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FAQ CMS Features

CMS Features

Does stSoftware's CMS allow consistent style sheet and link buttons across entire site?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow consistent style sheet and link buttons across entire site?

CSS can be defined at the site level and on each page

Style sheets can be specified at the site or page level and based on the browser filter.


CSS

Tags: CSS

Does stSoftware's CMS enable documents and pages to be made unsearchable and unable to be accessed by visitors to the website?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS enable documents and pages to be made unsearchable and unable to be accessed by visitors to the website?

Only published articles, pages and sites can be viewed by visitors.

We have 3 status: Published, Offline, and A previous version is live for articles and sites

 

And 4 status: Published, Offline, Publish Scheduled and Offline Scheduled for pages

Tags: publisher

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the management of Alt Tags, Heading Tags and Title Attribute Management?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the management of Alt Tags, Heading Tags and Title Attribute Management?

Image title, image description and advanced editing are entered with the Insert/Edit Image tool.

The default image editor used in TinyMCE

Image description

Tags: tinyMCE

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for SEO friendly page and link designs?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for SEO friendly page and link designs?

The system is designed to be Search Engine friendly from the ground up.

The CMS automatically handles SEO requirements such as sitemaps and permanent redirects when a page is renamed.

See the full list here.

Tags: SEO

Does stSoftware's CMS allow HTML editing including a find and replace tool?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow HTML editing including a find and replace tool?

Search/Replace is standard functionality.

The standard article editor includes find/replace option.We use TinyMCE for the editor, any of the TinyMCE buttons can be enabled.


Search/Replace

Does stSoftware's CMS allow hyper link creation both to external and pages within the web site?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow hyper link creation both to external and pages within the web site?

The CMS menu items can link to site pages and external pages.

The menu item page links are automatically updated when the page URL changes. The menu items for external URLs are not automatically changed.

Page Links

Tags: designer

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the creation of CMS managed e-newsletter campaigns?

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April 9, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the creation of CMS managed e-newsletter campaigns?

Standard email templates and contact management with build templates, import/export and subscribe/unsubscribe functionality.

The system has a central Contact Relationship Management (CRM) module. The standard features include bulk emailing and email templates.

Bulk Email Screen

Email templates with "mail merge" substitutions is a standard feature.

Email Template

All reports can be exported. 

Export of contact

New contacts can be entered. Sections of the standard forms can be hidden as required or new forms can be created.

Person form

Easily import contacts using the import wizard, which includes a number of predefined templates. Custom layout can also be used.

Import wizzard

Tags: crm, featured

Does stSoftware's CMS include the ability to move pages within the navigation structure?

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April 9, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include the ability to move pages within the navigation structure?

All menu items can be easily re-ordered.

Pages and menu items are easily re-ordered, by changing the items sequence number.

Menu Items

Tags: designer

Does stSoftware's CMS include spell checking and word find?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include spell checking and word find?

The "Toggle Spell Checker" and "Find" buttons is available for spell checking and word find

The standard article editor includes find/replace and search options. We use TinyMCE for the editor, any of the TinyMCE buttons can be enabled.

Spell check example

Find Replace

Tags: tinyMCE, spell

Does stSoftware's CMS include image resizing, compression, format conversion and placement tools?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include image resizing, compression, format conversion and placement tools?

Images handling in articles and pages can be re-sized, compressed, placed and styled as required.

Images can be resized and style set from the page authoring user interface.

Image dimensions

All images can be compressed on the server side (reducing the size of the image downloaded to the client) by using the standard FORMAT URL parameter. The image will be converted on the server side and cached for performance reasons.

Does stSoftware's CMS include intuitive CMS authoring?

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April 9, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include intuitive CMS authoring?

Authoring an article is as simple as 1,2,3

1) When authoring a new article the user selects the type of article (specific article types can be customized as required).

Create Article

 

2) Edit the newly created article. 

 Edit Article

3) Publish the article once ready

Publish Article

 

 

Tags: Article

Does stSoftware's CMS allow the ability to set future publish dates and times?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow the ability to set future publish dates and times?

Publish at a future time by setting the required time.

By setting a future date as the published time the article will not be published until that time. 

Publish at a future date

Tags: publisher

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the creation and editing of event calendars?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the creation and editing of event calendars?

Events are a standard component of the system.

The standard components for task and events can be used or any number of external events management components.

