Each enterprise nowadays has the option to choose from a wide range of open source content management systems. Some of the content management systems are popular, whereas others are lesser-known. However, some of the lesser-known content management systems like Concrete5 come with an array of features to simplify development and management of a variety of websites and web application.

As an open source content management system (CMS), Concrete5 helps users to curtail website development and management cost. At the same time, it simplifies web application development and management by providing several robust features, along with community and enterprise support. These features make many enterprises prefer Concrete5 to other popular content management systems.

Understanding Important Features of Concrte5 CMS

Themes, Add-ons and Extensions

Concrete5 enables web developers to design websites rapidly using a number of free and commercial tools. Likewise, the developers can easily add functionality to the web application using several free and commercial add-ons. The themes and add-ons enable developers to build custom websites rapidly without writing additional code. At the same time, the developers can extend the CMS using enterprise extensions like internationalization, HTML exporter, and multi-step content workflow.

Content Editor

The content editor provided by Concrete5 helps programmers to customize the website according to precise business requirements. The WYSIWYG content editor further enables developers to customize the website without writing or modifying code. It further comes with robust features like in-context editing, easy theme controls, and dynamic forms. The programmers even have option to drag and drop content blocks within a template.

Style Editor

Cocrete5 enables developers to customize website design using a variety of fonts, layouts, colours. The developers can further edit these elements using the style editor provided by the CMS. The style editor further simplifies website customization by providing features like image editor, videos, gallery, blocks, stacks, templates, and page layouts.

Mobile Optimization

Concrete5 allows developers to optimize websites for mobile devices by adopting responsive web design. The developers can further make the web pages look good on varying devices using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Also, they can optimize the web application for mobile devices by availing the features provided by Concrete5 – responsive images, responsive layouts, responsive video, and mobile navigation/menus.

Form Builder

Concrete5 enables users to accelerate digital marketing campaigns by creating form and surveys dynamically. The programmers can use the form builder provided by the CMS to create forms and surveys without writing additional code. The users can further collect user data more efficiently by availing the features provided by the form builder – custom form fields, form validation, error detection and drag-and-drop.

Integrated Reporting Tool

Concrete5 also comes with tools to generate a variety of integrated reports. It allows users to create a variety of reports using a single interface. The website administrators can use the interface to generate reports based on form results, survey results, error logging, user session tracking statistics, and email logging systems. These reports help managers to speedup decision making process and monitor marketing campaigns more efficiently.

Security Features

The security features provided by Concrete5 helps developers to protect the web application from various targeted security attacks. The developers can easily enhance the website’s security by availing features like captcha, email verification, content approval, SSL implementation, audit trial and login history capturing. They also have option to override the default security settings of the CMS without modifying its core architecture.

User Management and Permissions

Concrete5 further enhances the website security by allowing administrators to create multiple user accounts and imposing access restrictions. Based on the policy of his organization, an administrator can create groups, profiles, attributes, exclusions, and custom single pages. Likewise, they can make individual web pages accessible to specific users and groups. Also, they can trigger events based on workflows against saved permissions.

Blogs and Commenting

Concrete5 comes with features to facilitate blog integration and online discussions. The users can easily integrate customizable blogs into their websites by availing features like topics, multiple authors, post display options, and RSS syndication. Likewise, they can use the integrated commenting system provided by Concrete5 to moderate both individual and threaded comments efficiently.

Social Integration and SEO

Concrte5 helps users to divert traffic to their websites from popular search engines and social networks. The users can easily increase the search engine ranking and visibility of their websites by availing an array of SEO features provided by the CMS – XML sitemap, description meta tag, page titles, custom URLs, and bulk SEO page updater. Likewise, they can use the social share plug-in provided by Concrete5 to integrate the website with popular social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

However, Concrete5, like other content management systems, has its own shortcomings. For instance, it increases web application development cost by requiring enterprises to purchase commercial add-ons. The enterprises can still use Concrete5 to build and manage a variety of web applications smoothly.

An advanced and improved enterprise content management system (CMS) helps in streamlining the process of document management within an organisation. Whether you are talking about capturing, managing, accessing, integrating, measuring or storing information, an ECM proves to be of much help to you. Be it your company web or mobile site, a feature-rich and scalable content management system can help you manage your online content very easily. Remember that the most effective way to communicate with your clients nowadays, is through your mobile or website. So, enterprise CMS solution is important to store and update all valuable content in an organised manner.

