The Elcom Blog

Handy resources for Elcom Customers

2012-04-23T04:19:00Z

thoughts and insight by Chris Pennisi, Elcom's Account Manager

As one of Elcom’s Account Managers, I have the pleasure of working closely with our clients to help our businesses grow. For many of us, picking up the phone and asking for help is almost always the last resource because we like to be self-sufficient. To facilitate this, I thought that I would take this opportunity to highlight some of the great tools available in the Elcom Community so that you can start taking advantage of it today!

Elcom Reference Centre
http://reference.elcom.com.au/
Our reference site was first launched 2 years ago and has recently undergone a new facelift. The content is maintained by our Product and Documentation Teams. This site provides up-to-date information on the elcomCMS and its additional modules.

What will you find here?

Step by Step guides on using a variety of base features as well as additional modules.
A variety of useful tips and tricks as well as definitions of modules.
Release notes

Developer Community
http://dev.elcomcms.com/
Our developer portal is growing rapidly and is continuously updated with information by our Product and Developer teams. Clients and partners can use this site to find more technical resolutions to many questions about the elcomCMS.

What will you find here?

Blog entries from our developers and from our clients
A site gallery to showcase latest release client and partner sites
An easy to use search function to find what you need
A knowledge base full of great technical material

Elcom Blogs
http://community.elcom.com.au/blogs/
A great source of additional information to keep you up to date with what Elcom are doing and where the product is going. Our regularly updated blog also gets pulled in to the dashboard of your site so you don’t need to navigate away to view the content.

What will you find here?

News on upcoming releases
Updates on events elcom are holding and participating in
Relevant IT related news and CMS news.

Elcom Forums
http://community.elcom.com.au/forums/
Our Forums are a great place to share feedback and raise questions on the elcomCMS. With an announcements area and knowledge base area it is a great link directly to the helpdesk.

What will you find here?

Announcements regards the elcomCMS and modules
A plethora of Knowledge Base posts contributed by both the Elcom team and clients alike.

Quick updates through Social
Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin
If you want quick notifications of any updates related to Elcom such as new product information, blog posts, news articles and upcoming events, signing up to our social pages is a quick and simple way to do just that!

Helpdesk
And if you can’t find what you need, please feel free to contact our helpdesk team – that’s what we’re here for.

With the many different options available mentioned above there should be more than enough resources to resolve any question or query you may have. If you still have any questions please feel free to contact your assigned Account Manager so that we can do our best to help you further.

Time to start thinking about HTML5

2012-03-29T23:08:00Z

thoughts and insight by Adam Lusted, Elcom's Implementation Specialist

Why HTML5? HTML5 is the latest HTML recommendation by the W3C – this is really exciting. If you look back through the history books, you’ll see that the last W3C recommendation (HTML4.01) came out in 1997, the same year the Spice Girls and Hanson were at the top of the music charts! The funny thing is that this is STILL the current W3C standard - so really we are building the internet on an old set of rules.

In 2008, the W3C put forward its first draft for the HTML5 specification. This was the first glimpse of the future of the internet and I’ll tell you what, it looked great. Fast forward to 2012 and HTML5 is about to be an official standard. All the major web browser vendors have updated their browsers to support HTML5, and with Apple refusing to add flash to iOS, the only way you will achieve the same rich interactive visuals is with HTML5.

So what does HTML5 have to offer? The W3C has eight groups of changes for HTML5

Semantics
Search engines love Semantic code and Semantic code improves accessibility. More importantly, Semantic code is clean code and we [developers] love clean code! Semantic code on a very basic level provides meaning to structure. W3.org describes it as “A richer set of tags, along with RDFa, microdata, and microformats, are enabling a more useful, data driven web for both programs and your users.”

Example:

A basic semantic example is the new Figure & Caption element that has been recommended. In the sample code below, we can now link an image and its rich text description with the figure element. We can now give meaning to content.

<img src="wombat.jpg" alt="wombat">
<figcaption>
Australian Marsupial Common Wombat digs extensive burrow systems.
Common Wombat, Maria Island, Tasmania
</figcaption>
</figure>

Offline & Storage
In this mobile age, it’s important to have access to Web Apps and content even if there is no internet. HTML5 makes this possible with its App Cache, Local Storage, Indexed DB, and the File API specifications. This allows websites to store important stuff locally on your device for your browser to use.

