Thursday, January 14, 2010 9:00 AM
by Kathy Bryce
Although our website may look much the same, we have recently made radical changes behind the scenes. We have switched to using a Content Management System (CMS) to allow us to better maintain the website, simplify editing and keep track of all ch
anges. We are using Umbraco, an open source CMS based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET. Moving the site content over was easy, as Umbraco has a WYSIWYG editor and we were simply able to copy and paste the pages. We made some edits as we went along and re-arranged the navigation so you may find pages you had bookmarked have moved or that you are redirected to new sections. As anyone maintaining a website knows, upkeep is an ongoing process. Umbraco features great tools for saving drafts for review by others; the ability to publish and unpublish pages on set dates; and captures all edits so that pages can be rolled back if needed.
As part of the migration we also made changes to our blogs and instead of using Blogger we have switched to BlogEngine.Net. Our blogs are the most visited section of our site and this has allowed us to offer more functionality with a categorized and easily searchable archive. We are also starting to integrate RSS feeds from the various blog categories into pages on our site, so that for example our page about Inmagic Genie will automatically update with the latest blog posts tagged as relating to Genie. Our Twitter feed now appears on our blog page.
One of our core areas of expertise is integrating Inmagic WebPublisher PRO search and results screens into a site template, so we of course made sure that the various pages on our site that include records from our database of sites using Inmagic software also seamlessly fit within our new Umbraco template.
We are thrilled with the functionality and ease of use of Umbraco and are now offering Umbraco site design and hosting to clients interested in updating their website or creating a new one. Please contact us to discuss possibilities and pricing.
We also always welcome any comments on our website, especially topics that you would like to see included.
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