Having an enterprise content management strategy for effective storage, distribution and management of content, is crucial. Given below are some of the benefits of using an enterprise CMS for effective management of data in your organisation:

• Management and collaboration: The main goal for installing an ECM is to manage a company’s documents properly. And the best part about using an ECM is that you can search important documents by simply typing in the keywords. This way it becomes much easier for you to choose files instead of spending time searching for files in folders, endlessly. Moreover, every organisation needs a system wherein there is no need to track each document individually. The best ECM solutions ease up this process by offering facilities that lets you create a designated route for documents which needs approval and review by an appropriate personnel. There are ECM systems which are synced with Microsoft Office and can also send alerts as to which individual needs to check a document and which document needs editing.

• Streamlines scheduling: An effective ECM provides you with all the details about a content status, that is, whether a piece of content has been published, reviewed, organized or is in draft. This makes it easy for you to understand as to what to update and what not to.

• Comes with permissions and protocols: A great enterprise content management system comes with various types of publishing permissions and protocols. This helps in securing and protecting data from unauthorized sources. After all, it is essential to protect critical company documents from hacks. Therefore, it is essential that access to documents is given to only specific employees. Some of the ECM systems also offer auditing options. This allows you to see specific activities such as who has viewed a particular document, when was it viewed, who has shared which document with whom, and more.

• Enables easy upgrades: A good content management system can help you maintain a site very well. In addition, even if you need to update the CMS software or add features or tools, you can simply go to the CMS, which has a common architecture, and just make the necessary changes, as required. Without a structured content management system, that would mean going through hundreds of individual pages and making changes, which is a lot of work.

All in all, a good enterprise CMS is of huge importance for any business website. Moreover, since businesses are focusing on enterprise mobility, an advanced and scalable ECM is even more required in order to manage documents across various devices and platforms.

A Content Management System (or CMS) is essentially built for consuming content, either by customers and external stakeholders (websites) or employees and internal stakeholders (intranet). When content consumption is the primary goal, user interface of the system becomes even more important. A poor or confusing interface may result in miscommunication resulting in serious setbacks for any organization.

Here are 10 CMS user experience and usability tips for creating better websites.

1. If Not Sure Then Don’t Go For It

If you are not sure if the CMS you intend to use has the right UI interface, then it would be a good idea to go with some other CMS. There are hundreds of CMS products available in the market and all have their own strengths and weakness. If you are going with an open source CMS, then you need to be willing to make your own customizations to make it suitable for you as most open source CMS don’t have optimum user experience out-of-the-box.

2. Safeguard Users From The Intricacy

Your CMS may be advanced and robust, but users don’t care. Don’t expose your users to the inner workings of the system. Make their journey on your website as smooth as possible with minimum complications. For instance, a problem in majority of CMS products is “hub and spoke” or “pogo sticking” where end users are asked to go back and forth between various parts of the system to complete their tasks. This happens with some degree of “duplication” or “double handling”.

3. Speak Users’ Language

You must keep your communication clear using terminology that users will understand. User research would help find out the language, content tone and vocabulary that you should use for optimum results.

4. Know Your Users

Who are the end users of your CMS website? Know them well. They might not be techies or developers or administrators. The end users can be sales people, editors, writers, producers or product managers. You can do some research and find out how and why your users are using your website and accordingly structure the user experience.

5. Don’t Forget Its Purpose

CMS is made up of three terms. Don’t get trapped in the glory of the system and overlook its real purpose, which is to manage content. You should keep in mind everything from designing to the development of the system. You should also focus on the technical aspects of CMS.

6. Do A Few Things Really Well

Knowing your users includes some kind of task evaluation. Look for the most significant tasks that your users perform. Focus and prioritize tasks and perform them well. Have a tailor made interface, automate certain tasks to simplify processes. For a content heavy website, the focal point of the user interface will be quality content. So more than anything else, focus on making the content good enough for users.

7. Customize To Meet Specific Business Needs

Tailoring your CMS as per your needs may also mean using consistent visual design and branding. CMS customization should include removing unnecessary elements, creating simple interface and speaking the language of your customers. For example, if the particular purpose of CMS is for an intranet then the user interface must be customized to serve the needs of the intranet. You should avail of competent CMS customization services to ensure the customizations are done as per global coding standards.

8. Use Natural Mappings If Needed

Adding natural mapping is possible in the case of a CMS. For example when you deal with images on your website show natural mappings. It could be thumbnails on the search or listing pages and bigger versions when you view the individual properties. It becomes easy to identify content with the help of visual attributes.

