hodgsonConsulting

Over the past several years, Hodgson has had a great degree of success implementing and customizing the Ektron CMS for our clients. The extensive out-of-the-box functionality available in version 8.5 of Ektron and the .NET framework of the CMS allow us to offer our clients many highly desirable features as well as the capacity for future expansion of their web presences.

Ektron provides Web Content Management, Digital Marketing and Community software designed to help companies improve productivity, drive revenue growth, and increase customer loyalty. Founded in 1998 and privately held, Ektron has a customer community of over 3,500 and powers over 12,000 public-facing websites. Ektron has U.S. regional offices in Nashua, NH; Denver, CO; Richmond, VA; and San Francisco, CA.  The company also has global offices in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Ektron works in concert with its Implementation Partners—including hodgsonConsulting—to help customers develop, design, and deploy Ektron solutions.  More information on the company can be found at www.ektron.com.

Ektron Features

Ektron provides a familiar, rich Web authoring environment. The Ektron CMS editor, eWebEditPro, is a stand-alone product that is integrated into most major content management systems on the market today. Features include:

• Customizable user control menu options
• Full table support: nested tables, images within tables, modify table properties, cell properties, etc.
• Image support (preview/insert images, modify properties)
• Copy and paste content from most applications
• Print, undo, and redo functions
• Hyperlinks and bookmarks
• Bullets & numbering
• Indent and justify text
• Foreground and background color
• Special and extended characters
• Absolute positioning of elements
• Section 508 compliance

The Ektron CMS also provides a complete content / document check-in / check-out process to ensure version control and management. After documents are checked out by content providers, they may not be edited by another content provider until checked back in. This version control prevents content providers from overwriting one another’s content. In addition, content providers have the option to save the content before checking it back in.

Permissions and Access Rights
Ektron CMS will also provide your administrators with a flexible user security and permissions model. This allows administrators to create users with individual encrypted passwords. In addition, the login page for accessing Ektron CMS can be configured to use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to transfer the username and password, which will provide advanced security. Content providers are validated with a combination of cookie and database driven information, ensuring only acceptable users may log into the system.

Content security will be configured by a flexible user/user group permission association model and allow unlimited users and user groups. Each user or group will be given, or denied, a wide range of permissions to folders or even content.

Search
The searchable properties feature within Ektron will enable your administrators to create custom search “tags,” or searchable properties. These properties will be associated with web content, documents, images and other assets during the authoring process. This will result in information becoming highly organized and searchable. This feature will enable the creation of categories, build flexible relationships between information and make it easy to display files together based on common attributes.

In addition, internal search features also enable website contributors, editors and administrators to search on keywords, strings and other attributes, such as author, title, or topic, to quickly locate content. As users conduct searches, search results are displayed on a results page, all occurrences of the search terms are highlighted in the results listings.

Metadata Support
Ektron CMS enforces the process of associating metadata with content. Your Administrators can define the metadata taxonomy (such as title, keywords, and language), selectable metadata options, and default keywords. In addition, content providers can efficiently and consistently apply metadata as they create or update content blocks.

Metadata information can be set as required, forcing content creators to create metadata for the content block before it can be submitted, thereby enhancing search strategies. This metadata will also be utilized by customizing or adding selected fields to personalize each user experience and associate similar types of content and display them to the user.

Personalization
The XML indexing capabilities in Ektron CMS will enable the website to speak to every visitor and tailor each users experience to that user. The built-in XML indexing makes it easy and intuitive for visitors to find and consume information that is most relevant to them. By structuring and indexing content, website owners can:

• Enable users to conduct highly detailed, personalized and successful searches
• Personalize website content dynamically based on users’ preferences or behavior
• Create and deploy custom navigation links
• Build websites that function as truly interactive web applications

Website Analytics
Ektron CMS will track the life-cycle of the your website visitors. This will enable administrators to view real-time statistics to see how many users have come to the website, where they have come from, and what pages they viewed. These reports can be run on any specified date range.

Content Translation and Localization
The Ektron CMS workflow suite with task management enables translators to log into the CMS via the Web to conduct their translation and localization work. Flexible workflow and approval chains are easy to set up and manage. Translation services can operate as a virtual team member regardless of their location.

XLIFF Support
XLIFF is the standard exchange format for translation and localization service providers, it allows the text or content to be read by a translator with out any HTML tags or programming code. Ektron CMS content blocks can be exported as XLIFF files which can then be sent to translation houses for content translation. Once complete, the XLIFF file can then be imported back into Ektron CMS, completing the translation cycle.

Surveys and Polls
The Ektron polls and surveys functionality allows you to gain feedback from the website users and audience. A poll is typically a single question, whereas surveys will be several questions. Results can be displayed once the choices are submitted, and can be reported on at a future date. Polls and surveys can also be configured to limit the amount of times a user can submit their choice.

508 Compliance
Ektron, through eWebEditPro, has a W3C and Section 508 checker built in, this features checks all content being worked on within the editor to make sure it complies. Notifications / Alerts can be configured to notify a user if the content does not comply and can even prevent publishing the content until it becomes compliant. The Ektron system will also show the user the specific elements that need to be addressed should they not be compliant.