Articles - Page 169

What I Mean to Say: A Practitioner Perspective on AI, Semantics, and Content Evolution

msalvatierra

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/understandinguxd-620x354.jpg" alt="understanding user experience design" />
When you hear the phrase “user experience design,” you will have one of two reactions: 1) you skip over the phrase because it sounds like meaningless techno-jargon. 2. You latch on to the word because you know what UXD is, and want to find out more. For the uninitiated “user experience design” is the kind of term you just want to skim over, because you frankly don't care.
This article is going to tell you what you need to know about user experience design. It's pretty important.

<h2>So, tell me. What does UX, UXD, and UED mean?</h2>
First off, lets get the acronym stuff out of the way. UXD and UED stand for User Experience Design. The end goal of UXD and UED is UX, or User Experience.
<h2>Who needs to be concerned about UXD?</h2>
The people who are interested in UXD are mostly designers and developers. However, UXD affects more people than just those who use codes and colors. If an organization is involved with the web, UXD is important for just about everyone in that organization.
<h2>I still don't know what it is. Please define “User Experience Design.”</h2>
Here's the formal-sounding definition. User experience design refers to how a person (user) interacts with (experiences) a piece of technology (design).
<h2>What does UXD look like in real life?</h2>
Let’s pretend that a tech company wants to create a device that measures the heart rate of swimmers, times their laps, and tracks their progress toward specific goals. Maybe that want to create an aquatic form of <a href="http://runkeeper.com/home" target="_blank">RunKeeper</a>….SwimKeeper. In order to create this device or application, the designers and developers need to determine the best support device (e.g., Android, iPhone, waterproof case), any accessories required (e.g., underwater heart rate monitor), an interface for usability, understandable actions (swipe, tap, scroll, etc.), and additional features that may be helpful for swimmers (e.g., team goals, competitions, etc.).
The whole process of developing the device and software is a design process — experience design. Thus, every member of the development team participates in user experience design as they create SwimKeeper (or whatever they choose to call it).
<h2>So, how does it all work out in practice?</h2>
When a digital design firm, software business, or app developer begins a project, UXD should be leading the project. Everyone who is involved in the project carries forward a component of UXD. The visual designer's UXD contribution is to makes appealing colors, button sizes, and logos. A crucial contributor to UXD, the programmer, minimizes delay time for loading and startup screens. The information architect advances UXD by creating a wireframe that is aesthetic and intuitive. The project manager visualizes the tasks of the enduser, and how it all relates to UXD.
Unless the team has a clear, unified UXD strategy, team members will either start crying or throwing pens at each other.
<h2>What is a good UXD strategy, then?</h2>
UXD underlies much of the activity of technology firms and online businesses. It's important, then, to have a UXD strategy. Here are three points to remember as you consider your UXD strategy.
<h3>1.  Know what UXD is.</h3>
This is easier said than done. There is no single sacred and unbending definition of UXD. The term is so broad and unwieldy that it defies tidy definitions. Just check out <a href="http://uxdesign.com/about-user-experience-design/article/top-ten-seven-definitions-of-ux-design/24" target="_blank">this conflicted article</a> by uxdesign.com.
However, despite the definition-defying nature of UXD, it’s helpful to have some awareness about what it is and how it works. If your team has the same general definition, all the better. At the very least, become acquainted with UXD and some of its components. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> is a fine place to start.
<h3>2.  Figure out your users.</h3>
Now it’s time to dig into the real work of user experience design. User experience design is, obviously, about how the user experiences and interacts with your stuff. So instead of just making cool stuff, you must start by understanding the users. Who are they? What do they do? How do they do it? How do they think? What do they like? Where are they? Why are they doing this? How much money do they have? How old are they? What language do they speak. This is a process of questioning, interviewing, understanding, researching and knowing. In the long run, it pays off.
Keep in mind that a good UXD strategy is more than just making stuff with nice features, a good-looking design, or a flawless interface. User experience is about psychology and the enigmatic and dynamic interaction between humans and computers.
<h3>3.  Unify your project around your user profile.</h3>
The process involves the user at every step of the way. Since you've figured out who your users are, you can now deliver a product that meets their needs. Your entire project has a focal point — the user. Now, whip out your best UXD and get to it!
Mary Muckerman, in an article for Fast Company, wrote, “user experience is the heart of any company.”
The heart? Of any company? Really?
It’s a big statement, but it’s true. User experience influences everything, or at least it should.

