- OnlineCenter for site management and gadgets
- Global navigation
- Access anywhere
- Personalization
- Dynamic Content
- Localization and globalization
- Document Management
- Multisite management support
- Friendly URLs
- Global search
- Page bank
- Office publishing
- Report center
1. OnlineCenter for site management and gadgets
OnlineCenter is a unified workspace that you won't find in any other CMS. It is presented as a dashboard for easy navigation and integration of different products – either from EPiServer or third parties. The dashboard can be personalized to a user's preferences and requirements, so they can access functions relevant to their daily work all from one place, wherever the function or product module resides.
The OnlineCenter dashboard aggregates site information and exposes important functions to the user via tabs, zones and gadgets. New gadgets can be easily created and plugged into the dashboard so that users can access the ones they most frequently refer to and use.
EPiServer CMS ships with some standard gadgets such as External Links which shows how many pages have links to external websites, the Forms Viewer where you can keep tabs on who has completed the various forms, and Recently Changed Pages which displays a list of the last ten pages changed and who edited them. It's only your imagination that limits what other gadgets you may want to develop, from an analytics gadget that tracks visitors to your website to monitoring the trend of your search phrases on different search engines. The list is endless.
2. Global navigation: accessing integrated modules from one place
Customized to a user's requirements, Global navigation makes is easier to navigate and manage your complete online presence. Users can navigate between different products and modules such as EPiServer CMS, Community, and Mail as well as third party products or similarly integrated modules, all from one place. The menu is designed to be oriented on products and modules, so that each top menu tab represents a product while the sub level menu contains the actual views, functions or parts of that product.Global navigation makes it easy to move seamlessly from one module to another as all a user has to do is click on a different tab.
3. Access anywhere
EPiServer CMS includes a WYSIWYG XHTML Editor with more than 60 editor tools and functions benefiting both editors and developers. One of the main advantages of this Editor is its browser-friendliness, with support for all browsers including, for example, Internet Explorer or Firefox on both Mac and PC. Editors anywhere will have access to manage a website, from a number of different browsers. The Editor is also extremely easy to customize, configure and extend.
4. Personalization
With EPiServer CMS you can create personalized content for different audiences and deliver what is most relevant to them. Using visitor groups, you can define different audiences you expect on your site by dragging and dropping various criteria into the group. Included out-of-the-box in EPiServer CMS are criteria such as geo-IP, visited pages, numbers of visits, time of day, referring search word, user profile, landing page and much more. In addition, you can also create your own criteria.
EPiServer CMS has built-in support enabling you to refine and develop your personalization strategy to ensure that you are reaching your online goals. Standard reporting features include being able to see real-time statistics related to personalization and your visitors, which allows you to immediately see how your personalization strategy is working
5. Dynamic Content - enabling content reuse, page design and integration
The CMS Editor is an intelligent authoring interface where web editors can reuse content, design pages and integrate dynamic content in a page. For example they can place information blocks of dynamic content such as RSS news feeds, maps or videos wherever they want on a site. Also content from other pages, as well as associated properties, can be reused elsewhere on a website.
Using the WYSIWYG editor, users can quickly add dynamic content to a page whenever and wherever they want on their website. They create placeholders for content to be 'fetched' from elsewhere straight onto that page. This is a time saving feature, as if and when the content needs updating, it need only happen once and then it will appear wherever that Dynamic Content is published on the site.
6. Localization and globalization
If you are online, your business by default becomes global. To manage your global marketing assets you will want to enforce central control over some of your brand estate but allow local flexibility for other parts of it. With multiple websites in different languages across many markets, true globalization factors in the localization requirements of different cultures, languages and market sectors while communicating a consistent brand.
In EPiServer CMS, managing access rights to website language versions can be personalized. You can control who is doing what and where by assigning rights to different editors according to the pages on which you want them to contribute content to or edit. They will only be able to edit in languages for which they have permission. For example, local country administrators can edit and localize their language version pages or site but they may not have the rights to edit the primary dotcom site. Whatever their rights, editors can still compare two different language versions of a particular page in one view.
7. Document Management
Fully integrated with Microsoft Office, EPiServer CMS not only manages the online content but can manage many other file formats and versions of documents. With its check-in, check-out system, editors can collaborate on a document in the knowledge that when they have it checked out, no one else is working on that version of it. As in any good document management system, employees are able to access vital records from where they are.
With EPiServer CMS, at any one time, more than one person can access a read-only version but there's only one version of a file that is available for editing. Versioning gives a document that's been edited more than once a new version number so, if necessary, users can retrieve previous versions and continue work from a selected point. Versioning is useful for documents that change over time and require updating, and where it may be necessary to go back to a previous copy.
The EPiServer CMS file system is makes it easy to integrate with any file repository and integrating with Microsoft SharePoint is extremely easy using the additional add-on product EPiServer Connect for SharePoint.
8. Multisite management support
With EPiServer CMS, enterprises can manage separate sites from the same user environment. Users can share content and functionality, such as templates, files, categories and images across multiple sites. Another benefit is that system administrators have a full overview of all sites in one place while local editors can only access the sites they have permission to edit and review.
9. Friendly URLs
URLs can be the single barrier that prevents visitors from coming to your site. Query strings, numbers and symbols can be quite unintelligible to most website visitors. EPiServer CMS creates plain language URLs that not only lend elegance and clarity to a site but improve usability and the user experience. A very important aspect of this is that these friendly URLs are great for marketing purposes as well as being search engine friendly. They also help improve page rankings and are good for seeding your content in social media. EPiServer CMS helps you produce URLs that are short, memorable and in plain language so they are easy to recall.
10. Global search
Global search not only helps web editors easily find the content they are looking for so that they can find and edit pages with specified content. It also speeds up the process of finding that content so that it can be edited and published. The OnlineCenter search takes editors from simple web management to site management, giving them ultimate control over all the content on a site. A new search reveals the page(s) which contain the query either in the name of the page or in its content via a result list. As the search function is a global product module, you can also find data that is related to other products (including third party products) on the dashboard to get a complete overview.
11. Page bank
EPiServer CMS provides a page bank of templates. The package includes best practice features and lets web editors and developers get a head start in their website project and concentrate on the content. Pre-populated with some content and functionality, these demo pages can be customized in design and functionality to incorporate brand identity, house colors, and look and feel.
12. Office publishing
From Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you can publish pages and list documents directly to EPiServer CMS and even add them to the File Management Library. The Office Integration Client has a built-in toolbar and is installed on the user's desktop to enable ease-of-use while producing content for websites.
13. Report center
EPiServer CMS Report Center makes it easy for you to quickly find information about your website to help you with your everyday work. EPiServer CMS includes six built-in reports:
Changed Pages lets you monitor which pages have been changed and when. Expired Pages shows which pages are soon to be archived or disabled. Not Published Pages displays pages not yet published with a last changed date in a certain time span. Published Pages displays published pages within a specified time period. Simple Addresses gives an overview of all the simple addresses used in the system. Link Status report identifies broken links. EPiServer CMS will periodically check all links created inside the CMS system (internal and external) to see if they are still valid and reachable. Editors can quickly and easily see which pages or site sections contain broken links.