Example:
Gmail web app powered by HTML5
Google has made use of HTML5 Offline and Storage by providing Gmail users with access to their emails offline. Users can set and choose the amount/number of days’ worth of mail that they want to sync. You can also store attachments for offline use such as documents, photos, images and audio.

Device Access
Taking advantage of device functionality in your web application provides an enriched experience and improved usability. Such functionality may include: Geolocation API, audio/video, microphone, camera and tilt orientation functionality, as well as, personalised data stored locally such as contact list, event calendar and photos.

Example:

With HTML5 Device Access, you can take advantage of orientation specific features, such as the device accelerometers, gyroscopes and compasses. With this access, you can enhance the game-play of a browser based game such as controls for a motor racing game.

Connectivity
We don’t have time to wait. Watching the loading image go round and round, is more infuriating than being poked in the back by the kid sitting behind you on the bus. We want information now! HTML5 Web Sockets and Server-Sent Event provides more efficient connectivity, meaning quicker load times, real-time information, faster game-play and better communication.

Multimedia
W3.org describes audio and video as ‘first class citizens’ of the digital age. Through the HTML5 API you can access, control and manipulate your video and audio samples for improved experience and engagement. These new video formats are also supported on iOS.

Example:
Chrome Picture in Picture
Here you will see an example using Picture-in-Picture in HTML5 Video to swap between two video sources.

http://studio.html5rocks.com/#PiP

3D, Graphics & Effects
Goodbye Flash! Using HTML5 SVG, Canvas, WebGL, and CSS3 3D features, you’ll be able to create some amazing animations and effects rendered in your browser. Create all the weird and wonderful things you used to create in Flash in HTML5, and the brilliant thing is that it’s compatible across all the latest browsers and modern smart phones, with no plugins required.

Examples:
3D CSS – Snow Stack Experiment(Created by Charles Yang)
This is an experimental image gallery using JavaScript, CSS 3D transforms and transitions.
http://www.satine.org/research/webkit/snowleopard/snowstack.html

Cut The Rope (Created by Zeptolab)
The team at Microsoft IE and Zeptolabs (the creators of the popular Cut the Rope game) created this fun game using Canvas.

http://www.cuttherope.ie

Performance and integration
There are not that many good examples of this floating around on the web at present, but basically, this is to do with making your Web Application run faster to reduce load time or improve interaction times. A variety of techniques can be applied such as Web Workers. Web Workers provide you with the ability to run multiple tasks at any one time, as opposed to the tried and tested JavaScript method where tasks are run as a series.

CSS3
CSS3 offers a wider variety of stylization, effects and animation that will improve the look and feel of your web application. Typography flexibility using Web Open Font Format is a significant part of enhancing the overall design of your site, not to mention other layout, and image filters and effects. CSS3 also sports some amazing new selectors that really make a developers life easy. Have a look at the examples to get a glimpse of what you can achieve.

Examples:
One Hour Per Second (Created by Google)
This is a fun interactive website created by guys at YouTube in celebration of their achievements: “one hour of video uploads per second”

http://www.onehourpersecond.com/

Impress.js (Created by Bartek Szopka)
This is a clever example of how you can take your slide-based presentations to the next level. This example uses JavaScript, CSS 3D transforms and transitions.

http://bartaz.github.com/impress.js/

Closing thoughts
As you can see, W3C has made a giant leap with HTML since their last release in 1997. HTML5 is still in its draft stage and very much still in its experimentation phase, but it’s the best time to start thinking about applying the technology so your website stays innovative, fresh, adaptable and accessible to your wider audience.

The best news yet is that elcomCMS is ready to use the majority of the new HTML5 spec. With the User-Agent Mapping you can tailor full, rich pages with HTML5 while supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6 which does not support HTML5 (IE6 is also not supported by Microsoft anymore). You can have rich HTML5 canvas visuals, beautiful web fonts, local storage, microdata, device access, the power of CSS3 and many more new features that are included in the HTML5 spec. We already have a handful of sites that are utilising HTML5 and many more that are using small parts of the HTML5 spec.

So get excited and start experimenting and thinking about HTML5.

Thank you to the following sites for their examples. You can also browse these sites for more information.

HTML5 Rocks - http://www.html5rocks.com/en/
W3.org - http://www.w3.org/html/

Share your examples in the comments section below!

elcomCMS version 7.6 is coming!

