Detailed features list. Can I do this...?

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Salim Jordan	Monday 18 July 2005 1:29:04 am I have, on the advice of many CMS users more advanced than myself, created a list of questions/features. This was in response to the often asked question "Which is the best CMS?" The answer in invariably the same, "Depends on what you want to do." As I could not find an exhaustive features list for eZ Publish, please forgive me if these questions are covered elsewhere. With no further ado... Can ezPublish / does it offer ... <b>"more by author" feature.</b> This would allow a link to be created to additional articles by the author of a currently viewed article. Stated another way, is there a way to automatically create a link to past and further articles by the same author? <b>amazon-like review/rating feature</b> Does EZPUBLISH offer a review and rating system whereby readers can write reviews/comments on articles and rate them (all this would be optional at the discretion of the web master). Then articles would have amended to them something along the lines of "X number of readers found this review helpful" and of course "post/read comments". <b>amazon-like suggestion feature</b> Does EZPUBLISH offer something in the vein of "readers who enjoyed this article also found this other article useful" or similar mechanism? <b>preview feature</b> Preview could be a number of things: a. a preview of how the site would look with an applied template (before the template is commited) b. a preview of how an article will look in-line (before it is published) <b>sharing content among multiple sites</b> As I understand it, this is not possible. Each content is a copy of the others? <b>Pagination</b> For long articles, can I dictate where to break the story on one page and continue it over multiple pages without having to use cheats such as actually publishing each page as a separate articles and then link them together? <b>Ads and ad-like content</b> Displaying google adsense, for example, is a matter of placing the google javascript in the template? There is no +ad+ placeholder or similar? <b>directory</b> Does EZPUBLISH support a directory management scheme similar to the Yahoo-style directoty or demo here (http://demo.mosets.com/tree/). Basically listings with title, desc., url, contact, link to map, etc... all categorized and managed? Ideally ready to accept paid listings if the admin enables such a schem. <b>subscription/gating</b> a. Can content be gated to members or subscribers (not necessarily paying)? b. Further extending the question, is it straightforward to integrate a payment scheme to admin paid subscriptions and adjust user priviledges accordingly (ex. automatically disabling non paying members)? <b>link manager</b> Is there a way to manage an 'our favorite external links' page and ideally via cron (or similar) monitor these links for dead links? <b>archive</b> Is there an article archive in EZPUBLISH? How are articled promoted off the home page (or latest articles section) and into the archive? <b>search</b> First is there a site search and will the search feature grep the content and meta information of articles, news, etc? <b>Polls/surveys</b> Does EZPUBLISH have a poll or surveys widget? <b>Newsletter</b> Does EZPUBLISH offer a mailing list/newsletter mechanism? If not, is there a way to mass mail users (and or members)? <b>Sitemap</b> Is it easy to create a human-readable sitemap to at least a section/category level? <b>versioning</b> Does EZPUBLISH offer any type of versioning for the content it produces? For example, it may be as complex as being able to revert to any previous state the content was in or as simple as a simple "undo" feature. This could also include a trash feature where 'deleting' actually renders content in an intermediate state (sometimes refered to as in the attic) and capable of being retrieved. <b>checkout</b> Does EZPUBLISH support/plan to support a checkout scheme? It is conceivable that two writers (or more) could attempt to edit the same news article. The author who hits save last will presumably overwrite the work of the first author. This would not happen with a checkout system. <b>generate static pages</b> Generate flat HTML files <b>print article</b> With each article/news, is there an associated 'print this page' scheme? <b>watch for new content</b> Visitors to the frontend site can subscribe to 'watch' for new articles/news/content (usually through email or RSS)? <b>Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs</b> I understand SEF is controlled by EZPUBLISH as explained here (http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/3_6/concepts_and_basics/url_translation). What I'm unclear about is whether EZPUBLISH automatically uses SEF urls or system urls in links it publishes and links btween varying articles/pages on a site. I would like to make it so that system URLs never appear anywhere on a published site and all URLs are rendered as SEF; is this the case? <b>meta data</b> All pages and each article can have separate metadata to allow effective indexing and searching. <b>protection from bots</b> Above the use of a robots.txt files, can EZPUBLISH protect directories not intended to be spidered (ex. images directory)?