Event

Tags: Job Track

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the creation of user- friendly URLs?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for the creation of user- friendly URLs?

Article titles are automatically converted to friendly URLs.

The web safe characters of the article title are used to automatically create a friendly URL. Unicode characters and non-web safe characters are converted to "look alike" web safe characters.

Article path 

Site designers may enter friendly URLs for their pages. 

Page URL data entry screen

Tags: URL

Does stSoftware's CMS include an audit trail and full version control of pages including roll-back ability?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include an audit trail and full version control of pages including roll-back ability?

Every change to every record in every class has a full audit trail.

A full audit trail is automatically recorded for every change in the system. Selecting records as they were at any point of time is standard functionality. 

On each standard screen there is a log tab which shows the changes to this and related records.

Log tab

Each transaction record every change to every record within that transaction.

Transaction

The journal can be searched using a number of very suffocated commands.

Journal Search

Any transaction or set of transaction can be reversed by an administrator. 

Reverse

Tags: Journal

How to use variables with CMS components

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May 7, 2013

How to use variables with CMS components

Simplify Your HTML with Variables

Variables can be used with CMS components to reduce duplication and easy maintenance

 

Below is an example of using variables in an ActiveHTML component.

Variables

 

Types of  Variables:-

 

1.Site Config XPath Variable

This variable uses xpath statement to fetch values from the site configuration xml.

SIte config xpath variable

 Below is an example of site configuration XML that should be used for site scope.Site Configuration XML

 


2.Page Config XPath Expression

 This variable uses xpath statement to fetch values from the page configuration XML.  

  It looks and behaves similar to 'Site Config XPath Variable' except that the XML configuration has a page scope.

 
3.SQL Variable

 This variable uses SQL statement to fetch data from the database.

 

Below is an example of fetching the company name from the database.SQL variable

4.Url Variable

 

  

 

 

 

Can different sites be created for different host names?

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July 19, 2013

Can different sites be created for different host names?

A comma separated list of host name patterns can specified for each site.

To make a site the default for a domain or set of domain names a comma separated list of host name patterns is entered.

The default site is calculated to be the first PUBLISHED site with a matching host name pattern, if no matching sites then the first site will a blank host name list. 

The domain name registry itself must be done as normal to point to the system with providers such as goDaddy or Netregistry

Host name to site mapping

 

Tags: DNS, featured

How to manage the site structure?

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December 5, 2013

How to manage the site structure?

All pages and menus are managed on the site screen.

Each site has a series of pages and menus. A page can be taken offline or scheduled to be taken on/off line at a certain time. The menu and site maps will automatically adjust accordingly. 

Schedule page on/off line

Tags: schedule

How to dynamically resize images on the server side?

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https://aspc.jobtrack.com.au/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?max-width=600&max-height=600
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January 31, 2014

How to dynamically resize images on the server side?

Page loading speed can be greatly improved by scaling the images on the server side.

Overview

The download of large images to the client browser which will be later resized to be a smaller image is very wasteful and slow.

Let the server dynamically resize and cache your images with NO overhead to subsequent calls. To use in your HTML just add the desired behaviour to the URL e.g "?max-width=100"

Available image transformations

The sample large image is a landscape image of 1,000px × 667px which is 1.1m in size.

Eaxmple image to resize

You can resize the image while maintaining the same aspect ratio. The width by height of the resized image can not exceed 2 million pixels.

width=nn

The width of the image, in pixels.

/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?width=100

width=100

( 19k PNG image resized to 100x66 pixels)

height=nn

The height of the image, in pixels.

/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?height=100

height=100

( 41k PNG image resized to 149x100 pixels)

quality=1...100

The quality of the image, quality can be a number between 1..100, the default is 100.

/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?quality=5

height=100, width=400, quality=5

( 15k JPEG image 1000x667 pixels of quality 5%)

DPI=72,96,300,600

The dots per inch for the generated image, the default is the source image DPI

/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?DPI=96

height=100, width=400, DPI=96

( 157k JPEG image 1000x667 pixels at 96 DPI)

format=PNG,GIF,JPG

Each image format has its advantages and disadvantages:

FormatPlusMinus
GIF Supports animation, and transparent pixels

Supports only 256 colours and no translucency.