2012-02-07T21:14:00Z

thoughts and insight by Elcom's Product Director, Anthony Milner

Posted by: Anthony Milner, Product Director

Happy New Year and welcome to what is shaping up to be an exciting year for elcomCMS. The product team have been working hard and across multiple continents to deliver the latest edition of elcomCMS, codenamed “Mariana” after the deepest location on the planet, the Mariana trench. The product team were determined to dive into the deepest trenches of the elcomCMS to improve the experience in a number of high usage areas. In addition to this, the team significantly extended the Social, Real Time Personalisation and Multi-lingual publishing features and topped this off by making it even easier for developers to write and embed code blocks directly into content pages.

Aside from the release I would also like to inform you about our new elcomCMS beta program. In an ongoing effort to improve release quality we are inviting partners and customers to be part of our beta program. The beta program will give you access to pre-release versions of the elcomCMS. To be eligible for the beta program you must have a test or staging environment and be in a position to provide us with important feedback in relation to enhancements and bug fixes. If you are interested in participating please email me anthonym@elcom.com.au

Some of the deeper changes in the elcomCMS have been undertaken in the replacement or updating of older interfaces such as the folder tree (pictured). You’ll now notice a smoother and more responsive interface for dragging, dropping, opening and creating content as well as improved IE9 compatibility. In addition to this we’ve updated editor controls, folder search and date selectors.

The Social module is now in its second release and with it comes support for replying, tagging, and privacy options of public, private or friends only. In addition to this we’ve added a social stream element that can be dropped into any page to support private group conversations. Our long term approach in this area will see the corporate directory profile, my account and social page come together to support a more seamless person centric interface.

Another exciting development is the additional Real Time Personalisation capability now available in the elcomCMS allowing publishers to match target keywords with search engine referrer keywords. This allows you to present content which is more closely aligned with the search query. A practical example of this may be a home page rotator that has several promotional slides and can automatically start at the slide which matches the search query.

Multilingual publishing in the elcomCMS has been made even easier by providing publishers with a dashboard view of all languague versions of a particular piece of content. Whenever changes are made to a piece of content for which several language versions exist, the system will immediately offer the publisher the option to check out all versions for updating. Additionally when creating new content the system will automatically create all language versions and check them out to the user, ready for editing.

Developers, developers, developers sayeth Steve Ballmer and so do we. In every release we endeavour to make it even easier for developers to write their own apps for the elcomCMS and Embedded Code Blocks provides another mechanism to achieve this. Developers can write front end script that calls content objects direcly from the database, looping through that content and presenting it inside the page. A good example of this is the ability to create custom menus or lists within a page or series of pages.

We hope you can trial this new edition soon and as always please contact me if you wish to discuss any product issues or future product enhancements.

2012 – Welcome Back!

2012-02-01T01:25:00Z

Posted by: Ryan Bloch, General Manager

With Australia Day, The Australian Open and The Cricket Test series all behind us, one can officially declare the Australian holiday season over. On behalf of myself and the Elcom team, I hope you had a wonderful break and are ready for the great things to come in 2012!
2011 was an exciting year for Elcom with the opening of our New York office, the expansion of our global partner network, a product name change from CommunityManager.NET to elcomCMS, expansion of our product suite and features, and the continuous increase in our client base.

But as exciting as 2011 was, 2012 is going to be even better:

Roadmap - In 2012 you can expect our focus to be on the four main components of the Customer Experience Management framework; Personalisation, Corporate Social Networking, Usability and eCommerce.

Personalisation – Content delivery based on defined conditional criteria such as geographic location, browsing history or referrer URL, as well as personalised workspaces and storage.
Social – Providing a social networked layer throughout elcomCMS for social collaboration and knowledge sharing in open and closed groups.
Usability – Improvements to the admin user interface, inline editing and the ability to manage the site from smart devices.
eCommerce – Integration with best of breed ecommerce technology.

User Group - Following on the success of our user groups, our first user group for 2012 will be held at the beginning of March in Sydney and shortly thereafter in Melbourne, where we will be show casing elcomCMS 7.6.

Master Class & Webinars - 2012 is going to be the year where Elcom looks to solidify itself as WCMS experts. Together with our partners and various industry experts we will be hosting a number of Master classes and Webinars.

Expansion in North America – We will continue to increase our sales momentum and drive the Elcom brand with our partners.

