Content Management System
WebDeck product overview
WebDeck is a web based application which lets non technical users update content on their website. It's easy to use for content authors, whilst retaining flexibility and power for more technical users. WebDeck has a multitude of features some of which are summarised on this page, but above all WebDeck is a sound, scalable and extendable base on which to launch any website.
Please free to browse through the features, take a look at the screenshots and rolling demo. If you are interested in getting a more in depth information we do regular web based demonstrations, just call us or contact us online and we can set one up, or drop round and see you.
Major content management system issues
When choosing a content management system there is a number of issues that appear time and time again. Make sure your CMS can handle these issues as a base set of requirements:
- No design constraints, set your designers free, they won't be as creative if there are limitations from the CMS
- Use all the available web technologies such as Flash, video, music, instant messengers, java applets and other popular widgets
- Make sure the platform is scalable, modular, flexible and extendable. WebDeck is Java based and easily scalable
- Make sure it's SEO friendly and can produce accessible sites that validate to W3C standards
- Security is always paramount when building sites with secure access. WebDeck allows management of website members using user groups and encrypted passwords
Creating articles and content
WebDeck has an easy to use interface which lets non technical people create articles and work with content quickly and easily just like working with well known word processing packages.
Some of the features of handling content include:
- WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing just like using Microsoft Word
- Copy and paste text straight from Word and let WebDeck worry about the formatting
- Add links to other pages or documents on the site
- Preview the page to see what it would look like on the website
- Create content in multiple languages
Working in teams
WebDeck allows any number of users with varying levels of authority to login to the CMS and edit content, review changes and publish the website. WebDeck facilitates this teamwork using the following features:
- Users can be assigned a number of functional roles and permission to edit specific regions of content
- All users are assigned passwords which are encrypted and cannot be retrieved
- Workflow rules allow the articles to be proof read and approved by editors before being published
- Versioning of articles prevents users from over-writing each others content un-knowingly
- After publishing the articles, the entire site can be reverted to a previous copy
- Individual articles can also be rolled back to previous versions
Accessibility
WebDeck is fully supports the A, AA and AAA web accessibility standards and is fast becoming one of the most popular content management systems for running highly accessible sites. WebDeck's accessibility features include:
- Compliant with the latest web standards including XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2
- WYSIWIG toolbar button to help validate for accessibility compliance
- Templates are configurable to WCAG A, AA or AAA standard
- Forces key accessibility issues such as alt tags for images and labels for form fields
Search Engine Optimisation
We pride ourselves on WebDeck's ability to enhance search engine positions. Many of our clients are enjoying much higher rankings thanks to the following SEO features:
- Vanity URLs, create shorter, more concise web addresses that are search engine friendly
- 3 types of meta data allow content to be classified correctly by search engines
- URLs appear in / notation; no ugly query strings
- All pages are valid XHTML 1.1 strict and CSS 2
- Link checking ensures all internal links are correct
- Integrated tagging of content creates higher keyword density within articles, and allows browsing by topic as well as hierarchy
- Automatic page titles, or override as required
- Separate style sheet configured for search engines
Interactive features
WebDeck has a number of tools to create interesting and sticky websites. We have launched numerous sites with interactive tools such as:
- Article ratings with voting and comments from website members
- Competitions both web and SMS, with quizzes and polls
- Integrated forums with swear filters and moderator tools
- Easy web form builder, for collecting, emailing and storing information
- Integrated events calendar, event booking and reporting
Other important WebDeck features
These are some of the other features we want to highlight, things that are important, new and improved and in the media.
- WebDeck has an internal content tagging capability allowing articles to be tagged with various topic tags. Once tagged articles can then be grouped by similar tags, served to people who are interested in particular tags, or indexed and made easier to find by a tag based search
- WebDeck uses the Lucene search engine to fully index all pages, content tags and popular documents such as Word, Excel, PDF and more for better internal searches
- Personalisation is achieved through the use of content tags and user groups within the system
- WebDeck has a complete web statistics reporting suit enabling marketing users to analyse the traffic and users that are visiting the site
- All content within WebDeck can be syndicated via web services, XML, RSS and other syndication protocols
WebDeck holds all the visit information for the site along with all the user data for the registered users, and comes with a number of useful reports for visitor analysis.
WebDeck holds all the details about the registered users of your website. The users are split into groups which are then used for authentication for different areas of content on the site.
Once the content has been published, the version history of the site is displayed. The site can be rolled back to any previous version.
Once the content has been edited, a preview window shows what the content would look like once the article has been published.
The XStandard WYSIWYG editor allows the content to be edited in the normal Word style interface. This editor ensures all content written or pasted is formatted to the XHTML 1.1 standard.
All articles within the content folder are listed and can be checked out and edited. Images and documents associated with these articles are also shown.
The authors homepage shows the articles that are currently checked out by that author.