Articles - Page 53

Bland Brands Beware: Optimizely’s New Identity Brings Human Creativity to its Agentic AI and AEO Ambitions

matt-garrepy

eZ Systems has announced perhaps one of their biggest releases to date with an incredible suite of new offerings that turns their eZ Publish platform into an even stronger contender for publishers and producers of digital content. eZ Publish 4.7, or “Etna”, has begun the transformation of this web content management platform into a full customer experience management platform. Today, we take a look at this new product in our eZ Publish Review.
As part of this launch, they have also enabled the ability for customers to have eZ Publish served from the cloud with a new offering via their partner, Ixonos. This will enable the eZ Publish suite of applications to be served from a Red Hat Enterprise Stack.
<h2>What's new?</h2>
<h3>Smart Site Analytics with eZ odoscope</h3>
The first of their many offerings is the introduction of a new smart site analytics tool called eZ odoscope. This tool is essentially an analytics dashboard that highlights clickstreams of visitors pathways and journeys through a site and provides a filterable heatmap of their click behavior.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/imagescauzpt5i-1_2_chxbu2.jpg" alt="eZ Publish Review" />
With this new tool, customers now the ability to:
<ul>
<li>examine web behavior with visitor clickstream and pathways</li>
<li>apply filters to website visitors and create new user groups to monitor</li>
<li>analyze pathways across multiple media and different devices</li>
<li>design the dashboard for different users and functional views</li>
<li>build and distribute statistical reports for distinct stakeholders</li>
</ul>
Another part of the tool is the odosMap, which gives you a complete view as to how users are navigating their site with a representative flow.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/odosmap-620x437.png" alt="eZ Publish Review" />
Of course, everyone loves heat maps and they offer those too!
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/drupal_logo-blue-1_400x0_bi5pmp.png" alt="eZ Publish Review" />
A full breakdown of what eZ odoscope can do can be found here: <a href="http://ez.no/Products/eZ-Market/Explore-the-eZ-Market/eZ-odoscope" target="_blank">eZ odoscope</a>
<h3>Real Time Content Trending and Optimization with eZ LiveViewer</h3>
One of the coolest new tools in the suite is the new LiveViewer, which is effectively a dynamic infographic of how content on your site is being used.
It is described as follows:
<blockquote>
The realtime info-graphic analytics allows content managers to visualize usage trends of the complete content repository within a configurable recency time period. eZ Live Viewer allows immediate actions to take place as best suits business needs. Users can enter straight into editing mode, push content to another block on the page, add high trending stories to other websites in the network, act rapidly with push notifications like social media or email alerts to build more traffic and then watch for changes in consumer response.
</blockquote>
If, as a publisher, you are not drooling over this next picture, we'll be surprised. Check this out:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ez-liveviewer-620x322.png" alt="eZ Publish Review" />
See? We told you you'd love it.
Full features of the new eZ LiveViewer:
 
<ul>
<li>Real-time article-level visualization of website audience
<ul>
<li>Actual audience</li>
<li>Historical info</li>
<li>Trends</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>All this information on one screen</li>
<li>No clicking and scrolling</li>
<li>Easy-to-interpret</li>
<li>Customizable, color-coded categories</li>
</ul>
Additional information can be found here: <a href="http://ez.no/Products/eZ-Market/Explore-the-eZ-Market/eZ-Live-Viewer" target="_blank">eZ LiveViewer</a>
<h3>eZ Exceed- a new extension for faster and more efficient editorial workflow.</h3>
This new extension is described as follows:
<blockquote>
The user interface is built for speed, with a top toolbar that covers all actions. Simply browse around your site, editing from the toolbar or directly from the page.
A sheet slides in, ready for you to edit. When working with media and related content a new interface sheet fluidly slides on top, making it easy and faster to work with complex content.
</blockquote>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/logo_2-1_oyjywt.png" alt="eZ Publish Review" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/grow-and-expand_dtvki0.png" alt="eZ Publish Review" />This extension also improves the process of working with images on the site. When editing an image, a sheet slides into view to enable edits site-wide. Making an image crop? It can now be applied across the entire site, if needed. eZ Exceed can also be configured to store your media on a CDN.
<h4>Improved communication between team members.</h4>
Your editorial team can now communicate more effectively than ever. Users can send personal or group messages relating to content by clicking the chat icon from the toolbar, typing their message and hitting send. Collaborators will receive a notification, allowing them to open the applicable content item and start working instantly.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/collab-620x669.png" alt="eZ Publish Review" />As you can see, the eZ Systems team have put a lot of thought and work into this extension, simplifying the editorial process and making the experience more enjoyable.
Additional information about eZ Exceed can be found here: <a href="http://ez.no/Products/eZ-Market/Explore-the-eZ-Market/eZ-Exceed" target="_blank">eZ Exceed </a>
That's not all, however. Some additional features included in this release:
<ul>
<li>automated layout and design optimization with advanced multivariate testing.</li>
<li>enhanced auto-save, service dashboard, flexible content staging and delivery and team room functionality.</li>
<li>a new offering called the eZ App Factory that generates 3 app versions- iPhone, iPad, Android.</li>
<li>enhanced and improved adaptive technology solution for publishing content to mobile devices. Automatic rendering of content to small screens ensures that the reading experience on smartphones and tablets is optimized.</li>
<li>a connector integrating eZ Publish with the e-commerce engine from Magento.</li>
<li>geo-location of content delivery.</li>
</ul>
Needless to say, this is a big one. Check it all out on their website: <a href="http://ez.no/">eZ Publish</a>

