Agility CMS Blog

An Architect's Perspective on Agility

Joel Varty — 9/19/2008 2:09:27 PM

Agility is a CMS product written primary by developers for developers. That, in my mind, was always the first priority – but not in the way you might think. As developers, we wanted to be able work with the product ourselves without having to re-invent the wheel every time we approached a website. Along with that notion, we wanted to be able to offset the kinds of work that normally falls in the developer’s hands, like organizing the sitemap, or deciding which content block should appear where on any given page, without it being difficult, even for brand new users.

My opinion of Agility is that it does a great job of passing off “developer stuff” to developers and doesn’t force each site into a framework of the website design that may limit how you think about the website itself. In this manner, it really complements the Asp.Net framework in that it treats the managed content from Agility just like another data source, and the higher level elements, like the sitemap, just like a regular Asp.Net site map.

As a developer, I can setup an Agility website just like any other Asp.Net website, except I get the added benefit of letting the content editors and graphics designers figure out what the exact content is going to be in each case, and they can do it in multiple languages without me having to go back and add things like resource files or anything like that.

As a result, websites get built more quickly and with fewer bugs than if we had tried to do things without a managed content aspect, and the content, since it didn’t have to be filtered through extra layers of phone-tag, tends to be way more accurate.

Language / Region Localization in Agility

Michael Iskiw — 9/19/2008 2:03:32 PM

Working with multiple languages on a website is rarely pleasant. However, Agility proves that multi-language website implementations can be streamlined.

To give you a perfect example, while recently launching XFXForce.com. We were presented with a highly visual website with 7 languages to accommodate. Each of which had their own set of products that were specific to each region. This was not a worry for us with Agility. We simply setup our 7 languages and let Agility provide instant separation of content.

Now you may be wondering… they may have slightly different content but be relatively similar. This is indeed true. So as we built the site we started with the United States English as our base. We then were able to Export all content into a CSV document which provided the US English version of the content in one column and in another column there was space for the “translation” information. We were able to send this file off to translators who were able to easily match the English value with the language they were translating to in a familiar program and format. Once the translations were complete, we simply imported the CSV document into Agility and a new language was instantly available across the site. This was successfully done for all regions with amazing speed and accuracy.

All I have to say is Agility is a language switching MACHINE and she proves it every day with highly successful websites.

Secrets to Successful CMS Implementations

Jon Voigt — 9/22/2008 10:08:44 PM

Content Management Software is complex. It's not like Microsoft Office where you can buy the software off the shelf, install it, and you're done. Every website is different which means every CMS implementation is unique.

CMS implementations have to be carefully planned and executed. No matter how many features the CMS software has, the project will fail if the CMS is not implemented correctly. As such, it is important that you choose a CMS that is easy to implement.

As the name suggests, Agility was designed with flexibility in mind. This is why it has been so successful for highly creative sites like www.xfxforce.com where design and functionality are critical. Many CMS buyers rate products according to the number of features or add-on modules that are available. But is important to place equal emphasis on how easy it is to set up these features and modules for YOUR site.

We can show you how easy it is to build an Agility-managed site by training your developers or by rapidly turning around your website project.

Agility Release – September 25, 2008

Joel Varty — 10/1/2008 5:37:19 PM

This was a pretty major release for Agility, as it introduced a new features and consolidated our WCF (Web Services) platform to give us more flexibility down the road.

Tags

The biggest new feature for this release is Tags. There is a central tag list on every Agility website now, and any module definition or content definition can be set to “allow tags.”

Once that is setup, you can add tags to any module or content item where it has been enabled, bringing a whole new aspect to your content, and allowing you to relate disparate areas of the site together through a common system.

On your website itself, we’ve written a whole new set of API methods and objects to handle tags and their relationship to various content items or modules in the site. On top of that, the usage stats for content tags within a list, or even across the entire site are calculated for you on the Agility server, so you can immediately take advantage of tag clouds and various other content rating features as they relate to tags.

The Editor

The Rich Text Editor in Agility has been updated to be more powerful than ever before. This editor has been re-written completely to take advantage of Asp.Net AJAX and also incorporates a slew of tweaks that make it faster and more reliable for content editing.

We’ll be revisiting this control again soon with more features and tweaks, so feel free to provide us with any feedback that you have – we may just incorporate your ideas into the product!

The Website API

Agility communicates with your website using industry standard web services. We use a technology called WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) to do this. We are constantly updating this communications layer to make improvements to the way content is synchronized to your website.

This version added the capability to synchronize not only the new Tags features, but also extended the capabilities of the system to enable us to bring some exciting new features to you in the future. Cool stuff, folks – I love this stuff.

So what’s next? Stay tuned to this blog for more updates soon!

Agility Tip: Google Webmaster Tools

Michael Assad — 11/26/2008 2:16:50 PM

If you have a website and you haven't linked it with Google Webmaster Tools, you should.

Google Webmaster Tools are designed to give you peace of mind that your site is playing nice with Google. It tells you about how your site is indexed, what the top search terms to your site are, who's linking to your site, and more.

The diagnostic tools tell you if there are any issues indexing parts or all of your site. It also warns you if Titles or Meta Tags are having harmful effects on the crawling process.

The Google Sitemap utility allows you to provide Google with a complete sitemap of your site to give you extra comfort that Google knows about all of the pages on your site, even if it couldn't index them.

To verify your Agility site with Google Webmaster Tools, add the provided Meta Tag to the 'Other Header Code' field on the Meta Tags tab of your Home page.

To connect your sitemap with Google Sitemap, enter www.yoursite.com/sitemap.axd into the box provided.

Check it out:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

How does Agility synchronise data to my website?

Joel Varty — 10/24/2008 4:44:26 PM

Well, in theory, it’s pretty simple. We simply use a web service to move the data programmatically from your content database on the Agility servers out to wherever your web site lives. This web service is executed separately from the rest of the activity on your website, so no matter how many people are browsing the site at any given moment, we can refresh the content files without their experience being interrupted.

What about firewalls though? I thought my website was locked down so that other systems couldn’t “get into it?”

Great question. The answer is simple – we use the same internet port that your website uses to communicate through, port 80, so we can go through the firewall. On top of that, we use an encrypted authentication token and a secret key that is specific to your web site to validate each content synchronization message. This means that only your website can get your content from the Agility content server.

What if I have multiple web servers? Can Agility synchronize content to multiple servers for a single web site?

Absolutely – we can support as many servers as you have in your web farm, all Agility requires is the hard drive space to store the content files – and those files can live in a secure location; they don’t need to be stored in the web site root, which means they won’t be accessible to the outside world outside of the context of you website.

What if my network goes down? Does that mean I won’t get content updates that happen in that time frame? Does my site go down?

If your server loses connectivity to the Agility content server, your site will continue to function with the existing content files. When connectivity is restored, all of the content that was published on the site since the last successful synchronization will be synchronized. We call this the “delta,” meaning that we keep track of each changed item between successful content synchronizations and synchronize those changes when connectivity allows.

What if I have more questions?

Email us, or call us! We’d love to hear from you!

More later – joel.

It's Good to be Agile

Michael Assad — 10/3/2008 1:13:14 PM

The name Agility comes from the flexible nature of the CMS, allowing easy implementation of graphic intensive sites with complex back-end integration requirements. But there is another reason why Agility is 'Agile' that has an enormous benefit for our users.

Agility is built using the 'Agile' software development methodology. The key premise of this methodology is that software is improved incrementally based on users' feedback, rather than in large releases with bloated planning phases.

We listen to our users very carefully and implement their requests on a monthly basis. So, with each month that goes by, the CMS improves, without any effort on the part of our customers, and without an increase in fees.

For example, last month we added tagging functionality because one of our clients needed it for their site. Similarly, we've added document management capabilities, improved editing tools and much more.

Updates to the system follow a cycle to make sure that the changes are balanced. Last month, the focus was on 'Features', this month it is 'Productivity' and next month it will be 'Back-end' or performance and infrastructure improvements. The cycle then repeats.

For each release cycle, we encourage our users to tell us what features and improvements they would like for the next release. Already an Agility user? Let us know what you want next!

Learn more about Agile programming on Wikipedia

See the complete list of Agility features

The Numbers Don't Lie

Justin Lafontaine — 10/20/2008 12:06:07 PM

Recently, I set out to put together a return on investment document for our Agility Content Management System. My goal was to compare implementing a web site using our product to implementing a web site from scratch with no CMS, to using a standard, non-web based CMS, and to using an Open Source CMS. The results surprised me.

I obviously had some preconceptions about how Agility would compare to the other options. I expected Agility would have a clear advantage in convenience and long term costs over a web site built from scratch. I also expected that Agility would have a reasonable advantage over a non-web based CMS because of the administration and management benefits. I crunched the numbers and they supported my hypothesis. The ROI analysis clearly identified the advantages I foresaw.

However, when comparing the Open Source option to Agility CMS I expected that the Open Source solution would win on cost and that the Agility CMS advantages would be convenience and reduced risk. I expected a draw revolving around the cost versus convenience trade off. It turns out I was wrong. My comparison included the costs of administration and implementation, which is easy to minimize at a first glance, but the time spent by you, your admin or a consultant is real and quantifiable. The result... Agility actually has a price advantage and had intangible benefits of convenience, reduced stress and reduced risk.

The numbers don't lie. For more details check out the Agility CMS Return on Investment document

Agility is in the Cloud

Joel Varty — 10/27/2008 1:11:04 PM

One of the latest buzz-words that I hear flitting across the office these days is “Cloud Computing.” I won’t even bother to look up an actual definition (I stopped doing that after Web 2.0). What cloud computing means to me is that a hosted application and all of its constituent data are stored on a server and taken responsibility for on behalf of customers.

Sounds like what we used to call ASP (Application Service Providers), but whatever, at least this new term doesn’t get confused with Application Server Pages.

In a way, the “Cloud” refers to a bunch of internet web applications working together, usually tied with Web Services enabling server-to-server or application-to-application communication. Additionally, we tend to see “mash-ups” where certain applications can be consumed in somewhat non-standard ways, although this is becoming more commonly based on a set of “features” specifically designed to enable “mash-up” types of things. I think REST APIs are a great example of this: as opposed to web services, which tend to be tied very much to a specific process, REST APIs tend to be more related to the piece of application functionality that they are trying to expose for maximum mashability.

