I’m trying to be clever and match my daughter’s use of acronyms.  Yeah, I made it up.  But the first thing that came to my mind was “Wow!  What a Week!” as I sit here on the plane retracing my steps back from San Fran to Atlanta to Greensboro.

FIRST STOP:  Cascade Server Conference (Atlanta)

Four of us (John Scaramuzzo, Justin Klingman, Brad Henry and myself) jumped in a car on Sunday to head to the first stop, Hannon Hill’s Annual Cascade Server Conference in Atlanta.  Those guys really know how to do it.  They put us up w/ great accommodations, provided great information about their current products and got everyone excited about some cool features they have planned for the coming year.  Since many of our clients use Cascade Server, we had the opportunity to chat with some of them that attended the conference (like Silverpop, Los Alamos Labs, Rollins College, University of Hartford).  The Cascade Server CMS product remains strong and well supported as David Cummings, their CEO/President reminded us that Cascade Server has now been out for 7 years and has over 200 clients  (primarily in the Higher Ed vertical).  Pretty amazing for a small company!  It’s interesting to note that Beacon is one of the few Partners that have attended every annual user conference.

Brad Henry and I presented right after lunch – Web Marketing Tactics w/ Cascade Server. (I will provide a link to the video once it’s available).  Brad was certainly the headliner after I gave a quick overview of Beacon.  As always, Brad shared valuable SEO tactics with the audience – tactics that they could take back, apply and make an immediate impact.  However, the highlight was the results of two SEO Audits that Brad provided live for current Cascade Server customers that were in attendance – Auburn University and Health Network System.  He provided very specific advice on areas that can be improved along with confirming areas that were setup well for SEO.  Of course this sparked a nice Q&A session during the last 10 minutes of the presentation.

I also had the pleasure of having lunch with David Klanac, Hannon Hill’s COO, which gave us time to discuss growing our partnership over the coming year to further improve their products and continue providing services to Cascade Server customers.

NEXT STOP:  Google Analytics Certified Partners Conference (Mt. View, CA)

Our presentation ended around 2:30 and Brad & I were off to the airport to catch a flight to San Fran for the Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP) Conference in Mountain View.  This is Beacon’s FOURTH year of attending this conference and as always, it started off with a bang as Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist, delivered another captivating keynote address pointing out that GA is a critical tool in supporting the business decision process, but not the only one.  The real key…the real way for consultants to make money w/ GA is NOT to “puke” data back to clients, but to truly partner with clients.  Roll your sleeves up.  Show ROI.  Develop strategies to grow online conversions and identify the right key performance indicators to clearly show VALUE!  I encourage you to check out Avinash on YouTube or at www.kaushik.net.

We heard from many of Google’s engineers, product managers and marketing staff.  Even more importantly, with ~260 attendees and over 190 GACPs worldwide now, the folks at Google LISTENED to us – about issues we were having with the product, clients, marketing, etc. During one session, we actually lined up and presented desired features and/or changes and the entire group voted on whether each should be a high, medium or low priority.  There are several new development projects underway that will change the landscape further.  Our NDA with Google prevents me from providing any details.  However, I will say the Google Team seems more enthusiastic than ever and they certainly have embraced the GACPs.  The first conference had ~15 attendees; the second, ~30 (which I attended) and now, to see nearly 200 partners is truly amazing.  Momentum is growing.  2011 will see more major advances in GA.

On the personal side, I had to take in a Giants-Dodgers game.  AT&T Park is awesome.  Nothing like sitting in a ballpark next to the bay with a hot dog and a cold one.  It was a blast hearing the packed house chant “Beat LA!  Beat LA!” as the Giants won 2-1.

LAST STOP:  Home…which there is no place like!

There are many system and system pseudo tags within Cascade Server that I often can’t remember exactly. Its like my brain doesn’t want to remember the correct spelling of asset (always wants to put assett) or I get frustrated trying to output CDATA tags and forget there’s a tag for that. I often go back to 5 main pages of Hannon Hill’s knowledge base that are worth bookmarking.

• Linking: Provides the correct ways to reference system assets both locally and across sites.
• Available System Tags: Provides tags used in template creation.
• System View Tags: Provides internal and external tags and how to use them.
• System CDATA Tags: Provides information on how to output a CDATA section.
• Code Sections: Provides Passthrough and Root Code Section tags and how to use them.

If your like me then you know what they do and how to use them; you just forget the exact syntax sometimes. Below is a quick reference I created for myself to get straight to the ones that I either use or forget about on a regular basis.

• Cascade Server Quick Reference
  

Also I wanted to include the following link for Commmonly used XSLT:

• Cascade Server XSLT: Just found out about this one but it looks to be extremely useful for common XSLT formats within cascade.

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.

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.

We work with a lot of universities, assisting them with consulting and more complex development within their Cascade Server instances.  My team and I have recently wrapped up a very challenging project for one of our best customers, and I’m very pleased with the results.  We greatly enhanced their basic Cascade Server calendaring system in order to create a centralized repository of the entire university’s events.

