Blogs - August 2011
Below are the blog entries for August 2011
The Eternal Debate: Velocity or XSLT
By Rahul Bhagnari
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011 at 4:00pm
With the recent release of Cascade Server 6.10, we have added enhanced Velocity tools designed to make writing formats even easier and to provide maximum flexibility to our users. Check out some of the newly integrated tools: Display Tool, Escape Tool, Math Tool and Number Tool, among others. We have found that Velocity’s similarities to PHP and JavaScript mean that it takes less than 30% of the time to create a format in Velocity as it does to create a traditional XSLT format. Plus, Velocity is easier to learn, easier to read, and easier to debug than XSLT. So, with all benefits of Velocity and the advances in its integration with Cascade CMS, we must address a frequently asked question—Velocity or XSLT?
In the Cascade CMS stadium, which format reigns supreme? Let me go ahead and tell you the end first: Either one can do the job and do it well! Honestly. But there are some genuine benefits of each, which is why we are proud to support both.
Let’s look at a few important categories to compare Velocity and XSLT:
- ROBUSTNESS:
- Velocity works without the Xalan JavaScript extensions for date functionality, such as start dates and end dates.
- XSLT stylesheets can be included within other XSLT stylesheets, including the ability to cross-Site share these formats.
- XSLT formats can be tested and created outside of Cascade Server.
- INCLUSIVENESS:
- The Velocity engine continues to be updated with new tools cropping up all the time, which we incorporate into new versions of Cascade CMS as appropriate. Be sure to make any requests on our idea exchange.
- XSLT was designed specifically to go through XML data and therefore it’s often a foolproof method when displaying your content.
- Including PHP and JavaScript code snippets in your Velocity stylesheet is as easy as reading this sentence!
- GENERAL EASE:
- XSLT is an XML document and is designed to read XML data (exclusively) making it simple for clients to map their transformation from the XML content to how it should be output on the page.
- Velocity is often coded in a straightforward, linear way making it easier and clearer to “see” and understand your format. Despite the standardization of XSLT, it’s still pretty hard to troubleshoot and debug.
- Velocity looks startlingly similar to JavaScript and therefore isn’t much of a jump in logic for many people; this makes it much easier to learn.
Hannon Hill has pulled out all the stops in supporting Velocity because we think it offers superior benefits to our users over XSLT. Additionally, Velocity allows us to develop our own tools based on your needs. While we support traditional XSLT, we chose to support Velocity as well in order to provide a more intuitive, easy-to-learn-read-debug, and more efficient format. More tools and other types of transformations are already in the pipeline! If you have any requests, please contact us at support@hannonhill.com or make your suggestions known on our help forums.
In conclusion, there really is no battle between Velocity and XSLT at all because we want you to determine what works best for you and feel free to use both—even on the same page! We do and will continue to support both Velocity and XSLT so you have maximum flexibility within Cascade CMS.
For more in-depth information, check out our 2010 User Conference Presentation on the topic featuring engineering all-star Brent Arrington. Check out the example.com and example.edu Sites to see various XSLT and Velocity examples. Some of these formats are also located at GitHub, our main repository for various examples, tools and code.
Category
- Resources
- Product Upgrades
Vote for 2011 Cassies Awards
By Holly Wright
Thursday, August 25th, 2011 at 2:00pm
As many of you know, we are introducing a new awards ceremony called the Cassies at the User Conference this year. Cassies will be awarded to people who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in using Cascade Server and helping our clients.
Thank you for taking the time to submit your nominations. We have finalized the submissions, and the official list of nominees is below. You don't have to be attending the User Conference to vote or even to win. Click here to cast your vote for the Cassies before Friday, September 2nd!
- Most Creative Use of Cascade Server - What is the most innovative functionality that your organization has implemented using Cascade Server?
- Union College - For its integration with social media.
- University of Houston - For its use of centralized social media and rich media community site that engages their student audience and allows students to upload their own videos and pictures.
- Concordia College - For its clean and thorough site for managing and displaying their videos as well as segmenting them by topic.
- Best New Site powered by Cascade Server - Has your organization rolled out a new Cascade-powered website over the last twelve months? What makes it unique?
- Langara College - Langara uses Cascade's webservices to synchronize course information with its public website. It has around 2500 pages which are managed (or automatically updated) through Cascade. They've used LDAP authentication to let every employee have an account and they're utilizing groups to manage permissions of 100+ users.
- University of California Santa Cruz - UC Santa Cruz has a great design, clean implementation and great use of structured data blocks and reusable formats.
- Clarkson University - Clarkson has a very creative design and shows off their campus well through photos.
- University of Saskatchewan - USASK's site uses a fresh, clean design that has great functionality. The navigation is good and simple and the focus on their academic programs is right on homepage. Also, all design for this site was done in-house.