eZ Publish Review - A Look at the New Features for Publishers

mike-johnston

As usual, WordPress have named their latest release after yet another Jazz star. This time, it's <a href="http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinah_Washington">Dinah Washington</a>. Oh, and it's available for download via your WordPress dashboard, too.
I covered much of what's new when WordPress released their <a href="/first-beta-released-for-wordpress-4.1/" target="_blank">first beta for version 4.1</a>, but it won't hurt to recap, because there has been a couple of new features thrown in since that first beta.
<h2>Twenty Fifteen &amp; Distraction Free Writing</h2>
As mentioned in my previous coverage of WordPress 4.1, Twenty Fifteen, is perhaps the first default WordPress theme ever which doesn't make me want to immediately swap it out for a third party solution. It actually looks pretty darn good.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2015-laptop-1024x533700x0.png" />
There's also a brand new (and productive) way to write.
When you turn on “distraction-free writing mode”, all distractions outside the editor will fade away as you begin typing. But don't worry, all your editing tools instantly return when you need them. I'm personally eager to try this out. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dfw-screen-1024x614700x0.png" />
<h2>Vine Embedding, Plugin Recommendations &amp; More</h2>
On top of the two core features above, here's what else WordPress 4.1 has to offer:
<ul>
<li>Choose a language: Right now, WordPress 4.1 is already translated into over forty languages, with more always in progress. You can switch to any translation on the General Settings screen.</li>
<li>Log out everywhere: If you’ve ever worried you forgot to sign out from a shared computer, you can now go to your profile and log out everywhere.</li>
<li>Vine embedding: Embedding videos from Vine is as simple as pasting a URL onto its own line in a post. See the <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds">full list</a> of supported embeds.</li>
<li>Plugin recommendations: The plugin installer suggests plugins for you to try. Recommendations are based on the plugins you and other users have installed.</li>
</ul>
Head over to your WordPress dashboard now to update, or check out the .

WordPress 4.1 “Dinah” Released

To cap off what many would call a highly successful 2014, <a href="http://www.jahia.com/products/digital-factory" target="_blank">Jahia</a> has released its eagerly anticipated <a href="http://www.jahia.com/products/form-factory#ff-video" target="_blank">Forms Factory</a>.
With Forms Factory, marketers can create forms at will without depending on development teams. Plus, marketers can monitor the effectiveness of their forms thanks to the Form Center: a finely tuned engagement tool based on real performance.
Jahia is a popular and rapidly developing enterprise-level Java CMS. Recently, Jahia were crowned the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-enterprise-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award Winner for Best Enterprise Java CMS</a>.
<h2>Powerful Forms Management Simplified</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/jahia-form-factory-builder1700x0.png" alt="Jahia Forms Factory" />
According to Jahia's <a href="http://www.jahia.com/company/news/form-factory-launch" target="_blank">original press release</a>, “Forms management is the single most essential tool for digital marketing engagement With Form Factory, Jahia gives it back to whom it belongs: the marketing team.”
Here's an overview of the benefits Form Factory brings:
<ul>
<li>Create multi-step, multi-language, multi-conditions and validation-ruled forms super easily through drag-and-drops</li>
<li>Manage all forms created from a central interface (the Form Center)</li>
<li>Monitor collected data, measure engagement (by form, field completion, period, etc.), export data etc.</li>
<li>Connect each/all/selected forms to external business app such as CRM, marketing automation tools, etc.</li>
<li>Unmatched extensibility and versatility: developers can extend the Form Factory with their own fields, groups of fields, validation, logic and custom consequences.</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/jahia-form-factory-builder2700x0.png" alt="Jahia Forms Factory" />
Jahia's CEO, Elie Auvray, made these comments:
<blockquote>“This new addition to our content and user experience platform and suite of products is another expression of our Digital Industrialization vision. Our goal is to allow each digital team within companies to produce what they know best in full autonomy, thanks to the most powerful and easy-to-use data collection tools without putting any of the architecture and IT security processes at risk.”</blockquote>
To find out more about Jahia Form Factory, <a href="http://www.jahia.com/company/news/form-factory-launch" target="_blank">check out their official announcement</a>.
Also, be sure to explore more of <a href="/products/jahia/" target="_blank">Jahia via our CMS Directory</a>.