What You Need to Know About User Experience Design

daniel-threlfall

Ryan Cramer is the founder and lead programmer behind ProcessWire, the winner of our Critic's Choice Award for <a href="/critics-choice-for-best-free-cms-goes-to/">Best Free CMS.</a> Earlier today, we took time to speak with Ryan about ProcessWire, the future and his thoughts on the CMS market.  Without further adieu, here is the interview.
Can you tell me a bit about how ProcessWire came to be?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/a-250x250.png" alt="Ryan Cramer" />ProcessWire has been a project since around 2003, though under a different name. None of the original code base remains as the system has evolved. But if you used that old system, you'd still recognize it as ProcessWire. The overall architecture and hierarchical page tree is very similar.
ProcessWire came about from my own needs as a web designer/developer. Before ProcessWire, I had already been building custom CMSs for various clients for several years. Open source CMSs weren't really on the radar, though there were a few like Moveable Type.
When I started working on my own as Ryan Cramer Design, LLC, I needed a tool to help solve the common recurring needs for projects. So I kind of looked at ProcessWire as like an employee, someone (rather something) to take care of a lot of hard work so that I could get more time and enjoy the work day more.
This continued for 7 years, and ProcessWire continued to evolve. I had always wanted to get involved in open source, and didn't really know how. I didn't know how ProcessWire would be received, so I instead focused on getting a little part of it released as open source. This was a jQuery plugin called asmSelect.
That was pretty well received. In fact, it ended up as a Drupal module (apparently) and I'm assuming elsewhere. So that gave a little necessary confidence to put the whole thing out there.
It was originally called Dictator CMS. The website is still there: <a href="http://www.dictatorcms.com/">http://www.dictatorcms.com/</a>. For while, I was developing both as separate projects (around 2005-2007) but that was mainly because I had clients on both platforms, and you couldn't swap one in for the other. So I had to continue maintaining Dictator CMS for quite a while after new installs were no longer being done.
Dictator was not open source. At the time, the clients (or at least my clients) did not want open source and were scared by it. I'm very glad that attitude has reversed.
The name came from an old Thomas Edison machine but between Saddam, Khadafi, North Korea, etc., the name started evoking the wrong things.
Does ProcessWire have any backers or financial support? How does it earn money or does it?
Backers of financial support… probably not in the traditional sense. But we do have some support. Avoine is a company in Finland, and they provided some support for development of multi-language support, between the release of ProcessWire 2.0 and 2.1.  Also ServInt (the hosting company) supports ProcessWire by hosting our site. I saved for many years to be able to dedicate lots of time to it. Now we've got lots of people dedicating time to it, so I feel like we are well supported by people's time.
Are there any plans to commercialize (not sure if that's the right word) any portion of ProcessWire or add commercial services, hosting, etc?
Not commercialize the software itself, but we do support commercial services, whether support, custom module development, or the like. We also encourage commercial module development, as I think it is beneficial for the perception of the project and for attracting the interest of full-time developers.
Hosting is one thing we've not looked into, but perhaps should. Ultimately though, most of us get paid by the work that we do with ProcessWire for our clients. ProcessWire saves lots of time and lets us be more competitive web developers.
Recently, ProcessWire won our Critic's Choice Award for Best Free CMS. Has this helped with exposure? What have you seen as a result of this award?
Thank you for highlighting ProcessWire with the award. I do think it has been great for the project and exposure. It brings new people to ProcessWire (I think you may be our biggest referrer in Google Analytics), and it's also great to be able to communicate this to people. It also energizes the whole team. I think I could go on and on. We appreciate this exposure for ProcessWire more than I can find the words to describe. Lots more people searching for “ProcessWire” on Google too, it seems.
What do you think makes ProcessWire such a great product for developers / designers. There are lots of products on the market that are great choices, why ProcessWire?
I think ProcessWire is a great product for designer/developers because it's developed by people who are full-time designer/developers that are focused on constant simplification and reduction to essentials. It's developed in the field, so to speak, according to the actual landscape. It fits to the environment and the needs like a glove.
ProcessWire becomes a tool to designer/developers much like other tools they may use. Much inspiration has come from jQuery. And I like to think that ProcessWire opens up content management in the same way that jQuery opens up JavaScript. ProcessWire is built to be simple and easy, but it's also built to be extremely powerful and scalable. Lots of people initially confuse it with being something very small and simple for basic needs… and it can fit that role just fine. But it really shines when you throw a really big project at it. The system scales without getting more complex, while saving you huge amounts of time. There isn't any other system that nails it as well as ProcessWire.
The way I sometimes describe ProcessWire to my clients on terms they can understand is to describe Google's search engine. You have something that appears to be very simple (just a search box and interesting artwork/logo). There is much more power and capability than it would appear. Yet it remains accessible to all, and what you can do with that simple interface grows as you do. It's a simple and easy interface to powerful engineering–that's always been the goal.
What is the most complex in size or scope, project you've seen implemented with ProcessWire?
That's a good question. For a long time, my own sites were some of the biggest and broadest in scope, that had been built-in ProcessWire. Now, others have gone far beyond that. I was recently helping someone optimize ProcessWire selector queries for a site with more than 100k pages in it. Now that's a big site, though I imagine there are people going beyond that too. ProcessWire doesn't get more complex as you go larger. It stays simple, and it's meant to scale as far as you would like it to.
What is the most under appreciated feature in your eye?
That's a tough question, but I think some decisions behind the admin interface are often misunderstood, at first. When I first put ProcessWire out there, people were emailing me their mockups of fixes to things that they perceived as a problem. For instance, the way the page tree works is one of them– It might seem overly minimal when you are initially testing it out on a small site. Yet when you are working with those sites with several hundred to thousands of pages, a lot more becomes apparent. The most “pretty” solutions are no longer good solutions. So I don't know about most under-appreciated, but I think the most misunderstood aspects of ProcessWire relate to the underlying goals to provided consistency across all scales.
Btw, many other admin themes are now available for ProcessWire too (many that are really fantastic), so this misunderstanding is much more rare now.
What do you think ProcessWire is missing in terms of either features or functionality that you'd like to change / add?
That's also a tough question because I'd like to simplify as much as I would like to add, so we have to balance the two. We have to make sure that as the system grows, it doesn't become any more complex, and hopefully, becomes simpler. The way we do this is by taking complex things and building them as modules. So they aren't adding any complexity to the system unless one has the need for that complexity.
An example: ProcessWire doesn't provide out-of-the-box capabilities for enabling things like user registration in the way that systems like Drupal do. We provide the API to make these things possible, rather than having them turn-key. There are some people that benefit by going the ProcessWire way and building these things exactly the way they want them to work. There are others that benefit more from turn-key solutions. I think that having turn-key solutions is very important, as the growth of WordPress proves. So I'd like us to continue building more turn-key solutions as modules for ProcessWire, while continuing to simplify the core.
How about eCommerce capabilities, have you seen any integrations that have been impressive? Are there specific modules that makes this possible?
Antti Peisa is maintaining a ProcessWire Shop module project, and I think he's done some impressive things here. I don't have experience using it myself, as my e-commerce needs are fairly limited. But there is a lot of positive discussion about this in the forums and I'm quite impressed by what he's done with this. For my own client work, e-commerce is one of the things that I really like to send to a dedicated service provider. That's because after running osCommerce and Drupal UberCart for years, I've come to see e-commerce as one of those things that is always threatening to take over my day for one little issue or another. So I just prefer to hand over my ecommerce to Shopify (or other dedicated ecommerce providers). I particularly like Shopify for their post order hooks. It integrates beautifully with ProcessWire and enables me to create ProcessWire accounts for users after an order is successfully placed, etc. So much potential in easy reach. All the fun without all the time and frustrating trying to self host an ecommerce software.
Basically, I'm not the best one to ask about e-commerce. OSCommerce and UbertCart (among others), as great as they are (or were) soured me on wanting to self host these things. But ProcessWire itself is a great module platform from which to build ecommerce modules, as Antti has proven.
What can we expect from the next major point release ? Any specific new features you are working on ?
ProcessWire 2.3 is just around the corner. Here's a partial list of what's coming with that: <a href="http://processwire.com/about/news/feb-2013/#article4">http://processwire.com/about/news/feb-2013/#article4</a>
What do you see for the future of ProcessWire? Say, next 5 years. What would be your ideal scenario?
ProcessWire 2.4 will emphasize adoption of PHP 5.3+ specific features, so we'll be dropping PHP 5.2 support with the next major release, while gaining all the great things that come from being able to focus on PHP 5.3+
More info about that in the roadmap here: <a href="http://processwire.com/about/roadmap/">http://processwire.com/about/roadmap/</a>
Next 5 years: I'd like to see ProcessWire continue to grow in audience. I think we're just at the top if the iceberg in terms of audience now, as we're still relatively unknown. So I think there is just a whole lot of room for growth. Currently we have a really strong platform that I'm very proud of. But in 5 years, we will be 10-years better. We're on a constant path to improvement and won't rest as long as there is room for improvement. And there's always room.
Why do you feel open source was the right way to go when it comes to PW? What about open source made it a good choice?
First off, I have benefited so much from open source that I wanted to give back. I think that anyone that spends years as a web designer/developer develops a strong bond with open source. So as a web developer, when you reach the point where you think you've got something to give that is really better than what's already out there, it's an honor to be able to do.
Secondly, I thought that ProcessWire had a lot of good ideas in it that would never see the light of day if I didn't get it out there. I'd put a lot of work into it and getting paid license fees or getting big projects from it just wasn't satisfying enough. I felt it needed to be open source in order for the ideas to make a difference. Proprietary CMSs don't have a future anymore.
What types of changes would you like to see within the CMS market?
I think there is a real over-use of the “big 3” systems (I won't name them). These systems are the right fit for some projects, but the wrong fit on so many more. Often they are used simply because they are known… they are the one that the boss will recognize, so no questions will be asked (playing it safe). This makes for a weaker and less diverse web. I would like to see the whole idea of “big 3” disappear. My hope is that a few years from now there will be a much greater understanding of all the different options out there.
What does the term CMS mean to you personally?
To me a content management system is two things: 1) a system that enables the client to create and edit content in the context of a web site or application; and 2) a system that enables the developer to design the content structure and layout, and build on top of it.
Thanks for your time today, Ryan. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.
Thanks again for inviting me to do this, it's a real honor. 
You can find out more about Ryan (or hire him!) by visiting his website <a href="http://www.ryancramer.com">http://www.ryancramer.com </a>or check out ProcessWire at <a href="http://www.processwire.com">http://www.processwire.com</a>

