I promised I’d let you know how the 2008 Cascade Server User’s Conference went, and I’m a man true to my word.  Maybe late, but true.

John Scaramuzzo (Senior VP), Louisa Nicholson (Web Designer) and I traveled to Atlanta, GA to attend the conference, which was held at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center, September 22-23.  Despite a scavenger hunt for gasoline in the Atlanta area before our tank ran dry (there was a shortage due to Hurricane Ike), the trip went really well.

The conference consisted of two tracks of sessions:  Technical and Business tracks.  The Technical Track was geared towards developers, whereas the Business Track focused more on what Cascade Server can do for your organization and where Hannon Hill is taking Cascade Server in the future.  Louisa stayed in the Technical Track to learn as many Cascade coding tricks as she could, John stayed in the Business Track to keep up with Cascade from a business owner standpoint, and I jumped from track to track to try and get a flavor for everything.

Both tracks offered a lot of great information.  Presenters included employees of Hannon Hill, as well as Cascade Server customers.  I did a presentation in the Business Track entitled “Tips & Tricks for End Users”, where I presented several different ways to use Cascade Server effectively for your organization, including:

• Smart implementations for large sites
• Content re-use
• Using structured content (Data Definitions)
• Integrate Cascade Server with eCommerce and other database applications (scripting languages)
• Manage Search Engine Marketing efforts
• Control full Flash websites and Flash applications
• Integration of advanced JavaScript applications
• Tips on training end users and providing documentation

Against every fiber in my being, I’m going to provide a link to the video of my presentation.  I know plenty of my colleagues have been waiting for this moment.  So you can view the video here.  Just reserve judgment, please!

I’m not going to grade myself on my own presentation, but I’ll say that it went well, and I had several people tell me afterward that it was very helpful.  I’ll consider that “mission accomplished”.  My goal was to let other Cascade Server users know how Beacon Technologies creatively uses Cascade Server to give all types of organizations the ability to manage their own Web site using content management.

So why did I do a presentation?  Simply put, Hannon Hill’s call for speakers really got me thinking.  They asked a simple question:  “Are you proud of your Cascade Server implementation?  As I wrote in my last post, I immediately thought, “YES”.  We’re always looking for ways to tailor Cascade to meet the needs of any type of organization, from a “mom & pop shop” to large corporations and universities.

All three of us met a lot of great people at the conference:  Hannon Hill employees and other Cascade Server owners and users.  As partners of Hannon Hill, we spent a good amount of time talking with employees, and networked with several Cascade Server users, several of whom we’re still in touch with today.

Already, Hannon Hill has sent out a notice about the 2009 conference, and I can assure you that we’ll be back!  Many thanks to all of the Hannon Hill employees for putting on a great conference.

In the background, John Scaramuzzo (left) and I (with the glowing eyes) talk with a Cascade Server user.  If you look closely, behind the head of Bradley Wagner (foreground, right, Director of Engineering at Hannon Hill), you can see Louisa’s nose as she networks with another user.  :)

For the third year, Hannon Hill will be holding its annual Cascade Server User’s Conference in Atlanta, GA, September 22-23.  During this conference, Cascade Server users from around the country gather for this two-day event to collaborate, meet the Hannon Hill staff, learn tips & tricks, and in general, learn more about Cascade Server.I was able to attend the first conference in 2006, and was asked to participate in a roundtable discussion with two other users.  It was a great opportunity to share how Beacon uses Cascade Server as an Application Service Provider (ASP), and share some tips & strategies that we use.  I met a lot of great people, and still collaborate with many of them today.

In 2007, I was asked by Hannon Hill to speak during a technical session on how Beacon, as an ASP, uses Cascade Server.  However, I was unable to attend, as my wife and I were moving into our first house that day, so I had to respectfully decline.  I had to think about my decision for a while:  go to Atlanta, stay in a nice hotel, eat great food, and have some fun, or lift heavy furniture, paint rooms, clean, and get no sleep?  I guess I made the right choice by choosing the latter!  Members of Beacon’s team did attend the conference and said that it was a great experience, and I caught up with everything that happened by watching the session videos.