9. Be Consistent

User Interface must be consistent when it comes to pages, components and screens. It includes navigation, forms, controls, text styling, buttons, form layouts, terminologies and feedback mechanisms. This is the case if particular parts are customized; those are normally different in look and feel.

10. Stick To Traditional Conventions

CMS should not only be consistent within itself, it should also include what users expect from other similar systems. For instance, if content management system is a web app, standard website conventions apply. Like for placement of search box, use form controls such as drop downs and single click links.

Businesses are increasingly turning to the internet to market their products and services. This allows them to reach a much larger audience when compared to traditional means of promotion, like billboards etc.

Most small businesses avoid setting up a website because it seems too costly to afford and too technical to manage. This is where CMS (Content Management Systems) can help out. CMS is an easy-to-apply web design and development interface that can be easily learned and applied. Below, we list out a few major benefits to using CMS to design your website.

• It is very user friendly.

This is the most important feature of CMS. Not everybody has the technical knowledge to operate computer software effectively. Having software that almost anyone can use to edit and update a website makes things a lot easier for those who are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of web design.

• A website can be made search engine friendly right from the start.

When developing with popular CMS providers such as WordPress and Joomla, you are offered many features like page titles, meta descriptions and headers, to optimize your website for search engines. A number of keyword focused links can also be placed in the content according to your requirement.

• Analytics are easily obtainable.

Analytics offer businesses a screenshot of what visitors think of their websites. With the help of CMS, website admins can log into their accounts and get instant analytical information regarding user behaviour, like time spent, bounce rate, point of origin etc. This gives businesses a better picture of customer requirements and allows them to update their marketing efforts accordingly.

• CMS can be used by multiple users and across multiple devices.

With CMS, a number of users can log in and update the website anytime and from anywhere, without the requirement of any special software to be installed on their devices. Some CMS software even allows you to upload pictures via your smart phone.

• The website owner has full control of the website.

By using CMS, the website owner gets full control of the website. This ensures quick access and easy-editing of the website, any time. As a business, you won’t have to rely on external web design agencies for small edits on your website.

Designing and launching your website using CMS need not be a herculean task. Let us help set it up for you, while you focus on growing your business.

The content organisation phase of any website development is perhaps the longest phase. Having rolled out an innumerable number of websites successfully over the years with various CMSes, deciding which one is the best of the lot is difficult. Every CMS has its own sets of perks and disadvantages. How well it can build a website or application for your business idea depends on your skills to deploy it. A CMS really gives the power to website creators or owners to place content, change or modify it as needed on the site. Yet, it’s also important for them to stick to certain conditions to make sure their idea of content management is not ruining the site or its effectiveness in Google and other search engines.

So, without a further ado, here are for you some crucial facts for consideration to derive the best of a CMS for your new website.

Usability

The first thing you should count upon in the CMS you picked is its ease-of-use. It needs to be easily usable for those indulged in content marketing. An average end-user with no technical skills will always find it difficult to perform certain tasks with CMS. The website owners cannot even make the slightest changes to the site without the help of web experts. Thus, whenever you are opting for a CMS, make sure you’re able to grasp over the usual aspects of the platform like WYSIWYG editor, in-line tools for content edits.

Scalability

Choosing a CMS based on the current content requirements is the gravest mistake you can make. The volume of your content will increase, changes may arise in the coming days. Always a content that is put meticulously in the website has more potential to captivate the audience. So, clearly, your CMS must be able to deal with increasing traffic or spikes in visitors over time by providing enough space for content changes and updates.

Customisation

CMS is not just about putting the content in a definite layout or structure. Truth is, marketers seek more than a dead-simple website to get the attention of targeted audience. Certain scope for customisation is necessary, that is, you can put the content elaborately in a way that you have wished for. When you have the flexibility to make modifications in content presentation and tweak its design, fonts, layout, or headers will help to gear up your site easily according to the business’s purpose.

SEO responsiveness

You should never go for a CMS platform that does not assure you about the site’s search engine optimisation. You may not be able to make your website prominent in the search engines without proper tools or SEO plugins that are needed to boost a site’s rank position. While it’s true that most CMSes are equipped with search optimisation tools, their effectiveness varies. You need to be careful in picking the platform that has inbuilt SEO boosting features and so a little effort from your end will deliver the best of SEO results for your site.

Using a rightful CMS is not enough for your website, but there are certain rules that you need to adhere to get the best results. There are no as such particular CMS platform that stands out from all others. However, you can get the most efficient solution using any one solution if you know the right ways to leverage it for your project.