Supports only 72 DPI

PNG Better alternative than GIF or JPG for high colour lossless images, supports translucency Doesn't support animation
JPG Great for photographic images Loss of compression, not good for text, screen shots, or any application where the original image must be preserved exactly

 

max-width=nn

The maximum width of the image, in pixels.

/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?max-width=100

max-width=100

( 19k PNG image resized to 100x66 pixels)

max-height=nn

The maximum height of the image, in pixels.

/docs/web/st/help/resize/landscape.jpg?max-height=100

max-height=100

( 41k PNG image resized to 149x100 pixels)

Benefits

Server-side image resizing provides incredible ROI. It can save web masters several hours each day, and gives you the ability to change the resolution of an image without having to hunt up the original.

How to define a RESTful Web Services?

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September 4, 2014

How to define a RESTful Web Services?

ReST services can be used natively from a client libraries such as jQuery

Overview

Representational State Transfer (ReST) has gained widespread acceptance across the Web as a simpler alternative to SOAP- and Web Services Description Language (WSDL)-based Web services.

The resources are acted upon by using a set of simple, well-defined operations. The REST architectural style constrains an architecture to a client/server architecture and is designed to use a stateless communication protocol, using HTTP/HTTPS.
 
The system allows a series of RESTful services to be defined. The ReST service will normally return a JSON object when successful. Other formats can be requested by the "accept" header. 
 

Representational State Transfer (ReST) is an architectural style for designing distributed systems, not a standard, but rather a set of conventions

    • Client/Server, Stateless, Uniform Interface etc. 
    • "... more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules" ~ Captain Barbossa. 
 

Faking the HTTP Method with _method parameter

Different actions are defined for each of the HTTP methods  GET,DELETE,POST,PUT. Since some browsers do not support sending PUT and DELETE requests there is a simple work around for this limitation by including a _method parameter in the query string or parameters of an HTTP request.

Content negotiation with _accept parameter

HTTP has provisions for several mechanisms for "content negotiation" - the process of selecting the best representation for a given response when there are multiple representations available.

— RFC 2616, Fielding et al.

Content negotiation is the process of selecting one of multiple possible representations to return to a client, based on client or server preferences.

For example, given the following Accept header:

application/json, application/xml

The returned results will be in JSON format.

The order of the Accept formats matter the first compatible format will be returned. Given the following Accept header:

application/pdf, application/xml

The results will be returned in XML format for ReST services that don't natively return PDF.

The _accept parameter will override the Accept HTTP header.  

Example

ReST example

 

http://shorten.stsoftware.com.au/ReST/V1/shorten?q=So%20happy%2C%20hitting%20the%20keyboard%20to%20buy%20a%20plane%20ticket%20for%20the%20sixteenth...%20supposed%20to%20be%20sunny%20with%20no%20clouds!%20%20&min=100&max=140

JSON result

ReST definition

ReST menu 
A ReST definition has four SQL definitions:-
  1. HTTP GET calls the Retrieval SQL
  2. HTTP POST calls the Create SQL
  3. HTTP PUT calls the Update SQL
  4. HTTP DELETE calls the Delete SQL
ReST definition 

ReST permission

ReST services without any permissions defined can be called by any user whether logged in or not. If any permissions are defined for a service and the client call is not logged in a 401 ( unauthorized ) will be returned. If the client is logged in but without sufficient permission to run the ReST service 403 ( Forbidden ) will be returned.

ReST permission

Magic numbers gives access to this ReST service based on a special unique random key. The “magic number” can be limited to a period or number of calls. The properties of a “magic number” override any parameters in the ReST service call.  

ReST magic number

 

ReST deprecation & removal

ReST services are used by external clients, notice of deprecated services and the removal must be done with care. When a service is marked as deprecated a message and the EOF ( end of life) date (if specified) will be added to the response 

ReST deprucation

ReST - deprecated message

ReST plugin

A Java plug-in can be defined to override the default behaviour of the system. 

ReST Plugin Process

Changes the default data source to be used.

 

HTTP Status Codes

The stSoftware API attempts to return appropriate HTTP status codes for every request.

CodeTextDescription
200 OK Success!
304 Not Modified There was no new data to return.
400 Bad Request The request was invalid or cannot be otherwise served. An accompanying error message will explain further. In API v1.1, requests without authentication are considered invalid and will yield this response.
401 Unauthorized Authentication credentials were missing or incorrect. For a ReST definition which requires a login.
403 Forbidden The request is understood, but it has been refused or access is not allowed. An accompanying error message will explain why. 
404 Not Found The URI requested is invalid or the resource requested, such as a user, does not exists. Also returned when the requested format is not supported by the requested method.
405 Method not allowed The ReST definition was found but there is no command for the request method
500 Internal Server Error Something is broken. 