Interview with Ryan Cramer of ProcessWire

mike-johnston

Like many writers on Google+, I want to increase my AuthorRank so my work will gain credibility and reach a wider audience. I've been looking into how to get Google Authorship working with WordPress, not the version you install on your own domain, but a blog hosted on WordPress.com. I was surprised to find little information on the subject that was reliable and therefore felt compelled to share what I've learned. I'm a technical person and I have to admit that I've tried researching what to do, wading through conflicting or old information online and trying the various tips only to give up twice. Some of this has come about by Google changing the way in which you link your work to your Google+ account, so some things that used to work now no longer do. On my third attempt however I managed to <a href="https://www.radicalmarketingsolutions.com/how-to-claim-google-authorship/" target="_blank">pursue this issue further</a> and by piecing together information from various different sites I found the answer by trial and error. I know how off putting this process has been for me, and I am a web developer by trade, so I can only imagine the confusion of millions of writers who prefer to host their blogs on WordPress.com and also want Google Authorship.
<h2>Why Use WordPress.com?</h2>
<a href="https://rack.2.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEyLzEyLzA0L2I4L3RoZWJlZ2lubmVyLmFCai5qcGcKcAl0aHVtYgk5NTB4NTM0IwplCWpwZw/0f408018/c56/the-beginner-s-guide-to-wordpress-multisite-18fcb53fac.jpg"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wp-760x427-620x348.jpg" alt="WordPress" /></a> click to enlarge image
I started out with WordPress because I wanted to write rather than spend my spare time developing a website in order to do so. I do have a hosting provider that gives me access to ‘One Click Installs', one of which is WordPress. I installed it on a couple of domains and found, because of all the updates required to keep the websites secure, I easily put those projects on the shelf until I had time to do so. In the end they got so horribly out of date our web host disabled them for security reasons. By this point I had already decided to go with WordPress.com blogs instead, and I stayed because I also liked how quickly Google ranked the posts I wrote. I now have 15 blogs hosted by WordPress.com and although some of them are likely to be replaced over time with <a href="https://drupal.org" target="_blank">Drupal</a>, until such a time I want the writing I've done so far to be picked up by Google Authorship.
<h2>Why is so hard to set-up Google Authorship on WordPress.com blogs?</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/google-plus-in-wordpress.jpg" alt="Google Plus with WordPress" /> click to enlarge image
The main issue is  the fact that you do not own the domain your WordPress.com blog is on so you can neither alter the blog code itself nor use an email address on that domain. Email verification is the easiest way now to set-up Google Authorship, particularly on multi-author websites. In fact it is the default option when you go to <a href="https://plus.google.com/authorship" target="_blank">Google's main page on Authorship</a>. Some of the newer WordPress themes provide a text field to allow you to add a link on the post that can be used to link to your Google+ profile, but you can't rely on that always being there in every theme. If you are like me and prefer the style of an older theme then you will likely find it is not an option. Also WordPress, for security reasons, strips the required bit of code “rel=author” (see Set-Up Instructions below) from the end of your links in your author bio, thus making it even harder to link to your Google+ account. This can be overcome if you have your blog hosted on your own domain by <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/allow-rel-and-html-in-author-bios/" target="_blank">installing a plugin</a> to disable this behaviour, but you can't install it on WordPress.com. All these in combination could cause many WordPress.com bloggers to fall behind in their AuthorRank and I for one don't want to see that happen.
<h2>Why Use Google Authorship Anyway?</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/google-authorship-620x249.jpg" alt="Google Authorship" /> click to enlarge image
Google wants to find great content that is relevant to their users. The more Google knows about you, the more it can do for you. Google is very good at generating traffic to your blogs, much more than Twitter or Facebook can often do. Getting to the top of a Google search result page is not just about hitting the right combination of keywords (or paying for ads) any more, it is about <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/google-plus-authority/" target="_blank">authority within your Google network</a>. You may have seen AuthorRank in action when you do a search and people with their profile pictures accompany the search results in the top slots. Just the image alone catches your attention amid a sea of text links. People are much more likely to click on a search result if they recognise the author from their Google+ stream (as along as you have a good standing relationship). If someone had enough interest to circle you then chances are they will be willing to look at your content both inside and out of Google+. Remember this is only the beginning, who knows how advantageous it will be in the future to have Google Authorship behind you. The sooner you sign up to Authorship the longer Google has to promote your work above others who haven't made the switch yet.
<h2>Set-up Instructions</h2>
Before you go further you will need a Google+ profile with a picture and tag line set. You should ideally have built an audience by adding circles and people who match your temperament and topic areas, but this can just as easily be done afterwards. I will demonstrate how to set-up Google Authorship with a WordPress.com blog I haven't converted yet. Just to prove this you can see in the screen shot below that it says under ‘Authorship Testing Result' that ‘Page does not contain authorship markup'. You will also note that my Google+ profile is also missing from the preview.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2013-02-26-hs-before-620x340.png" alt="Hermit Studio Before Google Authorship" /> click to enlarge image
You will need to find the URL address to your WordPress.com author bio. This is typically in the following format:
https://mysite.wordpress.com/author/username
You will need to replace the text in red above; ‘mysite' with the sub-domain of your blog and ‘username' with the username you log in to WordPress with. So in this example my WordPress author bio link would be:
<a href="https://hermitstudio.wordpress.com/author/niamhbrown" target="_blank">https://hermitstudio.wordpress.com/author/niamhbrown</a>.
Then you need to go to your about page on your Google+ profile. Click the blue ‘Edit Profile' button at the top  of the screen. This will put you into editing mode. Scroll down until you reach the section called ‘Contributor to' and hover your mouse over it until you see the block highlighted and then click to edit it. Towards the bottom of this block you will see the option to ‘Add Custom Link' you will need to click on this. Copy the WordPress bio link we created above and put that in the text field called ‘URL'. You can then give the link a label, which you can call whatever you like. In the end it should look something like this:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2013-02-26-hs-add-author-bio-link1-620x429.png" alt="Hermit Studio Add Author Bio Link on Google+" /> click to enlarge image
Make sure the contributor to section is shared to the public and then save it. Click on the blue button at the top of your profile called ‘Finished Editing' and you are done for this step. It is worth noting however that there has been some confusion online over what this link should be. I found it wasn't always clear in the articles I read that you needed a link to your WordPress author bio and NOT to the main blog address. This is how Google knows you are an author on this sub-domain.
Next we need to get your Google profile ID. This is the long number in the URL to your Google+ profile, as shown below.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2013-02-26-google-profile-id-620x34.png" alt="Google+ Profile ID" /> click to enlarge image
So my profile ID is the number 101942254766672606204, but yours will be different. (Don't use my ID otherwise I will get credit for your work!) Save your number somewhere and we will come back to it. Now we go to your WordPress blog. Go to your blog dashboard and click on Appearance &gt; Widgets. Drag a text widget onto one of your slots available on your theme, such as a ‘sidebar' or ‘footer' etc. In that text box add the following code using the profile ID number we got from Google+ as mentioned above.
&lt;a href=”https://plus.google.com/profileid/about?rel=author”&gt;+AuthorName&lt;/a&gt;
The ‘+AuthorName' should match exactly the name you use on Google Plus. So for example in my case I would use:
&lt;a href=”https://plus.google.com/101942254766672606204/about?rel=author”&gt;+Niamh Brown&lt;/a&gt;
 Once you have saved the widget you are done and it should look something like this:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2013-02-27-wordpress-authorship-widget-620x192.png" alt="WordPress Authorship Widget" /> click to enlarge image
<h2>Further Information</h2>
When you set up Google Authorship it will take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for your details to show up in search results. Be aware that just because you set-up Google Authorship does not guarantee your image will show up in search results.  So in order to be sure you have set-up your website correctly there is a handy <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets" target="_blank">Structured Data Testing Tool</a> you can use. Here is what it should look like when you have set-up your blog correctly.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2013-02-27-authorship-test-620x282.png" alt="Google Authorship Test" /> click to enlarge image
And that's about it. I recently found a great community on Google+ called <a href="https://plus.google.com/communities/104474428845467390263/stream/f6a897a4-219f-46a8-ac7c-fa6b1189a343" target="_blank">Google Authorship &amp; Author Rank</a>, which I would suggest you join if you have any questions or have other information to share.
Do you have any more interesting tips about Google Authorship on a WordPress.com blog?

How To Set up Google Authorship on a WordPress.com Blog

niam-brown

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/buildyourowncms-620x356.jpg" alt="build your own CMS?" />
I had a recent conversation with a developer at a web agency. He told me this, “We've been using Joomla, but we're not really satisfied with it. I think we might just make our own CMS.” I understand where they're coming from. As an agency, they are committed to providing their customers with high quality websites. They want their clients to be able to maintain those websites with ease. It would seem that making their own CMS might be a good choice. But is it really?

It's a great question. In fact, there are quite a few agencies, mid-sized firms, and other organizations that might want to make their own CMS. We're going to break the question down and submit a suggestion. The bottom line is this: you probably don't want to build your own CMS.
Here is our rationale.
<h2>Customize, don't innovate.</h2>
If you have the skills required to build your own CMS, you probably have the skills to modify an existing open-source CMS. Doing so would save the hundreds of hours that you would spend if you were to start from scratch. Plus, you would be able to ride upon the shared knowledge of millions of current users for help, insight, advice, and tips. Open source CMS are highly customizable. Take Joomla, for example. You can use Joomla as the basis for a souped-up and customized version that better meets your needs. WordPress allows for the same level of adaptation. When you build your own CMS, you're going to be all alone. Instead of a innovating a brand new CMS, customize an existing one. More power. Less work. Better ROI.
<h2>Survey the options before going it alone.</h2>
There are a myriad of CMS options that may do exactly what you want a CMS to do. “We can't find one that meets our needs” is a complaint of some potential DIYers. I'm skeptical. There are thousands of CMS, ranging from backyard brews to vast enterprise powerhouses. There are CMS that can mange your newsletters, track your Facebook ROI, autotweet blog updates, and just maybe serve you breakfast in bed. To claim that there isn't one that meets the need is to claim that you've surveyed and reviewed thousands of CMS. Keep looking. You may find that the ROI of finding and then paying for a big, powerful proprietary CMS is far better than the ROI of making your own.
<h2>Can you keep up with change?</h2>
Making a CMS isn't a one-and-done kind of thing. That CMS is your baby. You've got to take care of it. The digital world is constantly evolving. In order to be truly effective, your CMS must adapt to meet the changes.This is a process that requires a lot of time and effort. Many of the large CMS are on 2-year upgrade cycles. Is it worth your time to create a CMS that demands constant improvement? Adapting a CMS to meet the needs of a changing technology environment is tough work. Wouldn't it be better to buy a CMS or  to make changes to an existing open-source CMS? Most companies come to understand that the ROI of a roll your own CMS is pretty dismal.
<h2>Consider the cost.</h2>
As mentioned before, undertaking a CMS project is a big deal. You may create the world's next WordPress. But is that what you need to be doing right now? Before you make your own CMS, just count the cost and make sure it's worth it.
And if you do decide to make your own, please let us know. We'd love to check it out.