Jahia Launches Forms Factory

Well folks, the 6th annual CMS Critic People's Choice Awards have come to a close.
I'm excited to tell you that the winners have been announced on our awards page (along with the runners up). We had tens of thousands of votes come in this year, making this the biggest year yet! A big thank you to all of you that participated!
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/content_grattitude.jpg" />
Congratulations to all of the winners! Please reach out if you'd like a physical copy of your award or a graphic for display.
You can see the full list of winners here: <a href="/awards/" target="_blank">2017 Award Winners.</a>

2017 CMS Critic Award Winners Announced!

In advance the upcoming winter release of ImpressPages 4.0, the ImpressPages team have asked us to share with you some of the new features and changes about the upcoming release. And here you go!
 So what's new in ImpressPages 4.0? 
 New MVC engine 
ImpressPages CMS 4.0 has a lightweight and clean MVC Framework under the hood. If you are familiar with MVC, you can start coding on ImpressPages CMS straight away by just having a quick look at the file structure. You’ll have access to Request object and your answer will be a Response object or View as it is with most of the frameworks. 
Other MVC implementation details:
<ul>
<li>
Views are plain PHP files. No templating engine;
</li>
<li>
It is an HMVC, so you can do subrequests;
</li>
<li>
Use a tiny helper to execute operations on the database or take a PDO connection.
</li>
</ul>
 PSR standards-compliant class naming and autoloader 
Forget “require” and “include” functions. ImpressPages CMS now loads all classes automatically. And it is extremely simple as filenames identically correspond to the class names.
 IDE autosuggestions always work 
We care a great deal about the coding experience. For this reason, beautiful class structure and methods as well as a clean workflow in your IDE are all present at ImpressPages CMS 4.0. We took care to make IDE autosuggestions always work seamlessly. Whatever method you use, you will always get autosuggested methods by IDE. You will never want to go back once you try this feature.
 Bootstrap styles 
Nice and clean admin panel based on Bootstrap styles is available in the 4.0 release of ImpressPages CMS. This means you can code your own plugins without worrying about CSS. Want to change the default HTML? All view files can be overridden in your theme or plugin.
 Key-Value storage 
ImpressPages CMS 4.0 provides Key-Value storage for all plugins by default. It is implemented in MySQL and can work on any shared hosting. But if you have a real Key-Value engine on your server, you can switch to use it and to improve the performance. The code on the plugin side doesn’t change because of that. As a plugin developer, you no longer need to care about the engine you’re using. Use the same easy set / get functions and create your superfast plugin.
 Options service 
Add different type options to your plugin and theme using json configuration file or setOption / getOption methods. For language specific options, just use appropriate option type and you will have an option for each separate language on your website.
 Easy plugin development 
In ImpressPages CMS 4.0, everything can be achieved by writing a plugin. Each plugin is a single folder in the “Plugin” directory. Your controllers, models, views and assets will now go there. And so your whole business domain can be in a single place. This is unheard of not only in the CMS world, but also among the frameworks! And still, you can move all your PHP code outside of the public directory.
 New translations engine 
Translate any string in your code with a simple function. It works the same as on most frameworks and CMSs.
 PSR compliant logger 
It is always too late when customers start complaining about broken features on website you have just developed. Yet now you can use the ImpressPages CMS logger to log important situations and exceptions of your plugin by simple functions. PSR standard compliance makes it easy to understand the code, adopt third-party log aggregators and notifiers.
 Grid 
Add create / read / update / delete interface providing simple json config file. Add your custom layout and functions as you go.
 Ecommerce architecture 
Ecommerce support by CMSs is always poor or simply nonexistent. Each shopping cart plugin has its own way to add payment methods and products. Two separate plugins never “talk” to each other. Luckily, ImpressPages CMS 4.0 features an e-commerce interface that makes communication between the plugins easy.
<ul>
<li>
 Payment method interface . Write plugin which implements payment method interface and your payment method will be available on all shopping cart plugins;
</li>
<li>
 Products can be shared. Create your own catalog with products by extending default Product interface. This way your products can be added to any shopping cart implementation;
</li>
<li>
 Checkout methods are also separated from the shopping cart. You can have a shopping cart from one provider and checkout method from another, or even your own;
</li>
<li>
 Format prices and currencies in the way you like even when you use third party currency converter.
</li>
</ul>
 Uploaded assets repository 
It is always a pain to control user-uploaded assets. We solved it in ImpressPages CMS 4.0. Use simple JavaScript method to invoke repository browser and get list of files selected by the user. ImpressPages CMS 4.0 stores all the originals and tracks which plugin uses which files. So you know what resources can be deleted. ImpressPages CMS provides you with methods to get resized / cropped versions of originals on the fly and removes unused files when the original file is removed. Creating thumbnails has never been easier!
<h2>Content management improvements</h2>
<ul>
<li>
 Text can be edited fully inline . We had inline editing previously, yet now it’s made much friendlier to the user;
</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/impresspages-edit-content_02715x0.jpg" />
<ul>
<li>
 Better user interface across all menus. Now ImpressPages CMS has more functionality with twice as little menu buttons. Pages are easier to manage, to create and to delete. Language management has also been significantly improved. Flat design makes everything crisper and clearer;
</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/impresspages-meniu_02715x0.jpg" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/impresspages-pages_02715x0.jpg" />
<ul>
<li>
 No need to leave the CMS when downloading translations and installing plugins from our Plugin Marketplace.
</li>
</ul>
<h2>ImpressPages CMS 4.0 in a nutshell:</h2>
<ul>
<li>new MVC engine</li>
<li>
PSR standard-compliant class naming and autoloader
</li>
<li>
IDE autosuggestions always work
</li>
<li>
bootstrap styles
</li>
<li>
Key-Value storage
</li>
<li>
Options service
</li>
<li>
easy plugin development
</li>
<li>
new translations engine
</li>
<li>
PSR compliant logger
</li>
<li>
Grid
</li>
<li>
Ecommerce architecture
</li>
<li>
Uploaded assets repository
</li>
</ul>
Visit them online at <a href="http://www.impresspages.org">www.impresspages.org</a>

