More elcomCMS Features
Social Layer - 'My Page'
The new social layer provides intuitive and easy to use corporate Facebook-like functionality, giving users the ability to publish status updates, share information, comment and invite colleagues or members. This builds on our CMS's existing social features which include blogs, forums and wikis.
YouTube Integration - External Content Management '
We have also introduced a framework to easily integrate external content, such as YouTube. This allows authors to automatically extract and store video metadata as indexed objects without the need to actually store the video asset on their site. The content can then be integrated with the Elcom CMS's taxonomy engine, dynamic content widgets and search. This provides a quick and powerful way to enhance existing content with external content; and reduces the duplication and maintenance often associated with managing multiple content sources.
Campaign Monitor Integration
For marketing and campaign managers, we have integrated, the outstanding email marketing software, Campaign Monitor. This is a third-party online email marketing tool that lets marketers send “professional and engaging email campaigns, track results and manage subscribers”, to provide powerful email campaign management.
Nested Master Pages
Nested Master Pages make our CMS even more user friendly, particularly for web developers and front-end developers. With Nested Master Pages you can control which pages inherit particular page elements. For example your corporate logo can feature on every page but you may only want a particular header design displayed for the product section and a
different one again for the services section. With Nested Masterpages you can control and manage this easily without needing to change consistent elements for each page – reducing site maintenance time.
Fast front-end development
This feature lets an author quickly and simply add content, without going near the backend. Simply click the add article button, select the folder (it will default to the current location), click publish and you have a new article template ready to go. This should make it a lot less daunting for users who don’t really like to venture into the admin area.
Enhanced multilingual publishing
The multilingual engine has been enhanced to make the management of multilingual content even easier. A new label manager has been added to provide a central area to set language type and translation for specific system fields. Language can also be set in folder attributes which will automatically add the appropriate meta language value to all articles. Article relationships have also been enhanced to provide easier management of different language versions of the same content.
Powerful caching for improved performance
Output caching has been introduced to provide greater performance. It lets you store pages in memory and on subsequent requests the pages are downloaded faster by using the cache instead of having to regenerate the page from scratch. This can dramatically improve the performance of your website.
Additional URL flexibility for SEO
Greater URL flexibility has been added to version 7.4. In previous versions you could not specify the full URL, only the last part with the 'folder'. Version 7.4 now allows you to disable this feature and specify your own the full folder path in the URL. Making this an even powerful tool for SEO enhancements.
A/B Testing
Part of the Online Marketing Suite, this allows users to test a baseline control sample web page and compare
it to a variety of single-variable test samples, in order to better evaluate and improve response rates. This ultimately enables the execu
tion of “smarter marketing” through testing, evaluation, better resource allocation and enhanced tracking ability – thereby significantly improving Return on Investment.
Ephox EditLive Integration
Elcom has partnered with Ephox in order to deeply integrate their EditLive components into the Elcom CMS. The key benefits to users are the way it specifically cleans and presents semantic HTML code even with cut/pastes from external sources, image cropping, track changes, commenting and accessibility checking as you type. This even extends to advanced table management, whereby it can handle splits, resizes, merged cells, define header rows Vs data rows and table summaries for accessibility.
RSS Curation
RSS Curation allows a user to monitor an RSS feed and import content which matches a specified set of criteria, allowing auto creation of articles and auto tagging. This provides users with the ability to personalise their content with the information that interests them,thereby enhancing their online experiences.
Publish from Microsoft Word
Publishing and editing Web content is now as simple as creating a Word document and clicking Publish. You don’t even need to login to the CMS. This simple and powerful feature lets authors work in an environment they are proficient without having to learn a new system or fiddle with HTML. This functionality is provided via an office addin which automatically cleans your Word content producing clean HTML. It even uploads images that have been inserted into the Word document.
Analytics
Analytics is a key area of online marketing - understanding your users and how they interact. (See also Web Engagement Management)
The Elcom CMS now offers a fully integrated analytics engine to help you better understand visitor behaviour and further optimise their browsing experience. The analytics engine uses pixel tracking technology which collects, analyses and reports an array of metrics via a friendly and easy to use interface.
Element Drag and Drop
Our new drag and drop functionality makes it even easier to control the layout of your pages. If you want an element positioned in the right hand column simple drag it over to the relevant zone and release.
Even friendlier URLs
Friendly URLs are an important part of web usability and SEO. The Elcom CMS has always supported human friendly URLs but now we’ve taken it a step further using the latest URL routing technology offered by .NET 4.0 and dropped the default.aspx extension altogether.
Enhanced Mobile Support
Do you want to deliver content to a variety of devices such as ipads, iphones and Blackberrys? 7.2 lets you to target specific user agents with the same content while automatically adjusting layout and design to suit the specific device.
Enhanced Version Control
CommunityManager's enhanced version control now extends beyond articles and documents allowing you to rollback menus, folders, images, templates and stylesheets giving you a clear snapshot of how the site looked at any point in time.
Custom Menus
The Elcom CMS offers a range of pre-built menus, however in 7.2 we give front end developers the option to import their own custom menus. The Elcom CMS generates semantic menu mark-up to which front end developers can add presentation and behaviour by adding their own pinch of jquery and css magic dust.
Enhanced Wiki Module
The new wiki module makes creation of wiki content including references, sub folders and links a breeze. As always you can create a wiki at any location in the Elcom CMS and present the content wherever you choose making it even easier for teams to work collaboratively over specific subject areas.
SDK Refactored (EDF)
The Elcom Development Framework (EDF) has been extensively upgraded making it even easier for developers wishing to create their own custom functionality that integrates with CommunityManager.NET. There are an infinite number of ways the EDF can be used including custom pages and backend service integration.
Microsoft Office Connector
Elcom’s enhanced Platform now enables integration between document libraries and Microsoft Office. For the first time, users can access and edit web content from within Microsoft Office and save it directly back to a web, portal or intranet site. Conversely, Microsoft Office documents can be edited from within CommunityManager.NET and IntranetManager.NET, eliminating the need to duplicate online and offline changes.
SharePoint Connector
CommunityManager.NET Version 7 provides a single point of management for SharePoint content and web content. Pages, documents and images created within SharePoint can now be pushed out to a businesses’ web site, enabling content to be maintained and published to the Web from a single environment. SharePoint content can also be ‘mapped’ to CommunityManager.NET folders and automatically synchronised wherever mapped content is updated.
HP TRIM Connector
HP TRIM is one of the most popular document management systems used within government organisations. Its secure version control capabilities enable public bodies to comply with legislation around the storage and retention of content. However, government organisations have not traditionally been able to integrate web content with documents managed by HP TRIM.
CommunityManager.NET Version 7 lets organisations pull content out of TRIM and make it accessible on their website via a hyperlink. This easy-to-use system, allows government organisations to speedily publish web content, leading to huge operational efficiencies.
Email Publishing
With the introduction of an Email Publishing module, Elcom has developed an automated, time efficient process for the posting of online content. Non-technical users can now use email as a forum for publishing web content, saving time and eliminating the need for complex training. By sending an email to a specially configured mailbox, content will be automatically published to the businesses’ website along with attached images and documents. Standard templates are used to ensure that content is published in a consistent and professional manner.
Advanced Workflow Routing
Managers now have the option to let the publishers choose a workflow to send their content for approval. They also have the option to send content for approval to their Manager as defined in their user profile. These options can also be used in combination.
New Templating Engine
Front end developers now have deeper access to MasterPages allowing them to quickly build templates and customise their site.
Web Standards – XHTML Strict Compliance
Build websites that conform to the highest standards improving accessibility compliance and overall performance.
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