Elcom Launches in Asia - Elcom officially launches in Singapore at the Singapore Management University on 2nd February. For more information please visit, http://www.elcomcms.com/Campaigns/ElcomSingapore2012

Elcom has got off to a busy Marketing start already, with our commitment locked in to the following events.

iStrategy 2012
Sydney, Australia, 21 Feb – 22 Feb 2012
Gartner Portals Content and Collaboration 2012
Orlando, USA, 12 -14 March 2012
Gartner Symposium IT/XPO
Gold Coast, Australia, Nov 2012

Feedback: We value your continued support and feedback. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please feel free to direct these to your account manager or our Marketing Manager Lee-Sia Yuen on leesiay@elcom.com.au. Thank you in advance.
Looking forwarding to a working with you in 2012.

Best Regards,

Ryan

Season's Greetings from the Elcom team! - support details

2011-12-23T02:09:00Z

Hi, We'd just like to take this opportunity thank you for your continued support throughout 2011 and to wish you a wonderful festive break and a Happy New Year.

Please note that we will have skeleton staff working from Monday 26th December till Tuesday 3rd January.

For all urgent enquiries or questions, please email helpdesk@elcom.com.au or contact Ryan Bloch at ryanb@elcom.com.au or on +61 (0)2 8064 0931.

Best Wishes,

The Elcom Team

Social comes to v7.5 and we’re excited!

2011-09-21T03:59:00Z

Blog Post by: Anthony Milner, Product Director, Elcom

Well we’ve launched v7.5 on the market today and I’m so proud to be sharing with you news of this development. In this blog post I’ve noted a few of the new features you can expect to see in this latest version. v7.5 packed with new features to make managing content even easier but our focus was driven by two main goals.

Make it easier for developers to build sites
Make it easier for end users to create and manage content

There are over 60 new features but in every one of them you will find that we have attempted to deliver on this promise.

Social – ‘My Page’
This exciting new social layer provides intuitive and easy to use facebook like functionality giving users the ability to publish status updates, share information, comment and invite colleagues or members to share information. We are planning to deliver a lot more social functionality to bring the great benefits of social intranet to the enterprise. This is the tip of the iceberg.

Managing External Content (a.k.a YouTube integration)

We’ve introduced the concept of indexed external content. Initially this capability can be seen via YouTube integration however in the coming release it will optionally extend to other external repositories such as Vimeo and SoundCloud. This development essentially allows authors to automatically extract and store an external objects’ metadata as an indexed asset in the elcomCMS without the need to actually store the content itself. The content can then be integrated with the elcomCMS taxonomy engine, dynamic content widgets and search to provide a quick and powerful way to mesh external content and reduce the duplication and maintenance often associated with it.

Campaign Monitor Integration
If you are a marketing or campaign manager using Campaign Monitor for email marketing then it just got a whole easier. We’ve developed an integration that lets you automatically add subscribers to a campaign using Form Creator.

Nested Masterpages
Master pages can be now nested allowing developers to create more componentized master pages providing greater flexibility and significantly reducing maintenance associated with global changes.

Front End Publishing
This feature brings publishing capability to the end user who doesn’t want to go near the backend or doesn’t have access to the backend. This feature allows these individuals to create content in specific locations using a new button on the admin toolbar. This new feature provides a quick and simple lightbox interface for the quick addition of content.

This is a glimpse of the exciting things to come in the elcomCMS. As well as product developments in Mobile Web, Online Marketing, Intranet, Extranets and Corporate web; Social is big on the horizon. Whether your reading this as a customer, partner or interested-party, I encourage you to contact us to see a demonstration or to trial this update and consider upgrading, our team will be glad to assist you.

Lastly, a big thank you to the awesome Product team at Elcom. The product team consists of designers, developers, testers, technical writers, sys admins and marketers who make it their business to deliver the magic that culminates in a release. You guys are awesome!! Thank you.

For more information on this release please visit www.elcomCMS.com

Swinging at the Jeans for Genes Gala Ball

2011-09-12T01:50:00Z

Posted by: Lee-Sia Yuen, Marketing Manager

We had such a great time at the Jeans for Genes Gala Dinner in Sydney and I just wanted to share with you some of our highlights.

Having finished work on Friday evening, I raced home to get 'dolled-up'. Andrew, my partner, was of course my time keeper and we set off shortly after 6pm to get into the city centre in good time. Being a 'Swing and Bling' themed event, the 400+ guests each looked amazing, the ladies donned their sparkles and the men were looking sharp. Having had our pre-event drinks and listened to Liam Burrows tinkering away at the grand piano, we were all ushered to our seats at 7pm for the start of what would be a fantastic evening.

