ImpressPages CMS: Web Development Made Easy
Update: ImpressPages has won the Most Promising Open Source Project category in the 2011 Open Source Awards by PacktPublishing.
If you are new to CMS software, or looking to adopt a CMS solution but worried about your lack of programming knowledge, ImpressPages could be up your street. ImpressPages is an open source CMS platform (released under a GNU GPL License) that epitomizes the term ‘user-friendly’. Designed to provide users with a semi-automated solution for their content management needs, ImpressPages offers a true drag-and-drop interface. And with other content publishing tools such as the smart cut-and-paste feature, this free CMS platform sounds like a real gem. But has ImpressPages’ sacrificed functionality for simplicity?
Does a Drag and Drop Interface Mean Reduced Flexibility?
ImpressPages uses a system of widgets, sometimes referred to as ‘content blocks’, to help construct the structure of a web page and populate it with content. You simply drag and drop these widgets onto the page. There are various widgets to cover various aspects of web page design including:
- Text
- Title
- Photo
- FAQ
- File Upload
- Contact Form
- Video, and more
Does the use of content blocks restrict overall page design flexibility? Well there is an argument for this, but not everyone is comfortable with programming code and the ability to create dynamic web pages, without extensive knowledge of HTML and CSS, will appeal to many. By using a widget-based system, ImpressPages allows web designers to build web pages quickly and efficiently with minimal fuss.
Is the ‘Smart Cut-and-Paste’ Tool Actually That Smart?
Well it certainly deserves to be called pretty clever at the very least. This feature can save a lot of headaches caused by cross-code contamination. Cut and pasting is a wonderful facility but does come with the hidden danger of inheriting messy and incompatible HTML and CSS code. This code can populate content with uninvited character-derived oddities.
ImpressPages’ Smart Cut and Paste feature will honour any bolded, italicized, or underlined text you transfer. It will keep the formatting for lists, paragraphs, line breaks, and links. The clever part is that ImpressPages converts the content into a valid style for your page. So no more surprise ‘%’ and ‘$’ characters suddenly appearing on a page where an apostrophe or parenthesis should be!
How’s the SEO?
Like any good CMS software, ImpressPages has been designed with SEO in mind. And for users not overly savvy with good SEO principles, ImpressPages lends a helping hand by providing some useful automated features that will assist a website become search engine friendly.
- Automatically generate sitemaps
- Set descriptions, titles, and URL values on a per-page basis
- Automatically generate URLs which are SEO-friendly
- All content widgets comply with current SEO recommendations.
What Else Does ImpressPages Bring to the Table?
1. Simplified Internal Architecture
ImpressPages allows users to create an good internal link infrastructure by using a ‘page tree’ system. Simply select the page you wish to link to from the page tree overview and a link is automatically created. If a page is moved within the site architecture, for any reason, ImpressPages will automatically reconfigure the link... meaning no more 404 error catastrophes.
2. Multilingual Capabilities
ImpressPages has a tool for adding, or reconfiguring, a new language to a website with just a few clicks. A site can display the correct language to a visitor without the need for any awkward searching or altering language settings on the visitors part. The whole process can be set up to react automatically dependant on the visitors web browser settings.
3. Installation/Update Wizards
ImpressPages is all about ease-of-use and anytime a user is required to update a feature or needs to install something new there will be a foolproof wizard to assist. This may irritate some who consider too much assistance patronizing. But for the majority of users the wizards will provide step-by-step guidance and negate the need to either memorize, or consistently refer back to, wordy instruction manuals.
Some other features included in the ImpressPages package include:
- Website Administrator Tool which sends a notification when any page, or link on a page, has crashed or broken.
- Security features that help prevent cross-site scripting and CSRF attacks.
- Inclusion of Anti-Spam features in all Contact Forms.
- Newsletter creation
- RSS
Is ImpressPages Simply a CMS Practice Tool for Beginners?
While the automated functionality of ImpressPages may deter some hands-on style developers, there is no arguing that this CMS software does make website creation and development very easy. Accepted, ImpressPages may not have the in-depth capabilities of the high-cost CMS rivals but it is still feature-rich and possesses enough capability for building and managing high quality websites.
Don’t be too fooled by the furore over ImpressPages automation and use of content widgets. If you know how to code with HTML and CSS there are many areas available in ImpressPages to customize and develop independently. ImpressPages ships with a completely free license (with zero alteration restrictions) which means you can work on its kernel coding as well as the internal features.
ImpressPages was criticized in the past for being too basic but the developers have worked hard to address previous issues and create a fully-fledged CMS solution. The latest version of ImpressPages v1.0.8 sees more beneficial features being incorporated into the software.
If you are interested in a free, technically friendly CMS solution that can help you develop and manage website needs without too much fuss then ImpressPages CMS is worth a look.
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