The site in this example contains multiple listings of the events, including:

• Today’s Events
• Seven-day View
• Listing by Category
• Homepage Listing
• RSS Feeds
• Top Stories by Category displayed on a department’s homepage

The most important requirement for our developers was to make it simple for the end user to maintain, while creating a robust solution that met the client’s requirements.  The events are displayed in multiple places across the entire site; thus, we wanted the user to enter the event details in one place, and have it automatically be displayed in the appropriate listings.  Thus, the user doesn’t have to worry about finding all places where an event needs to be listed…it’s all done for them.  All they have to worry about is keeping up with the large number of events that come their way every day!

To add an event, the user simply fills out a form inside Cascade Server.  Among other fields, the user fills out:

• Event Title
• Start & End Date/Time
• Category
• Is this event able to be displayed on the homepage?  Yes/No
• Is this a featured event?  Yes/No
• Details about the event

That’s it.  They save it, and the publish it.  Cascade Server takes care of the rest.  The added story displays in the appropriate listings at the right time.  Some of the noteworthy features of this product are:

• A story only shows in the Today’s Events listing if the start and end date span today’s date.  This allows the user to enter one event that spans multiple days.
• Category listing pages were set up to display all stories tagged with a certain category (such as Athletics, Libraries, etc.).  With this solution, users from any section of the Web site can link to their category’s stories.
• The story is displayed on the homepage (if it was tagged to do so).  Also, if the story was tagged as a “featured” story, it will display first on the homepage to give it prominence.
• The RSS feeds of events are automatically populated as well.
• If an event’s end time has passed, the event no longer displays on any listing pages.

This was definitely a team effort involving analysis, system design, and skilled coding…something all of my colleagues excel at.  This is just one of the many custom applications we have written in Cascade Server.  For example, we’ve also written an advanced News application.  But that’s for another posting.

Think about all of the ways you viewed Web sites earlier this century.  There was your Web browser of choice…either Netscape or Internet Explorer…and, well, that’s it.  Things were a lot simpler back then, believe me.  Starting out in Web Design in 1999, we had two browsers to code for, and one output:  plain old HTML.

Fast forward to today.  How many Web browsers do you have installed on your computer?  Maybe you have one, maybe you have 8 like me.  OK, I don’t use all eight on a daily basis, but they all come in handy when working with cross-browser compliance.

Now, how many ways do you view a Web site today?  If you answered “one”, you may want to think again.  Ever clicked on the “Low Bandwidth” link because you’re on a slower connection?  Ever clicked “Print this Page” and gotten a print-friendly version of the page?  Do you have a PDA that you use to surf the Web?  Have you ever subscribed to an RSS feed?

Now, let’s turn our attention to your Web site.  Today, it’s becoming the norm to offer your Web site’s content in all of the above ways, and more.  The more versions (or “formats”) you offer your site in, the wider the audience you reach.

“But I can’t keep up with that many formats of my Web site.”

What if you could?  What if you could write one set of content, and have it display in multiple outputs?  One of the great features of Cascade Server is “repurposing content”.  Simply put, you can maintain a single source of content, and publish that content to your Web site in multiple formats.  When you publish one page, multiple separate files publish out.

How is this done?  In Cascade Server, we set up a template for each of the desired formats:

• The Full HTML version is your normal Web site that your visitors are used to today, with full graphics, JavaScript, and Flash applications.
• The Lite HTML version would be a scaled-down version of the Full HTML version.  It may look like the Full HTML version, but may have less graphics, no JavaScript, and no Flash.  This helps the site load faster for users on slower computers or Internet connections.
• The WML version is used for PDA and other hand-held devices.  This format may have a logo, a simple navigation, and your page’s text with limited imagery.
• The Print version would have just your logo and your page’s content, formatted to fit on a standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper.
• Your Web page can instantly become a PDF brochure.  The page’s content can be pulled into a specialized template, and published as a PDF file.
• Your Press Releases can be published out in an RSS format, so followers of your Web site can subscribe to this feed and keep up-to-date with your news.
• Your site can even be published out in XML format for exporting your content to another system, such as a Google Site Map, or a database application.

With Cascade Server, we have the flexibility to output, or repurpose, your site in a variety of ways.  Remember, you want to reach the widest audience possible.  And now, you can reach out to those audiences by writing one source of content.

‘Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the halls
All our sites were generating leads and qualified calls
Tracy’s team of eCommerce engineers coded with care,
In the hopes to avoid sneaky hackers’ malware;
John had our servers nestled all snug on their shelves,
While Barracuda spam filters blocked visions of naked elves;
And Brad with his backlinks, and Mark with his web apps,
Had just increased rankings with an SEO-friendly sitemap,
When out in Cascade Server there arose such a flurry,
As Justin typed CMS data definitions in a terrific hurry;
With a company like this, so lively and quick
I knew in a moment it must be Beacon Tech.

{Original Excerpt from Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore}

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!