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What is ContentAfrica's Content Management System?
ContentAfrica's Content Management System (CAMS) allows organisations, groups or individuals to run a powerful, feature-rich website without requiring any technical skills or knowledge, with minimal effort, and without the usual requirements of a dedicated web department or web service company. CAMS empowers non-technical individuals, staff and approved users to publish news, articles, events and any other relevant information directly to your website - using nothing more than a standard Internet browser.
How does our Content Management System work?
CAMS displays friendly input screens allowing users to enter news, stories, events, articles, brochures, training material, pictures or any other content that can be posted to the site. Articles can be entered directly by typing, or can be cut-and-pasted from almost any document (eg Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, text documents, web pages, etc).
The articles are then assigned to one or more topics and approved for submission (or amended or declined) by designated members at any location, again using only their browsers, and without requiring any specialised training. Once the article is approved it appears on the site in its designated topics, and optionally on the homepage as well.
Articles can be updated, re-categorised or deleted at any stage after they have been posted.
How is access to the website controlled?
User groups are created with associated permission levels. Approved users are then assigned to one or more of these groups. This allows organisations to provide information and services to users according to the permission level of the user browsing or logging on to their site.
How does the CAMS website mirror the organisational structure?
Our Content Management System can be set up to reflect the divisions, groups, departments or sections of an organisation. This can range from a simple flat structure to a highly complex hierarchical structure, with sub-levels arranged to any depth required. Levels can be added into the structure, moved or deleted without disrupting the hierarchy. Content assigned to multiple levels is automatically re-assigned as the structure is updated.
Additionally, divisions, groups, departments or sections can have individual themes assigned that override the site theme, ranging from subtle changes to the menu and font colours to complete theme changes that make the site look-and-feel completely different. This allows organisations to create a unique identity for each division, group, department or section within the organisation, while controlling the content for the entire organisation from one central point. An example of this would be a code of conduct or contact list for the entire organisation which would be displayed for each division, department or group within their particular structure and theme.
What drives our Content Management System?
All content displayed on the website is dynamically provided by an industry standard SQL database and server-side languages, which can run on a number of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and most versions of Unix. Browser requirements are standard and include Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 6, Mozilla 1 and Opera 6.
CAMS is a derivate of Postnuke, a widely used open source content management system.
Who would benefit from our Content Management System?
The ContentAfrica CMS is well suited to any group or organisation with a website that publishes content that is constantly changing or updated, and/or requires private access areas for its members. It is also a valuable tool for organisations with more than one office, or with members that need to access and update their website from more than one point.
Typical organisations and groups that can benefit from our Content Management System would include NGO's and Government departments, legal firms, schools, colleges and other educational institutions, employment agencies, estate agents, publications, retail businesses, community groups - in fact almost any organisation or group with changing information that would like to take control of their own web site and avoid or remove the costs and bottlenecks usually associated with web publishing.
What about the "look and feel" of the website?
A wide range of themes are available to give your website a unique layout and “look and feel”. Themes can also be created or customised to meet your requirements. New themes can be added at any stage, allowing the layout and scheme of the entire site or just a section of the site to be changed with a click of a button.
Many additional modules and plugins are available to provide an exact fit for various user requirements. Some examples include public or private forums, calendaring and scheduling systems, file uploads and downloads, private messaging and mailshots, polls and voting systems, advertising and rotating banners, and many more.
New modules and plugins are constantly being developed. A full list of these additional plugins and modules is available on request. Custom-built plugins and modules can also be developed to meet your exact requirements.
Is training provided?
Although our CMS is simple to use, comprehensive on-site training by experienced trainers is provided by ContentAfrica. In addition, our system provides context sensitive online help.
What else does ContentAfrica do?
ContentAfrica addresses the entire range of Content Management development, from investigating user requirements to implementing and hosting the final CMS and any required training and support. In addition, ContentAfrica develops standard Internet sites, ranging from regular "flat" pages (standard html and javascript) to high-end dynamic sites involving server-side and database processing.
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