Articles - Page 207

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

janus-boye

Bitrix, Inc., a technology trendsetter in business communications solutions, announces the release of Bitrix Site Manager 10.0, a version that includes 10 new weapons in the web and mobile-development arsenal, significant changes in the licensing policies of the product and a brand new module for senior editions.
Ten new technologies and tools are incorporated into Version 10.0 including:
<ol>
<li> BitrixMobile: for development of mobile sites and apps with support of iOS, Android and BlackBerry OS on the basis of HTML5</li>
<li>A ready-made mobile internet shop, created with BitrixMobile technology and an application for one-time passwords (OTP)</li>
<li>Web clusters, a complex solution for scalability and reliability of an entire web project (database, search module, etc.), can be applied in high availability (HA) or high performance (HP) configurations</li>
<li>Integration with social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Google</li>
<li>Sticky web-it notes for simplifying collaborative work in web project creation and content management</li>
<li>Instant search with query suggestion</li>
<li>Support of SKU in the e-commerce module</li>
<li>Rating and influence systems in the social networking module</li>
<li>A ready-made InfoPortal for municipalities and media outlets</li>
<li>A “Live session” feature, providing a more convenient experience to the daily user</li>
</ol>
“BitrixMobile and web clusters are the two key technologies in this release. BitrixMobile opens the way for web studios into the market of mobile application, demand for which is growing all the time. Our biggest clients, whose online business is measured in tens of millions of dollars, greatly value the appearance of web clustering technology for solving the critical issues of continuity, scalability and performance,” – emphasized Dmitry Valyanov, President of Bitrix, Inc.
Bitrix Site Manager users with current subscriptions to updates and technical support can implement the appropriate changes in their products using the SiteUpdate feature in the Control Panel.
Bitrix Site Manager Homepage:<a href="http://www.bitrixsoft.com/products/cms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> http://www.bitrixsoft.com/products/cms/</a>

