What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3?

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1 What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? About this document This document provides an overview of the enhancements and new features of CMS 3 over version 2. For more details of the exact changes to this version, please refer to the version 3.0 release notes. Contents: Fast Food Menu Served in Milliseconds! 3 All New Menu Runs Significantly Faster 3 ecommerce and Page Generation Performance 3 Reliability and Robustness 3 Reliability 3 Robustness 3 New user interface 4 New icons 4 New Sidebar 4 Standardised layouts 4 Hints, tips and bubbles 4 New Sites Manager Tool and To Do list 5 Manage Sites 5 Warning Bar 5 To Do List 5 New URL Rewrite Functionality 6 What is URL Rewrite? 6 Search Engine Optimisation 6 URL Rewrite Tool 6 What s new in ProspectSoft CMS Version 3 Page 1 of 9

2 Inbound and outbound rules 6 Dynamic ecommerce Product and Product Category rules 6 Enhanced Site Builder 7 Drag-and-Drop 7 Faster and more responsive interface 7 In-Tree Menu Editing 7 Updated News & Articles Manager 8 Tree view navigation 8 Enhanced data entry 8 It All Adds Up to a great deal 9 In-situ stylesheet editing 9 Linking to File-Cache items 9 Automatically expanded navigation trees 9 Setting the Plug-in Execution Sequence 9 Fixes and corrections 9 What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 2 of 9

3 Fast Food Menu Served in Milliseconds! There s lots of great front-end changes in CMS 3 providing a fantastic new interface for anyone who needs to manage your website. However, for every one person who edits your website there are perhaps thousands who visit your site over the web and for these visitors the big news is speed. With hardware and infrastructure updates last year we halved the time it took to generate a menu and breadcrumbs (which requires complex recursive queries) but this time we have literally smashed that time. All New Menu Runs Significantly Faster CMS 3 includes an all-new menu data structure and algorithm which generates the same menu in a fraction of the time. Menus that used to be generated in ms can now be generated in under 20ms. When combined with the breadcrumbs generation this means that almost every page will load half a second faster than before this doesn t sound a lot but reducing a page load from 2.1 seconds to 1.6 seconds or from 1.4 seconds to 0.9 seconds makes a real difference to the user experience. ecommerce and Page Generation Performance This faster menu generation comes on top of recently deployed plugin enhancements for product lists, tree view generation and pricing/vat calculations which substantially reduced page load times for ecommerce sites. All these enhancements now mean that the average page on our CMS servers now loads in less than half the time that it took just a year ago, ultimately improving your visitor s experience and maximising your sales. Reliability and Robustness Reliability Recent updates have also reduced server down-time, ensuring that our web servers are now running at greater than 99.9% uptime. Robustness While 100% reliability is the goal, with any complex system there are bound to be issues from time to time. So coinciding with Version 3.0 of the CMS editor, we have also deployed a new Server Monitor and Server Management system; that constantly polls the web server and automatically takes remedial action to repair the system if issues are causing pages to slow down or become unresponsive. What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 3 of 9

4 New user interface CMS 3 has a great new look. Fresh, clean and easy to navigate, CMS 3 makes creating and managing websites a real pleasure. New icons The new icons make it quick and easy for users to identify where to find the screen they need for each task. New Sidebar The new sidebar provides a simple and easy to use menu, which not only makes it easy to navigate the system, but remains highlighted ensuring that the user knows at all times, exactly which tool they are currently using. Standardised layouts Each of the main tools have also been updated to ensure that the windows are consistently set out with regular formatting, borders and interfaces. Hints, tips and Tooltip bubbles for Plug-in Properties Throughout various parts of the interface, you will now find hints and tips inside popup bubbles to guide you on elements of website creation/management. Most notably, hovering the mouse over plug-in properties will display a help bubble explaining what that particular property is. Note: not all properties will have help at the time of release these will be developed and added over time. What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 4 of 9

5 New Sites Manager Tool and To Do list Manage Sites The first option in the new sidebar, and the default tool that opens when logging in, is the new Sites Manager tool. This new tool provides an easy way to review all your sites in one place, easily moving between sites and reviewing either the live or preview (with changes not yet published) versions of your sites. Warning Bar The Manage Sites tool will also tell you if a new site is incomplete in any way and point you in the right direction for completing your site. To Do List Clicking the orange warning bar will open the To Do list which summarises some information about the site (how many menu items etc) and tells the user what tasks need to be completed in order for the site to be valid. What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 5 of 9

