Eden CMS Review
Eden is a unique new CMS from Durham, North Carolina based firm, Preation.
What makes it unique in a sea of content management systems you ask? Let us show you.
First off, anyone can create a free trial account (no credit card required) by accessing the Eden website.
Once you've done so, you'll enter the dashboard which provides an overview of available options:
The dashboard gives you quick updates from the Preation team as to what has changed recently, as well as site statistics (if you scroll down you will see these):
Exploring the various options, there is an Album link which will allow you to define an album for your media as well as create and select a folder.
Next there is an authentication tab where you can define which user roles are able to see various areas of the CMS.
There is then a calendar feature which lets you define and categorize events with quite a bit of detail (Note: screenshot does not show all available options as it would be too long ):
Following the calendar is the file manager which gives you an interface where you can import images from a URL or select files individually.
The file manager is very fast and works very well.
Selecting multiple files with the ctrl-key and uploading them worked without issue as you can see from the 3 images we randomly selected below. They were all uploaded quickly and the system provides nail shots of each.
They can then be renamed and descriptions added:
Form management is the next selection in the dashboard. From here you can create as many custom forms as you like and the system will provide you with plenty of options to adjust them to your needs:
Next is the optimization tab which shows your calculated SEO scores for each of your pages:
Now here's our favorite part of this system.. the Page tab.
This tab shows you the hierarchy of your website represented as follows:
What's neat about this is the way they have handled the content and page editing.. clicking on any of the pages presents a dialog with options.
Selecting the settings option will provide you with the following options:
- Name
- Description
- Layout (you can select the number of columns)
- Page type
- Whether or not to show the page in navigation
- SEO info such as page title, keywords, description, SEO target keywords, optimization info, and more.
- Analytics code entry (for Google Analytics)
- Copyright information
- Logo selection and Header image
Selecting the edit option lets you get your hands dirty and begin building your pages / content:
What's unique is that as you are populating the page with content, the SEO value is being analyzed and presented in real time to give you an idea as to how well you can expect your site to perform. We're not sure how accurate it is and what it is judging based on but it's a nice feature and we certainly appreciate having it as a guide.
The theme tab has a few themes which you can select from to give you a starting point for your site:
The final two options include user management and URL management and are pretty straight forward.
Pro's
- Easy to use
- Quick and responsive
- Reasonably priced
Con's
- No integrated CSS or HTML editing
Overall, it's a great starter system and being that you can upload your own designs to use with the system, the lack of integrated CSS and HTML editing isn't a massive issue but it would be nicer if it was included.
Eden is definitely a step in the right direction for ease of use and we can only hope that they keep improving.