10 New Weapons in New Bitrix Site Manager 10.0

mike-johnston

Elgg is a free, open source CMS that has been around for a number of years. Over the years, the community has grown exponentially and now boasts a rather active set of users. With a plugin repository of over 1000 available plugins for the system, it has quickly become the go to CMS for open source social networking.Today, we're going to take you through the CMS and show you what it's made of in this Elgg Review.
One thing to point out before we proceed, however. When it comes to Elgg, one must realize that it is similar to Drupal in a number of ways. Just as Drupal is more of a content management framework than a CMS at heart, so is Elgg. Elgg provides the foundation to build a powerful social networking based website and you, as the administrator, are responsible for deciding which modules/plugins are applied and configured. To some, Elgg can seem rather bare bones at first glance but this is intentional and the real power of the system comes from the ways it can be extended. You decide what will be added, how it will be setup and as you add the individual plugins, the system begins to take on the form of full fledged social networking CMS.
With that out of the way, let's proceed.
Installing Elgg is as simple as downloading their latest zip file and extracting it to your web host. Once you've done so, you can proceed through the install.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-04-06-at-5_36_46-am.png" alt="Elgg Review" />
Once you've entered in your database credentials, you will proceed to the next screen. Here is where things get annoying briefly.
One of the fields on the page below requires you to enter a data directory (full path to the directory where uploaded files will be stored, followed by a trailing slash). The issue with this is that it does not tell you that this data directory needs to be outside of the Elgg installation directory. It also does not tell you that it needs to be writable.
In some cases, depending on your web host, you may not be allowed to create directories outside of your public_html folder and if you are installing Elgg directly to this folder, that may be an issue. In our testing, we had to make a data directory within public_html but outside of the Elgg directory (public_html/elgg). It would be helpful if the field info was corrected to alert people of these issues as opposed to not instructing them at all as it can lead to quite a bit of frustration trying to figure things out and proceed. Once you get past this issue, things are smooth, however.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/cck-580x531_sqsqjl.gif" alt="Elgg Review" />
The installation process is pretty straight forward and does not require much as far as user interaction is concerned. Basically, it's just the two pages shown above. Once you get through the installation, you are shown the default homepage (which is fairly plain jane initially).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/custom-page-600px_r8h1hm.jpg" alt="Elgg Review" />
Logging in with the admin credentials you created during the install will activate the admin capabilities. The first section in the admin interface is the Statistics panel. For more advanced statistics, there are plugins to enable both Piwik analytics and Google analytics tools.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/multisite-580x613_xozifx.gif" alt="Elgg Review" /> 
The next tab down is the System Settings. This is exactly the same screen as was shown during installation, so we'll skip past that for the purposes of this review. Tools administration is where you can add/remove functionality using plugins. By default, Elgg comes with quite a few plugins as part of the core experience. You can see them in the list below.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/form_api-580x677_ungsqq.gif" alt="Elgg Review" />
Let's activate some and see how things change on the front end.  Once you've chosen the plugins you wish to use, you now have the option of editing the page on your Dashboard and adding the ones you wish to have displayed. Clicking on the Dashboard link on the top will bring you to your dashboard.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/duda-review-8_lltdzr.png" alt="Elgg Review" />
Right now as you can see below, it's blank. Time to add some content. Clicking edit page brings us to a drag and drop interface where we can add some widgets to our dashboard.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/duda-review-12_okxs0r.png" alt="Elgg Review" />
Let's add some widgets to some of the sections available.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/new-elgg-site-dashboard-3.jpg" alt="Elgg Review" />
Now that we've added some widgets, we can save and alter their settings from the dashboard.
Back on the dashboard page, the widgets are shown and ready to be configured. Once setup, they begin to show the data on the dashboard as you can see below.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/new-elgg-site-dashboard.jpg" alt="Elgg Review" />
You may also noticed a Tools menu along the top of the screen (the menu bar). Under this Tools menu are shortcuts to the areas for each plugin you enabled.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/new-elgg-site-dashboard-mozilla-firefox_2011-04-06_15-59-34.jpg" alt="Elgg Review" />
Writing blog posts is standard fare with an easy to use Wysiwyg editor and a familiar interface.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/new-elgg-site-write-a-blog-post.jpg" alt="Elgg Review" />
The wire is similar to Twitter except it's for your Elgg system. The same character limitations (140) apply.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/new-elgg-site-all-wire-posts.jpg" alt="Elgg Review" />
Overall, the plugins work as expected and do their jobs well. We didn't encounter any oddities or weird behavior when navigating the site, everything just worked as expected which made for a pleasant overall experience.
There is no doubt that Elgg has tremendous potential from a Social Networking perspective. There are plenty of plugins to use for the system. There is even a hosted version of Elgg available on Elgg.com which allows you to bypass the entire installation process.
Modifying Elgg requires hand editing of the files from what we can tell, so you'll need an experienced developer but for most people who are looking to start a solid social networking site, this isn't an issue.
There are also quite a few good themes available for use from <a href="http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/category/themes" target="_blank">http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/category/themes</a> to give you a good base to build from.
Elgg is a great system with a large community (perhaps the largest available when it comes to a social networking CMS) and is easy to customize. You can't really ask for much more than that.
Last but not least, should you wish to do so, the team at Curverider that developer Elgg are available for hire for customizations.
Check out Elgg at <a href="http://elgg.org" target="_blank">Elgg.org</a> or if you want to experience it first hand without installing, join the Elgg community which is a live install with tons of active users and a great place to get familiar with the product: <a href="http://community.elgg.org/" target="_blank">http://community.elgg.org/</a>