Should You Build Your Own CMS?

The Adobe Digital Marketing Summit is one of the largest (if not the largest) digital marketing summits out there and is, in my opinion, one of the best to attend if you want to stay on top of the trends happening in the industry. Adobe has become the top contender in the digital marketing arena and their products show their ability to not only stay current with customer needs but also to innovate and create new ways to position products and services.
The Digital Marketing Summit is set to be held in beautiful Salt Lake City, UT from March 4-8, 2013. If <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/adobe-kicks-off-the-digital-marketing-summit-in-style/">last years event</a> was any indication, this is going to be one heck of a conference.
<h2>Speakers</h2>
Speaking at this year's summit will be:
<h3>Felix Baumgartner</h3>
The Austrian skydiver and daredevil that set the world record for skydiving 39 kilometres reaching an estimated speed of 1,342 km per hour on the 14th of October 2012 and the first person to break the sound barrier without the assistance of vehicular power. He did this by jumping from a helium balloon in the stratosphere to Earth. This event was the most watched live broadcast ever on YouTube.
<h3>Adam Bain</h3>
Adam is the President of Global Revenue for Twitter, Inc. and former CTO of Fox Interactive Media. He is also a Director of The Advertising Council, Inc and former Director of the Interactive Advertising Bureau Inc.
<h3>John Battelle</h3>
John is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor and author. He helped launch Wired in the 1990's and launched The Industry Standard during the dot-com boom. In 2005, he founded Federated Media Publishing, now one of the top properties on the web.
<h3>Sal Khan</h3>
Sal is the founder of the Khan Academy, a non-profit with the  mission of providing free, high-quality education to  “anyone, anywhere” within the world. In 2012, Time magazine named Khan in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Amongst these speakers are a number of customer speakers who will share their success stories. A full breakdown can be found here: <a href="http://summit.adobe.com/speakers.html">Summit Speakers</a>.
The summit is comprised of two days of pre-conference training, followed by a full agenda which runs March 6-7. A full list of topics can be found here: <a href="http://summit.adobe.com/agenda.html">Summit Agenda</a>.
Following the Summit will be the infamous <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-summit-bash-at-the-adobe-digital-marketing-summit/">Summit Bash</a> with headliners, <a href="http://theblackkeys.com">The Black Keys</a>.
Need more reasons?
[media url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgc94nYA1HM” width=”600″ height=”400″]
Check out the <a href="http://summit.adobe.com">Summit website</a> for more details and if you are attending, see you there!

What You Can Expect from the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2013

eZ Systems is the company behind the open source publishing platform, eZ Publish and we recently had a chance to interview their VP of Community, Nicolas Pastorino. Mr. Pastorino has been with eZ Systems for many years and offers up some interesting insights into the company, the products and the future of the platform.
<h2>The Interview</h2>
Please tell us a bit about yourself, your background and how you ended up with eZ Systems.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nicolas-pastorino-ez-conference-2011-250x165.jpg" alt="Nicolas Pastorino eZ Conference 2011" />I have seven years of experience in Open-source software edition and Content Management, with eZ Systems since 2005, in international context (Western Europe, USA, Norway) as Consultant, Trainer, Software Engineer, in Product Management, and now as Vice President Community at eZ Systems. My role today is to manage the eZ Publish Community (43 000+ members), intensifying and structuring it around our product and mission. I am educated from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) in Lyon, France and Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet (NTNU) in Norway in the fields of Telecommunications, Software, System and Network Engineering. When not happily busy with the eZ Publish Community, I can be met in the mountains of our world, rock &amp; ice climbing or ski-touring. As a voracious user of those, I can name a few of my social media profiles, feel free to get in touch:
<ul>
<li>Twitter  <a href="http://twitter.com/jeanvoye">http://twitter.com/jeanvoye</a></li>
<li>Google+  <a href="http://bit.ly/nicolas-on-gplus">http://bit.ly/nicolas-on-gplus</a></li>
</ul>
For those who are unaware, what is eZ Publish?
eZ Publish is now dubbed eZ Publish 5 Platform, an Experience Management Platform for online services. Based on a strong legacy of high-end Content Management, we capitalized on our field experience to transform our flagship product into a centerpiece, a platform for organizations to create fully-fledged online services. All elements a UXP (User Experience Platform), notably Marketing Automation, are served by means of built-in features, or connectors to external products and services, tightly integrated. This allows to implement end-to-end CXM (Customer Experience Management) stories.
The base product is open-source, distributed as “eZ Publish Community Project” in its bleeding-edge version. The full Experience Management platform is distributed as part of a subscription, packaging all experience management features &amp; services around the powerful content management engine.
What types of verticals see the most value in using your product? What kind of adoption rates have you seen in the various verticals?
eZ is historically strong in the media vertical, many of the leading publishers in Europe having chosen eZ Publish as their standard technological platform today. But other verticals like Finance and Telecoms have been ramping-up significantly in the past years, finding eZ Publish Platform as solid, secure and flexible as their usage demands.
<h4>What do you think makes eZ Publish such a strong publishing platform?</h4>
Here are the key points in my opinion:
<ul>
<li>The tight integration of several Experience Management features and services, based on a proven application framework,</li>
<li>It now embeds a rock-solid, modern, well-spread and easy-to-use application development framework: Symfony 2 + a brand new Content Management PHP/REST API,</li>
<li>Strong and long-run experience in the high-end, demanding publishing world,</li>
<li>Innovative and vast feature-set of our content management engine,</li>
<li>Extremely extensible platform, easy integration in large IT systems,</li>
<li>Power of a professional open-source community providing a dramatically extended product portfolio,</li>
<li>Large partner network, meaning tenfold expertise spread across the globe.</li>
</ul>
<h4>What separates your product from the other products in the market?</h4>
Here is the synthetic view on our competitive advantages:
<ul>
<li>Freedom and Openness at heart,</li>
<li>“Platform” rather than shrink-wrapped, constrained product,</li>
<li>Existing tight integration of the required bits to build online services (Marketing Automation, Analytics, eCommerce, Recommendation to name a few),</li>
<li>State of the art scalable architecture and code-base,</li>
<li>Both on-premise and cloud versions available.</li>
</ul>
<h4>The CMS market is a rapidly changing one, what trends do you see coming down the pipeline?</h4>
Content Management is becoming a commodity, we can hardly speak about a dedicated market for this anymore. It might be a touch market-overshooting, but today is about building compelling online services, touching customer journeys, underpinned by a flexible and cohesive technology platform, supporting the increasing, demanding needs of online marketing teams, in any vertical. Silos are steadily taken down between the IT departments and the Marketing departments, leading to joint reflections and decisions on their tools, the technology, and cost-efficiency is more actual than ever: maintaining multiple vendor-relationships to be able to run one's business is decreasingly appealing, they need few, tightly integrated, future-proof tools to do their job.
The CMS market is merging into the bigger one of Experience Management, opening-up the M&amp;A and alliances mercato, placing the “Experience Architects” (the ones who care about their end-users' faint-smiling out of pleasure when using their service) in key decisional positions, even in the traditionally less “fancy” industries, or in case of internal non-public projects.
Continuity with the “past” needs to be enforce though, whereby
<ul>
<li>still rock-solid and innovative content management features,</li>
<li>native multichannel support,</li>
<li>compelling end-user experience in administration interfaces,</li>
</ul>
still need to be continuously improved, not to forget the constantly increasing amount of data (big data) that must not hamper performances in any way.
To adapt and anticipate on this change, eZ Publish Platform is positioned as the “Create Deliver Optimize” TM platform, solving the “CXM challenge”, in other words the “How to create a compelling seamless experience” challenge.
<h4>If you were asked to define a CMS, how would you do so?</h4>
I think this definition is transforming a lot nowadays, this question being related to the evolution of the CMS market. A piece of a whole…larger thing, like an experience management platform for example. By itself, as a stand-alone piece, the use-cases are getting more and more limited for CMSes. Today, even somebody's simple blog requires more than advanced content management features. Value resides in the quality and relevancy of the services provided in the product (less in the software itself), as much as in the quality of the integration of these services with the base.
<h4>How do you see social media changing the way publishers interact / share their content online and how is eZ Publish capitalizing on this?</h4>
My 4 year experience in Community Management led me to understand that social media, on top of nurturing live exchanges, represents a set of key two-ways distribution channels for content marketers. Not only are they an efficient way to rapidly diffuse their content with great “ripple out” effect, but they instantly “close the loop”, providing immediate, direct feedback to the author, who can subsequently, on the fly, optimize their post. The “O” in our “Create Deliver Optimize” TM  paradigm.
eZ capitalizes on this by…understanding what online marketers, content marketers and community managers do to be successful in their jobs, and baking the required tools within our Experience Management platform. Sounds trivial right? Still, simple things like that make our products far better and help us focus. Note: this does not prevent us to embed anticipative features that are not yet needed by the vast majority of our users ?
<h4>From a marketing perspective, what advantages does your product give marketers that they cannot find elsewhere?</h4>
We now provide, as value-adding layers on top of a very powerful and flexible (scalable, extensible) content management engine, unique Analytics and Optimization capabilities. In other words, the large spectrum of tools and services that are required by online marketing activities are integrated into the platform. The Experience Management platform.
<h4>Clearly eZ Publish has a strong presence in Europe, how has it fared in North America and other geographies?</h4>
Indeed, eZ has a large footprint in Europe and we continue to develop it. But North America and Asia-Pacific are in the limelight as emerging regions, very clearly, slightly more nascent markets for us compared to Europe. Plans are already under execution for tapping into these areas and intensively grow them to exceed what we have achieved on the old continent. To be noted: we have had active presence in Japan since a long time, this market having matured a lot throughout the years.
<h4>What do you see for the future of your product?</h4>
We will continue extending the rock-solid WCM platform to fully integrate Customer Experience features and services, including Analytics, Marketing Automation, Recommendation. eZ Publish 5 Platform will become a reference product for high-end marketing-savvy businesses, and digital services of all kinds, in the “Internet of Things”. This positioning comes as a complement, and not a replacement of the high-end WCM projects that we are successfully addressing today.
This comes along with diligent, constant care to usability (major enhancements coming-up) as well as scalability, whereby eZ Publish 5 Platform will be the Experience Management tool that can handle big content, big data.
— end —
Thank you Mr. Pastorino for the time you took with us today, we appreciate it. If you would like to learn more about eZ Systems or their products, visit the <a href="http://www.ez.no">eZ Systems website</a>. You can also check out our <a href="/ez-publish-review/">eZ Publish review</a> to get a birds eye view of their product.