6 New URL Rewrite Functionality What is URL Rewrite? URL Rewrite is a particularly technical and off-putting term for something that actually makes dynamic CMS-generated websites simpler to use and more accessible to visitors. A CMS-generated website is by definition dynamic and parameterised which is a good thing as it ensures a consistent website, full of dynamic data-driven content. However it also tends to lead to unfriendly URL s such as: Search Engine Optimisation The new URL Rewrite functionality allows you to automatically convert these unfriendly URL s and to use and publish friendly URL s such as: These friendly URL s not only make your site easier to navigate, and make it much easier for you to provide specific URL s to customers (over the phone, via or on printed documentation) but will also assist with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) where the search engines are able to read the keywords in your URL s. URL Rewrite Tool Creating and managing URL Rewrites couldn t be simpler. With the new URL Rewrite Tool, you can view all your rewrite rules, or navigate the rules by navigating the site menu. You can also create new URL rewrites in just 3 mouse clicks, using a helper function to automatically create valid inbound and outbound URL s for any menu item or page within your site. In & outbound rules These friendly URL s can be defined together or independently for both inbound (rewrite) and outbound (replaced) URL s. I.e. not only can a visitor type these friendly URL s into their web browser address bar, but all the links within your site can also be automatically converted to friendly URL s as well. Dynamic ecommerce Product and Product Category rules Not only does the CMS manage URL rewrite for menu entries and pages, but for anyone running a ProspectSoft ecommerce site, you can also very easily define powerful rules for generating dynamic URL s from your Product Catalogue either based on your product categories tree or individual product items (or both). What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 6 of 9

7 Enhanced Site Builder The Site Builder tool has been substantially redeveloped to make developing and maintaining your site both easier and faster. Drag-and-Drop As well as significantly increasing the speed of web page generation (see above), the new menu data structure and algorithms have also allowed us to introduce drag-and-drop features into the menu editor. This new drag-and-drop interface makes it much easier to move a menu item or even a whole section of the menu around. You can drag any item over another part of the menu, and then insert that item (and all of its children) into the tree at the drop-point. Menu sections can be inserted before, after or as children of other menu items. Faster and more responsive interface Not only is this drag-and-drop functionality a lot easier to use, but it is also built upon a new data structure, making the Site Builder interface much more responsive, even when editing a large and complex menu, or when moving large sections of a menu around. In-Tree Menu Editing It is also now possible to edit the menu text by simply clicking on any item in the tree for a second time, editing the text within the tree and tabbing (or clicking) off the item. Of course, changes to the menu text made in this way are still version-tracked and can be rolled back if required. What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 7 of 9

8 Updated News & Articles Manager Tree view navigation The News and Articles Manager now lists the current articles in a tree view, organised by the article group. You can also filter the list to exclude articles that have already expired. Enhanced data entry The data entry form for new articles has also been reorganised. As well as being more consistently laid out, the fields also have tooltips (information bubbles) to help those new to writing articles to understand the fields and how best to enter the data. The Group field has also been made into a drop-down box offering you the groups that have already been defined. Plus, the system will show red warning text if you create an article and haven t yet selected the in use flag (which may or may not be intentional). What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 8 of 9

9 It All Adds Up to a great deal On top of all of the new interface, major enhancements and new features in CMS 3, there are a host of smaller improvements that add up to a great user experience and great value for money. Below are just some of the highlights In-situ stylesheet editing In CMS 3 it is now possible to update the CSS without having to export, edit and re-import the stylesheet a new button in the stylesheet editor tool allows you to edit the CSS in-situ using a text editor. Linking to File-Cache items When creating a link within the CMS, the menu navigator window now also allows you to browse the file cache say for a PDF document and link to that quickly and easily too. Automatically expanded navigation trees In the various tools, the tree view is automatically expanded when the tool is opened. For example, when using the stylesheet editor, the tree view is expanded to provide access to multiple styles. In Version 3 the tree is automatically expanded to show the currently in-use stylesheet and style objects. Setting the Plug-in Execution Sequence A new option, accessed via the toolbar in the Templates Manager, allows you to define the sequence in which plugins are executed. This can be useful for performance or to control the effect of specific plugins like the Validation Plugin, or the Logout plugin. Fixes and corrections Beyond the many major enhancements and new features in CMS 3, there are also a range of minor enhancements, fixes and corrections all aimed at making site management quick, simple and effective. For more information, please refer to the version 3.0 release notes. What s new in ProspectSoft CMS 3? Page 9 of 9