Elgg Review - The Social Networking CMS

Alfresco has reported very solid growth for 2010 following the close of their fiscal year. Having added over 470 new customers in the past year, bringing their current client base to over 1700 customers worldwide.
Seventy percent of clients are enterprise companies with over 10,000 employees – while 25 percent of its base draws from government, followed by finance and media. Key clients gained in 2010 include: Home Depot, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Michelin and The National Health Service. Cumulatively, Alfresco has now sold just under $100M since its founding in 2005, saving customers between $750M – $1B in software licensing costs as they migrate from costly proprietary ECM vendors. In the fourth quarter alone, Alfresco grew 40 percent over the same quarter last year with overall annual growth over one-third.
<h3>Alfresco’s key 2010 highlights include:</h3>
<h4>Corporate Growth</h4>
<ul>
<li>Growth and 2010 profitability has been achieved on less than $20M of VC funding;</li>
<li>Alfresco is now available in over 55 countries; securing its first large customers in China and India;</li>
<li>Surpassed 3 million downloads of Alfresco Community Edition;</li>
<li>Increased staff by 35% and appointed industry veteran, Todd Barr as new Chief Marketing Officer;</li>
<li>Expanded operations in APAC and Americas, with new hires in both Sydney and Atlanta, Georgia offices;</li>
<li>Named to InfoWorld’s Best of Open Source Software (Bossie) awards for third time in four years; and,</li>
<li>Included in EContent Magazine’s list of 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry for fifth consecutive year.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Alfresco Technology</h4>
<ul>
<li>Launched the industry’s first open source Social Content Management in Alfresco Enterprise 3.4;</li>
<li>Launched Activiti BPM 2.0 Business Process Engine; announced hiring of leading BPM expert Tom Baeyens;</li>
<li>Simplified replacement of legacy and proprietary ECM solutions with Alfresco Migration Services;</li>
<li>Added collaborative web development, new tools for Spring developers, and content integration to enterprise portals to the Alfresco platform with release of Community 3.4; and,</li>
<li>Delivered five new premium language packs: French, German, European Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Customer Support &amp; Services Improvements</h4>
<ul>
<li>Named Barry Duplantis VP of Customer Services to coordinate Alfresco customer support, training, consulting, and documentation projects across the globe;</li>
<li>Held first annual Alfresco Developer Conferences in New York and Paris as well as first Content.Gov event in Washington, D.C.;</li>
<li>Expanded training services with launch of e-Learning courses; and,</li>
<li>Executed over 100 Lunch &amp; Learn sessions in over 50 cities.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Partner Expansion</h4>
<ul>
<li>Added 100 global system integrators (SI) and OEM partners during 2010; There has been approximately $1B in SI-related customization services revenue generated around the Alfresco platform since 2005</li>
<li>Expanded Australian partner ecosystem to include SIs, named Barry Costin as Territory Manager for Australia and New Zealand; and,</li>
<li>Promoted Boulder, Colorado-based Zia Consulting, Vancouver-based Appnovation, Austin-based Blue Fish Development Group, Boston-based Rothbury Software, Mexico City-based Think Hemisphere and Barcelona-based IN2 and to platinum partner status.</li>
</ul>
“Coming off our most successful fiscal year to date, we have invested heavily in expanding Alfresco’s global reach and service capability, while continuing to improve the most innovative ECM platform on the market. To achieve this we have focused on key global growth areas and extending our partner network to service these markets,” said John Powell, CEO of Alfresco. “We have used the open source model to propel our company and bring cost-effective software solutions to global enterprises. Now, with our investment in social content management, we are focused on optimizing and unlocking the power of content within organizations and from their most valued customers.”
Website: <a href="http://www.alfresco.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Alfresco</a>

Alfresco reports strong growth in 2010

Elgg (<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/elgg/">news</a>) 1.7.8 contains important security enhancements and bugfixes. All network owners are encouraged to upgrade.
Security Enhancements:
<ul>
<li>Properly encoding search queries (Thanks to lord epsylon (of Lorea) for the report!)</li>
</ul>
Bugfixes:
<ul>
<li>Blogs – Fixed disappearing blog draft issue.</li>
<li>Groups – Editing a topic from discussion list page works now.</li>
<li>Search – Group names used in titles.</li>
<li>InviteFriends – Invitation link no longer shows up when logged out.</li>
<li>Messages – Denormalized the message calculation for better performance.</li>
<li>Sorting by time_created in relationship functions supported.</li>
<li>Metadata and annotation names can now be updated.</li>
<li>Fixed error with deleting a user with disabled entities.</li>
<li>Removed unnecessary executable permissions on a number of files. (Thanks to pauloortiz for the report!)</li>
</ul>
Grab your copy from <a href="http://elgg.org/download.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://elgg.org/download.php</a>