Ryan, John, Kevin, Pawan and their wives (all looking very lovely I might add) found Andrew and I and we sat down at our table whilst funny man and MC, Vince Sorrenti kicked off the night.

We enjoyed our entree of 'Spinach and Ricotta Raviolli' while being entertained by the opening dance act, the Brent Street Dancers; followed by a welcome message by CMRI's Director, Professor Roger Reddel. To add to the ambience of 'Swing and Bling', special guest performer Liam Burrows from Australia's Got Talent, wowed us with his amazing 'Big Band style' voice with John Morrison's Swing City Big Bang accompanying him.

The main course arrived and we 'tucked into' a choice of either delicious Grilled Tasmanian Salmon or Roasted Rack of Lamb whilst the second part of the evening commenced. A scholarship was awarded and special guest speaker, Meg Martyr, shared a personal, heartfelt and enlightening story about two of her children's journey through cancer. Following on from that, Auctioneer Vic Laruso, started the Celebrity Jean's Art bidding and the wonderful pieces were all sold in quick succession. The silent auction was going on in the background throughout the night; and there were over 50 items that businesses had kindly donated. Unfortunately someone else in the room wanted the 'Spanish Night Out' a little more than someone on our table, so they lucked out on that one. Ryan also joked about bidding for the 'year’s supply of Kirspy Kremes', which would have been great for the Elcom Social Committee, but I'm not sure how good it would have been for our waistlines!

During the third and final part of the evening, the band played a few more tunes, this time accompanied by singer Jacki Cooper and we danced to a few songs (a bit of fun although we had no idea how to dance to Big Band music). A trio of Dark chocolate fondant, chocolate syrup and vanilla ice cream was served for dessert just as the Gala Raffle was being drawn - Ryan and his wife Kim had purchased one of the $100 Jeans for Genes teddy bears and were hoping that luck would swing their way to win the big family holiday to Canada. Again sadly not the case!

After more dancing, conversation and drink, the evening drew to a close and we were each on our way home. It was an amazing night, everyone had great big smiles on their faces and to top it off the funds were going to a great cause.

We would highly recommend your involvement in next year’s event. For more information on 'Jeans for Genes' and the amazing things that they do, visit: www.jeansforgenes.org.au

A Flexible CMS – What a Good Idea.

2011-09-05T22:37:00Z

by Kevin Oliver, Sales Manager, Elcom

The humble Web Content Management System (WCMS) is used for, well, managing web content.

It’s true that some are used for Intranets, Extranets and a variety of other “nets”, but they are mainly known for what they say they do on the tin. But, rather like one of Aunty Mabels’ cakes holding the door open; and the sock holding the family camera, does the WCMS have other hidden uses?

A client of mine, who has been running the Elcom CMS for some time was excitedly telling me about a new ‘Idea generation and Management’ software they were about to implement. One of the Big 4 (consultants, not caravan parks) had been in and recommended it. That the business needed the system was never in doubt, in fact all business should have an equivalent of the idea box (light bulb motif should now be the twirly ones as they are more environmentally friendly) as the best ideas will come from every corner of the office.

Several lattes later, I had a good understanding of what they wanted to do which went a little like this. I have a brilliant idea, I submit my idea via form on the intranet and three people (the innovation panel!) review my idea and agree its brilliance. It then gets posted onto the Ideas Page of the Intranet. The widget on the homepage of the Intranet posts the idea name and many of my colleagues click on it to be enlightened. On this page, logged in users (or non-logged in if you are brave enough) can comment on my idea; and this is where ideas usually get the flesh they need. There is even a little poll where people can vote “GREAT!”, “NO WAY JOSE!” or “MAYBE LATER”. The idea is automatically removed after a specified period and the innovation panel review all comments and the poll results before determining if the idea should progress to a project.

It’s simple, it’s effective, it’s accessible and it cost 5% of putting in a bespoke solution.

Getting more out of your WCMS. Now that is a good idea.

Elcom continues to experience success in North America

2011-08-31T06:52:00Z

North American update by Josh Anstey, VP Partner Engagement

Well it’s been 7 months since we opened our New York office and I thought it was about time to post a quick update on how we were doing here in North America.

