CategoryCMS Features | Pixelsilk Blog
Why Use of “Token Sense” is Common Sense
A lot of thought and effort goes into building and designing certain aspects of one’s website. A website can include interactive calendars, brand enhancing banners or slides shows—or unique and stylized content. Leveraging these items and ensuring their consistency across one’s web properties can save an enormous amount of time and add quality assurance to site.
Pixelsilk allows you to use web tokens to save all kinds of work and let others use it to, which is especially helpful for those building and managing multiple sites. A web token is code that inserts something like this [[“and”]], so the CMS knows what to show where. After creating web tokens, all approved users can just start typing [[name of token]] in editor window and the Pixelsilk token sense window will come up. The window allows you to confirm selected web token. Once you do, it will instantly render element or content right there.
Web tokens can include controls, themes, skins or content—really what you can think up and build using CSS, HTML, JavaScript or a plug-in. Another time-saving benefit is after a token is updated, the update can be easily rendered across multiple sites by a click.
When you consider these benefits, you can see why use of Pixelsilk tokens make a lot of sense and makes a lot of customers happy.
Developers are Diggin’ Multisite Management
OK we know why management is lovin’ CMS multisite management because of cost-savings and time-savings but what about developers? Well, they are too. They know that multisite management is more than just being able to duplicate site content like Drupal, Jentla and WordPress allow. Some of these sites maintain separate code-based instances of each site, which is cumbersome to manipulate. Others have multisite features built around a core that was really designed for single site installation, which adds restrictions.
On the other hand, Pixelsilk was built to handle and efficiently manage multiple sites from the start. Managing both site content and site resources is at its core. And it makes sharing themes and the HTML of important brand elements simple.
Can’t wait for more developers to get it! I’m Susan Sano Berado.
True Multisite Management Pleases Managers
The discussion of multisite management is an important one for companies and agencies who manage multiple websites. Here’s why: A CMS that offers it is more efficient. Its functionality allows one developer to literally do the work of 10 developers because they don’t have to “touch” each site. Site resources, such as a company’s brand look and feel, controls, plugs-ins, images, Java script files can be published—or updated—simultaneously.
When you consider the management of 100 or 1000+ sites, the benefits are huge. Businesses enjoy cost-savings and time-savings; the ability to get the work done with less manpower; and the quality assurance that assets are transferred correctly.
No wonder comparisons are taking place between Pixelsilk, Drupal, Jentla, Plone and WordPress. And no wonder Pixelsilk’s true multisite management is coming out ahead.
Stay-tuned for more. I’m Susan Sano Berado.
Quick Media and Content Publishing
Publishing made easy is the goal of every content editor. After working hard to research and write a great white paper, produce a compelling video or purchase the perfect photo, the last thing any of us want to do is spend a lot of time and effort to publish it. Fortunately, for those using Pixesilk this isn’t the case.
Pixelsilk offers a handy library where you can easily upload document files, media files and image files. And once loaded, the files can be easily found, placed and published right from the content editor. OK, it may not be as simple as adding bullets to text—but it is close.
Ease of use, for those who are less technically-savvy is best. Thank goodness Pixelsilk developers knew this.
I’m Susan Sano Berado. Thanks for letting me share.
The Value of a List Section
Content organized well on the web is becoming more important. If a page is too difficult to navigate through or too hard to find the information one needs, a visitor usually gives up and goes elsewhere. Having certain pages be created as a “list section” rather than just an HTML page helps you avoid this problem.
A list section is a “page type” that displays structured or record-like information really well. Articles, news items or photo/video galleries can be displayed cleanly—and better yet—can be sorted and searched by your visitors. Numerous book listings, for example, can be sorted and found based on a title or author’s name. The ideal vacation property can be pulled up first based on a visitors’ query.
Most Content Management System’s (CMS) don’t offer a list section, but Pixelsilk does. If your CMS doesn’t, you basically have two options: go research possible plug-ins or go hire a developer to build you the right fields for your list section.
With Pixelsilk, you won’t have to do either because it comes with default property fields that can work for any list section type right out of the gate. Pixelsilk lets you define how you want your list section displayed and used. Personalization can be done on a section-by-section (or page-by-page) basis giving you and your visitors many options.
I’m Susan Sano Berado—here are some samples:
http://www.blackbutteranch.com/accommodations/vacation-rentals/
http://www.blackbutteranch.com/Recreation/Whats-Happening-at-the-Ranch/
http://www.smartz.com/about/testimonials/
http://www.ironhorseprineville.com/Available-Properties/listings/
Partner Portal Creates Sites like Magic
If you’re already a Pixelsilk partner, you know the value of the Partner Portal. It can speed up your development time ten or a hundredfold depending on how many sites you’re creating. For those of you less familiar with the Partner Portal, think it’s time we shared the secret with you.
Webmasters Take Note
A Webmaster, like you, can leverage the work of one site in the Portal for the benefit of 1000 sites simply by clicking a box. Once clicked, themes will automatically transfer; CSS files will also seamlessly transfer; and files containing images, text, and media will transfer. In a matter of minutes, you will have created lots of new websites—and be ready for a coffee break.
