ADXSTUDIO

The state of the art in content management

Quite often we sit down and look at a piece of software and think we could do it better ourselves – so we do. Then we get times when we are simply gob-smacked by the simplicity and brilliance of somebody else’s development and sit there awe-struck thinking ‘wish we’d done that!’

When it comes to content management systems (CMS) the latter is most definitely the case. Sadly we can’t claim to have designed or developed the ADXSTUDIO CMS, but on the basis that ‘if you can’t beat them, join them,’ we are happy to bow our heads in respect and be very happy to use it.

To save you time looking up the ADXSTUDIO site to see what it’s all about we have shamelessly copied and pasted the content they have written themselves to describe their enviable product and why you should use it. (Which is exactly why we use it!)

Words stolen from www.adxstudio.com/cms-product/introduction and subsequent pages:

ADXSTUDIO CMS is a powerful and affordable web content management system built on Microsoft® ASP.NET and .NET Framework 3.5. Its easy-to-use web-based tools empower content authors to manage complex websites, intranets, and extranets, while alleviating the strain on costly IT resources. ADXSTUDIO CMS’s advanced capabilities allow organizations to deploy high performance, scalable, and secure websites with confidence.

Time doesn't stand still, and neither does the competition. Potential and existing customers expect to obtain detailed and current information about your organization and products as well as interact with your organization over the web. As a result, corporate website owners typically face the following challenges and constraints:

• Publishing a large amount of information to the web. Websites of 40-50 pages are manageable whereas 2000+ pages require an entirely different process.
• Distribution of content authoring across a team of individuals spread throughout an organization.
• Coordination and communication challenges related to website changes across all team members in various disciplines or roles.
• Shorter turnaround times = On demand publishing.
• High technical complexity.
• High expectations of brand and presentation consistency.
• Cost pressures.
• Website integration with other line-of-business applications.
• Many more stakeholder groups have significant interest in the website.

What is a Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) is a software platform that enables non-technical content authors to easily create, manage and publish website content. Electronic content (text, images, graphics, video, sound, documents, etc.) is typically stored by the CMS in a reusable fashion in a database which can be managed by content authors through a series of related applications. Developers can build web page templates that extract this content from the database and transform it to HTML which is delivered to the web browser. These templates typically implement a standardized look-and-feel, or corporate identity for all content on the website.

ADXSTUDIO CMS leverages the Microsoft web hosting platform (including Windows Server, SQL Server, Internet Information Services, Index Server, and Active Directory or AD/AM) to deliver these end-user capabilities and also provides a strong object-oriented developer framework that enables developers to customize and extend their website solutions.

Separation of Content, Presentation Style, and Application Behavior

By design, ADXSTUDIO CMS separates each element into content, visual style, and behavior. Content includes the pictures and the words that are being provided specific to each page. Visual style includes the look and feel, standard images, font specifications, and page layouts. Behavior includes the display rules, navigation pieces, site maps, search functionality, and other supporting applications that will be used to render each page in the site.

As a result, the CMS streamlines the publication process by enabling multiple content authors across departments with appropriate permissions to maintain website content. Non-technical staff are able to easily maintain content using a browser-based web console. Information can be published immediately or scheduled to launch and expire on future dates.

As visitors navigate through the website, the CMS renders each page dynamically with appropriate content according to applicable display and behavior rules. Each rendered page is guaranteed to use the appropriate structure, images, style, and navigational components. This results in a guaranteed consistency throughout the entire site.

Navigational components for each page are also generated by the CMS. This includes links to other related pages, table-of-contents (TOC) pages, indexes, search results pages, peer-to-peer navigational drop-downs, sub-TOCs, and many more. This is all done automatically according to the style and behavior rules established for the site.

Corporate brands and identities evolve over time, however technical and other standards related to a website must be maintained. Using a CMS that separates content from style and behavior makes it possible to update the design aspects of a website without requiring extensive redevelopment efforts. More specifically, existing content and website behaviors could remain in-tact even though the new website design may undergo extensive changes. Alternatively, if behavioral modifications are desired, ADXSTUDIO's extensible development framework enables website developers to implement application changes with ease while maintaining tight integration with both the CMS and other infrastructure components.

Content Publishing and Editorial Control

ADXSTUDIO offers content authors a web-based user interface for all content publishing tasks. Content authors have full control of all aspects of the content publishing lifecycle. A high level summary of the content publishing capabilities include the following features:

• Time-based publishing with release and expiration dates.
• Customizable workflow with review and approval stages, notification emails, and page preview modes.
• Multilingual content capabilities.
• Automated management of links.
• Easy upload of rich media and other files as attachments to documents.
• Management of all key content attributes.
• Management of Advertisement placements.
• Management of Polls and other interactive applications.

Tangible Benefits

Organizations that choose to build their websites using ADXSTUDIO can achieve the following benefits:

• Reduced capital costs by leveraging the Microsoft platform.
• Reduced salary costs by elimination of publishing bottlenecks and increased developer productivity.
• Ability to meet on-demand publishing expectations.
• Implement a consistent brand image throughout the entire website.
• Support a high number of visitors with great performance even with a very large website.
• Increased ability to integrate other line-of-business applications into the website.
• Maintain the integrity and security of the website with minimal effort

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves. For further information as to how we integrate ADXSTUDIO into our web builds please don’t hesitate to call.