If you have read any previous Beacon blogs than I am sure you know what a CMS is and what it’s used for. In case you haven’t read any other blogs, a CMS or Content Management System is an application that allows any user to update content on a given website easily. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge of programming languages such as HTML or CSS. Here at Beacon, we use Cascade Server CMS for the majority of our clients’ websites along with our own website.

I have used a few Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past before I started working with Beacon. These range from free open-source systems to custom-built systems created for a specific client. I can honestly say I prefer Cascade Server out of the bunch. Cascade Server has a lot of features that most of the other CMS’s lack. Below are some of the features that I really like about Cascade:

• Personalized Dashboard – you can customize the home screen for each user based on their preference.
• Work Flow Management – with multiple users updating content on the website, you can make sure that the only content you (admin) approve of will be able to show up on the live web.
• Version Control – have you ever accidentally made a change to a document and saved it only to find out you can’t undo it anymore? With Version Control, you no longer have to worry about that, it will let you revert back to an older version of the document/file in the CMS.
• Recycle Bin – if any user accidentally deletes a file or an entire folder from the site. With the addition of the Recycle Bin, they can undo the delete file/folder.
• Site Preview – you can preview each page or the site inside Cascade before publishing it out to the web.
• Spell Checker/Link Checker – before you save a page, the spell checker can automatically check for spelling errors. Also the link checker will check for any broken links before the page is saved.
• WYSIWYG Editor – (What You See Is What You Get) Editor is included in most CMSs but Cascade differs from a few. In Cascade, you can copy content from Microsoft Word and bring it in Cascade with original formatted (bold, italics, underline, etc.) content.
• Multi-site Management – if you have multiple sites, you can manage them all through one instance of Cascade. It even allows sharing files/templates between sites.
• Technical Support – most open-source CMSs don’t have tech support instead you have to post on a forum and wait for another user like you to post a possible solution. With Cascade, you get tech support from their knowledgeable staff that will resolve your issue.

There are a lot more features that are in Cascade that I haven’t listed here. Check out their website for a whole list of all their features at www.hannonhill.com. On their main site, you will also find a small list of their clients that currently use Cascade Server, including NC State University (Go Woflpack!). If NC State uses Cascade Server for their site, than you know it must be good.

To learn more about Cascade Server, please contact Beacon.

Recently we were in the process of upgrading a site to AspDotNetStorefront 9 and with the upgrade comes multiple changes to how things are coded. One important change is that the entire page is now a form. This form controls all things within it including add to cart or add to wish list. This caused two main problems that I dealt with while trying to integrate the old code into the new.

• The first one was trying to integrate the old search with the new search. I took what I could from the old code and copied it into the new (shown below). We figured out that the type of image didn’t work so we made it a button and styled as needed to match.

  OLD:   <input name="submit" src="/skins/Skin_1/images/go.jpg" type="image" />
  NEW:   <input id="searchBox_button" name="submit" type="button" value="Go" />
  

  A few hours later I realized that the add to cart and add to wish list buttons didn’t work anymore and I was getting an error ‘theForm.submit is not a function’. After some quick googling I ran across a page where I immediately realized what was causing this. The page basically states that there was a button somewhere improperly named submit. So I went back to the search form and sure enough I had copied this over from the original code. All I had to do was change the name to something else and voila! It works :)

  FINAL:   <input id="searchBox_button" name="go" type="button" value="Go" />
  

• The second issue was integrating a newsletter sign-up form within the main form. The form was in the left column and fell within the flow of the page. When I say this I mean it was positioned relative to other items so it could not be absolute positioned into the left column. This meant that the code had to reside inside the new form. The problem is you can’t have a form within another form.I feel like this was one of those problems that called for thinking outside of the box. Normally you wouldn’t develop something that had this problem but since we are actually customizing something that’s already built (AspDotNetStorefront) and integrating our code into it we needed to find a work around. On my way home my mind seems to subconsciously still be working and trying to solve problems from that day. So as I was driving home that day all of a sudden iFrame! I knew we had used this for different reasons on another site so the next day I tried and it worked like a charm :) This is a solution that could come in handy for multiple things down the road.

If your business uses WordPress for blogging or as a content management system, there are some great plugins out there to make life easier. Here are the top 10 WordPress plugins that I love.

1. Headspace 2 – HeadSpace manages meta data and other SEO functions. It allows you to tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that help your page ranking.

2. Simple Facebook Connect – This plugin comes with many different options. You can give your visitors the ability to comment using Facebook Identity (with FB avatar support), login with Facebook credentials and register using Facebook. It also allows you to automatically publish new posts to a Facebook Profile or manually publish posts to a Facebook Profile or Application/Fan Page. And if that weren’t enough, check out the other available buttons and widgets available through this plugin!

