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EPI VS Other CMS

Vote:
 

Hi All,

I have worked with other CMS solutions like Tridion, Drupal and very new to EPI.

I would like to know if EPI Server provides the following funtionality and the terms for the functionality which will help me to study and gain knowledge on this product.

Content Management
Blueprinting   (Master/Child website/publicationrelationship)
Localization/Globalization (localization of content in child which is coming from master)
Content Reuse
Content Personalization
Content Authentication and Authorization
Content Publishing
Form Submissions
Content Tracking (analytics)
Maketing Email Campaigns (Email Management for marketting products/registration)
DTAP support (Conten Import/ Export acrros epi server in different environments)
Content Templating (Template based)
Modular Templating & Reuse (Module/class based templates)
Multimedia Support
Content Taxonomy (Category/keywords association)
Dynamic Linking (Dynamic Content liked to page and can be published with page)
Multilingual support (Differnt Language's sites)
Content Sequrity
Content Versioning (Version management)
User Administration

Please share your valuable inputs and let  me know your concerns.

Thanks and Regards,

Anupam

#71259
May 15, 2013 9:45
Vote:
 

Hi Arlid,

Can you please share some of your ideas here as well?

Thanks and Regards,

Anupam

#71315
May 15, 2013 13:36
Vote:
 

Anupam, 

Since you are already a registered user at EPiServer World, I really recommend that you explore the Documentation area of this site. You can find guides for both developers and editors/administrators explaining many of the features you asked about.

Here are my comments to your questions:

 

Content Management/Publishing

Authenticated users can edit content in either a forms mode (editing field by field) or an On-Page-Edit mode (click any piece of content in the rendered web page to edit it directly).
Before publishing, editors can preview how the content will look on different devices (desktop/mobile/tablet).
Workflows allow several editors to work on the same content in a sequential approval process.


Blueprinting (Master/Child website/publicationrelationship)

EPiServer does not have a direct equivalent to Tridion's blueprint feature, but have some similarities.

For a developer: Page types can use inheritance, i.e. two different page types can inherit a set of core properties from the same base class (e.g. inheriting properties for heading, lead and main body text so you don't have to repeat these definitions on each page type). Properties on each page type can have default values so that each new page that gets created has the same starting values.
For an editor: Dynamic properties can be used to inherit a property value from page in the page tree, to all subpages below that page.
For multiple websites: An EPiServer installation can contain multiple subsites, i.e. many startpages (separate domains) each with its own page tree. The page type definitions defined for one site can be reused for all the sites in the same installation to ensure all sites share the same behaviour.

 

Localization/Globalization / Multilingual support (Differnt Language's sites)

EPiServer supports globalization in multiple languages out-of-the-box. An administrator defines which languages should be available.
An editor can create a page tree full of content in one language (the Master language), then translate any of those pages into the other available languages (i.e. the page tree structure is the same for all languages). A page will use the Master language as fallback if it is not translated into any other languages.


Content Reuse

Before EPiServer 7, many EPiServer web sites used the .NET Web Parts Framework or the EPiServer Composer module to define "building blocks" that could be reused on many different page types.

EPiServer 7 introduced an integrated feature called Blocks, which basically does the same thing as Web Parts.
Both Web Parts and Blocks allow an editor to dynamically build a content page using a set of predefined "mini-templates" (e.g. a navigation menu, an image banner, a bullet list etc).

EPiServer does not have a "true" cross-publishing feature, but there is a built-in feature where you can set up page A to always show the same content (e.g. heading and main body text) as page B which is published in a different place in the page tree. There are third party plugins available that enable more advanced cross-publishing in EPiServer.


Content Personalization

EPiServer has a feature called Visitor Groups where you can define different types of visitors based on their IP range, their geolocation, pages they've visited etc, search words used etc.
The editor can then create content that is automatically shown specifically for each type of visitor group (e.g. show an ad for a restaurant in Paris for visitors geolocated in Paris).
Quick demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dXmiUmea-w

Content Authentication and Authorization / Content Sequrity

Each page can have individual access rights/security. Access rights for a page can be given to individual users or a group of users.
The access rights define which users are allowed to see/edit/publish/delete the content in your page tree.
Also see my comment above about Workflows.


Form Submissions

The default forms feature in EPiServer is called XForms, where editors can define form layout and submission actions. The submitted form data is typically stored in the database and/or 
emailed to a specified recipient.

 

Content Tracking (analytics)

EPiServer does not have a built-in analytics system other than very basic statistics of recently published/changed/expired content. Most web sites implement Google Analytics, WebTrends or similar third party systems for more advanced tracking.
The EPiServer CMO (Campaign Monitor & Optimization) plugin allows more advanced features for analyzing user behavior and optimizing content and campaigns.


Maketing Email Campaigns (Email Management for marketting products/registration)

EPiServer has a very basic built-in subscription feature where users can subscribe to different areas of the page tree and received automated emails when new content is published, but this is not true email marketing management.
There are several plugins (from EPiServer and third parties) that offer this (e.g. EPiServer Mail, Apsis etc).

 

DTAP support (Conten Import/ Export acrros epi server in different environments)

EPiServer has a built-in import/export feature that allows page type definitions, content (single or multiple pages) and files to be copied between two sites.
EPiServer has a built-in web service based Mirroring feature which can be set up to mirror content from one EPiServer site to another EPiServer site (think of it as automatic export+import).


Content Templating (Template based)

All EPiServer content is published using the predefined page types (which define the properties) and their respective templates (which define the markup used to present the property values).

 

Multimedia Support

The default rich text editor in EPiServer supports inserting a range of multimedia objects from images to video objects. 

 

Content Taxonomy (Category/keywords association)

EPiServer can be extended to support a categories/keywords taxonomy, but is by default designed to use a fixed content structure where categories are merely used as metadata about a page.
See my answer at http://world.episerver.com/Modules/Forum/Pages/Thread.aspx?id=71269&epslanguage=en

 

Content Versioning (Version management)

Every time an editor saves/published a page, EPiServer stores that version in a version list. The editor can later view a list of all the versions of that page, and edit/publish/delete previous versions if desired.

 

User Administration

EPiServer uses the .NET membership system by default, which can be configured to support Windows users, Active Directory users, or SQL users (or a mix of these providers). It is possible to create a custom membership provider to allow users from other sources than the ones mentioned.

Users and groups can be managed directly in the EPiServer admin UI.

#71330
Edited, May 16, 2013 0:43
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