Sitecore - Web CMS
Introduction
Ignia is a Microsoft Certified Partner and Sitecore Certified Partner, with over eight years of experience delivering IT solutions to Australian and international business. Strategic partnerships enable Ignia to combine the power of industry standard technologies.
Ignia and Content Management - The power behind your website
Our command of Microsoft technologies such as Internet Servers, SQL Server database, the Microsoft .NET development platform and Microsoft best practices around security, all enable us to connect and integrate your business systems to maximize return on IT investment.
Sitecore builds on top of the above Microsoft technologies and is therefore compatible with all other systems and software that follow the same industry standard approach.
Sitecore is a Web Content Management Server, often referred to as a CMS. The job of a content management server is to increase the number of times you can use a single piece of information within your website. This reduces the time it takes to build your website and keep it up to date with news, products, job vacancies, company information and the like.
For example, if you were to create a content item comprising a description and photograph of a product, then Sitecore would allow you to build pages quickly that provide just pictures of products that match a customer’s search criteria. But then if the customer clicked on one of those pictures Sitecore would then provide all the detailed information surrounding the product.
We refer to this approach as separating content from presentation. How you enter the information in is not necessarily the way that the web designer will present the information on screen. All you are doing as you create content items is to populate Sitecore’s extensive database, which captures all the information and navigation structure of your website or internet portal.
Content management servers sit at the heart of flexible websites that are required to present information to your customers at high speed. Sitecore enables web site visitors to search for information with lighting speed and a great degree of accuracy on the hits that are returned.
The CMS approach allows you to quickly upload content and if you have already designed your site then new content will automatically appear in exactly the same place as the old content does. A perfect example of this is news items. As new articles are added into Sitecore, approved and published, they appear in the news section of your website instantly.
Now, imagine if the customer wished to view dozens of products per web page, Sitecore allows you to have a images of varying size and resolution associated with a product, and some might be relevant to detailed views whilst others would be relevant to summary views. Sitecore can select the best image automatically. This is a superb approach for creating content where some people may browse your site from a mobile phone or PDA, where they will need smaller images, different from those viewed by users with desktop web browsers.
As you would expect from a professional CMS system, Sitecore is browser independent, meaning your website won’t suddenly fall apart when somebody with an Apple iMac or mobile phone views your web pages. Sitecore truly protects your investment in your website and maximizes the reach you get into the internet community.
The most powerful aspect of Sitecore as a content management server is the ease of use with which you can create content items. Using Sitecore is as easy as writing neatly formatted documents with Microsoft Word, even though it’s a web based system, Sitecore feels and behaves like it is installed on your desktop computer. With Sitecore you make no sacrifices on usability, and put simply, the Sitecore experience is second to none.
Ignia is working with International companies based here in Australia in order to ensure that their website presents pages in various languages. Once you have written text in English Sitecore allows you to translate the text to any other language and to associate that translated text to the same original content item. Sitecore then automatically selects the appropriate language to display alongside product images, news items and so on, so you have a truly localized experience suitable for an international audience.
More and more systems are automating business processes such as Feedback or Approval these activities are referred to as workflows, connecting people to actions which need to occur in a timely manner.
Workflow in Sitecore is incredibly powerful and yet very simple to operate. Sitecore ensures that anybody that is authorised to write or modify content items, i.e. Authors, has their work approved prior to the content actually appearing on your public website. This means that your public affairs or corporate communication departments can ensure that the content abides by organisational policies.
Underpinning workflow is the rich version control system which ensures that you can wind back to any previous version of a content item. If you find changes to a content item are not suitable for approval you can simply refer the item back to the author, but if the item was published, and for any reason you wish to revert back to an earlier version you can do this very simply.
Content items can also be controlled by a time period during which they are visible, useful when you want items to automatically come into view for a week or so then be taken out of view on your website. This might be appropriate for content items that are related to special events, conferences, news announcements and job adverts that have a closing date. You will discover that Sitecore works continuously to save you time and allow you to schedule things to occur automatically, so then you no longer have to worry about them.
Sitecore has evolved over many years to be the website platform of choice for businesses and technical people alike. The peace of mind gained by having an internet solution that is based on widely supported and well understood technology is invaluable. Having a content management system that business users find easy to work with ensures that your website remains a living breathing entity which doesn’t go stale just because the technology is hard to use.
The internet is a gateway enabling customers to find your company and Sitecore ensures that your internet site reaches out to your customers to achieve maximum impact.
Some of the finer details are that Sitecore cooperates with search engines like Google to ensure that customers find you easily. The in-built Search Engine Optimisation ensures that you receive maximum hits when customers search for information, products and services that you can provide. Sitecore also has a range of add-in modules for forums, mailing lists and to provide integration with your network systems. For example, Sitecore will integrate with Active Directory using a technology called LDAP, which is the industry standard means of allowing users to log in to systems.
Having a site which allows users to log in is extremely powerful as you can use Sitecore’s statistics module to track how visitors browse and explore your website. This can teach you valuable lessons on how you can further increase the impact of your website.
Portals are something that companies adopt in order to create powerful websites that are tailored to a specific visitor’s needs. Once a visitor has logged in you can customise your website to that specific visitor. What news items are of interest to the current visitor, are there any new products or services that would be relevant to them, are there sections of the website they prefer to see rather than those displayed when other visitors are logged in? Sitecore creates a truly dynamic internet solution that is customisable in many ways.
Sitecore’s rich functionality can be of benefit straight out-of-the-box with Ignia as your website partner at hand, we can customise Sitecore to fit your exact requirements and together we can create a website with unlimited reach into the global market.
Contact Ignia today, your certified Sitecore Solution Partner in Perth
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