"A complete and comprehensive solution, providing organizations with simple yet sophisticated tools for creating, publishing and managing Web content in a controlled, distributed and collaborative Web development environment. " Quite a claim.
That's the pitch for CommonSpot Content Server from PaperThin, and the company has certainly gained some serious clients, such as Westminster Council in London and TRW, on the strength of its features.
CommonSpot's features include:
* Browser-based page creation, editing and approval, as well as assignment of security privileges and more.
* Elements - over 50 specific page regions that have unique rendering characteristics, for rendering text around an image, a formatted text block, a Flash movie, and so forth.
* Cascading Style Sheet support.
* Rich text editing.
* A wizards-based interface.
* Content reuse.
* Revision and approval procedures.
* Access-based roles and privileges.
* Distributed administration and security.
* Dynamic self-updating indexes and navigation.
* Scheduled and personalized content.
* Extensive metadata support.
* Dynamic content filtering.
* Alternate rendering (WAP, XML, print, etc.).
* Knowledge management tools.
* Electronic mail notifications to both contributors and end-users in association with various events (such as approval of content, content freshness reminders, etc.).
* Section 508 accessibility compliance.
The full list is huge. (See the company's Architecture document for the technical details.)
A particular selling point is that CommonSpot enables developers with only limited ColdFusion experience to develop content. CommonSpot also supports ColdFusion MX.
CommonSpot runs under Netscape Enterprise Server, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Apache, and CGI-based systems, or any server compatible with ColdFusion.
Pricing for CommonSpot Content Server 3.1 starts under $20,000.
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Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, and columnist. He writes the weekly Backspin and Gearhead columns in Network World.
Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, and columnist. He writes the weekly Backspin and Gearhead columns in Network World. Gibbs is also co-conspirator of the Vitally Important Information Web site.
Gibbs can be contacted at webapps@gibbs.com. Press releases to pr@gibbs.com.
