TERMINALFOUR Lifts the Lid on CMS

Launch of €900k Release of Site Manager 7.0 Positions Irish CMS Provider For Major Drive on Client Acquisition in 2010

 

 

TERMINALFOUR, one of the world's leading web content management companies, has launched the latest release of Site Manager 7.0, a major new edition of its enterprise grade web content management (WCM) product which cost the company €900k investment in the 18 month research and development.

 

Their web content management software continues to be developed with an open source collaboration ethos. Its community of developers, users and analysts have driven the changes to the technology, user-interface and functionality through discussion forums, thousands of opinion articles and enhancement requests on the extranet, and as a consequence, Site Manager now addresses the latest demands of a global CMS audience including ease-of-use, multilingual, intuitiveness, integration with external systems and availability on all major platforms and web browsers.

 

 

Site Manager 7.0 introduces many of the latest web technologies allowing content contributors to quickly publish and share documents, photos and video stored in other third party systems. Importantly, it is now one of the only WCM products in the world that complies with Accessibility Guidelines and can handle every internet browser on the market.

 

According to the company, TERMINALFOUR Site Manager 7.0 benefits from significant advancements in the following areas.....

 

 

The existing user interface has been enhanced considerably including the latest Ajax functionality to allow users interact quickly with the system, reducing the number of clicks, page refreshes and generally making the software more intuitive. While some of the improvements are highly visible, hundreds of very minor improvements to menu structures, labels and features based entirely on client feedback and our own user testing process. Significant enhancements have been made to its media library, SEO checking, accessibility checking, support for third party security plug-ins, shared folders via the WebDav protocol and multi-lingual capabilities.

 

The solution now allows for all or part of the content repository and media library within Site Manager, based on security rights and roles, to be exposed to users a type of file server. This allows users to quickly publish content by simply saving from common desktop applications using the standard "save as" function. Large volumes of content, such as library of photos or videos, can simply be published using standard Windows or Apple copy or move functionality. This feature can be highly successful in Intranet or Extranet environment where users wish to share master documents quickly.

 

 

For Web Developers all key assets such as web site style sheets, images, JavaScript files can also be shared using this feature so developers can make updates directly from products such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop or Microsoft Visual Studio.

 

 

The technical architecture behind TERMINALFOUR Site Manager's WebDav has been completely redeveloped to ensure it can perform under high simultaneous usage and meets the security requirements of the most paranoid organization. Less obvious to the end user is that all changes to the documents are version controlled, just in case.

 

TERMINALFOUR Site Manager's in-context editor "Direct Edit", which allows occasional users to quickly and visually make changes to content has been completely redeveloped from the ground up. TERMINALFOUR collaborated intensively with their existing client based to build an interface that could be used intimately by very occasional users, with little or no training, so that organisations can roll out the system further across their organisation.

 

TERMINALFOUR Site Manager is no longer just about efficiently allowing for the publishing and sharing of information. The circle has now been completed with the solution now providing you with dynamic feedback as to the performance of web pages making Search Engine Optimisation and Accessibility recommendations for every piece of content. This helps every user focus their content and help improve the quality the sites published.

 

 

TERMINALFOUR believes that accessibility of the web content management system should apply to all users, regardless of abilities, physical constraints or even their chosen computer. Since the very first version, Site Manager has worked with all the major browsers regardless of platform. With the number of browsers growing rather than reducing, it is no longer acceptable that some Content Management Systems work in Internet Explorer on Windows, with perhaps token support for Firefox. Version 7 will see full support for the complete solution beyond Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari to include browsers such as Opera and Google Chrome, regardless of whether users are Apple, Windows or Linux users. During testing the company claims that Site Manager passed official tests on the iPhone!

 

 

TERMINALFOUR Site Manager now allows the customisation of the administrative interface with customisable widgets that can be dragged into position. This allows users to not only to customise their view of the system, such as displaying recent documents you edited, system performance or user activity but also include third party widgets that meet the latest W3C Widget standard. TERMINALFOUR is the first Web Content Management System in the world to implement this new standard fully.

 

 

In practical terms, from one user interface users can have a complete view of data from other related systems such as analytics, server performance/alters or event fun widgets such as the weather or iGoogle widgets.

 

It's commonly accepted that trying to have all content in one place or system isn't really practical. TERMINALFOUR Site Manager focuses on allowing users to decide on the appropriate home for their content and allow them to reuse it no matter where they are publishing to whether website, intranet or extranet.

 

TERMINALFOUR Site Manager allows users to select documents, content, photos or even video from third party Document Management and Digital Asset Management systems such as Microsoft Sharepoint, EMC Documentum, Alfresco, and Opentext Livelink. Once a document is selected users can decide if it is to remain synchronised with its source.

 

TERMINALFOUR uses open standard interfaces and in some cases proprietary ones, to allow users to connect to over 80 commonly used systems, a level of integration not seen in most other web content management systems. The number of third party systems supported will continue to grow consistently over the next 12 months.

 

Making sure that users can quickly and easily login to a system is paramount to its general adoption and acceptance. Although Site Manager has had long time support for centralised authentication such LDAP and Active Directory support, organisations are now demanding support for other third party authentication and single sign-on functionality. Site Manager version 7 how allows for plug-in authentication with out-of-the-box support for Shibboleth, CAS and Webauth, and Site Manager is the first Web Content Management System to support these standards out-of-the-box.

 

Version 7 sees an updated platform independent Web Services API that meets all the key standards expected by developers worldwide. The new standards based web services interface allows the user to extend the solution and also integrate content managed within TERMINALFOUR Site Manager in third party systems regardless of the programming language or platform used.

 

David Miller, Chief Operations Officer, TERMINALFOUR, said, "With TERMINALFOUR Site Manager 7.0, we've pulled out all the stops to get ahead of the competition. While many of our rivals have stalled their investment in R&D during the economic downturn, we've amplified our activities. This is a fiercely competitive industry where continuous development gives you the edge. The new edition of Site Manager incorporates the latest interactive technologies and firmly puts us in pole position of driving innovation in the web content management industry."

 

Piero Tintori, Chief Executive Officer, TERMINALFOUR, said, "2009 has been a landmark year for TERMINALFOUR. Our position as the number one provider of web content management (WCM) to the higher education market is secured following the recent announcement of our fiftieth university customer. We have stepped up our US sales and marketing activities and now with the launch of TERMINALFOUR Site Manager 7.0, we're primed to take the company to a new level."

 

 

 

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