Where does Agility fit in to all of this?

Well, Agility has been enabling cloud computing for quite some time: the system is an application and data syndication service that manages website content data across servers and hosting domains using web services.

Is it any different now that we have the term “Cloud”?

I think it is. The concept behind this term, especially as it relates to a hosted application like Agility, means much more than what I described above.

The Agility Content Manager application itself is really just a shell that contains Pages, Content and Documents – and these objects have a completely open schema, meaning you can store any kind of data in them. We can (and quite regularly do) call web services to pull external data directly into the Agility system of content so that it can be integrated into a content workflow and, beyond that, we can enable the website that the data is pushed to, to itself pull content via REST or Web Service APIs and syndicate data via its own web services and REST, or even RSS APIs.

In other words, the Cloud concept helps us to understand that applications cannot be thought of as logical silos that stand on their own; rather we can now more easily conceive of a system of websites and applications that tie the web together in ways that we simply couldn’t wrap our heads around before.

More later,

- joel.

Agility Update for November 2008 - Productivity!

Joel Varty — 11/5/2008 9:18:44 AM

For the November update, we have focused on productivity: how can we make Agility users more efficient? We took a bunch of requests and put them into the product. This will be a recurring theme in our iterations as we strive to integrate new features, productivity enhancements and other backend or performance enhancements into the system.

So what is there to look forward to in this release?

Page Copy

You can now make a copy of any page in the system. Pretty simple, huh? Yea, it is. But it doesn’t just copy the page itself – all of the modules and their linked content views are also copied over, and in every language as well. Imagine how much time that will save if you need to copy a complex module with a linked content list to another page and only change a few small properties or items – just copy the whole page and rename the copy!

Improved Recent Changes Report

The recent changes report now shows all Pages, Shared Content, Modules, and Linked Content that has been changed in the system. Also, you can publish right from that list. What this means is that you can look at all the changes for the last few days and publish anything that is ready to go without having to navigate to the individual areas of the site. To make this even easier, we’ve added a new status that you can report on, “Pending Release”, which will allow you to show only the pages that are Approved (if they require approval) or have merely change (if they don’t require approval).

Some Bug Fixes

Timed release
- An issue was fixed where an item that had a Release Date that had not yet expired was republished with a new Release Date would not appear on the second release date.
Deleting shared content views
- An issue was fixed where a shared content view that had been used on a page that was subsequently deleted could not itself be deleted.
F5/Refresh in Firefox
- Previously to this release, pressing F5 (or Refresh) in Firefox would result in a Javascript error. The workaround to this was using ctrl-F5 or ctrl-Refresh. This has been fixed.

Agility Tip: Share Your Agility Content with Popular Social Sites in Minutes

Michael Assad — 11/26/2008 2:19:02 PM

Add This is a free service that allows you to share content with Facebook, Myspace, De.licio.us, Live and all other popular social networks and communities.

To share your Agility content using Add This:

Create an account at www.addthis.com, and copy the code that they provide for either a popup or overlay sharing panel.
In Agility, open the page or content that you would like to make available for sharing. Any page with a Rich Text Module will work, or any module that has the Rich Text Editor control.
Switch the Rich Text Editor to HTML mode by clicking the '<>' symbol at the bottom of the editor.
Paste the code from the Add This site in the editor.

Add This takes care of the rest!

Note that you can view stats on who is sharing your content by viewing the reports in your Add This account.

Agility Tip: Global Scripts

Steve Pontisso — 11/26/2008 2:16:03 PM

If you’ve been working in Agility for a period of time, you’ve probably noticed the Scripts tab when working on a page in your site. Many of our clients make use of this tab for putting a tracking script (like Google Analytics) at the top or bottom of the page. I know what you’re thinking though, that sounds very cumbersome for a site with many pages. Ever wish you could put the same script on every page and only ever have to manage it from one place? We did too, and that’s why we developed Global Scripts. So before you wear out the CTRL, C, and V keys on your keyboard, read on.

Global Scripts are configured by users with Administrative access in Agility and are accessible from the Settings page. If you can’t see them there, it’s probably because your account is of a security profile lower than Administrator. Have no fear though, help is only an email to support@edentity.ca away. Send us your script and where you want it (top or bottom), and we’ll configure it for you in a jiffy.

If you ever want to remove the Global Scripts from a specific page, back on the Scripts tab, you’ll see the Exclude from Global Scripts checkbox. Pretty self explanatory. Then you may want to configure a different script for that page, or just leave it blank. How simple is that?

Global Scripts are a way more efficient method of managing scripts on every page. And who doesn’t like efficiency?

People posting about Agility...

Joel Varty — 12/9/2008 10:28:11 PM

There's nothing more gratifying than seeing someone else say something about a product you build...

As you may know, I work on a CMS product called Agility, and CMS wire has recently been picking up on our monthly iterative updates to the hosted system.

Check it out: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/agility-cms-shoots-for-enhanced-productivity-003470.php

Huge Upside for Agility in SaaS Web Content Management Market

Michael Assad — 12/9/2008 10:28:11 PM

CMS Watch has posted their trend analysis of Software as a Service Web Content Management (SaaS WCM) Vendors for 2009. The report focuses on the top three SaaS WCM tools out there: Clickability, CrownPeak and OmniUpdate. Of the three, the first two compete more directly with Agility.

Overall, the report sounds positive on trends for SaaS in 2009. Over the year, I have seen a few posts on CMS Wire that get me excited about our prospects as one of the only SaaS WCM systems on the market.

The report states that vendors will have to do more and make changes to keep up with customer demands. This is good news for us because it means that none of the top three vendors have found the magic formula and no one is running away with the lead.

We will have an opporunity in 2009 to close the gap in public opinion between Agility and the current top 3. We have better developer tools, better implementation services, and a solid, proven CMS system. I would consider it a marketing failure if, in 12 months time, the name Agility isn't listed beside the other top vendors.

You can check out a summary of the CMS Watch analysis on the CMS Wire blog:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/2009-trends-in-saas-web-content-management-003583.php

More Press for Agility

Michael Assad — 12/9/2008 10:28:11 PM

CMS Critic has posted a good summary article about Agility:

http://cmscritic.com/agility-cms-powerful-hosted-cms-solution/

Upcoming Agility Update for December

Joel Varty — 12/11/2008 10:49:46 AM

We are quickly approaching another update for Agility! This is a pretty small in terms of what you see in the content manager, but pretty awesome in terms of the backend side of things. We are adding what we are calling “Domain Health Monitors” into our content service.

What this means is that if anything goes awry on your site with regards to content synchronization, network connectivity, or any of the other myriad issues that can be tricky to find out about on a web application server, we will know about it right away and can take action.

Now, we already have the capability of doing that on our own servers, but Agility websites can be hosted anywhere in the world, so our customers that host their sites in remote locations will be better served, by this updated monitor service.

In terms of the technology of this update, it is really a chance for us to be more proactive in how we do future updates. It means we can be more scalable and still keep the high standards of quality and service that we pride ourselves on with Agility.

More later! Joel.

A Great Article CMS Usability

Michael Assad — 12/12/2008 1:59:48 PM

James Robertson fromStep Two Designs in Australia posted a great article on CMS usability.

Usability is a primary consideration for selecting your content management system. The usability of a system is key to adoption within your organization and adoption is key to success for your CMS project.

CMS is inherently complex. It is software that is used in an infinite number of ways to do countless different things for different user types. It's not like you can buy a CMS system off the shelf, install in, and you're done. Customization and Training are critical components.

The article highlights that vendor demos and sample accounts are two good ways to assess usability. Vendor demos should use real world examples so that you see how the system works in reality, rather than oogle over the bells and whistles. The problem with sample accounts is that they generally don't lead to real world scenarios so clients might get the wrong impression of your solution. We have wrestled with the decision to post a sample account, but have decided to do so based on the assumption that those who sign up for the account have some idea of what they're getting themselves into.

At Edentity (the creators of Agility), we take the implementation and training of our CMS very seriously. To me, a proper implementation is 80% of the usability battle because you are ultimately customizing the system for each site. Also, no matter how simple your CMS system is, in reality it is a new concept for most users and is tailored to specific needs. Because of this, training and customized documentation are paramount.

Other important factors that we consider is the number of clicks required for each task and the speed with which the system processes commands. With a hosted model, you are at the mercy of your users' internet connection, so the processing speed is of the utmost importance.

We are constantly searching for ways to make our CMS easier to use. Agility is unique in that we upgrade the system every month with suggestions from our users. There is no better way to tune your system than to the needs of your users!

Read James' article here:

http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/practical-ways-to-assess-cms-usability/

Agility Tip: Publish Content Faster

Michael Assad — 12/12/2008 1:59:50 PM

The staging and published modes in Agility are a great way to preview changes to the site before they go live. However, as any Agility user knows, publishing content can sometimes take a few extra precious seconds that could be used for something more productive.

Here are a few tips for speeding up Agility content publishing:

Publish from the List

For content lists (linked content or shared content), publish content from the list by checking off the items and clicking the 'Publish' link - rather than publishing each individual item. When you publish the individual items, you have to wait for the item to refresh as well as for the publish to take place. This can take a particularly long time for modules that have multiple editor controls on them or a long version history.

Publish from the Page

If you are making changes to multiple modules on a page, complete all of the required changes to the modules, close the module dialog and Publish from the page. This will simultaneously publish all of the changes to the modules on the page, as well as changes to the page itself.

Publish from the Recent Changes Report

The Recent Changes report is by far the fastest way to publish content in Agility.

Make all of the required changes to your site without publishing any of them.
Click on the Reports link and choose the 'Recent Changes' report.
Use the controls on the report to select the 'Pending Publish' items in the desired time frame.
Select the items that you would like to publish and click the Publish link

If you have other suggestions for how to speed things up, use the Submit Feedback link at the top of the Agility Content Manager window and we'll build it into a future release!

Agility Tip: FireFox 3 is the Best Browser for Agility

Michael Assad — 12/18/2008 4:04:54 PM

In our Agility browser speed tests, FireFox comes out on top. FireFox 3 in particular is the best bet.