• Share button and Shortcode
• Connect Button Widget and Shortcode
• User Status Widget and Shortcode
• Live Stream Widget and Shortcode
• Bookmark Widget and Shortcode
• Find us on Facebook button Widget and Shortcode
• Fan Box Widget
• Fan Count Chicklet and Widget

3. TweetMeme – The TweetMeme button plugin simply adds the TweetMeme button to your posts and feed. It keeps a running total of how many times your content is tweeted. (See example on this post!)

4. Akismet – This does a great job of keeping your WordPress site free of spam. When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your site it is Akismet runs hundreds of tests on the comment to determine whether or not it is spam.

5. WP Click-Track – This plugin automatically posts and rewrites links in your content (pages, sidebar, posts, etc.) in order to include a tracking element. It also allows users to create stand alone trackable links that can be included in posts. It also provides extensive reports right within the WordPress dashboard.

6. Category Order – This seems like a simple plugin but there have been countless times where I’ve needed categories to be in a specific order that wasn’t alphabetical or by ID. This little plugin allows you to easily reorder your categories the way you want via drag and drop.

7. Google Analytics for WordPress – Even though you can use Google Analytics on a WordPress site without this plugin, it’s missing a whole lot of features that this plugin offers. This plugin includes:

• Google Analytics Custom Variables
• Google Analytics API integration
• E-Commerce integration
• Event tracking

8. cformsII – CformsII is the best form plugin I’ve used. Its creators are actually the authors of one of my favorite cooking blogs. This amazing plugin has an incredible amount of features and flexibility. You can create detailed custom forms, style them individually and place them in sidebars, posts or pages.

9. AddThis – AddThis is my favorite share plugin because  it automatically optimizes itself for each person who visits your site. AddThis custom fits each menu with the services they’ll normally use. This plugin also has an automatic interface for iPhone users. The plugin allows a customized share button to be placed in a sidebar or on each post. AddThis.com also provides detailed analytics so you can see how your content is shared across the Web.

10. YD Recent Posts Widget – This WordPress plugin installs a new sidebar widget displays your most recent blog posts along with images. It is very customizable allowing different settings on the home page and other blog pages.

We have a lot of projects going on right now, but I always like to stop and highlight projects that we have completed for our customers.  Recently, we completed two projects that our development team produced using ASP.NET and Cascade Server.

News Application: Cascade Server

This project was the first for this new higher education client that was referred to us by Hannon Hill.  The entire university’s site is in Cascade Server, and they contracted with us to enhance the News Releases function to include the following:

• Ability to add images with captions to the news detail pages;
• Addition of article categories and authors;
• Redesign the main news listing page to list stories by year and month using a collapsible function.  A new search feature was also installed, integrated with their Google Mini search appliance;
• New category listing pages that allows users to create a page that only displays stories tagged with certain categories;
• Modification to the display of the news stories on the homepage;
• Addition of RSS feeds, including a full listing and an RSS listing for each category;

This was a very complicated implementation that one of my CMS developers handled like a pro.  Many thanks to her for patience during development!

Dealer Locator:  ASP.NET and Cascade Server

Beacon teamed up with G-Force Marketing (here in Greensboro) and a client of theirs (a well-known retailer) to build a product promotion site, where potential customers can go use a dealer locator that we created using ASP.NET and AJAX.  The user can search by zip code or city to find a dealer nearest them, and thanks to AJAX, can easily sort the search results.  The client can log into an Administration section to maintain the list of dealers.  They can also use Cascade Server to maintain other content across the site.

Credit for the front-end development goes to our summer intern, who churned out a great-looking site.  One of our transactional developers did all of the ASP.NET and AJAX development to make the whole thing work, and our Graphic Artist helped out with some of the graphics.

Thanks to everyone for their hard work on both projects!  Being able to tell success stories like these is what we’re all about.