Error Messages

When the Twitter API returns error messages, it does so in your requested format. For example, an error from a JSON method might look like this:

{"errors":[{"message":"no ReST definition FOO","code":"400.1"}]}
 
Tags: ReST, RESTFul, JSON

How to use site default article template

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October 9, 2014

How to use site default article template

The default article template for a site will be used for each article component in the system

Each CMS site could have one default article template, you can set it in the Admin tab of the site data entry screen.

Select Handlebars as the default article parser, then enter the handlebar template

 

When you insert an article compoent in a page, it will look like:

 

Then you can add your style sheet to change the looking of the article

How to distribute a published article via email

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August 14, 2015

How to distribute a published article via email

Follow these steps to distribute your website article via email;

To distribute a published article via email firstly you have to enable the Distribution module and you'll need to have Admin level access. You can find the Distribution module in Modules tab of Admin/Settings screen:

Modules tab

Go to the main menu and click on Articles/List Articles, find the published article you want to distribute, go to Distribution tab, and check "Enable" checkbox.

Distribution tab

Once Distribution for this article is enabled, you can add Distribution Methods. You don't have to select Email Template or enter Subject, the default template will be entered once the method is saved. But make sure the Account is entered, and enter the recipients.

If you would like to use your own email template, you may want to know the following variables can be used in the template:

${rest.title} - title of the article
${rest.subTitle} - sub title
${rest.encoded} - html body of the article
${rest.description} - html summary of the article
${rest.textDescription} - text summary of the article
${rest.creator.content} - author name
${rest.thumbnail.url} - url of the thumbnail image
${rest.pubDate} - published date

Once the Distribution Method is entered, the status is On Hold. Now, you can click the "Distribute" button on top of the page to put this article into the job queue, the email will be sent soon.

The edition status is changed to "Sending Started" and method status is "Distributing".

Distributing status

Refresh the screen, the status is changed to Completed, that means the email was sent. If there's any error when sending the email, the status will be changed to Error.

Distribution completed

Finished! You have distributed your article to a list of email recipients.

Learn about other functions and modules by visiting our blog

 

Accessibility

Check your articles,email & pages Accessibility

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December 18, 2013

Check your articles,email & pages Accessibility

Before publishing submit your html for accessibility checking.

  • HTML code in the rich text editor to be checked

 

  • click the Check Accessibility button to check

 

  • Check results in another browser window

 

Does stSoftware's CMS meet WCAG 2.0 standards?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS meet WCAG 2.0 standards?

All custom content complies with the WCAG 2.0 standards

We check that our custom websites and content complies with http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG and checked with http://achecker.ca/checker 

Accessibility checks are built right into the WYSIWYG text editors and validation messages are given when known issues are detected in the site. 

Our custom sites comply with WCAG 2.0 AAA. There is no need for alternative "accessible" versions of the custom sites as we do not use or recommend the use of unfriendly technologies such as flash or Java applets.

HTML component accessibility validation

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December 18, 2013

HTML component accessibility validation

Automatic validation that the HTML is well formed and accessible

When a HTML component is changed validations for the validity and for accessibility will be performed. 

Article Editor

Does stSoftware's CMS editor include a full table features and editing tools?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS editor include a full table features and editing tools?

Full table and editing tools is available when you create a HTML Text component

Below is the table editor screen


Does stSoftware's CMS allow the content of structured pages and e-newsletter to be copied to create a new structured page or e-newsletter.

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow the content of structured pages and e-newsletter to be copied to create a new structured page or e-newsletter.

Content can be copied/pasted as normal, in addition content can be extended and reused.

Content can be pasted in paste, "paste as plain text" and "paste from word"

Copy/Paste 

 

All articles are published via an enhanced RSS feed. The content of these articles is then reused in multiple locations using XLST throughout the site.

XLST form

The site designer can create template pages and then extend these pages to reuse the template page content. 

Extend template

Tags: email

Does stSoftware's CMS include an intuitive structured page builder to create fields for repeated content?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include an intuitive structured page builder to create fields for repeated content?

The system has Articles which can be written by users and Sites created by a web designer.