ImpressPages CMS 4.0 - Better Interface, New MVC Engine and ECommerce Support!

In today's market, there is certainly no shortage of cloud-based content management systems. In fact, offering a cloud-hosted service is becoming something of a necessity for all platforms across the board.
But of course, some products do it better than others. <a href="/the-winner-of-the-2014-peoples-choice-cms-award-for-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">LightCMS were crowned the winners by the people</a> — and also qualified for in-depth coverage over at <a href="https://www.websitebuilderscritic.com/website_builders/reviews/lightcms/" target="_blank">Website Builders Critic</a>, but now it's the turn of the judges.
<img style="max-width:376px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bestcloudcmsforsmb-1.png" />
And the winner is…
<img style="max-width:250px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dotcms-250h.jpg" />
<a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">dotCMS</a> is a Java, open-source, content management system with a giant reputation. It has been in the running for a number of awards this year, and with the successful (and recent)<a href="/dotcms-3.0-brings-in-enhancements-tailored-for-java-web-developers/" target="_blank"> release of DotCMS 3.0</a>, it's not difficult to see why they've managed to bag this one.
Congratulations to everybody at <a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">dotCMS</a>!

2014 Critics' Choice Award Winner - Best Cloud CMS for SMB

Best Video Experience

Give your audience the best video experience

#000000

WordPress has been evolving at an incredible rate these last few years, changing from a straight forward blogging platform into a powerful content management system. As a business owner, there may come a time when you will want to be able to handle your billing and invoicing from within WordPress, well, it's a lot easier than you might think.
Enter WP-Invoice. WP-Invoice has been around for a number of years in numerous iterations but has consistently become better and better and today, we're going to share with you some of the excellent functionality you can get when you implement this handy plugin.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wpi-overview-hero-splash.jpg" alt="Billing and Invoicing with WordPress" />
<h3>How does it work?</h3>
You create an invoice from you WordPress installation’s admin section, an email with a brief invoice description and a unique link is sent to your client. Your client follows the special link to your blog’s where their invoice is automatically displayed for them. After reviewing the invoice, your client pays their bill using a credit card or PayPal account, and you are immediately notified.
Credit card payments can be accepted via Authorize.net, MerchantPlus' NaviGate, PayPal or Google Checkout account. For recurring billing, there is Authorize.net's ARB API that will allow you to setup payment schedules along with invoices. Subscriptions can also be implemented using PayPal Subscriptions and Google Checkout Subscriptions.
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/27887971?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h3>What can it do?</h3>
Here is a list of some of the features offered by WP-Invoice:
<ul>
<li>Automatically import invoices from Web Invoice plugin.</li>
<li>WP-CRM Integration</li>
<li>Brand new user interface for much improved invoicing filtering and searching</li>
<li>Minimum and Split / Partial Payments</li>
<li>Invoices can be reassigned to a different recipient</li>
<li>Receipt Page with Invoice Log</li>
<li>Per-defined Line Items</li>
<li>Discount Line Items</li>
<li>Custom Payment Entry, and administrative adjustments</li>
<li>Customizable Invoice and Receipt Templates</li>
<li>Create invoices from the WordPress control panel</li>
<li>Prefill customer information using the WordPress user list</li>
<li>Send invoice notifications to customers with a secured link back to the web-invoice</li>
<li>Accept credit card payment via Authorize.net or MerchantPlus NaviGate</li>
<li>PayPal available if you don't have a credit card processing account</li>
<li>Setup recurring billing using Authorize.net's ARB (Automatic Recurring Billing) feature</li>
<li>Force web-invoice pages to be viewed in SSL mode</li>
<li>Archive old invoices</li>
<li>Easily use old invoices as templates for new ones</li>
<li>Dynamic and intuitive user interface</li>
<li>Custom tax label, states input, and PayPal button URL</li>
<li>Insert an “Invoice Lookup” form using PHP or WordPress Shortcode anywhere</li>
<li>Create users directly from WP-Invoice</li>
<li>Customize billing settings per invoice</li>
<li>Customize invoice notification email per invoice</li>
<li>Invoice notification, reminder and receipt templates</li>
<li>Export/Import Invoices [Power Tools]</li>
<li>Sales Visualization [Power Tools]</li>
</ul>
Pretty impressive isn't it? This is not just your mom and pop invoicing plugin, this literally turns WordPress into an excellent invoicing and billing system and is something every business owner should take a look into. Even if you decide to go with the premium features, the whole package costs less than $250, which is quite reasonable considering what you get for your dollar.
The good news is that you can use a large amount of the features this plugin offers for free. There is a bundle that offers upgrades such as single page checkout, premium themes and additional plugins but for the most part, the majority of the features within the plugin won't cost you a dime.
Peaked your interest? Check out WP-Invoice today in the WordPress Plugin Directory: <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-invoice/">WP-Invoice</a>

