.
What is the most under-rated feature of Magnolia CMS?
Simplicity. People confuse simplicity with a lack of power, but it is about delivering powerful features, efficiently, where and when they are needed. The effect this has on creativity and efficiency can be astounding.
Our customers typically are well aware of all the benefits Magnolia brings. One feature that is often overlooked by prospects and implementation partners are Magnolia's on-demand image manipulation capabilities. This is a very powerful feature referred to as image variations, and is asset management functionality to generate different format images for different use cases, e.g. From one base image we automatically generate a smaller one for a teaser and yet other formats for mobile devices. This saves editors a lot of time because they can simply rely on Magnolia to generate all formats requested by the various output channels.
What can we expect to see from Magnolia in the coming 1-2 years?
Several commerce engine integrations; the productizing of personalization and content pool functionality. We also expect a lot of interesting apps to come out of our partner’s development efforts. In fact, some will already be presented at this year’s Magnolia Conference in September.
Do you have any parting comments?
With the launch of Magnolia 5, we are at the start of a new era for Magnolia. The whole app-based approach, has opened up the user experience to new levels of input and innovation. As an open source community, we cannot wait to see where our customers and partners take this new platform. We certainly have our own vision, but the joy is in combining this with the ideas and real-world needs of our customers and partners.
<h2>Want to learn more about Magnolia?</h2>
Check out <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com">their website</a> or read our related articles (see the right sidebar on this site) to learn more.

Interview with Boris Kraft, CTO of Magnolia

There are over 500 social media platforms on the web today, give or take a few. No one knows the exact number for sure. It's totally unrealistic to think that you can (or should) join all of these social networks, unless you have an inordinate amount of time on your hands. Thus, you should know which social media sites are worth your time and effort. Here's your guide to choosing the right ones. 
<h2>Social Media Domination Tips</h2>
<ol>
<li>Choose Five. You should pick a minimum of five social media platforms to join. First, join the four listed below. Then, you can choose at least one niche site, as relevant to your needs and industry.</li>
<li>Choose Big. The bigger the social site, the better it will serve your needs. There are well over a billion social media users on the planet. You'll never have a billion connections, nor do you need that many. In order to maximize the benefit of investing time in social networks, however, it's smart to choose the big ones. These will provide the greatest reach, to help you get what you want and need from a network presence.</li>
<li>Choose Niche. Although big is good, there is also value to being part of a niche social media site. For example, there are 1,748,365 members on the social networking site, VampireFreaks.com. Should you join? Only if you consider yourself a Goth/Industrial fan. This is a niche site, serving a subculture. Unless you are part of that subculture, the site will be of little use to you. Instead, focus on a niche site that provides you the networking opportunities directly in line with your occupation, lifestyle, or hobby.</li>
</ol>
<h2>The Four Social Must-Joins</h2>
I consider the following four sites to be important for the best social media presence. Each one is distinct, and has its own unique advantages. Each one is large. And each one provides a great blend of social interaction and tools. 
<ol>
<li>Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg's brainchild and rise to stardom is a familiar tale. Now, Facebook reigns supreme as the preeminent social network. With over 1 billion users (though more than 8% are fake), Facebook is a critical part of our connected culture. </li>
<li>Twitter. Those who are not part of Twitter “don't get it,” thinking it's supposed to be some sort of second Facebook. Part of Twitter's distinctiveness is its simplicity, though its simplicity is somewhat deceiving. Twitter has successfully embedded the phrase “140 characters or less” into common parlance, but the impact of this microblogging platform is vast. Even, dare we say, revolutionary? Twitter is important for establishing your voice of authority within your industry. </li>
<li>LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the ultimate professional network. LinkedIn overtly caters to the workforce, as opposed to teens or hobbyists. To gain an online record of your professional progress and achievements, LinkedIn is the answer. </li>
<li>Google+. Google+ is on a meteoric rise to place it at the forefront of social networking. That's kind of how Google rolls. Already, one's presence on Google+ translates into improved personal branding, higher SERP results, and overall good feelings. This network is something you need to join. </li>
</ol>
Joining a social network is not optional for today's Internet worker. It's an important part of being present in the workforce and contributing in a valuable way. Your current job, any future jobs, and success at your present task have a lot to do with how connected you are to a network. If you aren't on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+, now is the time to get active. 
<h2>Niche Social Media Sites </h2>
But beyond these common-knowledge networks, there are others. The social media experts know that a truly robust online presence must go beyond common knowledge. Here is a list of seven social networks that will help to enhance your online presence, professionalism, and reputation. 
 About.me https://about.me/ Who it's for:  any professional
In a day of the dwindling endurance of paper business cards, most  professionals need a digital alternative. About.me is as good as it gets. About.me provides a scaled-down version of LinkedIn, while allowing users to create their professional presence in an easily-accessible presentation. It's easy to set up an account, and doesn't require much management. About.me also does very well in the search engines, giving you higher SEO results when people Google your name. 
 43Things http://www.43things.com/ Who it's for:  Anyone interested in goal-setting
If you've ever made a goal and been sidetracked from it — which would be 99.93% of the human race — than you'll connect with the idea behind 43Things. Their premise is simple: “Changing your life is hard. Doing it by yourself is harder.” Thus, 43Things introduces the social power of goal-setting. 
 Behance http://www.behance.net/ Who it's for:  graphic designers, web designer, illustrators, photographers, artists
Behance provides a broader exposure for visual creatives. In this social network, artists can post online portfolios, and encourage discussion. The site is surprisingly simple, which helps to focus attention and interaction upon an artist's work. It's the perfect place to keep a collection of your  website designs.
 Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ Who it's for:  Professionals who present information, marketers, managers
Have you ever wondered why you spend so much time and effort on a PowerPoint presentation, only to have it last for a short meeting? Slideshare allows you to save your slideshows, and allow others to learn from them. Saving your slideshows and presentations for public access is a great way to bolster your reputation as a thought leader, and to demonstrate your value. Slideshare also integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social sites. 
 Quora https://www.quora.com/ Who it's for:  anyone who wants to find answers or provide them
Quora is the leading Q&amp;A site. Based on your interests and social network, it provides you with relevant questions and answers. Self-labelled as the “best source of knowledge,” Quora crowd-sources answers to user's questions. It's a helpful places to not only get answers, but also to give them, thus demonstrating your own expertise in a particular niche. 
 ChaCha http://www.chacha.com/ Who it's for:  people seeking answers, marketers, advertisers
Another Q&amp;A site is ChaCha, which functions via test messages, mobile apps, and the website. ChaCha is primarily a search engine, but it provides moderation and answers to questions in such a way that gives the site unique value. By becoming “guides,” many marketers and advertisers have been able to gain better inroads with their target audience.
 StatusNet http://status.net/
Think of StatusNet as a Twitter alternative that you can make yourself. It's a free and open source written in PHP that you can install on your own network or website. The idea behind StatusNet is simple — to help people announce their status among their social network. It's customizability and portability is one of its greatest advantages. 
What other lesser-known social networks have you found to be useful?