The user can choose which type of article they would like to create, the article form contains the required fields. Additional article types and fields may be added to match your requirements.

The simple user interface allows you to organise all types of content, including text such as manuals, photos and videos into pre-designed Articles.

Your content contributors can quickly edit existing content or upload new articles, and preview. New content can be set for publishing at a later date or publish immediately.

Article form

The Site designer (which designs the website where your published articles appear) is much more complex to enable the creation of sites without limitations.

Site form

Tags: designer

Does stSoftware's CMS editor include bullet and number lists?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS editor include bullet and number lists?

The CMS interface includes Insert/Remove Bulleted List and Insert/Remove Numbered List buttons for HTML text editing.

Insert/Remove bullet List and Insert/Remove Numbered List buttons are available in the HTML text editor.

 

Tags: tinyMCE

Does stSoftware's CMS editor include anchoring features?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS editor include anchoring features?

The HTML text editor includes an Anchor button to create anchors.

The Anchor button can insert and edit anchors.

Tags: tinyMCE

Support for Search Engine Friendly URLs?

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Site Builder

Easily integrated with other web applications through open standards.

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November 26, 2013

Easily integrated with other web applications through open standards.

Many supported protocols including ReST, SOAP and webdav

Users may access all allowed data via the Web Forms or via Industry standard protocols such as:

  • ReST which returns data in both JSON and XML formats. 
  • SOAP 
  • WebDav
  • ICal 
  • GWT RPC
  • JDBC

All requests for data or modification to data goes via the DAL ( Data Access Layer) no matter which protocol is used. There is NO direct access to the underlying data store. The DAL checks the ACLs ( Access Control Limits ) for each data request and performs all validations on each data modification. When data is modified the DAL will broadcast a message to other servers in the cluster so that optimistic locking and caching can be done within the server cluster. 

There is over 100 standard commands that can be called via the predefined web services.

Does site builder and stSoftware's CMS allow pages and images to be assigned metadata?

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March 29, 2013

Does site builder and stSoftware's CMS allow pages and images to be assigned metadata?

Meta data can be assigned to both pages and images

The page meta data can be set in the configuration tab for each page. All elements in the "head" element will be copied to the generated page head section.

Page Meta

The image meta data can be set in the "Appearance" and "Advanced" tabs of the image editor.

Image Meta

Tags: meta

Are there multiple page status' to manage webpage development through to publishing?

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March 11, 2013

Are there multiple page status' to manage webpage development through to publishing?

The CMS Site builder has multiple page status' to enable you to control the publishing of webpages while they are being developed or changed.

The CMS Site builder has multiple page statuses to enable you to control the publishing of webpages while they are being developed or changed.

Page status is easy to use and gives website developers very effective control of the publishing process across the site. You can utilise different page status to manage the publishing of individual pages. For example by setting the status of a page which is under development, to 'Offline', this page will not be published (not visible on your public site) when you next publish your website.

There are four main page status; Offline, Published, Published Scheduled, Offline Scheduled. There are two modifiers; "locked" and "dirty".

Status Codes;

  • Offline: means a page can be held back from being published when you publish your website. The offline status is very useful while you are developing new pages or are in the process of updating a page as it means you can stop those unfinished pages from being published but it allows you to go ahead and publish the site.
  • Published: means your page has been published and is viewable online to the public.
  • Publish Scheduled: means your page has been approved for publishing and will be published with your site at a future publishing date/time.
  • Offline Scheduled: means your page has been set to go offline when your site is published again at a future date/time

and Modifier Codes;

  • "locked": means no page component may be changed. You can still make changes to a number of page attributes like path and online/offline. To change a component of a "locked" page you clone it and make your changes.
  • "dirty": means there have been changes to your page since the site was last published. This indicates to the developer/publisher that the page should be reviewed before the site is next published. A "dirty" page should be reviewed to see if it is ready to be published or set to Offline so it is not published until it is 'ready'.

Page status

Articles

The publishing work flow of Articles can be customised to your requirements including permission to publish based on user group.

Standard publishing controls allow for immediate publishing or set by future date.

By setting a future date as the published time the article will not be published until that time.

 

WYSIWYG Content Editing that provides varying levels of WYSIWYG editing control depending upon the complexity of editing requirements?

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May 10, 2013

WYSIWYG Content Editing that provides varying levels of WYSIWYG editing control depending upon the complexity of editing requirements?