Elgg CMS 1.7.8 released

Veolay is giving away free copies daily &amp; a completely FREE custom web design package on the 15th of April 2011.
Prize 1 Description: Free Veolay license daily Veolay is giving away one free Veolay license daily. The winner will be contacted via Facebook message service.
Prize 2 Description : Free Website Winner will be announced on 15th April 2011.
Winner will receive a free website package from Veolay.
The package includes :
Custom designed professional website according to winner's requirements.
<ul>
<li> Website will be fully coded in xHTML/CSS.</li>
<li> 6 Static pages</li>
<li> One free Veolay licenses &amp; support</li>
<li> Free search engine optimization for the website.</li>
<li> This offer is transferable</li>
</ul>
To enter please visit their website : <a href="http://veolay.com/offers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://veolay.com/offers/</a>

Win a Free Website Package

WordPress 3.1.1 is now available. This maintenance and security release fixes almost thirty issues in 3.1, including:
<ul>
<li>Some security hardening to media uploads</li>
<li>Performance improvements</li>
<li>Fixes for IIS6 support</li>
<li>Fixes for taxonomy and PATHINFO (/index.php/) permalinks</li>
<li>Fixes for various query and taxonomy edge cases that caused some plugin compatibility issues</li>
</ul>
Version 3.1.1 also addresses three security issues discovered by WordPress core developers Jon Cave and Peter Westwood, of our security team. The first hardens CSRF prevention in the media uploader. The second avoids a PHP crash in certain environments when handling devilishly devised links in comments, and the third addresses an XSS flaw.
You can update from your Dashboard or download from <a href="http://www.wordpress.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.wordpress.org</a>

WordPress 3.1.1 Released

Hotjar - Spot what confuses

Spot what confuses your users with Hotjar & AI

#ffffff

Website CMS Contegro is giving away two free tickets to the highly-anticipated 2011 CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference in Chicago. The total prize (worth $1560) is for two three-day passes to the Expo on 2nd to the 4th of May, which features more than 80 of the world’s top CMS experts.
Entrants into Contegro’s Check out Our Competition Competition simply need to visit www.contegro.com watch a quick video, and answer a few easy questions. The competition closes on Friday the 15th of April.
Contegro’s Check out Our Competition Competition has been designed as part of a challenge for people to compare Contegro with other web CMS systems showcased at the Expo.
Founder of Contegro, Vaughan Reed, backs Contegro as a world-class system. “The design and functionality of Contegro is world-beating. That’s why we’re encouraging others to check out our competitors. We’re confident of the capabilities of our system but we believe there’s always room for competition,” says Reed.
To enter Contegro’s Check Out Our Competition Competition visit <a href="http://www.contegro.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.contegro.com</a>