How to Dominate Social Media

Microsoft has had a rough couple of years thanks to a plethora of new players in the market winning the hearts of consumers; from the ubiquitous Android to the unconventional Ubuntu and cultish Apple IOS, Microsoft has had its territory yanked out from under its feet. However, in the last one and a half years, it has been able to wrestle back some of its former well-earned glory by offering the public a new operating system with a bold and brazen design.
The Metro design principle is basically a template for design language used by Microsoft within the Windows 8 architecture It features clean and bright icons that lead up to content with an almost obvious feel without having to use real-word icons such as telephone, notebook or music note symbols.
Breakaway Design
This is a breakaway design concept that hasn’t been used before by its competitors, and is something that could radically change the way designers create web and phone-based apps for mass consumption. The main premise of this design comes from the idea that content should always take center stage, and design should follow a close second.
While this seems counterintuitive for hardcore web and app designers, this kind of design seeks to enrich the end user’s experience by taking him straight to the information or data he needs without blitzing him with stuffy design.
An illustration of how Metro design works is where you have a Windows 8 UI that has several differently colored panels representing phone functions such as messaging, music, maps and web browser. Once you select a panel, you’re taken straight to the application that you want to access, cutting out unnecessary steps and making the whole process much faster and sleeker.
Eye-Catching Typography
One of the selling points of the Metro design has to be the typography, which basically means the way information is presented. This is done via bold font that is straightforward and basic without being bland. For Metro, information is displayed using an array of differently sized letters that convey structured information. This helps the user know what data they need to pay attention to first before moving on to something different.
Next, we have the concept of motion which is something that makes the whole design come alive. Metro achieves this by creating a consistent set of animation and fluid motion, giving the whole system an intuitiveness that makes it effortless for users, all the while boosting overall performance and user experience.
It’s All About the Content 
Content takes center stage within Metro, and this is conveyed in the gesture based interactions that have to operate within smaller screens such as the ones found in Windows phones such as the Nokia Lumia.
With everyone making the shift from physical media, Metro seeks to stay true to the new digital age by giving users an authentic digital experience that can translate well on tablet or phone screens. While many people will wonder what made Microsoft take this giant leap in design, the reality is that Metro has some undeniably attractive positives that may act as a platform for future design templates for other operating systems.
Here’s a 15 minute video of Metro in action:
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jOG4DZV3TIY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
(Note: Microsoft now refers to the Metro design concept as Microsoft Design language as a result of naming issues with a retail partner).
What are your thoughts on the Metro design for desktop and mobile platforms? Please leave us your thoughts in the comment box below.