This year, since I’m definitely not buying a house again, I’ll not only be attending the conference with other members of the Beacon staff, but I’ll also be a speaker during one of the business user sessions.  I’ll be doing a “Tips & Tricks for End Users” session, where I’ll be covering:

• Smart implementations for large sites
• Content re-use
• Using structured content (Data Definitions)
• Integrate Cascade Server with eCommerce and other database applications (scripting languages)
• Manage Search Engine Marketing efforts
• Control full Flash websites and Flash applications
• Integration of advanced JavaScript applications
• Tips on training end users and providing documentation

I won’t lie and say that I’m not nervous about speaking in front of a crowd, but it’s something that I’m eager to do.  In Hannon Hill’s “Call for Speakers”, they asked, “Are you proud of your implementation?”.  I thought about that, and answered “yes!”.  I’m proud of how much Beacon has invested in this software in order to offer CMS solutions to our customers.  I’m proud of how my team implements Cascade Server sites that are tailored to the customer’s individual needs.

Check back here after September 23rd, and I’ll give you an update on how it went.  Wish me luck!

As I’ve written in the past, a Content Management System (CMS) is a valuable tool to your business’ online presence.  They enable anyone to maintain their Web site, with no Web development skills required.  As I tell potential and current customers when demonstrating our CMS of choice, “With Cascade Server, if you know Microsoft Word®, you can maintain your Web site”.  This powerful statement is the difference between hiring an expensive Web development staff and having your accountant maintain your Web site (instead of writing big salary checks).  Your Web site “contributor” (a user whose job it is to maintain the content of your site) now has the ability to keep the site up-to-date.

Of course, the “anyone” part does introduce a big problem:  how do you keep control over what your contributors are putting out there?  Chances are they’re not publishing inappropriate content:  anti-government, anti-(insert-your-favorite-sports-team-here), etc.  But what about spelling errors, inaccurate content, general formatting issues, and anything that you just don’t approve of?

Enter CMS workflows.  What is a CMS workflow?  Hannon Hill, the manufacturer of Cascade Server, states that a workflow “ensures that content entered into the system is quality checked by mandating that the entered content go through a series of approval steps.”  In short, it’s a way for a Web site manager to control what’s added to their Web site.

How does a workflow work?  Let’s take a look at a simple workflow.

The first step is to set permission levels for your users.  A contributor in your system should only have the ability to edit content, and not be able to publish that content to your live Web site.  Furthermore, a user can be locked down to a specific section, folder, or even page of your site.  Here, they can make any edits to an existing page, create pages, or if given permission, delete pages.

Once their edits are done, they submit the page into the workflow.  The manager is notified via email that the contributor has submitted content for approval.  The manager then logs into the CMS and reviews the content.  From here, the manager can either reject the content back to the contributor with personalized comments (which notifies the contributor via email as well), or the manager can “approve” the changes, which then publishes the page and associated files to their live site.

Pretty simple, yet effective, right?  By implementing this easy workflow, you maintain control over your Web site, while your contributor does all of the work!  Of course, workflows can be much more robust than our example, and can be tailored to fit your organization’s specific quality assurance practices.  You can have the contributor submit to a manager, that manager can submit to Legal, Legal can submit to Marketing, Marketing can reject back to the manger or submit to IT for publishing, and…well, you get the idea:  it’s completely flexible!

Below is an example of a workflow that we have implemented for a large Cascade Server implementation.

What kind of quality assurance program do you have for your Web site right now, whether it’s in a CMS or not?  Is it robust with several review checkpoints and processes?  Or do you not have one at all?  Whatever the case may be, my team and I can bring your entire Web site into Cascade Server, and apply a custom workflow that fits your needs.  Contact us to find out more.

One of the most interesting and rewarding aspects about my job here at Beacon Technologies is the fact that we are constantly looking for ways to integrate technologies together.  As a CMS Specialist, I’m always looking for ways to use our Content Management System, Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server, to further allow our customers to manage their sites on their own…completely on their own.

We all know about Flash:  a widely-used, extremely popular Web technology that allows site owners to jazz up their site with quick-loading animation.  But how would a site owner even think about maintaining that Flash application?  Have you ever seen the code that Flash is written in?  It’s complicated to say the least.  So we needed a way to allow our customers to have Flash applications on their site, but also allow them an easy way to maintain their images and content.