Why? Because Agility uses AJAX technology which is based on JavaScript, a client-side programming language. Apparently the folks at Mozilla, the creators of FireFox, have built a better JavaScript processing engine than the competition.

Stuck with Internet Explorer? Not a problem - it works great - but you might have to wait a second or two longer for some operations.

Get FireFox 3 now!

Agility Tip: Content Scheduling of List Items

Joel Varty — 1/15/2009 10:03:47 AM

Content Scheduling allows you to configure dates and times for content to automatically be published or unpublished. This is useful for time sensitive content like events or press releases, or for content that changes on a regular basis like the 'hot story' on your home page.

Content can be scheduled at the Page level, Module level or Content List level. This tip discusses the latter.

To set up content scheduling for items in a list:

Open the list of content from Shared Content or from a Module on a Page
Click on the item that you would like to publish or unpublish on a certain date
Click on the 'Scheduling' tab for that item
Click on the 'Enable Content Scheduling?' checkbox to reveal the release date and pull date controls
Set the Release Date and Time if you would like the item to be published at a certain point in the future. Set the Pull Date and Time if you would like the item to be unpublished at a certain point. You can set both dates to have an item publish on the Release Date and unpublish on the Pull Date
Set up the appropriate scheduling for all of the items in the list

Note that you can chain items in a list so that one item publishes when another item unpublishes. For example, you might have a block of content on your home page that you want to change once per week. Rather than manually changing that content every week, you can set up a content list with items that publish and unpublish according to the dates that you want the content to hide or show.

When you preview a page with scheduled content, you can preview how it will look on different dates by using the 'Preview Date' control in the Preview window.

Want to learn more about how you can use content scheduling on your Agility site? Email us!

Great Article on Usability from ComputerWorld

Michael Assad — 1/30/2009 12:03:51 PM

The premise of the article is that usability is about more than simplicity, consistency and stability - it's about control. Users are happiest when they are in control of the software and not the other way around.

Usability is also about emotion. Quoting from the article:

We've all experienced the full range of emotions while using gadgets, PCs, phones and software. At one end of the spectrum is a kind of thrilling joy, where something "just works." At the other end, there is a consuming rage. The amount of time your emotional state spends at one end of the spectrum rather than the other is the one and only thing that determines how much you "love" the product.

There is no better feeling than when software does what you tell it to or 'just works'. We will continue to give as much control as possible to Agility CMS users with each monthly update. Let us know if there is something about Agility that puts you in a bad mood and we'll fix it!

Read the article on ComputerWorld.com

Agility Update for January 2009 - Back-end

Joel Varty — 1/15/2009 11:50:21 AM

Our first update of 2009 is here! This month, our changes to the system are mostly "behind the scenes" backend changes, which will allow us to better service all Agility sites and apply future upgrades faster.

Here is a rundown of the changes and features in this update.

Improved Publishing Speed
- We have increased the speed of publishing content, especially when your site runs on multiple web servers
- We've broken the content synchronization into smaller chunks, allowing us to synchronize larger amounts of content with less waiting.
Instant Agility Framework Updates
- We can now instantly update the Agility Framework library on your website. This means that any fixes or new features we implement in our Agility Framework will be instantly available to developers, even on sites that are not hosted with us.
Enhanced Website Reporting
- We have created a new report so that website administrators can check the status of each domain on their websites.

Logging Enhancements
- We now allow the website developer to set up filters to set the priority of certain exceptions.
- This allows better reporting of true errors on the site, and gives you the option of ignoring certain exceptions such as 404s by logging them as informational or verbose errors.

Site Health Checks
- The content server now polls Agility sites to ensure that all content is properly sync'd. If a website resets half way through a publish, then this will allow the site to recover when it becomes available again.
- The content server now polls the website domains on a regular schedule to ensure that they are behaving properly.
Agility Content Manager Deployed on IIS 7.
- Agility Content Manager is now fully compatible with Internet Information Server 7 (IIS7)
- This allows for better content compression and availability of other IIS7 features.
Agility Developer Kit for Visual Studio Express
- The developer package is now compatible with the free version of Visual Studio Express.
Over 70 bugs fixes

Our next release focuses on new features. Please let us know what features you would like to see!

Agility Tip: Adding an Extra Line Feed in the Rich Text Editor

Michael Assad — 1/16/2009 4:29:17 PM

You may find a glitch in the Agility Rich Text Module content editor where you can't seem to enter an extra line feed between two paragraphs of text. A simple workaround is this:

Click 'Enter' to create the extra line feed
Click 'Spacebar' to create a space in the new line feed
Preview the page to make sure that the extra line feed is sticking

Agility Featured in CMS Wire Article

Michael Assad — 1/20/2009 10:41:14 AM

CMS Wire is one of my favourite sources for CMS news. They cover a very broad spectrum of all things content and social networking. This month, they have continued to provide commentary on our monthly update process.

Not surprisingly, they weren't blown away by the back-end and performance updates in this release (I guess to have to be an Agility user to appreciate them!). However, they do point out some highlights of our Software-as-a-Service model.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/agility-web-cms-update-focused-on-performance-003786.php

IIS 7, Dynamic Compression and AJAX Web Services Means Massive Performance Increases

Joel Varty — 1/26/2009 9:30:40 AM

I work on a product called Agility CMS. Agility CMS is a hosted web content management system - including a web application dedicated to actually editing website content, pages, sitemaps and other good stuff.

Last week we updated the app moved the whole system to IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008. We also turned on dynamic compression - which will now work properly on this system since we can now easily limit dynamic compression based on mime-type (not just file extension). Meaning all of our attachment handlers don't get messed up when delivering zips or other compressed files to silly browsers like IE7.

Dynamic Compression in IIS 7 is dead simple - its available through the IIS Admin, as you might expect.

But, behind the scenes, the dynamic content compression setting just tweaks a setting in the system.webServer section of the web.config:

Cool. Just make sure that you have Dynamic Compression installed...

What does it mean though? How much real benefit is there to dynamic compression in an AJAX style application?

In my preliminary tests (using Fiddler and FireBug) I was able see close to a 40% decrease in bandwidth overall.

The human result is a much more reactive experience on the application, which is suddenly much snappier. I can tell that people are being WAY more productive, too; my SQL server has jumped from an average 5-6% CPU usage to closer to 8-10%. I guess that's a good thing...

I shouldn't have been so surprised at this remarkable change in the overall bandwidth of the app, because we use dynamic compression with IIS 6 on our regular websites, but we never seen any thing close to a 40% bandwidth decrease. I am guessing this is because a regular website relies more on pre-compressed stuff like JPEG and PNG files, as opposed to tons of web forms with copious amount of HTML being sent back and forth to the server as part of the basic CMS operations.

I can't wait to see our hosting bill at the end of the month - I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised once again!

Agility CMS Listed on Capterra

Michael Assad — 2/3/2009 3:01:25 PM

Agility has been listed on the Capterra catalog of software products. Capterra is a leading source for information about technology vendors across a broad spectrum of categories.

Buyers of technology come to Capterra to learn about software offerings that fit their needs. Agility has been listed under the Content Management Software category:

http://www.capterra.com/content-management-software

It's great having a name that starts with 'A'!

This listing underscores the continuing rise of the Agility Content Management System as a leading Software-as-a-Service Content Management System.

Agility Site Launch: CookWithCampbells.ca

Michael Assad — 2/3/2009 3:01:25 PM

The latest Agility site was launched last week. Users can search for recipes that match keywords or a selection of criteria. Once logged in, users can print, email or rate recipes.

This site demonstrates the flexibility of Agility for incorporating Flash elements and integrating with a variety of systems including the Google Appliance, custom recipe database and proprietary Campbell's user profile database.

The site was implemented in partnership with Proximity Canada.

Try it out:

www.cookwithcampbells.ca

Take a look at the portfolio of Agility sites.

IE7 AND IE8 Compatibility

Jonathan Voigt — 2/3/2009 3:10:34 PM

IE8 is coming out soon and because of its change in CSS rules (more compatible) it may break some previously build sites that were built for IE7.

To get around this, people can run their site in IE7 compatibility mode. To do this, just add the following tag between the head tags in each page:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

In Agility this is easy to place throughout the entire site by adding this tag to the "Top Script" in the global scripts. All current Agility sites already incorporate this.

We're really hoping IE8 comes out in April and with it, IE6 can be pushed off the map with it's major CSS rendering issues.

Agility Tip: Upload Hundreds of Files to Agility, In Just Four Easy Clicks!

Steve Pontisso — 2/20/2009 11:25:57 AM

It's pretty common for our clients to upload many files to the Documents folder in Agility. This is typically where linked documents, images, and even Flash files are stored, and used on a variety of different pages throughout their website. Uploading files to Agility is no different than uploading to any other web application.

For instance, if you use a web based email service like Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail, you've likely uploaded a file or two as attachments to an email message. Using the Agility Content Manager, the process is very similar. As elegant as that solution is, it can become very tedious to do for say 5 files. Imagine how bad it would be if you had 50, or even 500 files to upload. That's why we introduced the "Upload Zip" feature.

This magical little feature lets you take a zip file you've created on your desktop and upload it as one file to the Agility documents folder. During the upload process, Agility will extract the the contents of the zip file for you and establish the exact same file structure for you in the Documents folder. So if you had folders and subfolders in your zip file, Agility will preserve those for you in the process.

This handy little feature can save you a boat load of time. The only limitation (and this is a limitation of web based uploading, not Agility) is the file size should be no bigger than 35,600KB. So if your zip file exceeds that size, you should break it into pieces. Two or three uploads vs. say hundreds is still exponentially faster!

To find this feature, just look for the "Upload Zip" link in the top right hand corner of the Documents folder. I've circled it for you in the screen shot below. After you've clicked on it you'll be prompted to browse for the zip file on your computer, select it, and then click open, and wait for the upload to complete. See, four clicks and you're done!

Software as a Service - "Transition to SaaS: An ISV Cookbook"

Jonathan Voigt — 2/20/2009 11:25:57 AM

Software as a Service is definitely getting a lot of attention. Only now are people starting to understand the benefits and what it really means.

This book goes into the steps necessary to transition to SaaS and touches on the research that has been done around this topic.

