EPiServer releases EPiServer Relate+2

EPiServer announces the release of EPiServer Relate+2 , a product package for EPiServer CMS 6, which containsEPiServer Community 4 and EPiServer Mail 5. It also includes a sample website which shows how to combine these three products to build a powerful online community. In today’s conversation economy the ability to get involved in websites where users are free to create, organize and share know-how and experiences in the form of words, pictures and videos is becoming more prevalent and Relate+ makes it a seamless experience for community members, community owners and moderators.

Included is support for Open ID where users can use an existing login ID to sign into multiple websites. The same rich text editor found in EPiServer CMS, TinyMCE, is now used for writing blog posts and the MetaWeblog API is also supported, so users can use their favorite blog applications, such as iBlogger for the iPhone or Live Writer for Windows, when creating or editing blog posts. In combination with blog syndication and ping/ pingbacks, Relate+ is a full-fledged blog engine.

Full Text Search

There’s global search functionality to search across all content in a community. And, with the use of in-built filtering search results can be limited to only include the type of content a user wants: blogs, forums, clubs, etc. The search index can be extended to include results from external systems using the search web service and an open protocol based on Atom.

Online Center and Gadgets

As EPiServer Community is integrated in OnlineCenter, moderators can track activity on the community in either Moderation Mode or Admin Mode. They can manage all different modules such as Images, Blogs and Clubs as well as Categories and Predefined Tags just from one place as well as segment a community for targeting with specific content or promotional offers.  The Admin mode manages access rights and more advanced settings such as available attributes on the community members.

With the dashboard in EPiServer OnlineCenter a personalized view with role based gadgets can be constructed to give the CMS Editor, Community Moderator or Community Owner direct access to the information he or she cares the most about.  There are three common tasks for managing an online community: analyzing the activity, approving content and handling abuse reports. EPiServer Community 4 ships with three new role based gadgets that cover these tasks. The Activity Gadget shows what’s being created, uploaded and commented upon. The Approval Gadget allows moderators to intervene before content gets published to the community (or removed) and the Abuse Reports show up what content members flag up as questionable and why whom.

Relate+ product information.