It has been busy, we’re continuing to grow and have signed on great partners across North America. We have won a huge number of contracts against a range of different providers here in North America. We’re building our reputation and credibility very quickly and we’re excited about the opportunities we have in the pipeline.

Here are some of the key points that partners and customers here in North America love about our Content Management System (CMS), CommunityManager.NET, and have said sets us apart from other products on the market:

• Modular platform
• Feature rich
• Easy-to-use
• Front-end developers can 'just turn it on'
• Quick turnaround time
• Configurability

We have built a strong team here in North America, and continue to bring onboard incredible talent. We are always on the lookout for people who are wanting to make a difference in the market; If you know of anyone that would be suitable please feel free to contact me. My contacts are at the end of this post.

There is lots going on and nothing is slowing us down, not even the extreme weather conditions we've been experiencing! Our Partners are quickly growing their businesses through the success of offering the CommunityManager.NET, and we are able to share in this success as they win more work with our platform. Our positive experience in the North American market has reinforced Elcom’s product strategy and has indicated that North America is looking for something new and something different.

We are excited about the National coverage we have gained, and the love the support and enthusiasm from our partners and clients. I look forward to keeping you updated on our success in the North American market, as well as the success of our partners and clients.

If you would like to find out more about Elcom or our CMS please visit www.elcomcms.com

Josh Anstey
josha@elcomcms.com
VP Partner Engagement, Elcom

Elcom puts on its Jeans, for Genes

2011-08-24T00:30:00Z

Elcom continues its support for ‘Jeans for Genes’ and joins the VIP sponsorship list at this year’s Gala Dinner in Sydney, Australia.

Sydney, Australia – 24 August 2011. Elcom, a global leader in enterprise web content management, has joined the list of business supporters to sponsor this year’s ‘Jeans for Genes’ Gala dinner.

The ‘Swing and Bling’ black-tie evening will be held at the Sofitel Hotel in Sydney on 9 September 2011; celebrating the finale of the 2011 Jeans for Genes Campaigns.

Jeans for Genes is a major national fundraiser of Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI). For over 50 years, CMRI has been providing key research to understand the underlying role played by genes in causing diseases. The four major areas researched are: embryonic development and birth defects, cancer, nerve cell signalling, and gene therapy.

John Anstey, Elcom’s CEO commented ‘CMRI perform a critical role in the prevention of genetic diseases and we are proud to be associated with them. We look forward to participating in this event, it looks like great fun and I strongly urge other businesses and professionals to show their support too.’ On the night guests will be entertained by Brent Street Dancers, John Morrison's Swing City Big Band featuring Jacki Cooper, as well as a special guest performance by Liam Burrows, Australia's Got Talent finalist.

A Celebrity Jeans Artwork auction will be held which includes celebrity jeans by Cate Blanchet, Ewan McGregor and Gordon Ramsay. A separate Silent Auction and Gala Raffle will also be held on the night.

Organisations can join Elcom in supporting ‘Jeans for Genes’ by visiting their website www.jeansforgenes.org.au. Donations can be made via their website and sponsorship opportunities for their Gala Dinner are still available.

About Elcom
Elcom is a global provider of enterprise web content management systems. Elcom assists mid-market organisations achieve their online objectives for corporate websites, intranets, ecommerce and training through one powerfully simple and secure platform: CommunityManager.NET. Established in 1996 in Sydney, Australia, and with offices in the USA, Elcom are a Microsoft Gold partner with more than 500 successful customer implementations.

Find out more www.elcom.com.au

7.5 Sneak Peak

2011-08-02T13:19:58Z

The are a number of great new features coming in version 7.5 of CommunityManager.NET which is due for release at the end of August 2011. In fact it is feature packed and addresses many small but important functions for making front end developers and end users jobs much simpler.

Front End Publishing

This feature lets an author quickly and simply add content without going near the backend. Simply click the add article button, select the folder (it will default to the current location), click publish and you have a new article template ready to go. This should make it a lot less daunting for users who don’t really like to venture into the admin area. Here is a short demo

Print to PDF

PDF printing is back by popular demand thanks largely to the release of 64bit tools to replace the old ones that didn’t play nice. So now you will be able to turn any webpage into a PDF with a click of button.

Publish Later

The concept of creating content and publishing at a predetermined time has always been possible for new content but what about existing content that required edits? Now the Elcom CMS can set a future go live date for existing content that has been edited but needs to be embargoed until a specified date and time.

