Advanced PageBuilder: Building Default Layouts
Category: Mark Cline, Ektron
Here at Square Root Interactive, our goal is to think like an end user when developing a Web site solution – particularly when evaluating and implementing new technologies. And, sometimes we find ourselves extending the Ektron CMS400.NET to make a new feature work better for real-world installations. After reviewing the new PageBuilder process internally, some of our usability experts commented that once simple tasks – like adding multiple news releases or articles – could become a time-consuming process.
Before PageBuilder, content contributors navigated to a folder in the CMS workarea, selected ”New HTML Content” from the menu, added content, updated metadata and published the content. Then they might add the content to a menu or collection, or perhaps it would display on the site automatically thanks to a folder list summary or taxonomy.
Now with PageBuilder, not only does the user have to create content, then create a page that displays that content, but they must also populate the other drop zones on the page. This may include a header graphic, sidebar menu and/or various sections of related and/or cross-promotional content. While not hard, this process does take time. And, if you use the same header and sidebar information section-wide, repeating this process for each piece of content in the section could become tedious and annoying.
We think PageBuilder is a great new technology and wanted to limit any potential roadblocks to early adoption. So, my development team and I sat down and determined a way to take advantage of this new tool without over burdening the end-user. Using the Ektron Extensibility Server, along with the built-in PageBuilder process and a smart form, we developed a pretty cool process that allows us to use PageBuilder to create default “layouts” that can be reused for creating new pages within a section. The system administrator can create any number of default PageBuilder layouts, which they may assign to specific folders. The default layouts may have any widget available preloaded into drop zones, with or without content already selected. When the layout is used to create a new page, everything included on the default will be carried over to the new page. The best part is once you add the new page using the default layout, you can add, change or delete both new and default widgets and/or content selected in the widget. I recently presented a webinar on this enhancement. You can download and view the webinar by clicking here.
As with any software process, we are already thinking of new ways to further enchance this process. Stay tuned for more PageBuilder enhancements.
Posted By: Mark Cline | Date Published: 10.29.2009 | Comments (0)