Ongoing updates are also easy. Let’s say you, and your team, want to release a new red banner on the homepage that promotes a short-term offer. All you, the Webmaster, need to do is make the “resource” (or red banner) available to site in the Portal. As soon as the homepage reloads, the new red banner will be present on your multiple sites. Not bad for a day’s work.
I’m Susan Sano Berado. More thoughts and tips forthcoming.
Why You Need Flexibility in Your CMS
E-commerce catalog pages can provide search spiders with rich SEO content. However, if one’s cart isn’t well integrated within their CMS, it can block spiders’ access. You can probably guess the result: only some of your site is SEO optimized. Not good for online storefronts looking for new customers.
Pixelsilk’s flexible architecture gives customers seamless integration with BV software. Pixelsilk web developers have ensured that the CMS communicates with e-commerce cart via the API, allowing page layout consistency for branding—and page SEO rendering for spiders.
Through its tight integration, CMS and product information are under one roof. Bet you can guess the result: your catalog pages rank better and your prospective customers find you. Not bad, I’d say.
I’m Susan Sano Berado. Thanks for listening.
Powerful Rendering Platform
Hi, I’m Susan Sano Berado. Technology and what you can do with it excites me. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Silicon Valley where I had the advantage of seeing amazing technology companies’ blossom as plentiful as the Valley’s former orchards.
Technology makes things better—just look at the semiconductor, computer and mobile device industries. The underlying technology platform of Pixelsilk also makes things better. It uses the most popular and functional programming languages to enhance the user experience. Basically, anything a browser can render is available to layout in Pixelsilk—thanks to how easily it can work with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Most people know that HTML defines the objects of a web page, but not everyone knows what CSS and JavaScript do. CSS is a style sheet language that displays the look and formatting of a web page. Its name to fame is being able to separate document content from document presentation including elements such as layout, colors, and fonts.
And JavaScript is a scripting language that allows manipulation of all types of HTML objects. All three languages are powerful, which makes Pixelsilk a powerful rendering platform.
SEO and E-Commerce: The Pixelsilk Difference
As content management systems and search engine optimization (SEO) have had their challenges, e-commerce and SEO have a significant divide. Typically, e-commerce carts say they are SEO friendly with a check of a checkbox. E-commerce solutions have a large amount of functionality and oftentimes the amount of code needed to complete that functionality may get in the way of a search strategy. Enter, Pixelsilk – a content management system that connects to an e-commerce cart and handles what a search engine spider needs, namely product and category information.
You continue to manage your products via your store and Pixelsilk automatically updates your product and category pages when new ones are added, moved or deleted. Pixelsilk offers the advantage of full HTML control for those pages, allowing full implementation of your search strategy. Full URL (web address) control allows you to tie your CMS and product information under one main domain to leverage the power of links directed to your products.
Pixelsilk communicates with your e-commerce cart via the API, bringing products and categories into Pixelsilk, allowing full control over layout and SEO rendering. In competitive online marketplaces, many factors needed to rank successfully are hindered by the HTML to content ratio needed for a spider to understand your products. Many carts, by default, do not offer the opportunity to simplify the code behind product pages.
Pixelsilk For E-commerce SEO Best Practices Include:
• Product Specific Page Title (Browser Window)
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Keyword-rich URLs (Web Address)
• Product Heading Tag <H1>
• Streamlined Internal/External Linking
• Alt Attributes for Images, Links
• Content Editor is XHTML compliant
• Automatic HTML/XML Sitemaps
• Site and Store on Same Domain
• Full HTML Control
• Store and Site Ongoing Connectivity
One example is an e-commerce site that had 100 product pages indexed as a baseline and after site completion in Pixelsilk, went from 100 to over 10,000 (all of their products) being indexed in Google.
If you have questions about how to get your e-commerce site additional visibility and search ranking, contact us to show you a demo of how Pixelsilk helps e-commerce.
Pixelsilk And The New Canonical Link Element
During the SMX West 2009 keynote, Google released information on the new ‘canonical link element.’
For more information on the keynote, see Matt Cutt’s Blog post.
We like this new link element. It should certainly help the engines improve their databases and use their clock cycles for the more important work.
This problem has been out there for a while and there is some good news here for Pixelsilk customers. First, Pixelsilk without a plug in, is already ensuring that the proper URL is being rendered and redirected so, most Pixelsilk sites are already fine. Secondly, simple HTML skills are all that is required to implement the canonical link element in Pixelsilk, no plug in required.
Pixelsilk uses a “token” system for common site elements and to leverage web developers preexisting work. Because of that, this canonical link element is already supported. Let’s use a site with two layout themes as an example for a moment. In Pixelsilk, you just add the following code to each site theme one time and you’re done:
<link href="[[PrimaryDomain]][[PagePath]]" rel="canonical" />
If you have questions or are fixated on a “plug in” type answer for this new link element, call us so you can see for yourself why it took six seconds for us to write this “plug in” 🙂