Simpler Form Management

We know that re-ordering a form was a grey hair inducing activity so we’ve added simpler ordering which makes moving a field from the top to the bottom a simple procedure. In addition to this each field has its own tag allowing you tailor your confirmation email.

Checked Out Articles

Ever forgotten to check an article back in? We have, so we decided to add an alert which reminds you to check the article back in if you move away from a page that is checked out. We’ve even given admins the ability to “take ownership” of an article that has been checked out to someone else who is away or needs help with their content.

We hope this talks to some of the pain points and great new feature you’ve been asking for and there’s much more coming….including Campaign Monitor email marketing integration, YouTube integration, a new element for listing people, SEO improvements, simpler application of security settings from within folders, a login/logout tag that knows its state, editor switching and more…stay tuned. We’re very excited and reckon you will be too.

Google Plus – Here’s what we think!

2011-08-02T01:43:00Z

Well it's been almost a month since Google launched its latest social networking product, Google Plus. Google describes the rapid demand for its product as ‘insane', especially after the much less successful Google Wave and Buzz products. Registrations and invitations have since been restricted, but fortunately, we here at Elcom are always eager to ‘play with' new technology, so a few of us signed up before the restrictions.

Here's what we think of Google's latest venture:

Frank Warwick, Project Manager (Elcom, Sydney Office)

"I was a frequent user of both Twitter and Facebook and I believe Google Plus is an intelligent merge of both. Actually, since using Google Plus, I've stopped using Twitter and only use Facebook occasionally.

I'm no longer restricted to Twitter's limited 140 character ‘tweets' and can now freely translate my latest ‘light-bulb moment' into my posts without having to stop and think about how best to say what I need to say in two lines. Google Plus also has the same concept of ‘followers', but what makes them a step ahead of Twitter is allowing you to choose who follows you, and no more posts or tweets littered with adverts and sales gimmicks.

What else? I love the fact that it's both push and pull content updates. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, I don't have to refresh my page to receive live-updates. There is also a ‘circles' feature, so you can group who you follow. I have a ‘circle' called ‘random people' (inventive I know, but the name fits the bill), where I drop all my random follows (some are fascinating and insightful individuals) in my field of interest. It's a great way to capture live information, feeds and posts relevant to me and my interests. Information is served for me to enjoy instantly.

At the moment, there is nothing I don't like about Google Plus. Sure there are teething problems but that's the point of a new tool; I know they are consistently developing it and I'm excited about what's ahead!

Google Plus is best enjoyed using The Chrome browser."

Adam Lust, Product Specialist (Elcom, Sydney Office)

"The one thing I love about Google Plus is it's ‘circle' feature. This allows you to really control your privacy levels depending on what group you have. Facebook has this with groups, but it's not as sophisticated and user friendly as Google Plus' ‘circles feature'. I can now have colleagues on my Google Plus without fear of any professional implications. I can ‘friend' them and stay professional, which is a bonus! I can post party pictures for my friends and choose not to show them to my family members and various other groups.

The privacy is done well, it allows you to have complete privacy in some areas and completely public in others - it's great!

Google Plus is still a new product, so as expected it has a few bugs. I won't be replacing my Facebook anytime soon, but will definitely be keen on what Google come up with next. Will this be the Facebook killer? Who knows, Google might be onto a winner here. "

Bryan Poggo, Project Manager (Elcom, Sydney Office)

"Well, I joined because a friend sent me an invitation and as I'm a self confessed geek, I jumped at the idea! Without repeating some of the things Frank and Adam have already covered, I too like the security and circles features in Google Plus. I can now be selective with who I send ‘tweets' or posts to.

I also like the ‘huddles' feature which is only available for iPhone and Android at present. Basically it's a way for friends to chat about a subject for example ‘catching up on the weekend' or ‘the rugby between South Africa and Australia', without sharing the conversation with all your Google Plus ‘friends' or contacts. On Facebook, you post a status update or a wall post and all your friends and friends' friends can see what you're saying. Now you can ‘huddle' together online and have a conversation privately or publically - you decide.

Again, there are lots of bugs and people are still trying to find their feet with the product but I have no doubt that it will be my integrated online social networking and communication portal once this kicks off. "

Josh Anstey, VP Partner Engagement (Elcom, New York Office)

"Google Plus is a great blend between Facebook and Twitter, of which I am a heavy user of both (now all 3).