Microsoft's Metro: Content Before Design

Email marketing is one of the most successful, most cost-effective, and most important features of your business. But in order to cash in on the power of email marketing, you've got to have the right email marketing provider.
This review of five email marketing platforms will help you to make an informed decision as to which email marketing system is best for you.
<h2>Constant Contact</h2>
<a href="https://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/signup.jsp?cc=CLK_DCLKAFFROSTEXT">http://www.constantcontact.com/</a>
Constant Contact is one of the oldest and biggest players in the email marketing industry. Their customer list has the likes of Microsoft, AmericanExpress, HP, and others. In a growth effort, Constant Contact has emerged from mere email marketing to encompass event planning (EventSpot), social campaigns, local marketing (SaveLocal), survey creation, and more. Though they are constantly changing their email editor, it still remains somewhat clunky and vexing, especially when compared to something slick like MailChimp. Nonetheless, for its competitive pricing and quality features, ConstantContact is a great option. 
Pricing:
<ul>
<li>0-500:  $15 </li>
<li>501-2,500:  $30</li>
<li>2,501-5,000:  $50</li>
<li>5,001-10,000:   $75</li>
<li>10,001-25,000:  $150</li>
<li>$25,000+:  Undisclosed</li>
<li>(All pricing monthly, according to mailing list size)</li>
</ul>
<h2>iContact</h2>
<a href="http://www.icontact.com/">http://www.icontact.com/</a>
Geared mostly toward the B2B community, iContact is a full-fledged email marketing system with all the standard features — templates, customization, metrics, and social media distribution. One advantage of iContact is its integration with several CMSs — Joomla, SalesForce, and Drupal. iContact's customer service has a sterling reputation, so you're sure to get the help you need when you need it.
Pricing:  
<ul>
<li>Up to 500 subscribers:  $14/month</li>
<li>Up to 2,500 subscribers:  $29/month</li>
<li>Up to 5,000 subscribers:  $47/month</li>
</ul>
<h2>ExpressPigeon</h2>
<a href="https://expresspigeon.com/">https://expresspigeon.com/</a>
It hasn't yet sprouted wings and soared with the same popularity of the others, but ExpressPigeon has the potential to be a top-notch mail carrier. The potential lies in the technology, which is powerful, advanced, and super flexible. One of the major shortcomings of other email marketing tools is their inflexible editors or prefab templates. Without HTML knowledge, you're somewhat limited in your options. Not ExpressPigeon. ExpressPigeon uses Zen simplicity with a WYSIWYG editor to make the job easy. No HTML knowledge needed. ExpressPigeon's slick A/B testing tools, market segmentation, suppressed list feature, and unlimited list power makes it one of the most advanced yet best-keep secrets in the email marketing industry. We'll likely see ExpressPigeon get bigger and better in the months ahead. 
Pricing:
<ul>
<li>0-500:  $8.99</li>
<li>Up to 2,500:  $19.99/month</li>
<li>Up to 10,000:  $49.99/month</li>
<li>Up to 50,000:  $209.00/month</li>
</ul>
<h2>MailChimp</h2>
<a href="http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&amp;aid=f192bbc03638ab99433d2efbd&amp;afl=1">http://mailchimp.com/</a>
Brilliant marketing, sweet tools, and a marvelous interface make MailChimp a really appealing option for many companies. Clearly postured toward startups, B2Cs, and small businesses, MailChimp makes email marketing cool again. The whole chimp thing might be a little quirky, but the serious delivery power of MailChimp makes the whole system really appealing. With an open API, you'll see plenty of programs and sites that have Mailchimp integration — PayPal, FreshBooks, SurveyMonkey, etc. Oh, and they've got apps for any mobile device you want. Plus, MailChimp's A/B testing is very intuitive, unlike some of the other email marketing contenders. One of the few downsides of Mailchimp is the analytics interface. I've been underhwelmed by MailChimp's reporting. It seems hard to mashup numbers in the way that I want, but this is a pardonable shortcoming. 
Pricing:
<ul>
<li>0-2,000 subscribers, with a limit of 12,000 emails/month:  Free</li>
<li>0-500:  $10</li>
<li>501-1,000:  $15</li>
<li>1,001-2,500:  $30</li>
<li>2,501-5,000:  $50</li>
<li>5,001-10,000:  $75</li>
<li>10,001-25,000:  $75</li>
<li>25,001-50,000:  $240</li>
<li>Pay-as-you-go, prepay, high-volume rates, and high-volume CPM rates also available.</li>
</ul>
<h2>AWeber</h2>
<a href="http://cmscritic.aweber.com"></a><a href="http://www.aweber.com/">http://www.aweber.com/</a>
This company takes email marketing seriously. Their buffet of help options, seminars, complementary coaching, and campaign strategy consultations demonstrate their commitment to solid email marketing efforts. Like iContact, AWeber integrates with Drupal. Another helpful feature of AWeber's reporting is that it pulls numbers from Google Analytics. One aspect of AWeber that sets it apart from the mass of other email marketing platforms is its handy auto responder tool. With templates, full automation, and complete personalization, AWeber's autorresponse feature is easy and intuitive. Plus it comes free with a subscription. Pricing:  
<ul>
<li>Trial:  $1</li>
<li>$19/month</li>
<li>$49/quarter</li>
<li>$194/year </li>
</ul>
There are plenty of email marketing programs on the market. The key is to find one that works for you. Each of the platforms discussed above have a loyal following and proven success.

Top Five Email Marketing Platforms

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