Here is a brief summary.

Agility Tip: Many Tabs Make Light Work

Steve Pontisso — 2/20/2009 11:26:35 AM

One of the limitations of working in a web application like the Agility Content Manager is that often, moving to another section requires a "page refresh". For example, if you're working in the Pages and Content view, and you want to switch over to the Documents folder, the page refreshes.

This is fine if you're working in a linear fashion, but what if you're doing things in parallel? Like what if you needed to copy/paste some content from one module on one page, into another module in another page? It can take a lot of time to copy, close out of that module, go into another one, and paste - especially if you need to click your way back to the original module to keep working with it.

Here's a little trick that I use to save a bunch of time.

If I'm copying and pasting, or performing similar functions on a bunch of different modules on a bunch of different pages, I open them all up on separate tabs in my browser.

Each tab is almost like another window where I can easily copy and paste things between them. Opening another tab is easily accomplished by right-clicking on a link in Agility (say the Pages and Content link in the main navigation) and selecting the Open In a New Tab option (the name of that function may vary from browser to browser).

This isn't a "feature" of Agility, but is a feature of working in most web applications. For example, when I'm writing email in Gmail, but want to reference something in my address book, instead of saving the email as draft, opening my addressbook, and then going into drafts to re-open and finish the message, I just open the addressbook in a separate tab. I find it faster and way more efficient.

I hope you do to!

Content Management Interoperability Services

Michael Assad — 2/27/2009 3:05:28 PM

IBM, Microsoft, Open Text and others are pushing a web services specification that will provide a standard way for applications to read data from any content management repository.

The Content Management Interoperability Services or CMIS will open up proprietary systems and allow companies and software vendors to tap into content is currently barricaded in content management systems by proprietary technology. Here are some of the benefits that are listed on Wikipedia:

Is designed to work over existing repositories enabling customers to build and leverage applications against multiple repositories -- unlocking content they already have

Decouples Web services and content from the content management repository, enabling customers to manage content independently

Provides common Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to dramatically simplify application development

Is development platform and language agnostic

Supports composite application development and mash-up “on the glass” by the business or IT analyst

Grows the ISV and developer community

Agility was one of the first content management systems to provide web service access to content natively. Granted, we weren't providing a global standard for this access.

We will keep our eye on this and make sure that Agility is compliant with the new standard once it is finalized.

More details on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services

RedDot is now Fully Digested by Open Text

Michael Assad — 2/27/2009 3:05:28 PM

Open Text has formally announced the termination of the RedDot brand. What does this mean for RedDot customers? Hopefully no more than a little upsell pressure from the ECM vendor.

Unfortunately, this will be disappointing and even shocking to many long time RedDot supporters. CMS Wire posted an interview with Daniel Kraft, Open Text SVP for Corporate Strategy that addresses the shift.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/open-text/farewell-reddot-viva-open-text-web-solutions-003961.php

The tone Daniel takes is very positive, but I can't see how this will be good for their RedDot customers. It means that current RedDot clients have no upgrade path and no road map for future development, other than to accept the Open Text way which is significantly more complex. For many clients, the suite of web products that Open Text has will be unecessary and they will likely seek other pure web content management options when the time comes for a site upgrade.

Daniel makes some good points about Open Text capabilities and the benefits of working with a vendor that manages a suite of solutions. However, there will always be a place for easy to use, nimble, cost effective tools that are specialized for managing web site content and functionality. Our queue of projects is evidence of that. Sometimes I wonder whether 'enterprise software' vendors ever set foot in the real world.

Agility Tip: Published Modules That Don't Show up on the Page

Jonathan Voigt — 3/4/2009 10:05:28 AM

There is a case you can get into that shows the module as published but where it won't appear on the site. This should be known to everyone for debugging reasons. We're looking to change the modules state from Published to Published - Requires Page Publish.

Case:

Page is Published
Add a new module to the page. (Page will change to Staging)
Edit the module, save the module, publish the module (from the module)
Navigate to the page.

You will now notice that the module says "Published" BUT it really isn't going to appear on the page because the page structure with the module hasn't been published. you then have to publish the page to have the module show up...

Agility Tip: Customize Your Agility Lists

Michael Assad — 3/5/2009 9:16:10 PM

Display the fields that you want to see on your list and change the default sort column in under a minute.

To do this (note that you need Designer or Manager level access):

Open any content list (e.g. Shared Content->My Blog)
Click on the List Settings tab
Choose the fields that you would like to have in your list by clicking the 'Include' link beside the field in the Available Fields list
Remove fields that you do not need by clicking the Exclude link in the Visible Fields list
Change the order of the fields by clicking the up and down arrows on the fields in the Visible Fields list
Change the default sort order of the list by choosing the column that you would like to sort by and the direction that it should be sorted

Customizing your list allows you to view the fields that is relevant for your particular list. You can also use the list Search to search any of the fields that are being displayed. It is a great way to improve productivity!

Agility Tip: Publishing Agility Modules

Michael Iskiw — 3/16/2009 3:11:05 PM

There are a few scenarios that need to be followed when publishing Agility Modules and if you are unaware of how things work in Agility it can be a little confusing.

Creating or Modifying a module:

Since Agility wants you to be able to make changes to modules while still maintaining a working live version of a module there is a notion of Staging and Published for modules definitions. If you create a new module in agility or modify a module in Agility you may be required to publish the module definition before you are able to see all the changes on your website. You can think of modules that sit on a page as a piece of content. Modules can store data and that structure of data may change as you update your modules.

How to publish a Module Definition:

Go to Agility
Go to the Settings Section
Select the Module Definitions Option
Find your Module in the list
Select the Checkbox and click Publish at the top (you should notice a checkbox appear in the Published column notifying you if your module has been published)
You can now add this module to a page and it will be using the newest Module Definition

Publishing Modules on a Page

Since everything in Agility is considered a piece of content a Page is also content that needs to be published and the modules that exist on a page are considered part of the pages content.

When you add a module to a page that has already been published you are in fact changing the page structure which will require a page level publish. If, for example, you add a module to a previously published page and go into that module and hit publish the module will be published BUT the Page will still not be aware of the new module addition and not show the newly added module in Live mode.

How to add a module to an Agility Page:

Go to Agility
Go to Pages and Content
Select a page or create a new page in the tree structure
Add a new module to the page and fill in the modules content as required
Click Save on the module
Now Click Publish on that module
Close the module window. You will notice that the Page status bar is in "Staging Mode" (If you were working of an previously published page)
If you Preview this page you will see that the module is indeed visible in the Preview of the site
But ...If you Switch to Live mode you will see that the module is not visible on the site yet.
To make sure this module appears on the Live version of the page click Publish on the page (Page level publish)
You should now see the page with the added module in Live mode

The safest bet, if possible, is to always click publish at the page level which will Publish all the modules on a page as well as the Page itself.

Agility Release March 2009 – Features!

Joel Varty — 3/28/2009 10:19:55 AM

Our March update for Agility has been released, and it packs in a bunch of new features. To ensure a balanced evolution of Agility, we rotate our updates between new features, productivity enhancements and back-end/performance improvements.

Here are a few of the features we put into this release.

A New Dashboard

We have totally revamped the Agility home page, check it out!

We’ve split up the home page into 6 main sections.

Status Panel
- This is a small section that will dynamically update to tell you whether your site is OK, Synchronizing Content, or will turn yellow if there has been an issue.
Agility Blog
- The 3 latest blog entries are displayed including tips, announcements and commentary from the CMS world.
- You can subscribe to the RSS version of the blog right from the home page.
Content Changes
- We’ve summarized the items that have been changed in the last seven days, any items pending publish on the site, and anything that has been scheduled for release.
System Alerts
- This area lists the three most recent alerts from our Alerts section of the help page. This is where important announcements are displayed about the product that we feel you may need to know right away.
Links
- This is place where the site administrator can setup some links or documents that may be important for everyone working on the site.
- These are administered in the Global Configuration section of the Settings panel.
My Bookmarks
- This gives you the ability to setup your own links for this site.
- You can link to any Page, Module, Linked Content or Shared Content via the new “Bookmark” link that appears on the toolbar (see below).
- This can also be a link that you find useful for this website and want to store in Agility.

You can add a link to any Page, Module or Content.

You can customize the bookmark title, URL and target when you add it.

External File Storage in Amazon S3

Agility now supports storing all digital assets, including documents, images and videos, in the cloud. A new Settings section was added called “External File Storage” where you can set up your site to store assets in Amazon S3.

If you haven’t looked into Amazon S3, I suggest you do so, since it is an extremely inexpensive solution for storing static files for any website or application.

With S3 storage, you can now use any of the widely available tools (such as S3Fox) to upload files and they will show up in the Agility Documents section.

As far as Agility is concerned, the interface is identical, only your files are stored in an external location.

But wait… there’s more!

Edge Server Support

To compliment the S3 storage support, you can set up your content to propagate on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudfront, Akamai, Limelight, or others. This is especially useful when your site has heavy flash or video content.

Contact your sales rep to learn about getting set up with Amazon S3 on your site.

Is that all?

No, that’s just the big stuff. We also did:

28 minor improvements
92 bug fixes

We hope everything that we’ve updated will improve your Agility experience!

Latest Agility Release Highlighted on CMS Wire

Michael Assad — 3/18/2009 1:51:42 PM

CMS Wire picks up on the new features from the March launch of Agility.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/hosted-cms/agility-cms-adds-dashboard-cloud-storage-support-004110.php

Feature Tweak Released: Language Copy

Joel Varty — 4/8/2009 4:35:15 PM

We recently rolled out a tweak to the "language copy" feature of Agility. You may not even have known that this feature exists. What it means is that, on any content item, or module, when you switch languages, the values from the old language are copied to the new language. We found that some people were confused by this, because the 2 items are connected when you copy them this way.

We have designed a dialog that makes this clearer, and gives you 3 options: copy the values from language 1 to language 2 and keep the items connected, create a connected item with new content in language 2, or simply cancel, because you don't want to create a connected item.

We hope that this clears up any confusion about the language copy feature.

More later - joel.

