'Net Features : content management system

Turn Your CMS Into a Newsroom

Michael Garrity — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:15:00 GMT

A new partnership between news distribution service PR Newswire and Web content management solutions provider Ektron has lightened the load for many Web publishers. The pairing will integrate PR Newswire's press release publishing and social media monitoring into Ektron's current platform to create "a more seamless news distribution experience."

Simplifying Content Distribution
PR Newswire Sync is an add-on module included in Ektron's content management system (CMS). Those working in communications and using the Ektron solution will be able to publish their press releases simultaneously on both PR Newswire and their Ektron-powered websites, a change that will help to diminish, if not totally eliminate, manual errors while also making work easier for those in charge of managing content on a corporate website.

PR Newswire Sync works by constantly monitoring an organization's PR Newswire account. This continual surveillance means that whenever a news release is published through PR Newswire, Sync will automatically take the content feed and publish that content on the publisher's site, with all links and formatting intact. It will even go as far as URL-aliasing the release's title, adding keyword metadata for search engine optimization and including a summarized version of the release to the organization's home page. In effect, it does three different jobs for a company's online content manager all at once.

Keeping an Eye on the Social Web
In addition to Sync, the company is also releasing the PR Newswire Listening Dashboard, its social media monitoring counterpart. This add-on allows users to monitor the conversations about their brand or company on multiple online and social channels by studying keywords and search strings. This allows Ektron's users to "better determine campaign success and adjust communications strategies based on the findings from the PR Newswire Listening Dashboard."

These modules can be attached to any website powered by Ektron. For more information about PR Newswire Sync and Listening Dashboard, click here.

Drupal-driven Sites Fare Well in New Report

Michael Garrity — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

A new study reports what is being labeled as an "identified trend in corporate website governance", concluding that more high-profile and scalable websites are moving to the Drupal platform.

The study was conducted by Volacci, a search engine marketing company that leverages the Drupal content management system (CMS) technologies for "superior search performance and profitability," in an effort to see which websites are currently built using the Drupal CMS.

Though Drupal typically sees a very small share of the market, with only about 2 percent of all websites currently running on the platform, the company has been seeing more significant increases in the corporate world, with a larger percentage of these websites adopting Drupal's CMS.

In August, the Inc. 5000 was announced, which is a listing of America's fastest growing companies. The number two company on the list, Solazyme, is one of the many sites using the Drupal CMS. Other Drupal sites on the list include Goldline (180), Accuvant (1800) and WellMed Medical Group, all of which saw their positions on the list increase compared to where they were in 2010.

Over the last few years, Drupal has seen a variety of corporate, education and government enterprises, among many other industries, begin to utilize their CMS platform to create their websites. Volacci says that this is an attempt by these companies or organizations to establish "a robust, SEO-friendly presence on the Web."

Reseller Edition for CM4all Sites to be Revealed

Michael Garrity — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:45:00 GMT

Content Management AG (CM-AG), one of the world's leading developers of Web-based applications, recently gave people something to be excited about for this year's HostingCon. Last Friday they announced that they would take the opportunity to unveil their new Reseller Edition and customization options for CM4all Sites at the event.

It was just last year at HostingCon 2010 that CM4all's premium site building solution was initially presented to the public, and since then it has met with great succes, being brought out in various language versions and markets by OEM partners around the globe. Based on totally overhauled CM4all technology and maintaining proven administrative APIs, the product is available for licensing and is already at work in various hardware scenarios, inlcuding everything from redundant failover solutions to highly scalable cluster solutions in the data centers of OEM partners.

CM4all Sites was initially developed as a platform solution that can be adapted and customized to each OEM partner's individual needs, and it is dedicated to serving leading telcos, MSOs, ISPs and Web-hosting companies worldwide. This new Reseller Edition will provide increased flexibility in overall product customization and it will also add room for the integration of custom content like OEM-specific ads or video tutorials.

The ability to customize pre-defined website categories and their related default content allows OEM partners to align the product with specific target groups or vertical markets. The CM4all Sites Reseller Edition will provide OEM partners with a multi-tier distribution system to create a separate GUI and product setup for each of their resellers from within one central installation.

“After launching the new platform, our focus was clearly on enhancing and extending the proven customization options that our global OEM partners have benefited from over the past ten-plus years. Our new options guarantee that all our OEM partners will benefit, whether they are operating under a single brand, leveraging multiple brands or operating a complex multi-tier distribution system via resellers or channel partners,” explains Robert Schovenberg, CEO of CM-AG. “We are truly excited about the future innovations we will launch in the years to come,” he adds.

The announcement of the Reseller Edition comes off the heels of an annoucement by CM4all from earlier this year introducing Simplified Templates, which can by styled with HTML and CSS according to CM-AG's Simplified Template Guide. This allows the templates to complement the built-in slection of fully customizable CSS templates. The concept enables CM-AG's OEM partners and their resellers to easily extend the template database within the product with specific templates for vertical markets or special customer groups; they can also include these templates within a managed service offering.