- Customer MVP: Most helpful non-Hannon Hiller to assist other clients - Our Cascade user community is awesome, and many of our clients frequently jump on our help forum to assist other customers. Who has been the most valuable player on the help forum? Who has shared great code examples and given advice on the high-ed listserv?
- Jason Aller (University of California Davis)
- Andrew Bauserman (William & Mary)
- Lee Roberson (Northwestern University)
- Earl Fogel (University of Saskatchewan)
- Hannon Hill MVP: Most helpful Hannon Hiller - Which Hannon Hill team member has provided the best customer service? (Voted on by clients only)
- Tim Reilly, Support Manager
- Joel Baxter, Support Engineer
- Penny Harding, Services Manager
- Charlie Holder, Services Trainer
- Chris Armistead, Client Relations Manager
- Lightening Bolt Award - How quickly did your company roll out Cascade Server to your users?
- Texas A&M Texarkana - They implemented their new site within just a week and have gone through a re-design already.
- Southern Illinois University-Carbondale - They implemented a new site while going through re-design, and updated services work to reflect new materials as they came in. Nice looking site! It took about a month from the start of Services work to launch.
- Hawai'i Pacific University - They implemented new site quickly and built out thousands of pages in just a few weeks.
- Biggest Fan of Cascade Server - Which client has been Hannon Hill’s biggest cheerleader, giving testimonials, referrals, interviews and webinars? (Voted on by Hannon Hill team members only)
- Winston Churchill-Joell (Sarah Lawrence College)
- Nate Tanner (University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics)
- Karmon Runquist (Wentworth Institute of Technology)
- Tony De Castro (Hawai'i Pacific University)
- Deborah Feldman (Northeastern University School of Law)
- David Shipley (University of New Brunswick)
- Early Adopter - Which client has had the best integration of a new Cascade Server feature or a partial site upgrade that best showcases the functionality of Cascade Server?
- University of Scranton - For its mobile website implementation (prior to and in version 6.8).
- University of California Santa Cruz - For being the first ones to implement Structured Data Blocks in production; they actually postponed their launch until the feature was available.
- University of New Brunswick - For its use of the WordPress connector and for using database publishing so extensively.
Congratulations to all the nominees! If you haven’t yet signed up for the User Conference, register today! The last day to register is Monday, August 29th.
Category
- Events
- Awards
Sign Up For The Cascade Server 6.10 Webinar
By Chris Armistead
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 at 1:00pm
Hannon Hill is excited to announce that this Tuesday, August 30th, we will be presenting a webinar on the latest feature release of our flagship WCM product, Cascade Server 6.10. This free webinar will demo the new features in Cascade Server 6.10 and be followed by a Q&A session with Hannon Hill staffers. We encourage you to sign up today and reserve your seat.
As always, if you can't make the live event you will be able to view the video of this webinar and all other past webinars on the Demos page on our site. We hope to see you next Tuesday!
Category
- Resources
- Commentary
Why Migrate to Sites?
By Charlie Holder
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 at 4:00pm
Although Cascade Server 6.x has been out for over a year now, we still get questions about migrating to Sites. Since the list of advantages to using Sites grows with each release, we wanted to share some reasons why we think Sites are the way to go.
Targets were Confusing
Before Cascade Server 5.0, Targets were used to organize content and define a "website." Targets were both a relational and functional entity that defined the scope of a "site." The scope began with a selected folder and included all of the assets beneath it. During the content development process, a Target was to be chosen for every Template that was created. And as a limitation, each Template could only be used by one "site." With the Sites model, the idea of a Base Folder that stores a Site's content is a much more logical asset than a generic folder asset. And by having an asset in the CMS that is specifically designed for tracking what Site an object belongs to, you are able to freely share more assets, like Templates, across different Sites without needing to create multiple copies.
Administration Area Asset Organization
Depending on the size of your deployment, the lists of Asset Factories, Configuration Sets, Metadata Sets, Data Definitions, Content Types, etc. might be a bit lengthy. Couple this with systems that are not using Content Types at all and your System Administrators could have a wealth of assets to wade through every time they log in. Sites afford you the ability to create certain assets inside of each Site when they don't apply to any other. Because Administration Area assets can be shared across Sites, you won't need to worry about duplicating every asset in every Site either.
Site-specific Publish Queue
With the release of Cascade Server 6.8, publishing was greatly improved -- the Publish Queue concurrently process two jobs per Site now. This means that each Site is able to publish two jobs at a time and the system as a whole can process jobs from multiple Sites at the same time.