How to Manage Billing and Invoicing with WordPress

When it comes to the inner workings of most medium and large sized businesses across the world, intranets play an integral role. Their purpose is to simplify communication, promote collaboration and streamline work flows. 
Products like Liferay, Bittrix24, Entando and ocPortal are the front runners in this category. <a href="/2014-best-cms-for-corporate-intranets/" target="_blank">Liferay was selected by the people</a>, but now it's time to see who the judges selected.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bestcmsforcorporateintranets-1.png" />
And the winner is…
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4sup_0yw.png" alt="Bitrix24" />
<a href="http://www.bitrix24.com/" target="_blank">Bitrix24</a> by <a href="http://www.bitrixsoft.com/" target="_blank">Bitrix Inc</a> is a high-end enterprise social network, mobile intranet portal, CRM and collaboration suite. With a wide range of features and over 300,000 organizations making use of the platform, Bitrix24 is a highly respected intranet solution. What's more is, on top of a totally free plan, Bitrix24's higher plans are far more reasonable than some of its competitors. 
Congratulations to everybody at Bitrix24!

2014 Critics' Choice Award Winner - Best CMS for Corporate Intranets

When building websites, you’ve probably always made it a top priority to ensure you provide a positive user experience to your end users. Of course, this is one of the most important parts of building a site. However, as a CMS company with over a decade’s experience in the industry, one of the things we consistently see among new customers is that their websites failed to take into consideration the user experience of a key audience: their content editors.
As a behind-the-scenes audience, providing content editors with a positive user experience isn’t given high priority. However, what a lot of companies don’t realize is that a positive user experience isn’t just about making your editors happy; in fact, it will lead to massive increases in efficiencies, and potentially higher revenue. In other words, you could be missing out on a lot of potential if your content manager’s UX is not up to scratch.
The question you should be asking yourself is: is your CMS set up in such a way that it meets your content editors’ key workflows? This means ensuring that your content editors can carry out their daily tasks as easily and seamlessly as possible.
<h2>The benefits of a positive content editor UX</h2>
So what benefits could you be gaining by streamlining your CMS to meet your content editors’ workflows?
<ul>
<li>
Increased efficiency: By making it easier for your editors to carry out daily tasks, you will obviously create higher efficiencies among your editors, enabling them to build and distribute content better and faster.
</li>
<li>
Improved speed-to-market: Being able to build content faster means that you will stay more competitive by allowing your editors to build and deliver timely content as fast as possible.
</li>
<li>
Reduced bottlenecks: A positive UX also means making it easier for your content editors to intuitively overcome any hurdles that may arise. The more intuitive your CMS is, the easier it will be to fix any issues.
</li>
<li>
Faster onboarding: Finally, creating a positive editor UX doesn’t only benefit your current editors; imagine how much time you will save onboarding new ones. New employees will respond much better to a CMS that has been configured with their user experience in mind.
</li>
</ul>
So what can you do to make your CMS as intuitive as possible?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/agility-image.png" />
<h2>1. Consider your objectives from a content editor’s perspective</h2>
Your content editors will be largely responsible for managing all your web content, so it makes sense to make it a top priority to ensure they can easily fulfill their objectives.
This may go back to the very start of the process of choosing a CMS platform for your business. Does the CMS place a strong emphasis on content architecture? Is the CMS highly configurable? A solution that can be configured to meet your unique business needs and processes will be key here.
When it comes to building the content architecture, it will also be important to think about the specific processes your editors will need to carry out daily, and ensure that your CMS is streamlined to meet these. Bonus points if you can find ways to automate these tasks!
<h2>2. Make it easy for your content editors to make decisions</h2>
Part of making your CMS as user-friendly as possible for content editors is allowing them to intuitively work out the ways to carry out specific tasks.
One way you can do this is by offering in-line guidance within the CMS itself, such as descriptions assigned to specific text boxes or page components. This will allow editors to quickly become familiar with the purpose of each element.
Additionally, you can help them reduce risk of error by making it required to fill out certain elements of a page or post. In this way, if the editor tries to save or publish a page or post without having filled out every required field, a popup or a red text box will appear to let them know.
Another often overlooked way in which you can assist your editors is by limiting the amount of functionality they have access to. As the saying goes, less is often more, and your editors will thank you for making their job easier when building a piece of content. Your CMS may offer different access levels which you can use in order to limit editor access.
<h2>3. Protect the site architecture from inexperienced editors</h2>
This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point and it comes down to this: if you give your editors tools that they don’t understand, they will make a mess of it. That’s why access levels are so important too, because they help you prevent inexperienced users from making changes with potentially vast consequences.
All you need is to limit the editor access level to areas that are relevant to their job and their job only. This includes designs too; can you assist them in building pieces of content through layouts or templates without requiring them to deal with any of the code? By doing so, you will not only protect your site but you will also empower your editors to build better content.
<h2>4. Leverage dynamic content </h2>
Using dynamic content is extremely handy when it comes to replicating content across your site. Imagine having to add a page component, such as a banner add, to every single page of your site, manually. This is a very inefficient process that will take up a lot of your editors’ time that they could otherwise spend creating great content.
By offering dynamic content, you can empower your editors to create a piece of content once and seamlessly publish it across the site. What’s more, this will make it easier for them to keep that content up-to-date, as if they will be able to push any changes to that content across the site at the click of one button.
<h2>5. Automate repetitive tasks</h2>
Finally, another way to significantly reduce your editors’ workload is to empower them with the right tools to carry out repetitive tasks in bulk, and even automate them. This will largely depend on your CMS, but an example would be publishing or unpublishing a large volume of pages in bulk.
On the other hand, an example of an automated process would be if your CMS automatically sets up a redirection whenever there’s a URL change; imagine the time your editors will save!
Bulk and automated tasks are not only great for your editors’ UX, but they will also help reduce the risk of error significantly and give your editors peace of mind that everything is in order.

