What is Contensive?
Contensive is a Content Management System and an Application Framework Extension. It is a web server program that creates a powerful platform for online web applications and websites.
Your web content is your single most powerful tool for accomplishing your communication goals. With Contensive you can now take control of these online assets. Contensive is a cost-effective and manageable solution for delivering accurate, timely content to a targeted audience. It empowers your non-technical staff to easily create, edit, share and distribute information on a moment-by-moment basis.
Who Benefits from a website powered by Contensive?
Your site visitors benefit when your site is up-to-date, acurate and informative. Effective content management achieves that goal.
For a website content manager, Contensive creates editing tools for you to add and edit your web content. Content includes web pages, as well as menuing, images, and drap-and-drop functions called 'Add-ons'. There are many optional content management layers available, from the simplest edit-and-save, to the more structured Workflow Management that requires authoring submission, approval and publishing cycles.
For a website designer, Contensive simplifies creating and managing html templates, styles and resources. When the site is in production, Contensive assembles the html components required, includes the style sheet(s) specified, executes Add-on features and functions, handles personalization, visit tracking, and much more.
For the website developer, Contensive is a flexible development plateform letting your create functionality, called Add-ons, through most popular scripting language. Add-ons are uniquely designed to handle not only server-side programming, but Ajax enabled content, background process activity, remote server-to-server communication, etc.
Contensive is built on a very basic, flexible content engine. The engine powers the website, but the flexible architecture also works exceptionally well for creating other server based applications, such as it's built in contact and resource managers.
For the communication manager, Contensive includes several strong email features. Group Email sends opt-in email to any group of users tracked on the site. Conditional Email sends emails based on events, such as users joining, notices of group expiration, even birthdays. System Email lets administrators customize any message send by the system. For instance, the administrator can create multi-page forms using the Contensive form wizard. When a user submits the form, System Emails created by the administrator are sent to a notification group.
How do I use Contensive?
During the Contensive Implementation phase you designate someone within your organization to be the Administrator. This person has unrestricted access to the back end of the website system and full control over the website content. This person can also designate others to be Administrators or Content Authors/Managers, by giving them the appropriate usernames and passwords. For full instructions on delegating content editing responsibility and roles within your organization, please see the section of this manual entitled Types of Users.
Once established as Administrators and Content Authors, your staff can make changes to your existing website and add additional content. The Contensive solution allows you to edit text, images, headlines, links, ?What?s New? areas ? virtually anything that you might want to include on your website. You will also find that Contensive greatly improves your ability to increase website functionality and manage website visitors. You can present fresh and relevant information, while enhancing the web experience for your audience.
A Contensive site really presents itself as two sites, the public side which is what the general population sees, whether they be quests, or members; and the admin side which is available only to Content Editors, those people with content editing privileges. These people can be administrators or content managers.
The admin area is the central control console for managing your web site. Here you can add/edit content, add/edit site members, review reports manage commerce transactions and all of the other features and functions that are implemented on your site.
As you use the Contensive solution, it will be important to understand two basic elements of your site architecture that we call Parent Pages and Child Pages. Everything starts with a Parent Page ? often a home page or root page. Think of your website as a hierarchy or family tree, with the home page at the top. It is the primary Parent Page ? the page that spawns all other pages. From the Parent Page the web visitor will click on links to subsequent pages, sometimes known as ?drilling down? into the site. Any page that is created as a link from another page is considered a Child Page.
There can be more than one Parent Page within your site hierarchy. Any page that spawns links to other relevant pages ?underneath it? is considered the Parent Page of all the subsequent pages. The subsequent pages are the Child Pages.
Who Can Use the Contensive Solution Within My Organization?
There are two primary types of users for Contensive:
- Administrators
- Content Authors or Managers
The Administrator has ultimate control over the website, with access to all areas and the ability to change or publish content at any time. One or more Administrators can be designated. Contensive will set up your initial Administrator with a User Name and Password, so that they can log in to the Tools Panel. Once that person has access to the Admin Site - or "back-end" of the website, they will have the ability to designate other Administrators if they desire.
Public Site and Administration Site
When a visitor comes to your site, they see the 'Public Site'. To access the public site, you simply type in your URL.
When you edit your content from the Public Site, or on a special site we call the 'Admin Site'. The admin site is part of the same website, just in a hidden and protected URL. Editing from the public site is simple and quick, but the most advanced features
To reach the admin site, you must be logged in, and your account of the site must be setup with the appropriate Role.
By default, the admin site is at the following URL. You can easily change this to discourage security issues.