Individual Recycle Bins
As a temporary holding area for deleted assets, the Recycle Bin helps prevent the loss of content. All Home Area assets (Pages, Files, Folders, Blocks, Formats, Templates, and Links) are sent to the Recycle Bin before being permanently deleted. The real benefit comes when you couple this with a user's abilities within the system. These abilities dictate which assets they can see in a particular Recycle Bin and even which Recycle Bin a user can interact with in general. Users only interact with content they manage and content in other Sites remains safe from accidental changes by unknowing parties.
Faster Database Queries
The application arguably performs better when you make queries to the database using "site Ids" instead of having to query across all data in the database. Quick and easy.
Site Roles
Users can have elevated permissions in one Site and more restricted permissions in another Site. This concept is much, MUCH harder to reproduce in the Global Area. Take the ability to "Modify the Content Type of pages" as an example. If a User has this ability, they have it for all assets in the Global Area, whether they work with each "site" or not. In Sites, you determine what Roles you want available on that specific Site and then choose which Groups inherit those abilities. Users now "Modify the Content Type of pages" only in Sites to which the Groups they belong to are assigned.
Simpler Access Rights
Sites offer another level of granularity as to how you would like to manage the Users within each Site. They are great for decentralized environments where you may have different people managing different areas and groups of users. Each Site's available Role and Group assignments are separate and customizable. Furthermore, assigning access to content through Groups and changing end-level user account access is faster and more easily managed.
Cross-Site Linking
Cascade Server provides users with a number of different ways to manage links in content. Managed links are tracked within the system so that one is updated automatically when the linked-to asset moves or changes names. In Cascade 6.2, it is possible to create links in content to assets existing on different Sites. This is particularly useful when linking between pages on different Sites or when linking to centrally managed support assets like CSS and Javascript files.
This becomes impossible when you begin to publish assets that exist within the Global Area to different Destinations. Content that is contained within a Site has an extra element associated with it for tracking what Site the asset belongs to. This element is used in conjunction with publish information for each asset to allow Cascade Server to manage the links regardless of what server or domain the content is pushed to.
In addition to being able to link to assets that are maintained in different Sites, it is now possible to link to a specific Page Configuration, even if that Page asset is published to a different Destination. The Web URL field grants you the ability to cross-link assets that are published to different domain names while still managing those assets within one Site.
Connectors
This is an example of a Site-centric feature that is not available in the Global Area. Connectors are simply a means by which to (pardon the pun) "connect" third-party applications and tools with a Cascade Server instance. They allow users to take advantage of other applications, like WordPress, Facebook and Twitter, for pushing content that is managed within the system to external locations.
As you can see from this short list, migrating content into Sites provides a variety of benefits to the system itself and to the users. I would love to talk more in depth, about any of these points as well as points I may not have listed here, to anyone that wants to continue the discussion.
Category
- Resources
- Commentary
Getting to the Meat and Potatoes of a Social University
By Rahul Bhagnari
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 2:00pm
Here are some tips and tricks for setting up a coherent social network:
Don’t be Intrusive/Invasive/Intolerable
- I hate to start off with a don’t, but it’s one of the more important rules of social networking. You don’t want to clog people’s feeds with information that doesn’t even apply to them. Think about the audience you’re reaching and how you can better serve them.
- Utilize Twitter to post about emergencies (nuclear meltdown, perhaps), random campus occurrences (a squirrel army attacking all graduate students), or special events (free fried chicken giveaway)
- Use Facebook to bring attention to long-running events and programs, like Spring commencement or study abroad and co-op deadlines
- Incorporate LinkedIn by promoting alumni and current student networking events. Start discussions about different industries using campus faculty/staff
- Instead, provide a central location to consolidate and syndicate all of your social media interactions. Check out the recent Union College webinar and how they implemented their Social Media Mash-Up network
- Most importantly, know your audience for each Social Network. Don’t start discussions on LinkedIn that would be better handled by a Twitter account. Where's the fun in being redundant? Utilize LinkedIn for genuine connection between different individuals, stimulating conversations and random tidbits about other alums. Like - how many alumni own their own business? It can be a tool for so much more than just shameless promotion and networking.
Interact!
- Put a face to your University! Your social media interactions define you as a University and it’s important to have a clear and confident voice in your presentation
- Create special ways for your students to interact with you on-the-go. Almost everyone has a smart phone these days (thanks catchy advertisements) so syncing everything to be easily digestible on mobile devices is key--and helps extend your reach
- Host live chats or Skype sessions with students to air grievances, comments and concerns. Take these seriously--being an accessible university means you take the good with the not-so-good
- Share your content! Share your lectures and faculty with other colleges and universities. Creating a network of students, alumni and faculty from various institutions can really help make you a voice to be reckoned with
- Never hesitate to respond to Tweets and Facebook comments. This encourages interaction with your followers and sets a precedent for the future
Promote and Fundraise
- Networking is key.
