Showing posts with label CMS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CMS. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

The problem of dependency

Regular readers will know that we've just launched our new web site. There are some teething issues, in certain, thankfully infrequently, situations the CMS system we're using doesn't like presenting the page to the site visitor.

My team are in close contact with EPiServer to get it sorted but it's leaving us feeling a little out of control. It doesn't sit well with the control freakery I've cultivated.

One of the key tenets of the Esendex Messaging Systems that has developed over the years is doing it ourselves. We've developed, much to the surprise of many people we interconnect with, our own protocol implementations to interact with their systems. On top of that are our own messaging systems, underpinning our customer applications. Our mantra has become:

DIY to get it right

I appreciate this might sound a little like I'm blowing our own trumpet and you're probably right. We're actually very proud of what we've done and it's given us a strong reliable platform that our customers can rely on.

Enter the third party CMS system. We're using it because it is very functional, does far more than our in house system we had built, and gives us the control we need. However when there is a problem we're paralysed. Frantically trying to debug the problem on behalf the supplier to try and sort the problem. It just doesn't sit right with us.

I have no doubt this was the right decision. The EPiServer platform is a cut above anything else we evaluated and gives us so many more features. We've just got to accept that sometimes we can't fix it.

Thursday, 4 October 2007

I have a new homepage

No, not our rather sexy new web site www.esendex.com, but this totally mesmerising service in our EPiServer CMS system called EPiTrace.

It tracks people as they interact with your web site in near real time. The results are displayed on a flash animation which comprises a drag and clickable site map with little spheres orbiting the pages. Each of these spheres represents a person visting your site and the bounce around each page very agreeably. You can even setup audio alerts to ping whenever someone visits certain pages.

EPiServer very bravely have a live demo running showing what's happening on their web site.

Not sure of the commercial value of seeing this info live, Google Analytics is probably better for overall trend analysis.

Still it looked fantastic on the 40" flat screen TV we've got in the office.

Monday, 4 June 2007

EPiServer CMS: UPDATE

Early indications from my development team are that the boxes are being ticked by the EPiServer solution.

It was a bit tricky to get setup up, but once in place the real potential is being slowly revealed.

We're going to attempt to build our new website with this system. Nothing like a real set of requirements to put a system through it's paces.

Here's hoping it's up to the challenge.

Wednesday, 2 May 2007

Internet World 2007 - CMS (Content Management Systems)

We have developed our own CMS at Esendex. This was born out of the frustration of not finding a solution that met a requirements in the market. These requirements are:

  • Friendly URLs, not the usual 'content.php?id=1234' which means nothing to either search engines or humans
  • Multi language support
  • Static site mirroring, from our central site to satelite hosting around the world
  • Integration with our existing application platform

It looks like our search maybe over. If the demo and chat I had with the Neal Perry and his colleagues from EPiServer is anything to go by.

EPiServer CMS

The EPiServer system is a CMS focused on delivering web site content, but it's killer feature for me is that it's a set of Microsoft .net libraries that can be embedded into existing ASP.Net sites. Given that our web site, applications and web services are all based on the .net framework you can see that this could be compelling. Further, our in-house team has developed everything you see and use on www.esendex.com. So we have a team with the skills and the will to do the integration, allowing us to maintain a seamless web experience.

We then got onto discussions about the 'warm web-site' where interactions are tracked and categorised allowing content and service to be tailored to the individual. Customer service and sales agents to contact people live, while they are interacting with the site, knowing what they've been looking at or having an issue with. This also allows the web site to adapt it's content to the the user. So if a user generally looks at information on APIs, they can be shown more detailed, tailored information as they explore the site.

So the demo will be downloaded and the support evaluated. Here's hoping the search really is over.