Interview with Nicolas Pastorino of eZ Systems

Squarespace 6 was released to the public last year on July 17th and was the winner of our 2012 Critics Choice Awards for <a href="/peoples-choice-winner-for-best-website-builder-is/" target="_blank">Best Website Builder</a>. Over 50 new features were added in the Squarespace 6 release, but there was one outstanding feature that everyone was waiting for: Squarespace Commerce. On Valentine's day 2013 they finally released it so we decided to do a new Squarespace Review.
<blockquote>“The ability to sell goods from Squarespace has been the most consistently requested feature throughout our history. We’re thrilled to be able to release a commerce offering we’re proud of.” – Anthony Casalena, CEO and Founder of Squarespace.</blockquote>
In light of all these recent changes since our last Squarespace review back in 2010 we have prepared an updated review, but first of all here is the current demo video for you to get a basic idea of what it can do:
<h2>Introduction Video</h2>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/45734056?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<h2>System Requirements</h2>
Unlike some other CMS reviews, like our WordPress or Drupal ones, for example, for this review, there was no need to download any applications to install on our servers. In fact they stated that they do not plan to release such a service. Instead they have streamlined their code to work efficiently with their own high performance cloud system and you do everything via your browser. Say goodbye to maintenance and updates taking up your time, Squarespace does that for you. You will, however, need to make sure your browser is compatible with Squarespace, which by the looks of things just means keeping it up-to-date (although at the moment they support both IE 9 and 10 for both viewing and editing). You can use Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer or Firefox to work with Squarespace 6.
However for editing there are some additional system requirements:
<ol>
<li>Cookies must be enabled for login purposes.</li>
<li>JavaScript must be enabled for the site manager.</li>
<li>Avoid running JavaScript blocking programs, such as anti-virus software.</li>
</ol>
<h2>New Features in version 6</h2>
I want to cover some of the new features that came with the Squarespace 6 release before I move onto the commerce piece of this review.  I'm not going over the reporting feature as they are hard to demonstrate when you are the only one viewing the page. The option is available on the main menu and looking through it is fairly self explanatory, so I'll move on.
<h3>The Blogging &amp; Layout Engine</h3>
In Squarespace 6 they did an overhaul of the blogging engine, along with a new commenting system and multiple author support. You can change the way your blog is set-up via the ‘Blog Settings' button, such as changing the name of the blog (we called it ‘Journal'). This is a very intuitive feature that I really like about Squarespace 6. There are also 20 new templates you can use for your blog in this latest release. When I first tried creating a blog post it took me a moment to understand how to add images. My screen is quite big and I didn't see the plus symbol at the bottom of the big text box, or realise what it meant. This button lets you add ‘Blocks' from images to quotes, to video and code; you get a lot of handy options to build your post quickly. Once I figured this out it was fairly self explanatory exploring the rest of the block options listed below.
<h4>Editing a Post and Adding a Block:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-blocks.png" alt="squarespace-review-blocks" />
The new LayoutEngine lets you drop images onto your image blocks and once they are embedded you can drag them around to rearrange them in your post. The only thing I will say is that I was expecting their Media Management to be separate. I found myself looking for it in the menu structure and I couldn't find what I had seen in the videos until I tried adding an image block to a blog post.
<h4>Editing a Post and Adding Images:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-layoutengine.png" alt="squarespace-review-layoutengine" />
<h3>Social Network Integration </h3>
The other great thing about Squarespace is the social integration. There are again a wide variety social media you can tap into as you can see below. Whilst you build your website you are offered many ways to integrate your site into the social networks you connect to your Squarespace account.
<h4>Adding Social Network Accounts:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-social-networks.png" alt="squarespace-review-social-networks" />
<h3>The Commerce Engine</h3>
To get to the Commerce section of Squarespace 6 you click on the dollar symbol on the left-hand side menu. This gives you a 4 step ‘Getting Started' process to get your store up and running quickly with options to: add products, select shipping options for physical products, connecting your Stripe account so you can accept payments and making your store live to the public.
<h4>Getting Started with the Commerce Engine:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-commerce-start.png" alt="squarespace-review-commerce-start" />
Getting Started is just the first item in the Commerce sub-menu. This gives you a way to manage your store and track your orders, inventory, shipping details, coupons for special offers, tax details, handling notifications and other settings. Everything you need to run your store effectively. So lets start with creating products. Before we can add products we need a product page to hold them. I didn't realise this and so got the following error when I tried to just add a product under Inventory.
<h4>Inventory (Before Adding Products):</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-no-product-page-error.png" alt="squarespace-review-no-product-page-error" />
To do this we need to go back to the content manager. Squarespace even provides you with a content specific tip when you over your mouse over the big ‘a' representing the content manger on the main menu. This is an unexpected but appreciated way to help you navigate the process of setting up your store.
<h4>Inventory Screen:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-add-product-page-tip.png" alt="squarespace-review-add-product-page-tip" />
When you click on the content manager icon you then need to click on the ‘Add Page' option under the ‘Top Navigation' list. This will give you a range of page types and in this case we want to click on the ‘Product' option.
<h4>Creating a new Page:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-create-new-page.png" alt="squarespace-review-create-new-page" />
You will be asked to enter a name for the page, which will correspond to the search friendly URL it will create for the page, although if you wish you can alter this to be different than the page's title if you want. It also gives you the option to set this page as the homepage of your website.
<h4>Configuring Products:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-page-title.png" alt="squarespace-review-page-title" />
Now that we have the product page in place we can create products. When the products page is created is creates a new option under the Top Navigation in the Content Manager called ‘Products', which has similar options to the Inventory page in the Commerce section.
<h4>Adding a Product:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-content-add-product.png" alt="squarespace-review-content-add-product" />
Since you are taken to this page immediately after creating the Products Page you might as well create your products from there, but you could equally go back into Commerce menu to do the same. Whatever menu you choose however, you will see on the top right a button called ‘Add Product', that is what you need to click.
<h4>Adding Products into Inventory:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-inventory-empty.png" alt="squarespace-review-inventory-empty" />
You will then be given a choice between creating a physical product that has to be shipped, or a digital product. With a digital product the customer will get a download link sent to them via email that is valid for 24 hours. In this review I'm going to create a physical product so I can cover the shipping options as well. You then get a screen where you can edit all the details of your product. Across the top on the right there are a number of different steps, the first of which ‘Item' lets you describe your product, add images, add categories for your product (see bottom left) and an options to make the product visible or not in your store.
<h4>Editing a Product:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-edit-product-complete.png" alt="squarespace-review-edit-product-complete" />
You can set the price here as well, but if you plan to have more than one variant, in size or colour for example, you might want to wait until the next step. When you hit save you go to the ‘Pricing &amp; Variants' step. In the example below I added a column called ‘Colour' as my example product comes in black and Mahogany. You can do this by clicking the ‘+' symbol on the right of the column headers. I then set the price and stock details for each variant by clicking on the ‘+' on the bottom left underneath the headers and filling out the different colour variants.
<h4>Editing a Product Variant:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-edit-product-variants.png" alt="squarespace-review-edit-product-variants" />
The next stage just lets you add rich text notes for additional information., there isn't much more to say so I'll skip over this stage. Next comes the step to set the URL address of the product. This seems to have an issue because it is set to ‘new-product' by default and you can't seem to edit this, regardless of what you set your product page URL to be. I had removed the ‘new' from ‘new-product' in my product page, but found I could not do this here. I was able to type something after ‘new-product' but it wasn't ideal. It also seemed to put a space between ‘new-product' and what I entered but it is just a display issue (when I later checked the product once it was live, the space was gone and ‘new-products' was replaced with just ‘products', as I had set it up on the products page, which could cause some confusion).
<h4>Adding a URL and Image to your Products:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-edit-product-url.png" alt="squarespace-review-edit-product-url" />
You then have the option to publish your product via your social connections, and if you haven't set any up it gives you the option to do so. You will need to make sure your product is saved before you navigate away from this product wizard. When you have completed filling out the product details hit ‘Save and Publish'. You can then go to your inventory to view the product.
<h4>Inventory with added products:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-inventory-products.png" alt="squarespace-review-inventory-products" />
If you made it available so people can find it on your store then it will also show on your products page. If you click on the product it will look like this:
<h4>The End Result:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-live-product.png" alt="squarespace-review-live-product" />
Now we want to move onto shipping options. Click on the Commerce symbol on the main menu and then select Shipping. On the top right is a button you want to click called ‘Add Shipping Method'.
<h4>The Shipping Portion of the Commerce Engine:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-shipping-empty.png" alt="squarespace-review-shipping-empty" />
You then get two options for shipping: ‘Flat Rate' whch lets you set a single price for shipping costs, or ‘Depending on Weight' that will determine the cost based on how heavy a product is.
<h4>Adding shipping options:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-shipping-types1.png" alt="squarespace-review-shipping-types1" />
I've chosen the second shipping option, as the flat rate option is pretty straight forward and most of it's functionally is the same as the weight based shipping option. You get the option to set weight ranges and the rate each one will cost. You can add more option by clicking the ‘+' symbol below the first two weight ranges it creates for you by default. You have to set a name to determine what postal method this delivery option will use, such as FedEx. This is a mandatory field.
<h4>Editing the weight range rates for shipping:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-shipping-formular.png" alt="squarespace-review-shipping-formula" />
Then there is another step at the top right called ‘Country Restrictions' which lets you say which countries you will deliver too. Remember that you can create more than one shipping method, so you could create different rates this way for USA, europe and worldwide, for example, if you need different pricing for each of them. Once you have saved all your option is will show up in a list under the Commerce Shipping menu.
<h4>Setting Country restrictions:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-shipping-country.png" alt="squarespace-review-shipping-country" />
I want to briefly cover the rest of the options under Commerce. You have the option to make your own coupons for special promotions and sales etc. They actually give you a vast range of types to choose from, that gives you a lot of power to promote your  products. They then give you even more choices, whether you want to offer free shipping, a percentage discount or a flat dollar discount.
<h4>Creating Coupons in the Commerce Engine:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-add-coupons.png" alt="squarespace-review-add-coupons" />
Moving onto to Commerce Taxes. You can set how much tax will be charged for your products on a state-by-state basis (and is therefore limited to the USA only). They also give you the option to charge sales tax on the shipping costs.
<h4>Tax Rule Editing:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-add-taxes.png" alt="squarespace-review-add-taxes" />
We now come to Email Notifications. This is where you can customise the text that will be sent out to customers, including header and footer options. There are two message templates you can tweak for emails that are sent to the customer regarding order confirmation and shipping. I did notice a little issue here. If I click on email notifications and then cancel without doing anything, and error will pop up asking to save or discard changes when none had been made. I found discarding didn't do anything untoward as far as I could tell so I just used that.
<h4>Setting up Email Notifications:</h4>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-email-notifications.png" alt="squarespace-review-email-notifications" />
The last menu under Commerce is Settings. From here you can configure the setup of your Stripe payment account, support email address, express checkout option and setting the shopping cart to a dark or light style, depending on what colour scheme the reset of your website is using. You can integrate your MailChip newsletter account, get stock level alerts to remind you when to stock up on physical goods. Lastly it lets you write your own terms of service, as well as privacy and returns policies. If you judge your settings and notifications just right, you can communicate your style and values in a more interesting way.
<h3>The Final verdict:</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-review-support.png" alt="squarespace-review-support" />
This was my first time using Squarespace so I had a fresh eye that had not been accustomed to earlier releases. I can see why millions have flocked to Squarespace, because you can create any kind of website regardless of technical ability.  The only downside for me was that the payment option they use for Commerce is restricted to the USA only. It's not clear if this is because of limitations in Squarespace 6 itself, or due to <a href="http://stripe.com" target="_blank">Stripe</a>, the payment vendor they are using. I also can't get <a href="http://lastpass.com/" target="_blank">LastPass</a> to work with the login form whilst using Chrome, my preferred browser. This has me going back and forth to my emails to find the password each time I want to login. However I think the issues I've found are minor details that are possible to address in the future, so I'm willing enough to over look them until they broaden the scope of Commerce to include payments to Denmark, which is where I live.
Squarespace caters to developers too, so you can delve deeper into it to get even more functionality and customization. As a developer, you can build your site for free until you go live. Whether you are a developer or not after the trial the monthly subscription cost varies from $8/month up to $30/month, depending on which of the 3 plans you choose and if you pay monthly or annually. So for the same monthly cost of a low bandwidth Virtual Private Server, which you would have to administer yourself, you really can have your cake and eat it with Squarespace 6.