- Promote social networking of alumni and more tenured faculty members with new students and new professors. Harness your ability to bring various groups of people together for the benefit of everyone
- Showcase your students’ talents on YouTube! Advocate for various professional organizations on your blog. Promote the hell out of an event for a student association--it all helps paint a clear picture of your university
- Try out “Day in the Life” Twitter feeds. Have a live Twitter feed of various faculty members, students, and staff around campus showing what an average day for them is like
With Cascade Server, you can utilize WordPress, Twitter and Facebook connectors to sync up your content with your various social networking tools. Plus, mobile sites have never been easier to develop with out-of-the-box designs and templates ready for you!
Be sure to check out the Hannon Hill Twitter and Facebook accounts too! We’re always open to new followers, friends, and likes, of course!
Category
- Resources
- Commentary
Cascade 6.10 now available: Facebook Connector, new Velocity Tools and more
By Bradley Wagner
Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 3:00pm
Overview
- a Facebook Connector
- new tools for Velocity developers
- a filter box to quickly locate Users, Groups, and Roles
- a handy feature for linking between assets published to different web servers
Increase your Velocity!
For Cascade developers, we’ve upgraded our Velocity engine to version 1.7 and added a number of new tools for developers including:
The goal is to allow developers to do more with less code. Here’s great example of how the Display Tool’s list() function can aid developers in outputting list or array contents more easily.
Before 6.10:
#set ($links = [“link1”, “link2”, “link3”])
#foreach ($link in $links)
#if ($velocityCount == $links.size)
$link
#else
$link |
#end
#end
In 6.10:
#set ($links = [“link1”, “link2”, “link3”])
$_DisplayTool.list($links, “ | ”)
Other notable improvements to Velocity include:
- Support for #break directives inside of #foreach loops
- Ability to treat arrays as Lists
- Better support for variable scoping inside of #foreach loops and macros
- $foreach.count, $foreach.first, $foreach.last, $foreach.hasNext loop variables
Check out our Script Formats documentation for examples of each of the new tools.
Also, join us for our upcoming Velocity webinar this Tuesday to learn more about the improvements available in 6.10.
Locate Users, Groups, and Roles faster
Administrator users let us know that looking for Users, Groups, and Roles was becoming unwieldy with enough of them in the system. In 6.10, we added a filter box to the users, groups, and roles interface to allow you to locate these objects by name (or full name or email for users). We also added “Full Name” and “Email” columns to the Users table.
Destination Web URLs and Mobile Outputs
In Cascade 6.8, we added the ability to publish page configurations to specific Destinations. This allowed users to publish their mobile page output, for example, to a different web server than their regular HTML page output. In 6.10, we’ve added a Web URL property to Destinations to help link to page outputs published to different web servers and consequently, different URLs.
Let’s take Hannon Hill’s own marketing Site as an example. It has the Site URL: http://hannonhill.com. Our services team recently created a mobile version of the Site that publishes to http://m.hannonhill.com. With 6.10, we can set the Destination Web URL for our mobile Destination to be http://m.hannonhill.com so that it overrides the Sites’ base URL.
That way, when we link to the mobile output of pages on our marketing, the link gets correctly written as http://m.hannonhill.com/<path/to/page>.html. Likewise, links from other Sites in Cascade to the mobile output of pages on the marketing site will use the Destination’s Web URL http://m.hannonhill.com instead of the Site URL.
Other improvements
Other features include an upgrade to the syntax-highlighting file editor, an upgrade to the PDF engine, and support for Tomcat 6. Check out the complete release summary on our Knowledge Base for more information.
Category
- News
Join Us For The Script Formats Webinar
By Chris Armistead
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 2:00pm
Hannon Hill’s next Best Practices webinar will take place on Tuesday, August 16th at 2PM EDT. Cascade Server developer Brent Arrington will provide viewers with a technical demonstration of the new tools and functionality available with Script Formats as of Cascade Server 6.10. Included in this webinar will be some actual coding examples of each of the following new tools:
The presentation’s emphasis will be on specific, common implementation use-cases which each of the above tools address. For a good refresher prior to this event, please watch the webinar on Velocity Functionality in Cascade Server. We hope you’ll sign up today and join us for this free session next Tuesday.
Category
- Events
Just A Few Conference Rooms Left
By Chris Armistead
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 10:00am
As some of you probably know, we recently sold out of rooms at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center where we will be hosting the 2011 Cascade Server User Conference on September 19th and 20th. However, we have secured several rooms at the nearby Renaissance hotel within walking distance of the conference center. In fact, the newly refurbished Renaissance hotel is even a bit closer to our Monday night event and Atlanta nightlife!
Rooms are limited, however, so we hope you’ll make arrangements today for the Conference. Please view our full conference schedule and sign up here to secure one of the remaining spots.
Category
- Events