5 Ways To Build A Website Your Content Editors Will Love

Remember that story we shared with you on May 11th about <a href="/twitter-picks-up-staff-from-email-marketing-startup-restengine/">Twitter acquiring the staff of the email marketing firm, RestEngine</a>? There was quite a bit of conjecture circulating as to how they would be making use of these people and now, things seem a bit more clear.
On Monday, Twitter began offering a Twitter email digest which is delivered to your inbox once a week and summarizes the top stories from the popular network.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/email-screenshot-620x514.png" alt="twitter to email" />
According to the announcement:
<blockquote>This summary features the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.
Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you. Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see related Tweets from the people you follow.
This new email digest also features the most engaging Tweets seen by the people you follow, even if you don’t follow those who wrote them. You can see who from your network retweeted or favorited these Tweets and click “View details” to retweet, favorite, reply or view the conversation around them.
We’re rolling out this new email out to everyone over the next few weeks, so keep checking your inbox for new messages from Twitter. Like other Twitter email notifications, you can manage your preferences for this new digest in your Notification Settings.</blockquote>
What's interesting about the wording in this announcement is that it Twitter has deemed it OK to simply opt every one of its users in by default. Take a look at our notification settings, for example:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/optimizely_logo_blue_700x0-is-hidpi_tzsdz9.png" alt="twitter email notifications" />We're not sure how we feel about being automatically opted in to these emails, even if they are weekly. How about you?

Twitter automatically opts all users in to new Weekly Email Digest offering

Adobe has announced the latest release of their social media monitoring and analytics solution, <a href="http://www.adobe.com/solutions/social-marketing.html">Adobe Social</a>. This new product aims to provide users with the ability to listen and respond to customer conversations, and connect the dots between social interactions and business results.
Adobe Social integrates with Flickr, Foursquare, Instagram and LinkedIn to provide marketers with a real view of their social presence in addition to social predictive publishing capabilities, a mobile user interface, streamlined reporting, and new collaborative features. As part of the , Adobe Social is one of the many key components to the all-in-one solution for marketers.
<h2>Management and governance</h2>
Adobe Social provides a means to assign roles and permissions, allowing administrators to choose how the various corporate teams (social, customer service, etc) interact with fans and followers. It's easy to specify who can publish content, moderate customer comments and more. Upper management, in the meantime, can get a full view of metrics and how social activities are performing.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/thumb-management-and-governance-327x183_jpg_adimg_mw_327.png" alt="adobe social" />
<h2>Listening and Moderation</h2>
Monitor thousands of sites across the social web and identify trends, opportunities and potential business threats. In addition, your social and customer service teams can access a real-time moderation queue, allowing them to respond to comments, route and escalate questions and track it all the way through to resolution.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/thumb-listening-and-moderation-327x183_jpg_adimg_mw_327.png" alt="adobe social" />
<h2>Publishing and Ads</h2>
Do you need to publish a large (or small) amount of posts? With Adobe Social it's easier than ever. You can create all posts within a calendar and route them for approval, schedule them for publishing to social sites and more. You can also target defined audiences based on a number of factors such as geographic &amp; demographics. You can also promote these posts directly from within the tool.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/thumb-publishing-and-ads-327x183_jpg_adimg_mw_327.png" alt="adobe social" />
<h2>Application Builder</h2>
Quickly and easily build a fan base using a drag and drop custom application made with Adobe Social's application builder. This tool lets you build our contests, galleries, polls and coupons quickly and easily. Using these tactics, you can get new followers and use the data collected to determine what interests them to better target them in the future.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/thumb-application-builder-327x183_jpg_adimg_mw_327.png" alt="adobe social" />
<h2>Social Campaigns</h2>
Due to it's deep integration with Adobe Analytics, Adobe Social has some of the most advanced campaign measurement tools available.  You can auto-generate and append unique tracking codes to social media posts and applications to quickly see which social channels, posts, and external influencers are driving the most conversations.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/thumb-socialcampaigns-327x183_jpg_adimg_mw_327.png" alt="adobe social" />
<h2>Social Analytics</h2>
Adobe Social helps you see and predict what customers like, talk about, and share most. Adobe Social monitors over 100 engagement metrics, filters social listening data by keywords and sentiment, and ties it all back to website activity so you can see which days, times, and types of content spark the most engagement.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/thumb-socialanalytics-327x183_jpg_adimg_mw_327.png" alt="adobe social" />