Easy Access for your Amazon S3 Data

Michael Assad — 4/20/2009 7:20:43 PM

Now that Agility CMS supports Amazon S3, we will start storing more and more data on this cloud storage environment. Here are some useful tools to help access your S3 data. You can use any of these tools alone or with your Agility account.

s3fox is a tool that plugs into FireFox. It allows you to manage your files on S3 using an FTP like client:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

CloudBerry is a similar service that doesn't require FireFox:

http://cloudberrylab.com/?page=cloudberry-explorer-amazon-s3

If you feel like paying for this capability, you could try JungleDisk which also works with Rackspace:

http://www.jungledisk.com/

We'll keep you posted as more of these handy tools surface.

New Address Effective Today

Michael Assad — 4/21/2009 2:36:17 PM

As of today, we are working out of our spacious new office space at Spadina and Wellington in Toronto. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello!

Our new address is:

40 Spadina St.
Suite 201
Toronto ON Canada
M5V 2H8

Here's a map:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=40+spadina+toronto&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=37.118294,76.816406&ie=UTF8&ll=43.644103,-79.39431&spn=0.010124,0.018754&z=16

Can a website keep you fit?

Steve Pontisso — 5/5/2009 9:41:41 AM

Well, not exactly, but it can give you tools to help you start a fitness habit! That's the goal of our latest Agility managed website http://www.fitin15.ca/ (or http://www.faitesle15.ca/ in French).

Developed by the Canadian Chiropractic Association (CCA), Fit-in 15 has a comprehensive set of exercise plans, motivational ideas, reminder communications, and a personal log feature all designed to help you fit in 15 minutes of physical activity a day to get a fitness habit started.

During the development of this site the Edentity staff became very familiar with all the content and I have to say it's very motivational indeed! It's not uncommon to find us now doing Doorway Stretches and Free Squats right here in the office from time to time!

Being fit can be very addictive, and this site makes it easy to get started. Speaking of easy, the Agility modules we built for this site give the CCA the flexibility to keep the content "fresh" and relevant while keeping the same layout and effects consistent as it grows. After all, keeping a website "fit" is essential to its overall well-being too!

Thinking about Mambo for your CMS? Might Want to Think Again.

Michael Assad — 5/29/2009 11:15:47 AM

Chad Auld, former core developer of Mambo and founder of Mambo fork project MiaCMS explains why the new CMS is better than its parent - and how the Mambo Foundation has some soul searching to do.

The candid interview on CMS Critic goes into detail on the issues facing Mambo and explains why it's time "the Mambo Foundation came clean about the state of their project".

According to Auld, "Four of those seven core developers, including myself, left in April of 2008 to form MiaCMS... A fifth former Mambo core developer joined us just a few months later and a sixth developer left the Mambo team... Since that time they also announced a new Project Leader who has since left, had the Foundation’s President resign, and have yet to fulfill their annual general election obligation, which allows foundation members to vote on new board members."

What does this mean if you're a Mambo customer? Probably that your already weak support is going to get weaker and it will be a long time before you see any new features. One of the risks of working with open source software is that it is not governed by the same rules that govern proprietary systems. The code is free, so if a group of people wants to take that code and make it their own, they can - even if they are the core developers from the original system. We've seen it with Drupal and Joomla, and now we're seeing it with Mambo.

Something to consider when evaluting open source vs. Software as a Service or other CMS options.

Read the full interview:

http://cmscritic.com/interview-chad-auld-miacms

Learn about Agility CMS ROI vs. Open Source or custom solutions [PDF] »

Agility CMS vs. OpenText WCM (Formally RedDot)

Michael Assad — 6/1/2009 5:14:38 PM

How does Agility stack up against OpenText WCM (formally RedDot) - one of the most mature and best known content management systems? According to Andre Gaulin, Director of Web Operations for Cineplex, very well.

Jon and I went out for dinner with Andre a few weeks ago to catch up and find out how things are going with Cineplex.com - probably our favourite Agility site. After discussing the many features of the site, the projects we've worked on and the various details of getting the site set up perfectly for their content editors, I thought it would be fun to ask him about how Agility stacks up to OpenText WCM - the CMS of choice at his previous company.

Thinking back to the last time Andre and I met, I expected him to enthusiastically support his RedDot platform and the many customizations and extensions he and his team made for a variety of vibrant sites. Surprisingly, he tipped Agility as "the better CMS overall" saying "[OpenText WCM] is not as intuitive as Agility and has a higher learning curve to work with" and "[OpenText WCM] is more difficult to upgrade and keep current." He even confirmed my belief that "it is hard to find developers to work with it because it is completely proprietary", whereas Agility development is based entirely on ASP.NET.

Shocking!

So, if OpenText WCM is an inferior CMS to Agility, why does it cost more than twice as much? Sure brand recognition goes a long way, and we're probably not charging as much as we should be, but why pay more - especially in a recession.

I'm not saying that Agility has all of the features and functions of the OpenText Enterprise Content Management Suite, but 9 out of 10 websites don't need that level of sophistication. As I mentioned in a previous post, the days of RedDot being a nimble, efficient, easy to use web content management platform are likely coming to a close.

We're happy to take its place.

IIS7 Search Engine Optimization Toolkit

Michael Assad — 6/9/2009 11:21:59 AM

Microsoft has released a toolkit that will simplify basic SEO tasks like making it easier to build a site index and robots.txt file.

The features include:

Improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines
Control how search engines access and display Web content
Inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing
Site Analysis Features
Robots Exclusion Features
Sitemap and Sitemap Index Features

We will take a close look at this and see how we can use IIS7 and the SEO Toolkit to improve the search engine optimization of Agility CMS managed site.

For details:

http://www.iis.net/extensions/SEOToolkit

Amazon Web Services Import/Export – fill your S3 Buckets Without Killing Your Bandwidth

Joel Varty — 6/9/2009 11:22:19 AM

One of the things about online file storage is getting the first massive data dump onto the server. If you have a lot of data to store, it would be more prudent to simply take an external drive to the physical data center and do a transfer that way.

That’s what Amazon is proposing as high level service with their newly announced Import/Export product.

The premise here is that you can fill up an portable storage device and ship it to Amazon for them to copy to your S3 bucket(s). The authenication is handled by a separate email that explains what is on the device and where to put, as well as the credentials for the bucket itself.

It sounds like a great idea – I just wish I could get into the beta. :)

more later – joel.

Agility Shared Content Preview Settings

Michael Assad — 6/9/2009 11:22:20 AM

Just a reminder to the Agility developers and power users about how to set the Preview settings on a shared content list. If the settings are not correct, the list and items in the list will not preview correctly.

To configure the preview settings:

Open a Shared Content list
Click on the 'Advanced' tab
Enter the URL for the List Preview page starting from the site root (e.g. ~/pressreleases.aspx)
Enter the URL for the Item Preview page starting from the site root (e.g. ~/pressreleasedetails.aspx)
- Note that these URLs can be the same page
Enter the value for the Item Preview Query String Parameter (e.g. PressReleaseID)

You can test that these settings are correct as follows:

Click on the Shared Content list
Click Preview -> the preview window should show the content in a list
Close the Preview window
Open an individual item from the list
Click Preview -> the preview window should show the specific item that you were editing

Email support@agilitycms.com for more info!

Agility Release - May 2009

Joel Varty — 6/9/2009 11:22:20 AM

We've just released the May 2009 Agility Update. It includes 20 new features and productivity enhancements as well as over 100 tweaks and fixes.

Here are some of the highlights.

For the Content Editors

New Version of the Rich Text Editor control

Better support for image, document and media management
More control over padding around images
More options for styling your content
Improved table wizard

Please email support@agilitycms.com if something on the new editor is not working correctly!

Link Sitemap Item Enhancements

When you add a 'Link' type to your website tree, you can now choose between pages on the site, documents from the central Documents repository, or an off site URL.

Content Item / Module Check for Changes

If you have changed a content item or module and you attempt to close the dialog without saving, you will receive a message stating that the item has been changed and allow you to continue, or cancel and save your changes.
This prompt also happens when you click Publish, Unpublish, Approve or Decline.

Module Status

If the module you are looking at has been published, but you are required to publish the Page to see your changes, you will now see a message on the status panel stating that.

Emailing Preview Links

You now have the ability to email preview links from the Page Settings tab in the Content Manager, or from the Preview Bar
This allows you to send the preview site to anyone, even if they don't have an Agility login

For the Designers and Developers

Default Modules on Fixed Module Zones

A Page Template can now have multiple fixed modules in a module zone
These modules can be "defaulted" to be created in staging mode (instead of new) with default values.
If the module cannot be created (because it has non-defaulted properties), it is left as new.
This allows you to more easily specify what any given page in the site will be populated with when it is added to the sitemap.

New "Unique" field type

Any text or number field can now be marked as "Unique" in the content definition.
This means that the data for this field will be enforced as unique across all connected items across languages.
If you change the value in one language, the connected version of that item in all other languages (if it exists) will be updated as well.

For the Enthusiasts

jQuery in Input Forms

We have implemented jQuery v1.3.1 support in the content manager.
This means that you can use jQuery in your custom input forms.
We are using jQuery.UI for the Tabs on the Content List and Content Item.
- This means that you will have far less problems with custom input controls caused by the AJAX Toolkit tabs that we were using before.

jQuery in Preview Mode

In your website's preview mode, we now add a jQuery reference dynamically if it is not already added.
- We use this for the new DatePicker on the Preview date field (jQuery.UI) and for other DOM manipulations.
- Testing Note: This should be regression tested with different versions of jQuery in websites.
Preview Mode will now work for an entire browser session, and will work for "Friendly Url" or other custom HTTP modules that have been coded.

Content List Changes

We now use a completely client templated grid which loads from a web service, requiring less data to be passed to and from the web server for each page of the list.
This means that is it much faster and easier to find data within a content list.

Please email support@agilitycms.com if you have any questions about how these new features can improve your Agility website.

Agility Site Launch: COC.ca

Michael Assad — 6/9/2009 11:22:30 AM

The latest in a string of high profile sites running on the Agility Content Management System is the site for the largest opera producer in Canada and one of the biggest in North America. The Canadian Opera Website (www.coc.ca) was built in partnership with Delvinia Interactive. Staff from the COC and Delvinia use Agility to manage all of the content on the site including blogs and details of performances.