Squarespace Review - the Long Awaited Commerce Solution

You may have asked this question before:  “What's the best CMS for beginners?” Maybe someone has asked you this question. The question isn't easy to answer, though. We need to understand what the person asking is wanting to do. Keep a blog? Advertise their photography business? Sell widgets? We'd like to help answer this question, and in order to keep the net as broad as possible, we're going to say “everything.” Here is the question we will try to answer in this article:What CMS will enable the complete newbie to do just about anything — except of course write code and do complicated design stuff?We suggest that there are at least six qualifications that this CMS should fulfill:<ol><li>Low Cost. Just in case this is a hobby, we don't want to break the bank on massive startup costs and killer hosting fees.</li><li>Easy to start. Launching the website or blog should be just about as easy as joining Facebook.</li><li>Design-friendly. Just in case our newbie friend doesn't know what “Photoshop” is the CMS must be able to pick up the slack.</li><li>Quick learning curve. What's the user interface like? Does it have the shocking complexity of a jet airline control panel, or does it have the slick intuitiveness of an iPhone?</li><li>Help. When you get stuck, you're going to need help. We wanted to make sure that users had it when they needed it.</li><li>Scalable. Let's say the beginner evolves over time into a power user. Will he be stuck on the training wheels of his baby CMS or will he be able to take the training wheels off?</li></ol>Those are six rather tough qualifications. We surveyed the playing field to find out who qualified. This post does not discuss our process of elimination. Suffice it to say that a lot of site builders eliminated themselves from the start thanks to fat fees. It's always hard to compete with free. Plus, there were some CMSs that were designed for beginners, but provided approximately zero options and customizability. Then there were some CMSs that had downright frightening user interfaces.An unnumbered qualification of our CMS selection has to do with longevity. Since longevity is hard to predict, we made our selection based on popularity. Choosing a CMS isn't a popularity contest, of course, but we wanted to make sure that the CMSs we recommended were going to be around for a while. Widespread adoption of a CMS is one indicator of its potential lifespan. Thus, the two CMSs surveyed below have a high likelihood of being around for a few more years at least.Rather than take you through the laborious process of picking, choosing, and eliminating, we're going to present you with the two winners.<h2>Weebly</h2><a target="_blank" href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a> oozes with awesomeness for a lot of reasons:<ol><li>Low Cost. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a> is free. Can't really beat that. If you want  That's going to cost.</li><li>Easy to start. You want Facebook signup? You got it.</li><li>Design-friendly. You've got hundreds of awesome templates to choose from. Now you can fake looking like you're a professional designer.</li><li>Quick learning curve. Anyone can manage the WISYWYG editor. Easy. Plus, the integrated hosting deal really simplifies things.</li><li>Help. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a> has a nice help center that is simple and easy to navigate. There aren't a whole lot of video tutorials, but there are plenty of screenshots.</li><li>Scalable. On the scalable side of things, Weebly also lets you play around with the source code and fiddle with SEO settings. The system isn't set up to cater to the HTML heads, but there is enough freedom to have some fun. The drawback is that Weebly lacks the rich library of features offered by its bigger brother alternatives. Do note, please, that Weebly is not open source.</li></ol>Whether it's for a blog, an e-commerce site, or that fashion consulting business you've always wanted to start, Weebly's got your back. Check out our <a href="/weebly-review/">Weebly review</a> from July of last year.<h2>WordPress</h2>Yes, you were expecting that we would feature this as a winner. How could we not? WordPress is the most popular open-source CMS on the market, and there's a good reason for that.<ol><li>Low Cost. Free. Obviously, you may drop a few bucks for a template, hosting, and the like, but the price structure is just right for such a powerful CMS.</li><li>Easy to start. Okay, Weebly's got WordPress taken on this one, but not by a whole lot. If you opt for a self-hosted site, you've got to jump through a few loops that may frighten the complete newbie.</li><li>Design-friendly. The themes available to WordPress users are virtually endless. Design ineptitude is no problem. Just find yourself a pretty theme, install, and go. You're set.</li><li>Quick learning curve. The WordPress interface is clean and simple. We like clean and simple. Even Weebly looks cluttered by comparison. Most newbies that I've tutored on WordPress are able to jump in and start publishing posts within about 2.2 minutes. As the user continues his or her WordPress journey, the knowledge deepens and the experience is more enriched.</li><li>Help. WordPress has a community of devotees that are chattering away on forums all day long. In my experience, the forums are very responsive. Even some themes have their own forums. Even the theme forums that I have tested have been very quick to respond.</li><li>Scalable. Here is where WordPress clearly trumps Weebly. You don't see many professional developers, designers, and programmers extolling the virtues of Weebly. Of course there are many virtues of Weebly, but the pros don't flock there. Instead, they sing the praises of WordPress. In the words of one WordPress guru that I know, “You can do anything you want with WordPress.” That's just about true.</li></ol>You may have a favorite CMS that you recommend. By all means, please recommend it in the comments below. All things considered, however, these are two safe recommendations to give to those who want a DIY website that's easy to make.