Need Social Media Monitoring & Analytics? Check out Adobe Social

<a href="http://www.joomla.org">Joomla</a>! is perhaps one of the best known names in the world of Content Management Systems. Originally a fork of Mambo, Joomla has surpassed it's predecessor in popularity and size by a massive margin. Does Joomla! really deserve all the praise it's been getting? Let's examine it and find out in this Joomla 1.5 review.
First released in January of 2008, version 1.5 has since seen a number of point releases to cover security holes and issues.
With the new release a number of very anticipated changes have been put in place such as one central installation tool and improved theming.
Upon installation we are greeted with the following screen.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla1.gif" alt="Joomla 1.5 Review" />
I proceed to the screen below:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla2.gif" alt="Joomla 1.5 Review" />
This is an excellent preinstall check that quickly gives you a breakdown of problem areas and things that need to be resolved. For most people, if you are on a shared host and not a VPS .. if you have anything RED, you may need to contact your provider before proceeding.
After accepting the license agreement on the next screen, we are greeted with:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla3.gif" alt="Joomla 1.5 Review" />
Enter your database details (for those first timers who've never had to do this before, Joomla has gone to good lengths to make sure they explain each field well). Once this is done, we proceed:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla4.gif" alt="Joomla 1.5 Review" />
This is an option I quite like. The ability to add FTP configuration is a sweet function. This allows you to enter your ftp details to your site and let Joomla correct any permissions issues that it encounters without bugging you. In my books, this is immediately filled in every time I install it. Some people will want more direct control though, and for you, you can safely ignore this screen entirely.
Enter your site name, details and choose whether you want sample data installed.
CAVEAT: If you don't install the sample data, you will literally get a bare bones website with zero content and it'll look horrible right off the bat.. so make sure you know what you are doing.
If you want a populated site with content so you can see how it would look when populated.. click install sample data. Otherwise, click next. <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla7.gif" alt="Joomla 1.5 Review" /> Here you see the default site with Sample Data installed. Joomla has one of the better default themes and it shows quite nicely. Let's check out the administration interface:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla8.gif" alt="Joomla 1.5 Review" />
Joomla has a nice interface with dropdowns. One of the things I found a bit overwhelming was the number of places content can hide. I literally spent 15 minutes trying to find one article that as buried in a bizarre place not reminiscent of content.
Joomla does a good job of making everything available. There are tons of options and it'll take a few to get used to maneuvering within the admin panel, but once you get used to it.. it functions quite nicely. What I did not like was the breakdown of sections, categories and content. I found I had a hard time understanding which was which and where my article would end up. I also couldn't figure out why I had to have both a category and a section (I hate being forced to do things..)
Once nice new inclusion in 1.5 was the universal installer. Instead of trying to discern what is a mambot, module, component or theme.. you just install the zip from one box in the CMS and it figures it out for you.
Joomla, like Drupal has a very large community, a large number of modules and an amazing amount of beautiful themes available from either premium sources or free.
In this Joomla 1.5 review, we've given it the ratings below:
Community 9/10 (The forums are active, but I found from a few posts I made that it takes a while to get a reply)
Expandability 8/10 (There are modules, but you are still limited with the way views, content and such can be presented as well as there are quite a few essential modules which required payment) Themability 10/10 (Probably the best CMS when it comes to themes. There are thousands of beautiful ones available from a myriad of sources.) Useability 7/10 (Content sections can get overwhelming and using third party addons can get messy as I found quite a few that were not stable or had poor support themselves)
<h2>Overall Score: 8/10</h2>