The following is a list of new features for Cascade Server 6.7
(Source: http://www.hannonhill.com/news/blog/2010/Cascade-Server-6-7-Released.html)

• Recycle Bin – users can restore deleted assets.  Enough said!
• Cross-site Move and Copy – allows users to re-organize assets in Sites and copy them across Sites
• Rich Text Editor improvements – newer version of the TinyMCE editor with a re-written “paste” plugin for much improved pasting from Word documents and consistent UI between browsers
• Unsaved changes warnings – users are warned before attempting to navigate away from pages with unsaved changes
• SFTP/FTP compatibility improvements – more reliable publishing to a variety of different SFTP and FTP servers including Windows 2008′s built-in FTP server.
• Live View – preview the published version of pages at their public URL from within the application
• XHTML/Data Definition Blocks – data definitions can be assigned to blocks to provide users the same form controls available in page editing when editing blocks
• Variety of UI improvements to the application’s main menus and help links
• Support for the Google Chrome browser, the SQL Server 2008 database server, and Java 6

Reviewing these new features there are 3 that really excite me:

• Recycle Bin - I have learned to live without a recycling bin within Cascade only by tiptoeing around deleting items. I know the recycling bin will play an important role when I need it.
• Cross-site Move and Copy - I have wanted this since day 1 of the Sites feature. Now I don’t have to recreate commonly used items for a new site. I would simply copy them over from existing sites. This Cross-site Move and Copy is one step closer to my dream feature of ‘Copy Site’ which would copy an entire site including administration items.
• XHTML/Data Definition Blocks - This one is so great because it separates the Data Definition from the page allowing us to integrate different Modules like Photo Galleries into any page without the page being tied down to a specific data definition. So where we used to have multiple Data Definitions for an interior 2 column page like Interior 2 Column and Interior 2 Column with Photo Gallery we will now only need that initial Interior 2 Column. When we put the Data Definition on the XHTML/Data Definition block it allows us to make each Module mobile so that we can use it within any page of the site.

I feel these updates have opened multiple doors and I look forward to seeing how we use them.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not murder.

Thou shalt not steal web content.

Okay, the last one is not one of the commandments, but darn well should be.  It is unethical, illegal, and far too rampant.  Ultimately, it can lead to massive headaches on both ends.  As such, I offer 3 different perspectives with suggestions:

As a copywriter, how do you protect yourself from being accused of plagiarism? There is really only one answer and it is a simple one.  When you use the intellectual and/or written property of another – give them credit!  Whether it be an MLA-style end-note, a Chicago style footnote citation, a directly quoted passage, or a link back to their website, give the original author their dues.  You may still encounter the random situation where somebody asks you to take their work down (whether you choose to do so is up to you), but people tend to be less likely to sue when they have been credited.

As a website owner, how do you make sure that the people you have hired are not engaging in this practice? I recommend taking random snippets of 5-6 word text and searching for exact (in quotes) matches on Google.*  If you feel the text is a bit generic, you may want to select a longer string; but you would likely be surprised how rarely the exact same 5 words appear on the internet together in the same order.  Search through any results that are not your web page and look for fishy similarities.  If any pages are older than yours and stating very similar thoughts in the same wordage, you likely have a copywriter or developer who needs a good kick in the rear.

But what if you find similar content that is younger than yours?  If you find that your intellectual property has been stolen, what do you do? Document, document, document.  This includes both your original publishing and a record of your violator’s content.  Your word is not good enough, you need cold hard proof.  After that, it is up to you how far to take it.  You may just want them to take it down (some sites may have hired a firm to do their content and were unaware that they were infringing upon your material) or you may want to take it as far as you can through legal channels.  At the end of the day, you just want to make sure that the information is on your side.

The next commandment we will focus on is that Thou Shalt put no other Search Engines before Google…

-EW

*If you prefer the automated route, Copyscape offers free (up to 10) results on sites that offer similar content to your own.

When maintaining your website, every inch of space on the screen is crucial to helping you hit your conversions. Why would you leave anything to chance?

You never want to waste space or hide an important call to action because it may cause your visitors to grow frustrated; consequently, you could continue to lose sales. Therefore, the million dollar question is: How do we determine the effectiveness of your layout site? The answer, my friends, becomes apparent with the use of heat maps, which illustrate the behavioral trending of your site’s visitors, or to know where potential customers are clicking, and more importantly, where they are not.

How the software works

When we optimize a client’s website, we install a special application that tracks movements, hovering, and clicks visitors make on your site. What is most impressive from this application is that we can analyze the data in several ways, all of which start with a true-to-form heat map that registers density by click. From here, we can break down the clicks and divide them by search engine source, day of the week, time of day visited, new vs. return visitor, IP location, referral paths, search terms, etc. We can also filter and block specific IPs to refine our data better as well.

At this point, we can begin testing and monitoring test page variations against each other to optimize sales-driven pages more effectively.

I’ve been with Beacon for almost 11 years.  That makes me feel really old (or dedicated, one of the two).  Thus, it’s really hard for me to fathom that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 has been with me almost my entire career.  IE6 was released on August 27, 2001.  That was a glorious day back then.  Think about how much IE6 revolutionized how we experience the Web, and how us coders could now start that revolution.  Who knew almost 9 years later, IE6 would be defying our death wishes.