Win free tickets to CMS Expo

New case study details how SWM employed Magnolia’s STK to connect with customers and slash administrative costs
Magnolia, the open source content management vendor that delivers simplicity on an enterprise scale, today announced publication of a major case study detailing how Magnolia CMS helped Munich-based utility SWM upgrade its web image to engage with customers and promote environmental goals of green energy and sustainability.
Stadtwerke München (SWM) is Germany’s biggest communal utility company, with 1.3 million customers and $7 billion in annual revenues. It is 100 percent owned by the City of Munich, and its 7,300 employees provide customers with electricity, gas, water, district heating and cooling, and public pools.
SWM had been using a proprietary CMS with obsolete layouts that were cumbersome to update. As a result, information was limited, and their site was unattractive and intimidating to users. In the face of stiff competition from private utilities, SWM realized that since the web had become its primary communications channel, it needed a more exciting and dynamic site to attract and retain customers.
“It was clear to us that the site was in urgent need of an overhaul. As a result, we were reducing marketing and sales opportunities and we found it difficult to communicate our brand identity and value proposition,” said Silke Radlherr, Team Leader, SWM.
Their initial Magnolia Community Edition launch enabled SWM to connect with customers through an attractive, easy-to-navigate site that reinforces the SWM brand and environmental messaging. A subsequent Enterprise Edition relaunch in 2010 enhanced their web branding through interactive channels with a simplified design and content layout.
The Standard Templating Kit (STK) turned out to be the “killer feature” of their 2010 relaunch. After the switch, SWM was able to connect with customers through an attractive, easy-to-navigate site that reinforces the SWM brand and environmental messaging. Training and administrative costs plummeted, and authors now find it easy to add and update content.
“The STK greatly reduces development time. Integrating a design, plugging in reusable content, and enabling interactive communication across multiple sites can be done quickly and efficiently,” said Dr. Maximilian Störzer, SWM’s Relaunch Project Leader. “The STK also made it easy to integrate Magnolia CMS with the Google Web Toolkit and our in-house applications.”
So successful was their Magnolia experience, that SWM was asked to overhaul the web site for the City of Munich as well – a dynamic multi-lingual site with multiple instances and custom workflows.
SWM case study available online The SWM case study is available for immediate viewing and download at: <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/clients/case-studies/swm.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.magnolia-cms.com/clients/case-studies/swm.html</a>
About Magnolia Americas Magnolia Americas, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Magnolia International Ltd, whose open source content management system delivers simplicity on an enterprise scale. Its outstanding combination of ease-of-use with a flexible, standards-based Java architecture has led to its adoption by enterprises and governments throughout the world, including ING, JBoss.org, Johnson &amp; Johnson, Lloyds TSB, Sony, Seat, Unilever, and the US Department of Defense. To find out more about Magnolia, including service, support, implementation, consulting, training, and our international network of qualified partners, please visit <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.magnolia-cms.com</a>.

