WebCMS3 Product Information

What is WebCMS3?
WebCMS3 is a Website Content Management System that enables an Organization to quickly update their website/s without having to depend on specialist Web Programmers to do the same. WebCMS3 provides authoring (and other) tools designed to allow users with little or no knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease of use.

The Need for a Website Content Management System:
The website of any Organization serves as a round-the-clock information gateway between the organization and its audience viz., customers, members, industry observers, the media, and the general public at large. To keep the audience updated on various industry issues and activities, the website requires be updated very frequently.

Usually most websites are implemented as a set of HTML Pages placed on a web server held together by a Menu which is usually implemented using a scripting language like ‘JavaScript’. Whenever new information is to be posted on the web-site, pages need to be manually created by using HTML programming, menus need to be manually reprogrammed and files need to be manually downloaded & uploaded from the server. This process has the following disadvantages.

a. Needs a lot of time from IT personnel. A skilled IT resource is occupied just to keep the website updated.
b. If this work is outsourced to an external agency, it results into recurring service costs.
c. The need co-ordination with an external agency leads to delays in content updating.
d. As the number of links in the site increases, the complexity of deployment of HTML pages manually increases often causing missing links and other errors.

These disadvantages can be eliminated by implementing a Website Content Management System.

How does WebCMS3 work?
WebCMS3 works on the principle of ‘separating the content of the website from the presentation’. Various layouts used for different types of pages are implemented as Templates within the system. Each Template may have one or more sections where dynamic content may appear. Dynamic content can be of two types:

• Pre-defined Widgets: A Widget is a visual component that appears on the web page. The widget displays content according to the presentation logic written in the Widget. Examples of widgets may include a ‘Stock Ticker’ widget which displays prices of various stocks or a ‘News’ widget that scrolls breaking News.
• Editable-Content Regions: These regions can be edited by the User using a Web Based WYSIWYG (What you See Is What You Get Editor) as shown below. The editor provides all common formatting options like font selection, color and background color selection. It also provides facilities like creation and editing of HTML Tables. It also provides simple browse-attach interface to allow users to upload images straight into the content without having to write complex HTML tags.

The Content is stored separately from the template in a database. Each page is assigned a unique ID.

WebCMS3 also provides a WYSIWYG Interface for Menu Management. Users can simply click and add, edit and link Menu Items without knowing a single line of ‘JavaScript’.

Both the structure (the menus) and the page content are stored separate from the presentation (layout) in a relational database. Whenever a Website visitor requests for a page, the page is actually generated at runtime from the database (if not cached to increase performance) and is displayed to the User. 

Features and Advantages of the WebCMS3:

WebCMS3 is a program which enables users to add and edit web pages and menus without the need to create HTML pages manually. It provides a easy to use Microsoft Word like interface where users can quickly add content (text and images) without even knowing HTML.  

This approach provides the following advantages 

1. WebCMS3 speeds up the content updating of the website. Moreover the updating may be carried out by anybody who can use basic Office software like MS Word. This person does not need any knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc. Therefore this job can be assigned to anybody from the office staff without requiring any special training. 

2. WebCMS3 controls all pages and menu items that are added. Therefore it prevents any errors in updating 

3. WebCMS3 automatically creates the site-map and updates it when new pages and menu items are created

4. WebCMS3 provides a Search Facility by which content can be easily searched for keywords. 

5. WebCMS3 also provides comprehensive website traffic monitoring. 

6. WebCMS3 provides a news module by which news can be published as RSS (Really Simple Syndication protocol) feeds which enables other industry websites to display news from the organization and vice versa. 

7. WebCMS3 enables the Organization to announce forthcoming events under various categories. Visitors to the website are provided with a facility to subscribe email alerts t events in various categories. This ensures that the interested audience is kept updated on a proactive basis. 

8. WebCMS3 also provides a form-generator. A form-generator is a program that enables users to create custom forms without any knowledge of programming. This will enable the organization to deploy forms that collect enquiries from prospective participants for various events.