What's the Best CMS for Beginners?

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

#ffffff

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elcomcms.jpg" alt="elcom8.1" />
Elcom just announced the release of ElcomCMS 8.1, the latest version of their .NET enterprise web CMS. ElcomCMS is the Australia-based company's core product. In June of 2012, they launched version 8.0. This latest upgrade contains features that help users meet accessibility requirements, collaborate on projects, organize and protect content, and improve social capabilities.

Elcom is a powerful CMS platform that targets the needs of mid-enterprise organizations. As an enterprise-level solution, it's far more than just a web CMS. It also assists companies in the development and management of intranets, portals, eCommerce, learning management, and online marketing.
<h2>What's New in ElcomCMS 8.1?</h2>
WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliance
Perhaps the greatest benefit of the new version is that it allows organizations to better achieve WCAG regulatory requirements. ElcomCMS has many Australian clients. The Australian government recently <a href="http://webguide.gov.au/accessibility-usability/accessibility/" target="_blank">mandated</a> that all agencies must update government websites to acheieve level AA conformance by December 2014. ElcomCMS 8.1 offers as-you-type accessibility features and improved reporting functionality, making it easier for companies to meet the new regulations.
New Task Manager
The Task Manager Module is the core of ElcomCMS. Users can set deadlines, assign jobs, keep up with tasks, and better acheive progress from this centralized module.

Compare Versions Feature
Collaboration takes a big step forward in 8.1. For this reason, “compare versions” features is a great improvement. Users can view two versions at once, and see all highlighted changes at a glance.
Dynamic Widget Library
Dynamic widgets allows users to aggregate content feeds on their sites. Users can easily create news feeds, article feeds, document lists, image galleries, and asset libraries. The Dynamic Widget Library allows administrators to view all dynamic widgets that are used on a site, and modify their settings.

Taxonomy Management
ElcomCMS is a great tool for businesses that need high levels of content organization and structure. Taxonomy Management gets an upgrade with tag, edit, and reuse features.
Improved Social Capability
As social gains importance in CMSs, Elcom has stepped up the game. Version 8.1 improves upon the already-powerful <a href="/elcom-8-will-focus-on-social-intranets/" target="_blank">social capabilities of version 8</a>, and <a href="/elcom-7-5-brings-social-functionality-and-more/" target="_blank">7.5</a>.
Overall, ElcomCMS 8.1 provides a greater degree of collaboration, compliance, and other features that will help organizations already using the product and attract more potential customers. To find out more about Elcom, visit <a href="https://www.elcomCMS.com">www.elcomCMS.com</a>.
<a href="https://www.elcomcms.com/News-and-Events/News/PR_elcomCMS8-1" target="_blank">View the official press release for ElcomCMS 8.1.</a>
<a href="https://www.elcomcms.com/News-and-Events/Events/elcomCMS8-1/elcomCMS8-1" target="_blank">Register for a webinar walkthrough of the new version, hosted by Elcom.</a>
The following video provides an overview of Elcom.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUNqeBLrjmc]

Elcom Version 8.1 Released - Significant Upgrade and Improved Features

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/website-maintenance-620x442.jpg" alt="website building" />
Open source platforms such as <a href="http://wordpress.org">WordPress</a> and <a href="http://drupal.org">Drupal</a> are becoming more and more popular because of the ease of their content management systems, impressive and affordable themes, variety of options and plug-ins and access to numerous “communities” and forums. Often, website designers can build websites using open source content management systems at a fraction of the time and cost of hand coding HTML or using some proprietary content management systems. This makes them attractive and affordable options for budget-conscious businesses. If you are building websites using an open source platform, consider offering your clients a maintenance agreement to prevent some common problems:
Security Updates
Open source platforms generally require a significant number of ongoing security updates. Remember, the average person does not know or understand all that is happening “behind the scenes” of a website. They often think the site is just “there” in cyberspace. If security updates are not downloaded in a timely manner or kept up to date, the website can become a haven for hackers. It is important for you, as the website designer and programmer, to ensure the latest security updates are implemented on all your client websites. And, if Google feels the website has been compromised in any way, they will indicate it by posting, <a href="http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;ei=y6kbUeCWBYj88gS2uIGADA&amp;answer=190597&amp;?sa=X&amp;ved=0CDEQpwgwAA">“This Site May Be Compromised”</a> in search engine results. This can be quite embarrassing, to say the least!
Updated Versions
Open source platforms tend to have frequent version updates. Once again, unless your client is website and IT savvy, they may not know or understand how to keep up with necessary version updates.
Plug-ins
Plug-ins allow a website to perform above and beyond the “norm” but they must be kept updated as well. And, sometimes, a better or more advanced plug-in becomes available which may be a more suitable option than a current plug-in. Although very easy for a website designer or programmer to understand and implement, the average person is probably not going to be familiar with the various plug-in updates and options.
Backup
Most website designers and programmers back up their websites using <a href="http://spanning.com/backup/demo/">cloud-based services like spanning.com</a>. When a website is being maintained by a professional provider, all of the files are securely backed-up to prevent data loss. Therefore, if the website does crash for some reason, it can be quickly and easily restored.
A website designer described an experience where her client did not want to purchase a maintenance agreement for a mere $40.00 a month, stating they would keep it “updated” themselves. She gave them a log in and quick tutorial after the site went “live”. The client left the site in cyberspace for months without logging in to it. So, no software or security updates were made, and Google placed it on their “compromised” list because it appeared to have fallen victim to hackers. In the end, everything was able to be fixed. However, it took more time and money to update and “recover” the site than it would have if the client had agreed to the $40.00/month maintenance agreement and allowed an expert to keep up with all of the updates.
So, if you are planning to use open source, strongly encourage your clients to engage in a website maintenance agreement. Otherwise, if all they plan to do is let the website “sit” in cyberspace, then building it in HTML may be the best option.
Gina Smith writes freelance articles for magazines, online outlets and publications. Smith covers the latest topics in the business, golf, tourism, technology and entertainment industries.