As many Agility sites do, the COC site incorporates Flash elements alongside dynamic HTML elements to provide a rich interface and stunning imagery.

Check it out:

www.coc.ca

Take a look at the portfolio of Agility sites.

Google Launches Innovative Translation Tool

Michael Assad — 6/11/2009 4:35:36 PM

The Google Translator Toolkit combines automated translation with 'crowdsourcing' so actual people can review and edit machine generated translations.

Wikimedia is excited about the possibilities for speeding up translation of its many thousands of pages.

We will look at how we can use this tool to help speed up translations of Agility sites into new languages.

Bring Your Site to Life with SitePal

Michael Assad — 6/17/2009 11:07:01 AM

This nifty utility allows you to place a talking avatar on your site to guide your visitors through the functionality and navigation.

Starting from just $9.95 per month, your customized avatar can speak to your audience in several languages. Design your avatar, record your audio, and you're done! You can then drop your speaking website companion anywhere on your Agility managed site.

http://www.sitepal.com/home

Adding HttpModules to Agility Websites? Extend the ExtensibleAgilityHTTPModule

Joel Varty — 6/29/2009 1:36:08 PM

If you want to do Friendly Urls or other things in an Agility website that requires you to add an Http Module, you should do it by extending Agility.Web.HttpModules.ExtensibleAgilityHTTPModule.

This is a module that already has the appropriate logic in it for handling language switching, state management, etc.

There is one method in this class to override called "InitExtensibleModule()" that you can treat like the init of a regular http module. From there, you can bind to the begin request event, or whatever other event you need.

public override void InitExtensibleModule()
{
base.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(FriendlyUrlModule_BeginRequest);
}

void FriendlyUrlModule_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}

Also, please take note that if you are doing friendly URLs, you'll need to add some logic to ensure the output cache of the page is a different version for every raw url.

You can usually do this by added Request.RawUrl to the GetVaryByCustomString method as a return value like so:

public override string GetVaryByCustomString(HttpContext context, string custom)
    {
        //AgilityCacheControl is a special "VaryByCustom" value that is added in the HTTPModule.
        if (string.Compare(custom, "AgilityCacheControl", true) == 0)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            sb.Append(Agility.Web.Data.GetAgilityVaryByCustomString(context));
            sb.Append(context.Request.RawUrl);
            return sb.ToString();
        }


        return base.GetVaryByCustomString(context, custom);
    }

Agility CMS Reviews Posted on Capterra

Michael Assad — 7/7/2009 4:16:53 PM

Read product reviews from Agility customers.

4.5 out of 5 stars. Not bad!

http://www.capterra.com/content-management-software/reviews/88191/Agility%20Content%20Management%20System/Edentity%20Web%20Systems

Agility Tip: Clear out all Formatting and Start Fresh

Michael Assad — 7/10/2009 1:44:31 PM

The Agility Editor will sometimes have difficulty recognizing the formatting that you add to your content, especially if that content was originally copied from another source.

The failsafe way to get back on track to to clear our all HTML formatting:

Click on the 'Format Stripper' button
Choose 'Strip All Formatting'

This will clear out all formatting in your content and you can start again from scratch.

Note that you can try stripping out the CSS, Word, Span and other formatting using the Format Stripper tool before resorting to this.

Great Article on Open Source Software from CMS Watch

Michael Assad — 7/22/2009 2:29:30 PM

My favourite line: 'First of all, I have to keep repeating that open source isn't gratis ("think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer").'

The author explains how Open Source is just a licence model and should not be a key deciding factor on the CMS you purchase. He also reminds us that Open Source is usually the same cost or more than traditional licensing models.

Here is the full article:

http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1642-Open-Source-License?source=RSS

Crisp Brand Agency Launches First Agility-Managed Flash Site

Michael Assad — 9/15/2009 5:40:47 PM

Agility has been used to manage content embedded in Flash objects for a while. However, the Five Axis site is the first example of an Agility-managed site that is 100% Flash - navigation, content and all.

It's a sick site too. Check it out!

www.fiveaxis.net

Canadian Opera Company Website Wins WebAward

Michael Assad — 9/24/2009 4:04:11 PM

Delvinia Interactive and Edentity have won a WebAward for 'Outstanding Achievement in Web Development' in the 'Non-Profit Standard of Excellence' category for the Canadian Opera Company website.

Delvinia provided the strategic direction, functional specifications and design. Edentity took care of the back-end development and content management system implementation.

Here are the details of the award:

http://www.webaward.org/winner.asp?eid=13196

Here is the COC site:

www.coc.ca

For more about Delvinia:

www.delvinia.com

Agility Release - October 2009

Joel Varty — 10/6/2009 4:35:02 AM

October Release has Launched

We’ve just released a round of new features, fixes and enhancements for Agility!

It’s been a long summer of development - here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to:

Features and enhancements: 31
Bug fixes and tweaks: 189

Holy Moley! Where did we come up with that many fixes and tweaks? Well, we go through every email, every server log, every customer call and everything we’d ever had report for Agility, ever, and put it through our bug fix process.

It took a little longer than we thought, but it was a worthwhile activity, because it made us focus not so much on what we wanted to do, but what our customers want us to do, and how we can best help them day to day.

So what’s in the box?

Change a template on a page. Finally.

From any page, click “Change Template” and you’ll get the dialog below, which allows you to drag and drop the modules from this page to a new template.

Any default modules on the new templates will show up in green.

If you move more than one module into a zone, you can re-order them here before you save the change.

Super Fast Workflow Actions

The publish, unpublish, and other workflow actions have been re-worked to work way, way faster. This is most important on a content item or module with a lot of fields or rich text editors.

And, once you do publish the item, you can keep on working on it while it synchronizes out to all your web servers without having to wait.

Super Fast (Client Side) Save

There is a new option on every content and module definition that enables a new feature we call “client side save.” This means that the data in the input control can be saved without having to reload the current item.

The result is that items which might take a few seconds to save can now be saved in less than one second. Add it all up, and makes for a huge productivity increase. And it feels nice, too - especially with big rich text items and attachment lists.

This feature has to be enabled on existing module or content definitions, but any new ones will take advantage of this automatically.

Publish Recent Changes

There now a “Publish Recent Changes” button on Pages and Content when you don’t have a page selected. This takes you to the recent changes report to the pending publish view.

Why is this important? From this report you can see everything that needs to be published from anywhere in the website.

Big fields for Meta Tags and Scripts

We've added a zoom action on the Meta Tag and Script fields on page settings. This will open the same field in a large dialog to allow you to see more of the text at a time.

This is especially useful if you have a custom analytics script you need to add to a page and you need to see everything at one.

Performance

We’ve been monitoring the performance in Agility from every possible aspect. From the content manager, working with lists, syncing content to multiple domains, to previewing complex sites, to running reports, to developing sites, we’ve made tweaks and fixes that will make these things faster.

In some case WAY faster. Yep, bold and in caps.

But we also know it’s just the tip of the iceberg, since nothing is ever fast enough. It’s our little obsession that things should always get faster and not slower as features are added.

Handling of Agility.Web API versions

One of the biggest complaints we get from our developers is that they don’t know when they missed an update to the website API. This happens mostly on local sites or sites that are in development mode.

In these cases, if the site is using an outdated API, the option to automatically download and install the updated API DLL will be displayed. If the site is in development mode, the developer will be able to download the DLL file to update their website project references.

Other stuff that starts off small and ends up big

“Save and New” button when adding fields to a module or content definition.
New version of the Telerik HTML Editor.
- Honestly, is there ever not a new version of this? This one is much faster, though, and caches your spot in the image of file manager.
Edit the editor CSS directly in the browser. An optional checkbox to output the css as a file in the website.
Double prompt for “Unpublish List.”
Double prompt for “Delete Folder.” Enough said about that :)
Better zip file handling for Mac users.
Show the user role in the UI beside the user name.
“Publish” from the list of shared content views.

Check out the Cineplex Mobile Site

Michael Assad — 10/15/2009 5:57:06 PM

Here's a great way to check movie times at your favorite theater from your iPhone, BlackBerry or mobile phone with the new and improved Cineplex mobile site.

Trying to decide which movie to see? Watch videos of trailers right from your phone!

The site was designed by Cineplex and implemented by the Agility implementation team. It is running from the same Agility CMS back-end as the main cineplex.com site.

Check it out! m.cineplex.com

Facebook Connect Wizard and Translations

Michael Assad — 10/19/2009 7:38:41 PM

Facebook has announced a compelling new version of Facebook Connect that provides quicker setup and translations.

The new setup wizard is a tool that allows a Facebook Connect script to be set up in three easy steps.

With the new translation capabilities, it will automatically translate your site into the language of the user's computer. This is very compelling and is something we will investigate further for adding onto Agility sites.

Learn more from CNet:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10364277-36.html?tag=nl.e703

Writing for the Web

Kyle Tinning — 10/22/2009 7:27:54 PM

I have written web standards several times for jobs in the past. So many times that I wrote them for myself so I wouldn't have to keep writing them. They probably aren't all that important for us, but you may find it a good read or something to share with a client that is interested in this sort of thing. So much of SEO is related to your content after all...

Writing Standards For Web pages

The purpose of these standards is to improve the usability of pages (how easy are they to read) as well as the search-ability (how easy are they to find).

There is a lot of research on web writing styles available online. The foremost authority on most things web is Jakob Nielsen. A collection of articles for web writing standards can be found here: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/

Executive Summary
Inverted Pyramid
Put the most important information at the top of the page.

Be Concise
People read computer screens 25% slower than print. Web pages should be half as long as their print equivalents.

Scan-able
Web users do not read, they scan. Use headings and lists judiciously. Highlight keywords. Start headings and paragraphs with keywords.

Credibility
Web pages inherently lack credibility. Write in an objective manner, quote experts, cite facts, and keep information up to date to increase trustworthiness.

Search-ability
If a user doesn’t know exactly where to go, he is going to search – most likely with google. Modern search engines rank pages by the relevancy of their content and markers – such as titles, headings, and links within the content.

Grammar
Some web specific grammar rules to be referenced in conjunction with any corporate standards.

