Low-Cost Tools Fill a Web Content Void

by Marvin Pyles

That old saying "a little goes a long way" is well suited to Amherst, NH-based Ektron, maker of low-cost content management applications and content authoring tools. At least that's the perspective of Steven Pruner, CEO of CyberDivan, a Charlotte, NC-based Web design firm that develops and hosts sites for organizations with humble Web publishing budgets.

Two years ago, Pruner used Ektron's eMPower content management application to develop a community affairs site for Duke University. The site (community.duke.edu) publishes information created and maintained by local schools, neighborhood groups and other community organizations. Duke's main requirement was to provide a way for content authors to easily update Web pages.

EMPower is a low-cost product for sites using Macromedia's Cold Fusion development language. The management system has similar, although more limited versions of the features found in most large-scale Web content management systems: workflow, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) content entry, version control and XML tagging support. The product supports as many as 1,000 contributors, and it allows administrators to create different levels of content rights for different user groups.

At just $3,000, eMPower was effective and affordable for CyberDivan's Duke University project, but Pruner also encouraged Ektron to come up with an even lower-cost version of the software.

"I shared a statistic [with Ektron] that says that 80 percent of Web sites are run by just one to five people," Pruner explains. Ektron has now responded to Pruner and other customers with the release of CMS100.

CMS100 is basically a light version of Ektron's eMPower content management system. According to Pruner, the new application provides an inexpensive way for users to update a Web site without "messing anything up."

At a cost of just $1,000, CMS100 gives five licensed users a simple way to update Web pages published from a Microsoft SQL or Access database. The system provides check-in/check-out, version control and integration with Microsoft databases, although it lacks scheduled publishing tools, search capabilities and robust workflow. The product also works with only two development languages: Microsoft Active Server Pages and Macromedia Cold Fusion.

Pruner recently implemented CMS100 for www.MegaRugs.com, a small specialty retail site. After receiving an initial quote of $230,000 from another developer, MegaRugs approached CyberDivan for a quote.

"Using CMS100 [and a third-party commerce engine], I was able to build their site for $10,000," says Pruner.

For those wanting an XML-enabled content environment, Ektron also offers CMS200, which supports XML content entry and LDAP integration. A 10-user system costs $2,999.

In many respects, CMS200 is identical to eMPower. The main differences are that CMS200 operates within a Microsoft Active Server Pages environment and can only be integrated with Microsoft SQL Server and Access database. EMPower uses Cold Fusion and can be integrated with Microsoft SQL or Oracle databases and can run on server platforms including Windows NT, Windows 2000, Sun Solaris, Linux and HP-UX.

While some organizations want low-cost tools for content management, others simply need a way for contributors to create content without having to code in HTML. For these businesses, Ektron offers a content authoring tool known as eWebEditPro. This WSIWYG HTML editor can be embedded into a content entry page, and it offers an interface that looks and feels similar to Microsoft Word. (A simpler version of the tool called eWebEdit is currently integrated into Web content management applications including Vignette, Mediasurface, Eprise and OpenMarket.)

Brokerage firm J.J.B. Hilliard, W.L. Lyons of Louisville, KY, is using eWebEditPro to let its legions of brokers contribute timely financial information to the company's intranet site. EwebEditPro was first used on Hilliard Lyons' Internet site, providing a way for site managers to easily change headlines and teaser text. After this successful implementation, the company decided the tool would be ideal for the Hilliard Lyons intranet site.

"Our intranet is very important to the firm," says Tamara Lepianka, a Hilliard Lyons systems engineer/developer. "The intranet is right up there with e-mail [as a communications tool] for us. We use the intranet to publish information when time is of the essence."

The four-year-old intranet site offers more than 35,000 pages of content, including sales information for brokers, financial information from headquarters, human resources and operational announcements, financial reports and alerts and executive memos.

"We needed to remove the Information Systems department from between the content authors and the people who needed the information," says Lapianka. "IS was a bottleneck that kept us from delivering information as soon as possible."

Many companies address this bottleneck by eliminating home-grown management systems. But Lepianka says Hilliard Lyons wanted to avoid distributing the company's custom-built intranet architecture.

"We did not want to buy a big, enterprise application," she explains. "It would have taken longer to integrate certain applications with our system. That's the reason we used eWebEditPro. It just writes code and inserts it into the database."

For content creation, Hilliard Lyons' 103 authors use a custom-built management system that offers a wizard interface, says Lepianka. Authors choose a specific site area and content module depending on their content. Authors create the content using eWebEditPro, which is automatically saved in a Microsoft SQL Server database. A custom-built application server grabs and serves the content to the Web site.

"With eWebEditPro, content authors can quickly post money market rates to the intranet every morning at 8 a.m.," says Lepianka. "Previously, they had to wait for a developer to come in and publish [the data] to the site. At times, new rates may not have been posted until 11 a.m."

Lepianka also adds that the authoring tool has generated unexpected savings. "EWebEditPro has allowed us to move our Web developers on to higher-end development projects," she explains. "We also saved at least $70,000 not having to replace two Web developers who had left the firm. At one time, maintenance of the intranet was a full-time job for four people. That's been reduced to a 10-hour-a-week job for only two people."

The one complaint Lepianka has about the editor is that authors may have too much control. Because of the way the tool codes cascading style sheets, an author can't be denied certain formatting rights, such as changing text color.

EWebEditPro costs $299 for a 10-user license without maintenance support. Ektron has also released eWebEditPro+XML, a new version of the tool that saves content in an XML-compliant format.