Website Maintenance Agreements: Why They are Important for Open Source Websites

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sharepoint-620x350.jpg" alt="sharepoint" /> Recently, Chris Wright announced a <a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/prediction-sharepoint-will-disappear-very-soon-019572.php" target="_blank">prediction</a>:  “SharePoint Will Disappear Very Soon.” His claim was, of course, provocative and attention-grabbing. As it turns out, his prediction merely centered upon a simple issue of wording: “Let me explain, I’m referring to the word “SharePoint,”  the name, the brand we have grown accustomed to over the years. I’m not talking about the product, which I’m sure will be with us and going strong for many years to come.”
Is he right? Is “SharePoint” going away?

Declaring the demise of the SharePoint brand is like predicting that Apple computer will stop imprinting their products with an Apple, or  declaring that Google will change its name to something entirely different. After all, SharePoint is the technology engine that runs many corporate environments. It's a pretty big deal.
<h2>A Brief History of SharePoint</h2>
The original emphasis of SharePoint was, of course, integration and conslidation of work-sharing, organization, social activity, cloud-based app. In a word, SharePoint offered information management on an exponential scale. At the same time, SharePoint has necessitated its fair share of improvements. Products like <a href="/smartlogic-announce-availability-of-semaphore-for-sharepoint-2013-as-well-as-support-for-microsoft-office-365/" target="_blank">Semaphore</a> have helped to enhance SharePoint's power and enhance its capabilities.
To this point, SharePoint has been an evolving and ever-growing product in the lineup of corporate power products. Is it too early to publish the brand name obituary?
<h2>SharePoint 2013…and Beyond</h2>
SharePoint is still strong, still powerful, and with SharePoint 2013, it's growing stronger and more powerful still. There are some major improvements in SharePoint 2013, such as:
<ul>
<li>Streamlined user interface. This needed to be done. A trimmed down menu and wide-open UI make the whole process of building, integrating, working and networking much more appealing. The most pleasing change? Mobile-friendly views.</li>
<li>Better app building. The SharePoint app builder has been beefed up, making it easier for apps to be built and published to the SharePoint store. You can even pick your language — HTML, JavaScript, .NET, and go to.</li>
<li>More social. If you feel like you need more social integration, SharePoint has that, too. It's bigger newsfeed visibility (thanks to Yammer) provides your personalized newsfeed to give you all the social info you yearn for.</li>
<li>Better search results. SharePoint has been hammered in the past for its dismal search results. Thanks to some tweaks, the search function is much improved.</li>
</ul>
These improvements and others lead us to question Wright's claim. While Office 365 is big and strong, it's not so big that it will swallow up SharePoint. With improvements on this scale in 2013, there's probably a lot more good things to come later on — the SharePoint label still attached.
<h2>Predictions, Anyone?</h2>
We're not in a prediction-making mode right now, but it does seem that SharePoint has solid footing in the market. It's so much bigger than a CMS, so much broader than a development platform, so much more powerful than a document storage site. Plus, it has a large and loyal following, even if its not quite as iconic as Apple's apple. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Predictions, anyone?

Is SharePoint Going Away?

<img style="max-width:525px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/525px-libreoffice_logo_with_background_svg.png" alt="525px-LibreOffice_Logo_with_background_svg" />If your business is looking to cut costs and reduce licensing fees, you might want to consider cost-cutting alternatives like the free office suite, <a href="http://www.libreoffice.org">LibreOffice</a>.  Not only is it feature-packed for a free office suite, it also offers connectivity options for tying into your existing (or future) content management system (CMS).
With their latest release, LibreOffice 4.0, which was just announced, the connectivity options and features this suite provides make it a great alternative to traditional office suites such as Microsoft Office.
Here is a list of some of the features within LibreOffice 4.0:
LibreOffice 4.0 offers a large number of new characteristics, which are listed on this page: <a href="https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes">https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes</a>.
<ul>
<li>Integration with several content and document management systems – including Alfresco, IBM FileNet P8, Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, Nuxeo, OpenText, SAP NetWeaver Cloud Service and others – through the CMIS standard.</li>
<li>Better interoperability with DOCX and RTF documents, thanks to several new features and improvements like the possibility of importing ink annotations and attaching comments to text ranges.</li>
<li>Possibility to import Microsoft Publisher documents, and further improvement of Visio import filters with the addition of 2013 version (just announced).</li>
<li>Additional UI incremental improvements, including Unity integration and support of Firefox Themes (Personas) to give LibreOffice a personalized look.</li>
<li>Introduction of the widget layout technique for dialog windows, which makes it easier to translate, resize and hide UI elements, reduces code complexity, and lays a foundation for a much improved user interface.</li>
<li>Different header and footer on the first page of a Writer document, without the need of a separate page style.</li>
<li>Several performance improvements to Calc, plus new features such as export of charts as images (JPG and PNG) and new spreadsheet functions as defined in ODF OpenFormula.</li>
<li>First release of Impress Remote Control App for Android, supported only on some Linux distributions. (The second release, coming soon, will be supported on all platforms: Windows, MacOS X and all Linux distros and binaries.)</li>
<li>Significant performance improvements when loading and saving many types of documents, with particular improvements for large ODS and XLSX spreadsheets and RTF files.</li>
<li>Improved code contribution thanks to Gerrit: a web based code review system, facilitating the task for projects using Git version control system (although this is not specific of LibreOffice 4.0, it has entered the production stage just before the 4.0 branch).</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>“LibreOffice 4.0 is a milestone in interoperability and an excellent foundation for our continued work to improve the User Interface,” explains Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board of Directors. “Our project is not only capable of attracting new developers on a regular basis, but it also creates a transparent platform for cooperation based on a strong Free Software ethos, where corporate sponsored and volunteer developers work to attain the same objective.”</blockquote>
So if you are in the market for a cost free alternative or a method of reducing your existing licensing fees but still need to retain interoperability with Microsoft Office formats and connectivity with your CMS, you should take a look at LibreOffice and see if it fits the needs of your organization.

Free Office Suite offers Content Management System Connectivity

CoreMedia has announced the latest release of their web content management platform, CoreMedia 7, which brings with it a host of new features and benefits for current and future customers.
CoreMedia 7 Key Features and Benefits:
<ul>
<li>Embrace a Mobile-first World – CoreMedia enhanced CoreMedia 7 with more advanced and comprehensive mobile publishing options than any other system on the market. Companies can create unified experiences across all mobile channels and delivery models – Web apps, native apps, responsive Web pages and legacy devices. CoreMedia 7 can adapt to any visitor on any channel, providing contextual and social content support on any mobile device.</li>
<li>Make Cloud Computing Work for the Enterprise – CoreMedia 7 allows enterprises to deploy to the cloud while maintaining security integrity, visibility, scalability and control. With this release, CoreMedia goes beyond the limited “cloud ready” capabilities of other WCM platforms to put the best of cloud technology to work, making it easier for businesses to deploy portions of their implementations in the cloud. Furthermore, businesses have the flexibility to choose any cloud deployment environment, whether it be on-premise, cloud, virtual or hybrid.   </li>
<li>Support Social Interactions – CoreMedia 7 arms companies to seamlessly manage content generated from two separate sources, internal and external. The platform deeply integrates CoreMedia’s <a href="http://www.coremedia.com/web-content-management/resources/product-information/factsheets/social/-/26158/25406/-/_qrewm8/-/index.html">Elastic Social</a> software, which leverages NoSQL architecture to help enterprises easily scale to support growing social conversations. CoreMedia 7 also includes advanced social tools for interacting with community members, publishing social content and moderating activity.</li>
<li>Deliver Highly-Contextual Content – Today’s business decisions are driven by content with context. To make customer interactions profitable, businesses must deliver the right content to the user at every stage of the customer journey. New features in CoreMedia 7 make it easier for all users to create highly-targeted, contextualized experiences for current and potential customers. </li>
<li>Empower Users Across Departments – With this release, CoreMedia optimized CoreMedia Studio, its editorial hub for business users, to incorporate a customizable user dashboard and over 70 performance and usability enhancements. Using a single, intuitive information-based editorial interface, business users can design customer experiences – moving way beyond the traditional page-based tools. They can launch new online web properties, campaigns and microsites quickly without IT support. CoreMedia 7 also more deeply engrains <a href="http://www.coremedia.com/web-content-management/resources/product-information/brochures/website-blueprint/-/26154/25336/-/_f2rvve/-/index.html">Blueprint</a>, its rapid Web development solution, offering a wealth of out-of-the-box solution components and pre-configured templates that is already proving to dramatically reduce implementation times.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Gallery</h2>
Learn more at <a href="http://www.coremedia.com">CoreMedia</a>.

New CoreMedia 7 Release Brings Allows User to Create Contextual, Mobile and Social Customer Experiences

CMS Kickoff 26

Find out at CMS Kickoff 26, January 13 - 14, St. Pete FL

What's the future of CMS in the AI era?

Explore a wide range of informative articles, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry. Page - 169