Magnolia CMS Helps $7B Utility Build its Brand on the Web

The team over at Agility CMS have a number of updates that will be coming down the pipe over the next month or so to their clients. Here is a rundown of the expected updates.
User Generated Content Enhancements Lots of our customers love UGC. They've been using it for all sorts of great things, and we wanted to make the most common UGC tasks even easier and faster to develop.
Comments – Setup, Development, Moderation. Easy. You can now add comments to any Content Definition (either UGC or digital content). Just check off the “Comments” checkbox on the General Settings tab of the definition and choose Flat or Threaded. You can even add custom fields to the Comments schema that is created. What great about this is that Comments in Agility are just like any other UGC item, so if you know how to work with UGC, you know how to work with UGC comments, and it’s automatically enabled once UGC is turned on for your site.
Votes, Likes, Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, Ratings Now you can add voting, liking and rating to any content type with the quick check of a checkbox. Sweet! The values captured show up on each content item on the Feedback Stats tab.
UGC Input Form Updates Building on the work we did with input forms on our last release, we’ve added a bunch of things to the UGC side of things this time around, including Tabs, Custom Sections, Dropdown fields, Custom Scripts and more. As always, we think the most important part of Agility is making things easy, so we will continue to tweak this stuff over the next few iterations to bring all of the features into alignment between UGC and the rest of Agility.
Email Templates You can now custom all of the Email Templates that Agility uses to send alerts and notification emails out to your content moderator and website users. Just look for “Workflow Alert Email Templates” and “User Generated Content and Website Users Alert Email Templates” in the Settings section.
New OData API for Shared Content OData is a great protocol for content APIs. By enabling OData for Shared Content, we’ve given you a complete API for XML and JSON/JSONP that allows you to access your content from anywhere. It’s easy to enable, too. Just check off “Enable API Output” on the Advanced tab of your Shared Content, and it will be included in the data exposed by the API. We’ll have more documentation about how to work with the OData API for Shared Content over at developer.agilitycms.com soon.
MVC Support We were so excited about this that we already blogged about it here! The long and the short of it is that MVC and Agility are a great fit, and we can’t wait to see what our customers will do with it. To make life easy, we’ve added some features that make MVC development a real joy with Agility, including adding strong types for every Content and Module Definition in the system.
Microsites Also, we’ve added Microsites, so that with MVC you can build different website templates that can easily share the same content from the site, using a folder to contain the pages for each microsite. For instance, you can keep www.mysite.com, m.mysite.com, ipad.mysite.com all separated in Agility, and they will be automatically routed for you through MVC.
URL Redirections When you rebuild your site, it is critical to redirect URLs from the old site to new pages on the new site in order to maintain your Page Rank. This is critical to ensure that your hard won search engine optimization achievements are maintained with the rebuilt site. As expected, setting up URL redirections is super easy.
My Accounts One of the things we wanted to make easier in Agility was the idea of customer self-service. That’s why we create the new My Accounts page. It shows you all of the website accounts that you have in Agility and lets you set up the billing and technical contact information for each account.
You can even set up new sites and add them to you login, right from Agility itself, making it much quicker and easier to set up a new site.
Website Hosting in Azure (Beta) Agility websites can now be hosted in Azure. Website hosting has never been easier.
Improved Website Diagnostics We’ve switched up the way diagnostics happen for your website. The API for tracing and logging is the same, but we made it easier for you to see what’s happening behind the scenes for your site when it’s in development mode. If you do have an error in development, the top bar will turn red and give you a link to the log file, so you can see what happened right from your browsers. Also, you can now sign up to receive error messages from the website by email in the Settings section of Agility. Any error emails are syndicated into a digest and sent as they occur, once every 15 minutes.
See more information and images at Agility Blog Post [<a href="http://www.agilitycms.com/blog/Agility-Release-March-2011.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.agilitycms.com/blog/Agility-Release-March-2011.aspx</a>]

Agility CMS sees March updates

For those who are unaware, Squarespace is one of the best online publishing CMS on the market today. It allows you to completely design and structure a top notch CMS purely through a web interface. Everything is hosted on Squarespace servers and media files are managed by Amazon's super fast cloud platform.
This ensures some of the fastest sites out there. Check out our indepth <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/squarespace-review/" target="_blank">Squarespace Review</a> if you haven't already done so. Alternatively, if you're interested in trying it out and seeing things for yourself, you can sign up and get a free 14 day trial without a credit card.
Check it out here: <a href="http://www.squarespace.com">Squarespace Free Trial</a>

Free 14 day trial of Squarespace with no credit card required

Recently, Telerik released version 4.0 of their popular .NET based content management system, Sitefinity (<a href="/telerik-unveils-powerful-sitefinity-4-0-content-management-solution/" target="_blank">announcement</a>). Today, we delve in to this new release to see what is different and what has been improved upon in this Sitefinity Review.
Setting up a demo of Sitefinity for testing is very straight forward. They offer a sandbox edition which can be created from <a href="http://www.sitefinity.com/download.aspx">this page</a> and takes about 10 minutes before you are ready to start using your own private hosted version of Sitefinity.
We set up our sandbox using the Charity (nonprofit) template for the purposes of this review.
The default look of the website using this template pack is shown below.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2012-07-16-at-5_57_51-pm-620x511_kubg0i.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
The dashboard (where the magic happens) is accessible by appending your sandbox URL with /sitefinity.
This should bring you to a login prompt. Once logged in, your dashboard should look similar to the one below:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2012-07-16-at-5_58_14-pm-620x496_hlobbv.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Some things worth mentioning with regards to the dashboard. Telerik has done a great job with this setup. They've integrated numerous video tutorials right into the dashboard to provide quick and easy access to usage tutorials. This is a great idea and something that other systems should consider following suit on.
It's always interesting to see how the various contenders in the CMS marketplace work to alleviate customer apprehension when it comes to learning curves.
Once you've logged in to the back end, you have the option of working from within it or working directly off the site. Should you choose the latter, you can return to the main page of your website and you should see an icon on the right of the site similar to the one below. This lets you enable inline editing for the site.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sitefinity3.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
When enabled, a edit button appears in each content area to represent that the area is now editable by clicking on it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1-620x158_yplnjt.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Clicking edit will bring you to the editor for that particular content type:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sitefinity5-580x417.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Logging back into the dashboard, you will see several options in the menus across the top. Clicking on the Pages link brings you here:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tablet-gallery-back-620x390_ag4kr9.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
From here you can manage and edit every page on your site. If we click on a page, we are then taken to a drag and drop interface where we can add and remove elements (as well as resize) from the pages.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sitefinity6-580x387.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
 