Lower Literacy Users
The internet is a global medium and not all visitors are native English speakers. Lower literacy users have special needs and it turns out that what is good for them is good for higher-literacy users as well.

Inverted Pyramid
Overview – What is an Inverted Pyramid?
The inverted pyramid is a writing style that starts a page with the conclusion (the most important information) follows with key supporting information, and ends with specific details. The reader immediately knows the key findings and purpose of the page and can stop reading at any time.

Web users are impatient and critical; using the inverted pyramid immediately informs them if they have arrived at the correct destination or whether they need to continue their search.

Title & Summary – The most important elements
The most important element on the page is the title. The title needs to clearly state the page’s purpose and should contain the keywords that a user may have searched to find the page.

A summary needs to follow the title. The summary should be short: two sentences maximum. The user should confidently know what they can find on the rest of the page after reading the summary. The summary will capture the interest of a user that has found what they are looking for; it is not intended to generate interest in a user that is looking for something else.

Scrolling & Scanning – Only interested users scroll
Users don't like to scroll and will read only the top of a page to judge their interest. Very interested readers will scroll, but they are more likely to scan than to read.

“Scanners” will read the first line (or less) of each paragraph, skipping the rest if it appears to be irrelevant. Information should be prioritized so the first sentence of each paragraph indicates what the paragraph will contain. See “Scan-able” for more information.

Be Concise!
Overview – Get to the point
Keep sentences short and to the point. People read computer screens 25% slower than print and tend to scan more than they read. Web pages should be half as long as their print equivalents.

Stay Relevant – Don’t mix your messages
Avoid unnecessary content and stick to your message. Web users do not want to read “marketese” or welcome messages.

Using paragraphs – One idea per paragraph
Write short, tight paragraphs following these guidelines:

Short, direct sentences (20 to 25 words).
Break up long paragraphs (three to five sentences).
Be succinct. Use only your best details and examples.
Use simple sentence structures: Convoluted writing and complex words are difficult to understand online.

Page Length - Avoid long pages
Users don't like to scroll, so keep it short and to the point. BUT - do not break up information into separate pages if it belongs together: moving pages is more disruptive than scrolling

Lists – Great for scanning, but keep them short
Limit the number of items in a single list to no more than nine. Limit lists to no more than two levels: primary and secondary.

Scan-able
Overview – Web users don’t read
79% of users scan new pages, only 16% read word-by-word. Users scan in an “F-Pattern” and will read the page title, the summary, and the first few words starting paragraphs and headings.

Increase usability with scan-able text such as:

meaningful headings
short and focused paragraphs
bulleted & numbered lists
hypertext links
block quotes
highlighted keywords
numbers

Structure & Headings – Scanner friendly formatting
Properly constructed headings organize a document and summarize the content found beneath them. Headings should clearly describe what the following text is about even when read out of context.

Headings must be properly coded so that the topmost heading on the page is an H1, and subsequent headings (h2, h3, h4, etc) are organized structurally. The hierarchy of headings should be no deeper than four levels. Lower-level heads are hard to distinguish and disorienting to online readers.

Headings should start with information carrying words (first 3 words) that users will notice when scanning the left side of the page. It is ok to use passive voice when constructing a heading if it improves scan-ability. Skip leading articles like "the" and "a" if the sentence still makes sense without them.

To ensure an adequate number of headings, try to create a heading for each “thought” or paragraph on a page. Leave the heading in if it makes sense.

Heading Don’ts
Puns and clever headlines obscure content and are difficult to scan; use plain language.
Do not tease or try to entice users to click to find out what a page is about: users typically will not bother.
Paragraphs – Short and sweet
Large blocks of text are more difficult to read online than in print and should be broken up into short sentences and paragraphs. Each paragraph should contain one main idea; use a second paragraph for a second idea.

Like headings, paragraphs should start with information carrying words (first 3 words) that users will notice when scanning the left side of the page.

Lists – Full of important facts and points
Bulleted and numbered lists attract the scanning eye and draw attention to important points. Use numbered lists when the order of entries is important and unnumbered lists when the sequence is not important. Lists are preferable to lengthy comma separated sentences.

Limit the number of items in a single list to no more than nine. Limit lists to no more than two levels: primary and secondary.

Links – What scanners are looking for
Hyperlinks stand out by virtue of being colored and underlined (default state). Scanners will fix on hyperlink text, so they should contain keywords. Links should contain keywords for SEO purposes as well.

Quotes – Add credibility and interest
Block quotes (those that are pulled out of the flow of the rest of the text) are very effective at attracting the scanner’s eyes. A quote also lends credibility to a topic.

Bolding – Makes keywords stand out
Within paragraphs, use bold to make keywords or short statements stand out. These elements help guide readers' eyes towards the most important content.

Bold and italics can be used more in online than in print, but should still be used sparingly for maximum effect. Bold is more noticeable and is preferable to italics.

Never underline or use blue to highlight words as those formats can be confused for being hyperlinks.
Highlight only information-carrying words. Avoid highlighting long phrases as a scanning eye can only pick up two (or at most three) words at a time.
Numbers – Numbers represent facts
Users tend to fixate on numerals as numbers represent facts. Show Numbers as Numerals – e.g. use "23" rather than "twenty-three". More info on numbers in the grammar section.

Governance & Credibility
Overview – Are you trustworthy?
Credibility is very important to users as it is often unclear who authors information on the Web, if facts and quotations are true, and whether a page can be trusted. Content needs to be kept updated and relevant. Adequate resources to check each content page at least once every three months is required.

Dates & Authors – Who wrote this and when
Users have more confidence in information on pages that list an author or contact and the date the page was published or last updated.

Page Updates – Last updated in 2002
An outdated page causes users to question whether any of the content on a site is relevant.

External links and citations – Cite your sources
Hyperlinks to other sites that have supporting information increases credibility and helps users assess the accuracy and quality of information on our site. We should cite our sources whenever appropriate.

Quotes – Who is behind the quote?
Users trust quotes from experts whose names and photos are provided.

Statistics – Are these facts & figures to be believed?
All statistics should be cited.

Marketing – If you say so…
Exaggerated claims and boastful language hurt credibility. Users detest "marketese"; it has been shown that “promotional language imposes a cognitive burden” on users who have to spend resources on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts.

A neutral, objective writing style with factually supported claims is trustworthy and allows users to quickly scan or read content. Slogans can be used, but should appear in the site masthead or as a sidebar. The mission statement belongs in the about us area of the site.

Context – this heading is in the credibility section
Any page can be accessed out of context (ie. search engines). Each page needs to disclose enough information to let the user know where they are and what the topic is. Cross-linking can be used to expand on topics covered elsewhere on the site.

Search-ability
Overview – Can you be found?
More than half of users rely on search engines to find web pages. When a user links to a page from a search engine, they should immediately know how the page relates to their query. Highlight keywords, start the page with a summary, and follow the guidelines listed under "Scan-ability" to ensure the content of a page is immediately recognizable. Including all of the keywords that a searching user would expect to find on a page will improve search results.

Keywords – The words typed into a search bar
All possible terms that might be credibly used to search for a page should appear in the content. Keywords appearing in the page “Title” and in the headings on a page will have the most benefit to SEO and will be most visible to the user. Do not add keywords that are only peripherally related to a page.

Prior to authoring a page, list the most important keywords and use them to try to structure the page.

Meta Content Descriptions – Tell the user what is on your page
Each page should have a short summary included in the description meta-tag. This summary is shown below the page title by some search engines and must be 150 characters or less.

Meta Content Descriptions should make sense when read out of context and should tell users what the page is about; do not fill descriptions with hyperbole or promotional language.

Title – Be descriptive and use the keywords your user will search on
Each page must have a <TITLE> tag. The title tag appears on the viewports top bar, the history and back button function of browsers and in search results. Each page on a site should have a unique title.

The title tag is the single most important element in search engine optimization.

Make the first word of the title the most important descriptor of the page. Use relevant keywords in the first 40 characters, as titles are often truncated in navigation menus and by search engines.

Use the company name first for the homepage title, but place it at the end for all content page titles. Do not start all page titles with the same word: they will be hard to differentiate when scanning a list.

Headings – Just like the title
The second most important content element in search engine optimization are the headings that structure the content on a page. Each page should have an <h1> heading that is the title of a page and <h2> thru <h6> headings that structure the rest of the content. Headings should include the keywords relevant to the content they describe and should start with the most descriptive one to assist with scanning.

Hyperlink Text – Counts as keywords. Ever search for ‘click here’?
The words within a hyperlink describe the destination page the user will reach when they click. These words are considered in search algorithms and have a significant impact on page rank. When linking to internal pages, the link text should be descriptive and contain the keywords relevant to the destination page. Links such as ‘more’ and ‘click here’ should never be used. Where a shorter link is desired, link “title” text can be used.

Descriptive links are very important for accessibility concerns as screen readers can read links out of context.

Keyword Density – More keywords, good – Less other words, better
Keywords that appear more often on a page with fewer words have more power in search results. See the “Be Concise” section.

Grammar & Style
Overview – This is just for the web
The grammar & style rules listed below are specific to websites and should be followed in conjunction with any other corporate writing standards in place.

Active Voice – more readable than passive voice
Active voice is clear, direct, and more succinct than passive voice. All content should be written in active voice with one exception: Headings can be written in passive voice to improve “scan-ability”.

Simple Language – Avoid jargon & acronyms
The language used on a website should appeal to the widest possible audience. Convoluted syntax, specialist vocabulary and acronyms need to be avoided and there is no need to use long words where short ones will do.

As the web is a global medium, content should be written with low-literacy users in mind. It has been shown that improvements for lower-literacy users do not come at the expense of higher-literacy users, the same way as improved usability for users with disabilities increases usability for non-disabled users as well.

Tone – Relax, it’s the web…
The Web is a less informal medium than print and a more relaxed writing style is acceptable as long as grammatical rules are respected. Caution should still be used with humour and puns that may not be understood by all readers.