Yes, the page is laid out as the user would see it.

When in CMS design mode, when the designer mouses over a component an EDIT button is shown for 5 seconds. A orange dotted line will outline the component that will be edited. 

Editing a breadcrumb component:-

Mouse over edit button

Editing a text component:-

edit text component

Editing a HTML component:- 

mouse over a HTML component.

Tags: WYSIWYG

Does stSoftware's CMS allow inclusion of widget scripts such as social media feeds, survey monkey feeds, youtube/vimeo video feeds and Google/Apple map placement?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow inclusion of widget scripts such as social media feeds, survey monkey feeds, youtube/vimeo video feeds and Google/Apple map placement?

Any script or HTML component can be added.

The system comes with a number of standard components but any valid script/HTML can be added as a component using the ActiveHTML component.

Active HTML

Tags: RSS, feeds

Is stSoftware's CMS responsive Design catering to both desktop and mobile screen sizing?

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March 29, 2013

Is stSoftware's CMS responsive Design catering to both desktop and mobile screen sizing?

The system automatically detects a desktop, tablet or mobile.

The system will detect the different form factors and apply different Cascading Style Sheets accordingly. 

Site CSS

Each component in the site can be hidden or shown based on the browser's form factor. 

 Responsive based on form factor 

Does stSoftware's CMS provide accurate draft page previewing features?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS provide accurate draft page previewing features?

Site Page authoring has a full preview with temporary edit button on mouse over of a component.

When designing a page (which is different to a user authoring an article) an edit button for each component appears as the designer mouses over the component.

Edit button

When the designer moves the mouse to the top right of the page the "page edit" icon appears

Page edit

Does stSoftware's CMS include page level restrictions allowing authors to publish select pages only?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include page level restrictions allowing authors to publish select pages only?

Articles and pages can be published or taken offline selectively.

Articles can be published, publish scheduled or offline.

Offline Article

Pages can be online, offline or hidden

Page status

Does stSoftware's CMS automatically advise of broken links and page errors?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS automatically advise of broken links and page errors?

Validation is performed on each save of a component.

On each save of a component validation is performed. Menu links to pages are always synchronized.

External links (not under the control of the CMS) are scanned using http://validator.w3.org/

Tags: publisher

Does stSoftware's site builder allow for the creation and management of micro-sites using the same CMS?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's site builder allow for the creation and management of micro-sites using the same CMS?

Any number of micro sites can be created with the system.

The simplest way to create a new site is to clone an existing site. A site can be created for a specific host name or for "intranet only".

Micro Site

Tags: cms

Does stSoftware's site builder allow the use of frames?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's site builder allow the use of frames?

Any valid HTML can be used including the use of frames.

The site designer allows for any valid HTML/CSS to be used. 

Dynamic HTML components can be edited in a HTML editor.

HTML Editor

Cascading Style Sheets can be edited in a CSS editor.

CSS Editor

Rich text components can be edited in a text editor.

Text Editor

Tags: designer

How do you retrieve data out of the database?

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February 20, 2013

How do you retrieve data out of the database?

JQuery and JSON will be used to fetch the data out of the database.

The standard JSON component will return the images for the banner.

JSON

Tags: JSON, featured

Does the site builder allow for pages to be viewed within the same screen or in a new window/tab?

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February 20, 2013

Does the site builder allow for pages to be viewed within the same screen or in a new window/tab?

Pages can be viewed in any logged in browser window.

The design mode of the CMS is the standard page/URL with an additional parameter DESIGN_MODE. The system checks if the user has CMS access and then will show the site in design mode.

Site design

Tags: designer

Rotating Banner ads

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November 27, 2013

Rotating Banner ads

yes, the site owner can/should be able to change anything.

And technically they can as it's all just JavaScript/HTML/CSS.

An example is SRL when they publish an article the banner image is placed on the carousel and linked to the article. The page reads this information from the RSS feed. 

Article Banner

 

carousel

Does the CMS include a script manager?

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December 5, 2013

Does the CMS include a script manager?

Many versions of a script libraries can be stored in the manager and the best matching version is returned.

Every page can define a script and/or include a number of script modules.

Page scripts

Each script module can have many versions of the JavaScript. 

Script Module

Each script version can specify what is the maximum and/or minimum browser version compatible with this script. The page can specify the a maximum version number for inclusion or just the script module. The script manager will include the highest compatible script version.