Should you need to make changes to any of the individual components that already exist on the page (or new ones you add), you can do so using the edit or more menus as shown above.
Adding blocks of content is very easy. You may notice in the screenshot above that there is another button labelled “Layout” in the top right of the screen. Clicking this switches you to layout mode where you can drag and drop various sized content blocks. Once thing noticeably missing here is the ability to resize the existing ones. If the option is available, we weren't able to find it easily.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-1-620x431_qxzkht.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Taking a look now at the settings menus, there are two difference views. Basic, as shown below, or advanced, where far more settings are available to tweak.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-2_f0awve.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Sitefinity also has built in workflows that can be added and altered in the dashboard.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-4-620x62_l8dxoc.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
These work as one might expect and are a very welcome addition.
Under the content menu, you will find the various types of content that Sitefinity has been configured to manage.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-4-1-620x435_icl6c7.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
We won't cover these all too in-depth as that would take the fun out of exploring for yourself in your own sandbox demo but some of the new additions here include the forms and (unless we are mistaken) the newsletters option.
The new forms builder is very intuitive and easy to use. As you can see, once you've created a new form and named it, adding components if just drag and drop and done.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-6_sxyhsv.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Using the new form builder was a pleasure and works like a charm. There is also a new settings button which allows you to further manage the form by restricting the number of submissions per IP address and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-7-620x114_suqt58.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
The newsletter builder worked quite well considering it's in beta status at the moment. Adding a new mailing list was quick and intuitive and once done, we were able to see and manage our campaigns from the screen below:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-8-620x414_nen5wo.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Creating new campaigns are very simple. Click the create a campaign button, choose your mailing list and to/from details and you are taken to a screen where you can choose one of three available formats for your newsletter:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-invite-620x452_knbjho.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
The first two types of fairly common place. Should you choose the third, you are given drag and drop content types just like you would if you were creating a web page within the dashboard:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/papyrs-review-theme-620x639_tqhnt3.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
How well this third type displays in conventional email clients remains to be seen but it's a very interesting option, for sure.
Under the administration menu, there are a number of choices.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sitefinity8_2.jpg" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
You'll notice under the heading Alternative Publishing that there is an option called Feeds &amp; Notifications. Within here, you are able to create various types of content feeds.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/3_3_0-timeline-620x472_hiujf2.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
What's especially interesting here is that you can also choose how to publish them. Some of the choices at the moment include Twitter, RSS or as Content within Sitefinity.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/3_3_0-photo-theater-620x284_preheb.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Next in line to take a look at is file management. Sitefinity comes with very well done file management using an interface very similar to windows explorer.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/3_3_0-membership-compare-620x272_cwvvf4.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Adding/removing and modifying various types of content is very straight forward and works without a hitch from our testing.
Last, but certainly not least, is the Analytics.
For testing purposes, we were not able to test this functionality as it requires a link between a Google Analytics account and Sitefinity to be present in order to display analytics information. From what we have read in the Sitefinity release announcements, however, it sounds like a great addition and what better tool to use than Google's own?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/3_3_0-share-item-on-wall-620x474_be7bbj.png" alt="Sitefinity Review" />
Conclusion
We'd say that this is one of Sitefinity's best releases to date. They've put a lot of work into simplifying the interface as much as possible and reducing new user anxiety. Nothing will put off a new user more than a feeling of being overwhelmed with options and Sitefinity has found a good balance between usability and extendability.
If you haven't yet had a go with their <a href="http://www.sitefinity.com/download.aspx" target="_blank">sandbox</a>, we highly recommend you do so.
To learn more about Sitefinity, visit their website: <a href="http://www.sitefinity.com" target="_blank">Sitefinity.com</a>