Numbers – Numbers represent facts
Users tend to fixate on numerals as numbers represent facts. Numbers should be shown as Numerals – e.g. use "23" rather than "twenty-three" – to catch users’ eyes when they scan a page. The following rules should be followed when using numbers online:

Write numbers with digits, not letters (23, not twenty-three).
Use numerals even when the number is the first word in a sentence or bullet point.
Use numerals for big numbers up to but not including 1 billon:
2,000,000 is better than two million.
2 trillion is better than 2,000,000,000,000 as most users can't interpret that many zeros.
Use numerals for the significant digits and write out the magnitude as a word: e.g. write 24 billion (not twenty-four billion or 24,000,000,000).
But - spell out numbers that don't represent specific facts.
Grammar & Spelling – Have it checked by another set of eyes
Grammar and spelling are important for the same reasons as consistency. All pages must be QA’d by marketing to ensure proper grammar and spelling.

Web specific grammar – Some web-isms
Email vs. email vs. E-mail vs. e-mail. Use e-mail, with the hyphen and no capitalization, unless it begins a sentence or is in a headline.
WWW vs. www and Web vs. web. Use the Web or WWW in text and www in URLs.
Use a lowercase "w" when describing web pages, web surfers, or web sites.
Online vs. On-line. Use online.
A vs. An with Acronyms. Use a or an based on the acronym's pronunciation. For example, a WYSIWYG application and an ASCII file.
Set Up vs. Setup and Log On vs. Logon. Use set up and log on as verbs in instructions, such as: set up the printer or log on the network. Use setup and logon are adjectives or nouns, such as: the setup program or your logon password.
Notes About Lower Literacy Users
Overview - Lower literacy is different than illiteracy
People with lower-literacy can read, but they may have some difficulties doing so.

Inverted Pyramid – Don’t make them read so much
The inverted pyramid is especially important to prioritize information. Users who might give up after a few lines of text will have read the most important content.

Be Concise! – Don’t make them read so much
Having to scroll can break a lower-literacy users' visual concentration and they often will lose their place after scrolling. Writing in a concise manner will ensure the most important information remains above the fold and minimizes scrolling.

Scanability – Hard to do
Lower-literacy users have difficulty understanding a sentence by glancing at it. They read word for word and can spend considerable time on multi-syllabic words and jargon. As a result, lower-literacy users don't scan text. They have a narrow field of view and often miss objects outside the main flow of the text they're reading.

Lower-literacy users tend to satisfice – accept something as "good enough" – as digging deeper requires too much reading, which is both challenging and time consuming. As soon as text becomes too dense, lower-literacy users start skipping, usually looking for the next link.

Search-ability – Are you feeling lucky?
Lower-literacy users often have difficulty

Edentity is proud to announce our Sponsorship at the Digital Marketing Awards

Pam Westwater — 10/27/2009 2:53:30 PM

Edentity is proud to be a sponsor of the 2009 Digital Marketing Awards, taking place on November 11, 2009 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. These awards celebrate Innovation, excellence, and leadership in the Digital Marketing world. Produced by Marketing magazine, the DMA's represent the best of interactive marketing in Canada. The Awards are judged exclusively by the industry, and a select few are chosen for their creativity and for leveraging the interactive environment to its full potential.

The awards are part of the 12th Annual Digital Marketing Conference which has been a very successful event over the past few years. This year's conference focus is The Digital Marketing Balancing Act, covering the focus and prioritization of opportunities with the ever changing marketing landscape. With a number of successful keynote speakers, and valuable networking opportunities, Edentity hopes to gain a wealth of knowledge through our presence at the conference. More information on the conference, and the option to purchase tickets can be found at:

http://www.the-cma.org/marketingweek/digitalday.asp

Edentity is excited to be a part of the growing Digital Marketing industry, and continues to make their mark on the Digital Marketing and Web Development World.

Channel 9 - Windows Azure Storage Overview Video

Michael Iskiw — 10/30/2009 3:17:02 PM

Great video on the basic concepts of Window Azure Storage

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dunnry/Windows-Azure-Storage-Overview/

Enjoy

Bing Maps Interactive SDK

Michael Assad — 10/30/2009 3:17:26 PM

If you're working with Bing Maps, the Interactive SDK gives you a leg up on how to learn and code all of the features and functionality.

http://www.microsoft.com/maps/isdk/ajax/

Use the interactive map to test the various features of the API, like multi-point routes and custom tile layers; tabs behind the map provide source code, references and additional help for the features that you have enabled.

Very handy for building a Bing Maps mashup!

Facebook Open Graph API Makes Every Website a Facebook Page

Michael Assad — 10/30/2009 3:18:06 PM

Facebook recently made some big product roadmap announcements at the latest Facebook Developer Garage including the Open Graph API.

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait at least 3 quarters, but it's great to know that it's coming.

The Open Graph API essentially turns any website into a Facebook Page. According to Inside Facebook, "with the Open Graph API, any website can have access to all the communication channels that a Facebook Page does, while living outside of Facebook.com." "... users can become a "fan" of the site itself. Web masters and publishers can then publish content to users' News Feeds through the stream publishing APIs."

This is very exciting because it means that brands can leverage their existing investment in their web properties by easily hooking into the best parts of Facebook. It also fits very nicely with your Agility CMS managed website.

There were 4 other product roadmap announcements that are detailed by Inside Facebook:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/10/30/page-brand-managers-facebook/

Edentity announces Sponsorship at nextMEDIA Toronto

Pam Westwater — 11/2/2009 3:03:16 PM

Edentity is proud to be a sponsor of the 2009 nextMedia Toronto event, taking place from November 30th to December 1, 2009 at the Design Exchange Building. This event includes an intensive two days of networking, learning and strategizing and attracts top executives from Advertising, Broadcasting, TV Production, Media Buying and Interactive Agencies. The nextMedia event is all a part of Innovation Week '09.

The conference offers a number of options for learning and relationship building for your business, as well as an Awards night entitled the "Canadian New Media Awards." This conference focuses on the Digital Media world, and offers Edentity great exposure for networking and business partnerships. This 3-day event will be a platform for innovators, individuals, companies and communities from across the country to come together to discuss present successes and ideas for the future.

So if you're looking for the "Who's who" of the interactive and digital world, the nextMEDIA is the place to be. That's where we'll be spending our time!

More information on the event can be found at http://www.nextmediaevents.com/toronto/index.php.

Shrinking your SQL Server 2005 Transaction Log

Joel Varty — 11/5/2009 12:02:56 PM

One of the ways to truncate the log file is to simply detach the database and re-attach it without the log.

I DO NOT recommend that unless it is a development db that you don’t care about.

The proper way to do this is to first backup the TRANSACTION LOG portion of the database by using the following command:

BACKUP LOG <DatabaseName> TO DISK = '<BackupFile>'

And then running a shrinkfile command:

DBCC SHRINKFILE (<FileName>, <TargetSize>) WITH NO_INFOMSGS

If you run the shrinkfile command without first doing a log backup, all it will remove is the empty space in the ldf file, no matter what target size you specify.

Here is the Microsoft support article that explains this.

More later- Joel

How to test multiple copies of Internet Explorer on your PC without Virtual Machines

Ian Davis — 11/10/2009 8:30:34 PM

Nearly 10 years after it's release Internet Explorer 6 is still used by enough people to warrant testing. But as IE is now a Windows Update you cant keep an older copy around for testing.

OR CAN YOU?!

The IE Collection (http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm) allows you to install any copy as far back as 1.0 and run it in parallel with IE 8+.

Internet Explorer Collection contains the following versions of IE:

Internet Explorer 1.0 (4.40.308)
Internet Explorer 1.5 (0.1.0.10)
Internet Explorer 2.01 (2.01.046)
Internet Explorer 3.0 (3.0.1152)
Internet Explorer 3.01 (3.01.2723)
Internet Explorer 3.03 (3.03.2925)
Internet Explorer 4.01 (4.72.3110.0)
Internet Explorer 5.01 (5.00.3314.2100)
Internet Explorer 5.5 (5.51.4807.2300)
Internet Explorer 6.0 (6.00.2800.1106)
Internet Explorer 6.0 (6.00.2900.2180)
Internet Explorer 7.0 (7.00.5730.13)
Internet Explorer 8.0 (8.00.6001.18702)

For those of us who require functional testing in IE over older versions, this is an excellent tool....until IE is standards compliant

Quick and dirty Cross Browser compliance...

Ian Davis — 11/10/2009 8:30:55 PM

Even though all sites should be "standards compliant", the world of the web just doesn't work that way. Sometimes you need to quickly see if a layout or a form even works in Firefox, Safari, IE and others. You can install multiple versions, but that's a bit of overkill when you can use Spoon.

http://spoon.net/Browsers/

Spoon is an in-browser plugin to run multiple browses "sandboxed" on your local machine. There "real" versions of the programs, streamed to the plugin from their servers. Performance is easily good enough for functional testing, although Flash and Javascript support is dodgy. They have IE 6 / 7 / 8, Firefox 2 ,3 and 3.5, chrome, opera and Safari too.
While not exact enough to be considered true tests, Spoon can easily uncover CSS and HTML issues that may show up during development, without filling up your applications menu.

For quick and dirty cross browser tests, try Spoon.

Agility Tip: A Refresher on Content Scheduling

Joel Varty — 11/11/2009 1:41:42 PM

Content can be scheduled for release and pull to and from the site at a future. You use the scheduling tab of a module, content item, or page to accomplish this.

As the screenshot shows above, All times, as labeled are Eastern Standard Time.

You can schedule a single item that is already released on the website to be released at a future time. The limitation here is that you can only schedule it for a SINGLE future time. If you schedule the item for tomorrow, publish that out, and then make a change and publish it for release the next day, the one in the middle will NOT be release. Only a single future release is support for any given item.

If you want to schedule a whole bank of items, we suggest using a content list of items, all with specific release dates. That way, you can even setup the list to display the release and pull date in the Agility list settings, so you can see exactly when each item will be visible.

As for previewing changes in scheduling, you can you use the Preview Date selector on the preview bar to switch the date that you are previewing changes on. Note that this only takes effect when previewing in Published mode. Previewing in staging mode ALWAYS shows the latest version of an item, regardless of release date.

When you click on the "Preview Date" field, the date/time picker will appear, allowing you to switch to a future date to see the changes that have been scheduled for that time.

I hope this has given you some insight as to how the Content Scheduling feature of Agility works, and perhaps given you some ideas about how you can make it work for you.

More later - joel