Google Plus has a very familiar and easy to use interface. The security permissions around the ‘circles' are fantastic and provide a lot of flexibility. It's great that you can completely customize how these work and filter your feed based on your ‘circles'. The ‘huddles' is another great idea, and it's great to see the concept of a few friends speaking offline, now so easy to do online.

I am looking forward to seeing the new business features that are coming out in the next few months. "

Tell us about your experience with Google Plus in the comments below.

austrade.com.au wins CSSawards “Site of the Day”

2011-07-11T05:49:00Z

Austrade, the Australian Government’s trade and investment development agency has won a “Site of the Day” award for Friday 8^th July 2011. The award was voted by an international jury made up of some of the most important designers, bloggers and Internet agencies. The site was evaluated by scoring it on a scale of 1 to 10 for its Design, Creativity, Usability and Content.

This work is the culmination of an outstanding collaboration effort between Elcom and Silver Pistol to deliver the Austrade website redesign.

Elcom’s Product Director, Anthony Milner commented, “We are particularly pleased at how effortlessly the ElcomCMS was able to adopt these brilliant designs from Silver Pistol. Converting a site with over 20,000 pages in a matter of days is testament to the great benefits of using a CMS that truly embraces CSS allowing for true separation of content and design.”

For over 6 years, Austrade and Elcom have been working closely to develop and expand their government web portal. Elcom’s flagship product, CommunityManager.NET, has allowed Austrade to centrally manage the creation and publishing of their web content, their international multilingual sites and online training portals.

Roundedcube Becomes Elcom Partner and Expands CMS Offering for Clients

2011-07-01T12:01:00Z

St. Louis, MO - June 30, 2011 Elcom, a globally recognized provider of enterprise web content management systems, is proud to announce its recent partnership with Roundedcube, a digital agency specializing in web content management. Roundedcube is one of the first partners that have joined the Elcom Partner Program in North America.

Elcom’s flagship product, Elcom CMS, is an innovative, easy to use web content management system, which features a comprehensive library of modules that can be used as standalone applications or integrated into powerful internet, intranet, and extranet solutions. Roundedcube looks to expand their vast experience with content management solutions with the addition of the Elcom CMS.

“Roundedcube strives to provide our clients with the best web content management system for their specific needs,” said Marco Tana, President and CEO of Roundedcube. “Becoming an Elcom partner gives Roundedcube the ability to maintain our leading edge in providing the best-fit solution for our client’s scope, budget and timeline.”

“We are excited that Roundedcube has joined the growing Elcom Partner Program. The Elcom CMS was a natural fit for Roundedcube, given Roundedcube’s technical skills and industry experience”, said Josh Anstey, Elcom’s VP Partner Engagement. “Elcom is committed to providing a market leading web content management system and Roundedcube’s clients now have the ability to experience the benefits of the Elcom CMS.”

Roundedcube will begin their first Elcom CMS implementation immediately by developing an intranet for a Fortune 500 multi-national manufacturer and marketer of consumer-products.

About Elcom

Elcom is a globally recognized web content management provider. Elcom assists mid-market organizations achieve their online objectives for corporate websites, intranets, ecommerce and training through one powerfully simple, secure platform: Elcom CMS. Established in 1996, with offices in the USA and Australia, Elcom is a Microsoft Gold partner with more than 500 successful customer implementations around the globe, including those which have been delivered jointly with their global partner network. Find out more at www.elcomCMS.com

About Roundedcube

Roundedcube (www.roundedcube.com) is an interactive agency providing web strategy, design and development services. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Roundedcube excels in creating innovative solutions based on the .NET Framework and related technologies. Incorporated in 2002, Roundedcube is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

CMS Technology - Hot topic at the Melbourne Internet Show

2011-06-07T22:48:00Z

Last week Elcom exhibited at CeBit 2011 – Australia, one of the world’s largest global IT trade shows. Held at the ‘Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre’, the exhibition showcased information and communications technology used to help drive business strategy. With over 30,000 business delegates from Australia and overseas the event was bigger than ever. The exhibition spanned across 3 huge halls with a wide range of exhibitors showing off the very latest in technology, with a big focus on cloud computing and e-Health.

As expected Web Content Management was a major topic of interest; and as one of the main technology providers, Elcom was happily inundated with questions and queries. Hot topics circled around the areas of CMS, intranet solution provision, document management and the big one, Mobile technology.

Elcom would like to thank the Australian Technology Park for partnering with us on the stand and we look forward to next year.