Sitefinity Review: First look at Sitefinity CMS 4.0

Flypaper Studio, Inc., making high-impact Flash and motion graphics simple, has released a new version of its content creation software. Flypaper Version 3.5 has new features and updates that support demand for integration between content development tools, and a more open environment for content sharing and publishing. Additionally, Flypaper continues to make multi-touch content capability a focus for the digital signage and corporate learning markets.
“There is still little continuity between the many content creation and distribution platforms out there and it’s certainly not as open of an environment as it can, or should be,” said <a href="http://www.flypaper.com/company/management">Don Pierson</a>, president and COO of Flypaper. “The idea behind most of the work we did on this version was focused on our belief that Flypaper should integrate and interoperate with the other platforms and tools our customers use,” said Don Pierson, president and COO of Flypaper.
New features and benefits of Flypaper Version 3.5 include:
<ul>
<li>Photoshop File Import – Flypaper users can now directly import the native Photoshop files used by graphics and creative professionals into Flypaper without any additional conversion.</li>
<li>Multi-author Editing – This allows users to setup “master” and “subordinate” projects. Changes or edits to the subordinate projects are done without affecting the other parts of the larger master project. This makes localized content creation or small edits much quicker and easier.</li>
<li>PowerPoint 2010 File Import – For users who want to take an existing PowerPoint and kick it up a notch.</li>
<li>Publish SDK –Enables third party developers to create plug-ins that enable Flypaper users to publish their content directly to any content management system, such as a digital signage scheduler, learning management system, or website.</li>
<li>In total, Flypaper added over 40 new features and enhancements to version 3.5.</li>
</ul>
The new version also includes added functionality and support for multi-touch content, one of the most in-demand components of digital signage systems. At the Digital Signage Expo in February, Flypaper showcased the latest in multi-touch content capability with partners Elo Touch Systems, and Intel.
Scott Matthews of MG Digital is a Flypaper partner that uses Flypaper for its enablement to create high-impact Flash content that integrates seamlessly with the most advanced touch screens. “Touch screen technology remains a top interest, especially among digital signage users, and has changed the way we define interactive. Our customers want to develop content that not only engages the viewer on a tactical level, but also allows them to manipulate the content on the screen. This equates to higher offline conversions and stronger brand engagement.”
Version 3.5 is available now through Flypaper.com and the company's resellers. A full list of pricing and reseller channels is available on the Flypaper website.
About Flypaper Studio, Inc.Flypaper Studio, Inc. is the developer of Flypaper, the leading Flash Content Creation Platform that empowers programmers and non-programmers alike to create, edit, share, track and reuse high-impact Flash and video content. Users benefit from hundreds of already available templates and components, or can create their own quickly and easily, with no prior development experience. Output from the application rivals the interactivity and quality of custom Flash development, but in a fraction of time and cost typically associated with such projects. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.flypaper.com/">www.flypaper.com</a>.

Flypaper Studio Releases Version 3.5 with Features that Extend Flypaper's Open Content Creation and Sharing Platform

A new release of Croogo, the CakePHP based CMS has been made available. Details:
<blockquote>
This release sees a new and polished admin user interface with a focus on usability which includes searching of content for administrators, not having to leave a page after submitting a form, etc as well as more tests.
</blockquote>
More info: <a href="http://fahad19.com/blog/croogo-133-released">http://fahad19.com/blog/croogo-133-released</a>
Website: <a href="http://croogo.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Croogo CMS</a>

Croogo 1.3.3 released

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