Whenever I think about IE6 and how it should have been long gone from our minds years ago (like Netscape), I think about that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  You know, the scene where the “Dead Collector” encounters someone trying to put a man onto the dead cart.  Problem is, the man isn’t dead.  He pleads not to be cast off with the forgotten, but his carrier insists that he’s pretty much a goner.  Eventually after a lot of pleading, the man is hit over the head and wheeled away. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the video below.)

I can’t believe IE6 is still around. And whenever I try to admit that it has to be dead, someone calls and says, “This site doesn’t look right in IE6.”  In fact, according to the W3C Schools browser statistics, 7.9% of users are still on IE6 (April 2010).

Why haven’t those 7.9% users upgraded yet?  I have a few theories, one of which I came up with all on my own, the other I’m quoting from one of our university clients:

• Many home users don’t know how to upgrade, so they leave well enough alone and continue to use IE6.  I always wondered why we move along so quickly in dropping all other browsers (Netscape, for example).  My theory is that all other browsers do not come pre-installed with Windows,  so it takes know-how and desire to go out and download that browser.  Those users are more apt to keep up with browser versions.
• At many institutions (such as universities), desktop support personnel lock down machines so that people can’t install other software.  Even if this doesn’t include disabling Windows Update, this feature only downloads & installs critical patches…IE upgrades are considered optional.  Thus, the machine never gets upgraded to the next version of IE.

So what’s a Web Designer to do?  The way I see it, we have two options:

1. Drop IE6 support altogether.  Give IE6 users a message stating that this site will not work properly in IE6, and they should upgrade.  (Translation:  Join us in the 21st century.)
2. Live with it.  Continue to code for IE6, and enjoy the daily challenge.

The good news?  IE6′s market share has been dropping about 1% every month.  If this trend continues, by the end of 2010, IE6 will be gone!  We developers will get to do all of that fancy XHTML/DHTML/CSS 2.0/JavaScript programming without having to worry about IE6′s attitude.

IE6 isn’t dead yet.  But IE6, enjoy your time left:  “You’ll be stone dead in a moment.”

Will we have this same discussion in a few years for IE7?

About a week ago I was told that I’ll be getting a new computer and that it will be an upgrade in performance, hardware, and software. Of course I was extremely excited about this but also started worrying about all my files and settings on my current computer. William, our Systems Administrator informed me some of my files were already being copied over. As we discussed what would and would not be transferred I realized I had no way to sync up my huge collection of Firefox add-on’s. These tools are what make every job easier along with more thorough and efficient.

While searching solutions to this problem I knew I didn’t want to use any kind of software or have to write down every add on and search and install each one I just wanted to kind of take the list with me and reinstall from there. My chosen solution to the problem was making a collection via Firefox add-on’s and using Add-on Collector to sync it up. This is an add-on itself that allows you to share and sync your collections from Firefox. This made it extremely easy to create the list as well as sync it up to the new computer.

All in all I had 57 add-ons! Some I use daily and others I haven’t even had a chance to test drive. To check them out you can visit my collections page.

I was going to write about the Peloponnesian War, its ramification on the course of Western Civilization and how that ancient struggle correlates to the Microsoft vs. Apple battles we see today. But, in addition to the fact that I really don’t know very much about the Athenians or Spartans, that war was fought, as my son Tyler would say, “a very long long day ago”.  Instead I’ll write about how in ASP.NET you can prevent an error from being written to the server’s application log.

Let’s look at the “A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client“ error that can show up on an ASP.NET page.  This error is thrown when potential HTML or other script tags are entered into a textbox of an ASP.NET form. This error gives you something looking like …..

The error itself isn’t a bad thing since it helps prevent script injection attacks.  (If you want to allow script tags to be entered on your form there are several things you can do. Check them out here.) Our problem was that when an unaccounted for error is thrown in ASP.NET, the error is written to the server’s application log. We have a utility that reads the application log and email’s the system administrator any errors that show up. Our administrator had to screen all of these emails in looking for one’s that we really needed to see.

The solution is to put some code into the Application_Error method of the global.asax file that will trap and remove the error that we don’t want to log.

Notice that after clearing the error we need to redirect to another page. If, after clearing the error, we allowed the page to load, we would see a blank page. (The error that would have been displayed is erased by the Server.ClearError() command).

You could also include the code in the page’s “Error” event.  However, you would have to include the code on every page instead of in just one place.

So, if you have any interest in preventing an ASP.NET error from being written to the server’s Application log, consider using the Application _Error method of the site’s global.asax