Luc Chase	Tuesday 19 July 2005 1:01:34 pm Salim, As far as I know, many of the ez Systems staff are on holiday at the moment, so you may need to wait a bit for a complete answer. Until then, I'll try to comment. One thing to note about EZP is the fact that entirely new datatypes and new content classes can be created relatively easily, with their own behaviours. Many of the requirements you've mentioned are 'almost' there in the sense that a competent EZP developer would be able to implement them with ease as the API hooks are there waiting to be used. For example.... 'more by author' would be very easy as it is a simple fetch looking for the Owner of the content... but as far as I know there isn't a ready made template component which does this 'out of the box', but probably just a few minutes to set-up. Review / Rating: as above. EZP has poll building components which could concievably be used for this. "Readers also enjoyed..." again, fetch other Comments owned by this Comment Owner. Previews in different styles is present in 3.6, but may not be in the way you've described. I believe this would require some significant development. Sharing content: if you mean ALL content (but filterable by user role) then 'Yes' in that several sites can be driven from a single database of content... with different templates, styles etc. If you mean only the occassional item of content and not via RSS then it is more complex but have a look at the Content Server at http://ez.no/solutions/solutions_and_software/content_server Pagination: I would need to research this. Adds / Javascript code: EZP can accept literal snippets of code. Server-side code can also be integrated by an EZP developer. Directory: As far as I'm aware this has be done on several EZP sites, but there may not be a ready made template in the standard download. subscription/gating: This would probably require an extention. Link manager: standard feature. Archival: The work-flow system could be used here. Search: There are several search engine options various levels of complexity. Polls/Surveys: Polls - yes as standard. Surveys (multiple questions), not really but Polls functionality and the fact that you are able to design custom, data-collecting forms would provide much of the functionality required to develop surveys (with reports etc.). Newsletter: not fully but a simple solution can be achieved with a combination of the notifications system and workflow. Sitemap: very easy... standard feature. Versioning: yes, standard feature. Fully configurable how many versions are preserved. Not just an edit undo. There is a garbage can where you can go and get back 'deleted' content. Checkout: Yes, standard feature. The system informs the user that the content is being edited. They can choose to create a new draft. Static content: Yes, but some content may change often so it may not be appropriate to try to make certain pages static. Print article: either via CSS or use the included PDF generator (batch or on-the-fly) to allow any page to be downloaded as a PDF. Watch for new content: Standard - Notifications system. Search Engine friendly URLs: Standard - optional global setting for the site. Also, various options for redirection , url rewriting, aliases etc. Metadata: vie site-wide settings, content class definitions, templates and their overrides etc. There is also Keyword associations (shared keywords can be used to automatically relate content) between content. Protection from search-bots: Yes. Hope everyone will forgive me if they see any inaccuracies. The Web Application Service Provider
Salim Jordan	Wednesday 20 July 2005 9:15:23 pm Luc, Thank you for your reply and your answers. I have to say, it is very much appreciated as you are the first person to respond so thoroughly; I've posted similar requests at other forums of various CMS solutions I am testing. I am not here to bash any solution; that is not productive, as most are great works of programming. I've tried Mambo, Drupal, Typo3, ezPublish, Big Medium, Xaraya, WebGUI, and Sitellite (I think that covers them so far) and as yet I can't quite seem to get it right. In the case of ezPublish, you suggest that most of what I want can be done, but will undoubtedly require some custom programming -- exactly what I'm trying to avoid; hence my weeks of evaluating all these OS solutions against my business requirements. Leaving that discussion there, the only real concern I have against ezPUblish at the moment is that it seems exceedingly slow. Searching Google and sites like opensourcecms.com, that seems to be a common perception. Again, I'm not down on it, rather I want to learn to do things right. For what it's worth, I've compiled notes on each of the CMS solutions I've tested. I know my visitors will not wait 10 seconds for a page to be rendered no matter how much functionality the site provides. In truth, at one informal focus group, the concensus was more like an unwillingness to wait more than 5 seconds. Can you perhaps help me understand how to harness the power of ezPublish to achieve fast results? Aside from that, I'll think hard about your previous answers and I do thank you again. Salim
Eivind Marienborg	Wednesday 20 July 2005 11:05:18 pm <b>Just a little comment on print layout:</b> Print article: either via CSS or use the included PDF generator (batch or on-the-fly) to allow any page to be downloaded as a PDF. eZ Publish also has it's own print mode (through layout/set/print). This allows you to configre your completely own printable versions of everything, in the same way as the rest of the site. <b>About the speed issues:</b> There has been lots of discussions about this, but I haven't seen anyone of them concluded with anything. In my experience eZ needs a good server, and preferrably one that's not shared with many other sites. eZ also needs proper cache setup to have decent speed results. You might want to check out a collection of benchmarks tests here: http://ez.no/community/forum/install_configuration/ez_publish_performance And be aware that the results are presented both with and without precaching, so be sure to check out the right results :)
Luc Chase	Thursday 21 July 2005 12:02:47 am Salim, my immpression of the speed issue is that if one compares a small site in EZP with an equally small site in many other systems, yes the system is slightly slower.... but the speed seems to degrade only very gradually from there. So, a very large site still performs very well. Example the ez.no site is quite large and busy, yet seems to respond well. The Web Application Service Provider
Frederik Holljen	Thursday 21 July 2005 2:16:45 am In the case of ezPublish, you suggest that most of what I want can be done, but will undoubtedly require some custom programming -- exactly what I'm trying to avoid; hence my weeks of evaluating all these OS solutions against my business requirements. In most cases what Luc means is custom template writing. This is not PHP programming but simply a customization of the templates in the system which you most probably want to do anyway.