Macromedia, Ektron balance functionality, affordability

Installing it on Windows Server 2003 with SQL Server 2000 took approximately 30 minutes, and making my basic site functional took less than a day.

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As with most pure CMS products, you first create and organize your site’s content and then apply consistent styles and access controls. CMS400.Net consolidates these jobs within a browser-based work area similar to that of Outlook 2003. The resulting UI streamlines the creation of folders and subfolders for content, building a library of images and other shared elements, and managing users and groups.

Additionally, this “smart desktop” acts as a day-to-day project manager by displaying tasks such as content awaiting your approval.

More experienced content authors use the same folder-tree UI for locating and editing content and for adding new pages. Unlike many CMS products, however, CMS400.Net also allows end-users to log in, navigate to a Web page, and edit it directly. I was pleased that authorized users could use the same basic process to update site navigation such as adding another page to a drop-down menu.

Whereas most content managers supply a WYSIWYG editor with decent text-formatting commands, Ektron’s eWebEditPro+XML goes farther. I appreciated the ability to configure cleaning levels, which strip out extraneous tags from text pasted in from Word but maintain formatting of tables and text styles.

Most intriguing is the XML aspect of this editor. I quickly built a contact form that saved keyed-in information to my SQL database. The process is painless because all the underlying XML tags are hidden from the author, as is the need to manipulate the database directly. The same XML approach works when you want to embed XML data as part of Web pages.

XML takes center stage in several other areas as well. Built-in RSS syndication enabled me to publish the news section of my intranet as an RSS feed. Second, an XML indexing module provides basic keyword search for site visitors and helps editors locate library and content assets. I was also able to build advanced navigation by feeding XML metadata within pages to a custom Macromedia Flash movie.

CMS400.Net offers solid site administration, including expected history tracking, a virtual staging server for previewing changes, the ability to roll back sites to a prior state, and functionality for publishing and retiring content at specific times.

Ektron CMS400.Net offers surprising depth for the price, including workflow tasks and the ability to work easily with XML forms and XHTML (Extensible HTML) documents and data. Moreover, the .Net framework enables fast integration with Microsoft products such as SharePoint Portal. The downside is that you’re tied to Microsoft technology; Ektron says there are no current plans for Linux support nor for porting to J2EE servers.

Macromedia WPS and Ektron CMS400.Net demonstrate that IT managers have serious, affordable Web content management choices. Whereas Macromedia WPS delivers straightforward editing and publishing capabilities at a good price, Ektron offers superior functionality, but its reliance on Microsoft technology may prove undesirable to some shops.