Script Version

Mobile Features

Does the mobile platform allow for the completion of forms/online applications?

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March 11, 2013

Does the mobile platform allow for the completion of forms/online applications?

Forms and online applications can be completed on mobile devices.

Mobile platforms (mac and android) are compatible with system forms and online applications and integrated to automatically process the data into system work flows.

Here is a form on an iPhone, this example shows the ability to have forms which have a further action (apply and also create a free online trial of software).

Forms and applications on mobile

Tags: mobile

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for mobile social media feeds?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow for mobile social media feeds?

The CMS allows for social media feeds on mobile platforms (mac and android).

Social media feeds are seen here on on iPhone in the footer.

Social media feeds on iPhone

 

Social media feeds for mobile platforms and PC's are edited or added through the CMS Design function using simple mouse over Edit

Mouseover edit of social media feeds

 

Here the social media feed is designed as a footer element on all pages

Social media feed as footer element

Does the mobile design allow for easy navigation and task completion?

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March 11, 2013

Does the mobile design allow for easy navigation and task completion?

Mobile control panel navigation is quite different to desktop.


Mobile Control

Tags: mobile

Does stSoftware's CMS site builder allow selection of any page and translate it for publication to a mobile website?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS site builder allow selection of any page and translate it for publication to a mobile website?

Every page and component with a page can be hidden or shown based on the form factor.

The designer can show or hide any component on a page based on the browser form type.


Mobile Hidden component

Tags: designer

Progressive Web Apps

How is the PWA manifest generated?

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June 22, 2016

How is the PWA manifest generated?

All manifest details can be edited in the manifest tab

Once the site is marked as a "Progressive Web App" a new tab will be displayed "Manifest". This allows the developer to change the default values. 

Manifest tab

Tags: featured

How compatible are the template Progressive Web App ( PWA)?

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June 22, 2016

How compatible are the template Progressive Web App ( PWA)?

The standard template apps are tested with Lighthouse and have a 95% or better rating

Below is the current lightouse report for the template app-contract-list

Report for app-contact-list

Tags: featured

Search engine optimization

What is SEO?

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August 11, 2013

What is SEO?

There is a lot of snake oil phrases around search engine optimisation (SEO)

There is a lot of fuss nowadays about search engine optimisation (SEO). Apart from sounding cool and highly complex what is SEO? Well to tell you the truth it is quite simple in fact.

Lets start with the first part "search engine". Most obvious examples of these are Google Search, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing, Yandex and many others. Search engines are in fact web applications that contain information about your site and hence when a user searches for some keywords or phases the search engine can match those against information it has to provide the web user with a link to your site. This gradually brings us to the second part - "optimisation". Optimisation is adaptation of your site to the way a particular search engine works. This therefore increases the chances of correctly matching keywords to pages of your web site and places your website higher on the pages of search results. Luckily most of the Search Engines look for clues described by best practices of HTML.

So what are the best practices?

  • Proper URL. This is one of the most important things that search engines look for. Do not put codes or strange parameter values. The more human readable the URL is - the better. A good example for a product page would be: http :// yourdomain.com/category-name/product-name-and-code.html. The more valuable keywords (such as category and product names) the URL has - the more likely it is to have a better scoring value when indexed by search engines.
  • Providing non-AJAX website version. If you use a lot of dynamic content loading via AJAX this may not be such a good idea for search engines as the process of indexing for many of them happens without support of javascript. Hence if everything is done via ajax all a search engine will "see" are blank pages. So make sure that for every clickable AJAX link you provide a good all fashion full page reload - even if the target page would be "ugly", as long as it has good content it is all good.
  • Giving a good title to your pages. If you have a hierarchy such as category, sub category and then particular product page - then this should come in reverse order: [product name and maybe code] - [sub category] - [category] - [your site domain].
  • Have good keywords and descriptions. Although this topic is quite controversial it is misuse of these attributes by many sites which has many search engines starting to ignore keywords and descriptions. However one thing to point out is that description usually appears in search engine's results - so make it a good one to attract your target audience.

This list is far from being exhaustive but the points above represent the main things that must be done correctly before anything else is attempted. Anything beyond this in fact would be search engine specific implementations and hence are beyond the scope of this article. 

Tags: SEO

Does renaming a page's path automatically redirect from the old page path?