Joomla 1.5 Review - A Look at the Popular Open Source CMS

When it comes to website traffic analytics, Google Analytics is by far the most popular and widely used tool on the market. It’s powerful, accurate, easy to install, and practically the industry standard at this point.
However, it’s not perfect, and there are a few flaws in GA that can leave some users feeling a little bewildered. Google has addressed this with a number of ‘hacks’ and native/third party plugins that can improve Google Analytics as you require.
I’ve put together a list of some of the best.
<h2>1. Track Clicks On Links To Other Sites</h2>
Tracking links that leave your site is exceptionally useful as it allows you to judge where and how your traffic flows away from your site. In order to track outgoing links within the system, GA users will have to code by hand which isn’t always the easiest task.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/picture_4.png" />
There are a number of different ways get around the coding aspect, such as adding a few short lines of jquery (which can be found in a number of sites like <a href="https://github.com/remy/min.js">min.js</a>,<a href="http://zeptojs.com/"> Zepto.js</a>,<a href="http://minifiedjs.com/"> and Minified.js</a>.
Using these lines of code, you can direct Google Analytics' pagetracker to track outbound link clicks extremely easily.
<h2>2. Google Analytics Filters Bot Traffic Automatically – You Just Didn’t Know It</h2>
This simple analytics hack makes life much easier by filtering all the automated bot traffic out of your metrics. So, you’re left with the real clicks that you’re actually interested in.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/picture_1507x0-is.png" />
To filter all the bot and search spider traffic from your metrics, just go to the Admin settings. In the View panel, you’ll see View Settings. At the very bottom of this panel, you’ll see a small section for Bot Filtering that has a box next to it that says: ‘Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders’.
Once you tick this box you’ll automatically filter all the known bots and search spiders from your metrics.
<h2>3. Use In-Browser Extensions to Display Information In New Ways</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/picture_5.png" />
Google Analytics can be augmented in many ways that don’t include tampering with your code or your site. There are hundreds of interesting and useful extensions that can be added via your browser.
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-by-google/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk">The Tag Assistant </a>: This chrome extension allow you to automatically check if you have installed your tracking tags in the correct places.
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/table-booster-for-google/mhedbgbipbdppajofkiklhlbbdlldidj">Table Booster </a>: This extension allows you to change the way that data is visualized on your Google Analytics dashboard. This allows you to spot errors and identify trends much quicker.
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gaidpiakchgkapdgbnoglpnbccdepnpk">Campaign URL Builder </a>: Using Google Tag Manager? If so, this extension can be a very powerful tool. It lets you insert your own GTM container snippet onto a page so you can create your own test environment test it on a site via your browser
</li>
</ul>
<h2>4. Track Your Downloads</h2>
Google Analytics allows you to track your downloads ‘out of the box’ but it requires a lot of specific code manipulation that can be a little daunting for most. Fear not, Google Analytics Certified Partner firm <a href="https://www.analyticspros.com">Analytics Pros </a>have developed a plugin that allows you automate the tagging for your download files in just a few clicks.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4.png" />
This can be especially useful if you have a large number of file links on your site or you feel the code aspect might be a little too time consuming.
<h2>5. Get Google Analytics On Your Apple Products</h2>
As recently as two years ago, it was impossible to get Google Analytics to display on your iPhone without using a third party app that people found a little iffy, especially with data protection being such a hot topic.
You might not have realized that Google has launched an <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/google-analytics/id881599038?mt=8">iPhone (and iPad) </a>specific app that gives you all of the power of Google Analytics, optimized for your smart phone.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/5.png" />
With Google's app, you can track users in real time, analyze behaviours, and check referalls.
<h2>6. Integrate Google Analytics With Google Docs</h2>
A plugin<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics/fefimfimnhjjkomigakinmjileehfopp"> available from Google </a>lets you automatically export your Google Analytics information into Google Docs to allow you to use their powerful word processing and visualization tools to present your site metrics in a clean, shareable manner.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/picture_3887x0-is.png" />
This free plugin allows you to query and display your data from multiple viewpoints, calculate and display custom reports, create pie charts or other visual aids and embed these on third-party websites, schedule your reports to process, and then update automatically.
<h2>7. Use Google Analytics In Your CMS</h2>
You don’t have to stick with Google’s dashboard – you can view your Google Analytics metrics directly on your CMS dashboard with a range of special widgets. Not only do these widgets allow you to easily insert your Analytics code onto your site (usually with a one click solution) but they also allow data visualization of real time traffic.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/7.png" />
There’s a range of third party extensions for <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/">WordPress</a>, <a href="http://extensions.joomla.org/extension/asynchronous-google-analytics">Joomla</a>, and many others.
It's worth noting that, although most major content management systems support Google Analytics in one way or another, not all of them allow you to view your stats within their dashboard.
<h2>Hack To Your Heart's Content</h2>
These hacks and plugins allow you to bring Google’s powerful Analytic platform to a new level and customize it to the exact way that you need. I hope you’ll find them as useful as I have.
Why not tell us about some of your hacks and plugin finds? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

7 Google Analytics Plugins & Hacks You Should Know About

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