Enter Cascade Server.  With our innovative solution, customers can use Cascade’s Microsoft Word-based editor and intuitive interface to edit content and images within a Flash player that Beacon custom-built for them.  Since Cascade Server is based on XML, and Flash is a pro at reading XML files, you have your integration of technologies.  Cascade Server can take the content that you put into it, publish it out in XML-format, and the Flash application reads that XML and displays the changes.

We took this solution even further, and built an all-Flash site.  Instead of an HTML-based site calling a few Flash applications here and there, this site is completely built with Flash, and managed by Cascade.  Using Cascade, our customer can add, remove, and delete pages, edit content using the Word-based editor, and insert images and tables.

It’s just another way that we create innovative Web technologies for our customers.  To learn more, visit our Web site at http://www.beacontechnologies.com/.

You know you’ve thought about it.  Your business needs a Web site.  Or worse yet, you have a Web site, but its content is about as fresh as a carton of milk in a college dormitory fridge.  Sure, people will visit your site, but as time gets further away from its expiration date and nothing changes, they’ll eventually give up on it.  Then you lose potential customers.  Not the best sales model, huh?

What are your reasons for not keeping your site’s content fresh?

• I don’t know how to do it.
• It’s too expensive to pay someone to maintain it.
• I know how to do it, but I don’t have time to mess with it.
• I don’t want to have to buy special software.
• I send my changes to my Web site provider, but it takes them too long to get my changes posted.  I want change to happen yesterday!
• I have access to edit my site, but I’m no programmer.  It takes me forever to figure out how to add one page.

All of the above used to be true.  You want your site updated, but it’s expensive, it’s not done immediately and on your schedule, and you just don’t know how to do it.  You have to leave it up to the tekkies.  But in the past few years, new tools have emerged that allow you to be a Web site programmer.  Welcome to the new world of Content Management Systems.

So what is a Content Management System (CMS)?  In short, it’s an application (preferably Web browser-based) that allows you to maintain your site’s content (text, images, documents, etc.) using a friendly and familiar interface.  Using a personal login, you can access your entire site to do the following (and more):

• Add, update, or delete pages;
• Upload and manage images;
• Use it as a document management system to maintain all of your PDFs, Word documents, videos, and other files;
• Maintain frequently-updated sections of your site, such as press releases, product updates, and photo galleries;
• Produce RSS feeds.

And now, the icing on the cake:  a good CMS will use a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get), which looks and functions just like your everyday word processing program (I probably can’t mention the name, but we all know what I’m talking about).  Using this editor, you can format your content and images just like you would with your favorite word processing tool.  Font sizes, colors, styles, linking, images, tables:  they’re all at your fingertips.  When you’re done, you click a few buttons, and your Web site is updated!  This same CMS can also publish out multiple formats of content:  HTML for everyday Web browsers, formats for hand-held devices, PDFs, Word documents, and print-friendly versions.

Intrigued?  Beacon Technologies offers all of the above with the CMS that we’ve selected, Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server.  We can import your existing site, or create a whole new site for you in Cascade Server.  Then, after a short training session, we turn the reins over to you, and the site is yours!  You can keep your site up-to-date within a matter of minutes, any time of the day, from anywhere you can get your hands on a Web browser.  There’s no extra software to buy and install, and you don’t have to know fancy computer programming languages to maintain your site.  (But if you do know HTML, there’s an interface for that, too.)

Don’t think you have time to maintain your site?  Using Cascade Server is a real time-saver.  To add an already-written press release would take you about 5 minutes.  Updating a page with some current-year figures?  5 minutes.  Creating a new page from scratch?  15 minutes.  Those few minutes you spend will keep visitors coming back to see what you’ve come up with this time.

To learn more, get in touch with us to discuss your current needs and customize a CMS implementation for you.

And by the way:  Welcome to the CMS corner of the Beacon Blog!  Here we’ll explore CMS and how Beacon is using it to help any kind of company grow and showcase your business, all while maintaining it yourself.  Even if you’re not a tekkie.