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July 19, 2013

Does renaming a page's path automatically redirect from the old page path?

Yes, page alias are added when a page's path is changed.

Pages can have any number of aliases. When a page's path is renamed the system will automatically add an alias from the page's previous path to the current page.

This prevents 404 errors which are a well known cause of user frustration and lower SEO rankings.

When a user requests a URL first a matching page is searched then the page aliases are searched, if a matching page alias is found then that page is used. There are NO 301/302 errors returned there is just many paths to the same page.

Tags: 301, 302, 404, redirect, SEO

Validation of page URLs

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August 8, 2013

Validation of page URLs

Use hyphens instead of underscores

Search engines treat hyphens '-' and underscores '_' differently from one another. Google has clearly stated that when it comes to URL structure, using hyphens rather than underscores makes it much easier for them to identify what the page is about. Take a look at an excerpt below from the Google support blog on URL structure.

See more at:-

Tags: SEO

Shared Community

RSS feed aggregation

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November 27, 2013

RSS feed aggregation

All published articles are avaiable via the RSS feed automatically.

The system comes with a number of standard components but any valid script/HTML can be added as a component using the ActiveHTML component.

Active HTML

Social Media

Social features are integrated into the core of the CMS

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December 14, 2013

Social features are integrated into the core of the CMS

Automated posting of articles to a number of social media sites

When articles are published the built in social integration automatically posts the article to the requested social sites.

When posting to twitter the title and subtitle are automatically shorten to within the 140 character limit.

All published articles are automatically published via the RSS feed.

The CMS automatically generates an XML Sitemap which can be submitted to search engines for faster indexing of new content.

Tags: twitter

Analytics

How to set up Google Analytics tracking

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October 29, 2015

How to set up Google Analytics tracking

The generic templates all support Analytics out of the box

To set up Google Analytics tracking of your web site.

  • Log into you Google Analytics account.
  • Create a new Tracking ID
  • Switch to the SEO tab in the web site and enter the Tracking ID
  • All standard templates will automatically create the Google tracking script when a tracking ID is entered and not in design mode.

 

Create a tracking ID

List of tracking IDs

 

Page template

 

Tags: Analytics

stSoftware's CMS Customizable

Does stSoftware's CMS include Form Creation tools?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include Form Creation tools?

The system includes a drag and drop form painter.

Every form in the system is created with the form painter and can be easily customized to suite the changing needs of the system.

Painter

Tags: painter

Support multiple site publishing and authoring

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September 5, 2013

Support multiple site publishing and authoring

Unique layered database structure allows content and customization to be shared across systems.

stSoftware systems are built from the ground up on a unique multi-layered database structure which allows documents, articles, business rules and all other types of data to be selectively and securely shared across many systems and sites.   

A layered database system is the aggregation of the layers below by selectively placing data and documents in different layers they can be securely shared across the different systems.

Layered database

Detailed design of a layered database system Multi-Layered DB Application-document

Ability to use custom post types and custom fields.

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March 28, 2013

Ability to use custom post types and custom fields.

The data model allows for many standard field types to be added to any class.

Supported field types include :- 

  • Integer
  • String
    • Email
    • URL
  • Boolean
  • Float/Double
  • Text
    • Cascading Style Sheet
    • HTML
    • JavaScript
    • XML
    • XPath
  • Timestamp
  • Date
  • MultiLingual
  • Long
  • Custom 
Tags: customize

Does Cloud CMS include a powerful search engine with the ability to prioritise results?

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March 29, 2013

Does Cloud CMS include a powerful search engine with the ability to prioritise results?

There can be simple keyword or complex form base searches.

Simple search form

Simple search

Sample Advanced search form

Advanced form

Does stSoftware's CMS include draft content pages and notification system (email alerts) to administrators including mark up of changes made?

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS include draft content pages and notification system (email alerts) to administrators including mark up of changes made?

System events can be added to any class to notify administrators of changes.

Events and actions can be defined on any class in the system including Articles and Pages.

Events

Does stSoftware's CMS allow unlimited number of administrators each with their own unique username and password and access privileges.

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March 29, 2013

Does stSoftware's CMS allow unlimited number of administrators each with their own unique username and password and access privileges.

Every user has their own login/password/access levels.

The system requires every user to have a unique login and indeed can be configured to logout other sessions when the user logs in via another browser.

Users

Tags: password