Content Management

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Content management is a set of processes and technologies that make control of digital information (content) possible. This content can take many forms, including site content, 3rd party content, structured data, or anything else that contains digital information. Content management centers around the idea that content goes through cycles or phases, to create, update, publish and archive information.

A really unique feature of VitalSite's CMS component is the ability to edit text directly on the site. Geonetric's "Surf-and-Edit" technology allows a content manager to surf the site, select a page or area of the page to update and make changes instantly. This means the content manager will always know the answer to the basic question; "how is this going to look on the page?"

Why is a typical CMS not enough? Many organizations draw a line between content management and content delivery/display. This overlooks the crucial grey-zone for the user: How do we ensure that the user-experience is designed to drive them to a course of action? How do we ensure that each visitor is provided with 'action items' and related, relevant information from anywhere on the site? This is especially true for public healthcare Internet sites, with layers and layers of content.

Taking things to the next level, many healthcare organizations are seeking to provide their end-users with a "My Yahoo", portal-type experience. Instead of patching together multiple software solutions, VitalSite's component suite gives you a single, elegant, integrated way to transform your site into a user-focused, personalized, revenue-generating investment.

For System Administrators

• “Surf and Edit" technology
  VitalSite's easy to use Surf and Edit technology makes it as easy as possible to edit content - in 3 clicks! Simply login to the system, browse the site, and edit the page you want to change.
• Easy to use interface
  VitalSite's Surf and Edit technology, along with a pleasing, intuitive interface, ensures that your organization will be up and running quickly and easily - and not complaining about the awkwardness of the interface or that it's "too hard to use".
• What you see is what you get
  VitalSite's powerful WYSIWYG editor is almost identical to the word processing software you use every day. It includes all of the features you'd expect - bold, italics, styles, bullets, numbered lists, and more. But it also includes features not available in any other CMS.
• Accurate preview
  Want to see exactly what your page will look like? Hit the Preview Button, and VitalSite will show you exactly what your page will look like in every detail.
• Paste from Microsoft Word or other office applications
  VitalSite makes it easy to paste most content from those programs right into the editor, and it'll clean it up and apply styles automatically.
• Inline search and replace
  VitalSite lets you find them easily and update them all at once.
• Integrated spell check
  VitalSite includes an embedded spellchecker, tied into your Microsoft Word dictionary, so if you add words to the dictionary in Word, they'll show up in VitalSite. Supports both the "red squiggly underline" feature as well as an interactive spell check.
• Link manager
  Managing links - with a CMS or without one - can be laborious. VitalSite makes it easy by managing links for you. As you update links or move pages, it will automatically manage the link reconciliation for you.
• Image manager
  Centrally manage an image repository for your site directly from the editor screen, with a variety of built-in style formatting options to control consistency easily.
• File & document manager
  An integrated file manager enables you to upload everything from Word documents to PDFs in two clicks.
• Print from VitalSite
  Print your content right from VitalSite before saving it. Sometimes it’s easier to proof content on paper with a pen.
• Undo and redo
  Make a mistake? Use the undo button and you're all set.
• Caption Manager
  Beyond basic font and color styling, VitalSite’s integrated Caption Manager has a wide variety of pre-defined styles for headline banners, photos and captions, and other combinations of layout elements, all designed to enforce and enhance your existing brand style.

Overall System Features

• Help search engine rankings
  Search engines use the filenames of your Web pages as one part of their ranking algorithms. Many CMS products use silly database-created addresses to reference pages.
  
  For example, in some of our competitors' software your Heart Center page might be:
  www.site.com/body.cfm?id=934
  
  In VitalSite, your Heart Center's page can be:
  www.site.com/heart/
  
  VitalSite's intelligence automatically optimizes much of your site for search engine exposure, including appropriate style techniques and other tactics to ensure that your page receives the best rankings possible from the search engines.
• Distribute authoring across your enterprise
  VitalSite makes it easy - you can have roles for different types of users, general and/or granular. You can maintain approval rights over any and all content before it goes live if you wish or you can release control to specific individuals.
• Manage meta data about your content
  VitalSite makes it easy for you to manage meta data, such as additional words or descriptions that should go along with your content. In the past this was often used for external search engines, such as Google, but today they're used primarily for searches within your site.
• Let VitalSite schedule page publication for you
  Not going to be around this weekend to publish a page that should go live on Saturday night? No problem - let VitalSite's lifecycle management take care of it. Schedule a page to go live at the date you specify. You'll even get an email letting you know that it was published, ready for you in your inbox on Monday morning.
• Automatically produce valid HTML
  To ensure compatibility with federal guidelines and best practices online, your site needs to be compatible with screen readers for blind users and other users that may be color blind, have slow finger dexterity to operate a mouse, or otherwise have a harder time using your site. We address this in our approach as well as in our software - VitalSite produces valid code automatically.
• Enforce consistent styles
  What good is a content management system if it lets users put flashing pink text in the middle of your homepage? VitalSite enforces stylistic rules according to your style guide. (We can help you write a style guide if you don't have one already).
  
  VitalSite also ties into your Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) automatically. This makes it easier to be consistent across the site, keeping the site easy to use and in accordance with your brand guidelines.
• Compatibility is built-in
  VitalSite generates sites that are functional in any browser - on Windows, Mac or Linux, in Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera or Safari (or almost any other browser you can imagine).
• Supports most languages
  VitalSite can support Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, (simplified) Chinese, Chinese (traditional), Danish, and Swedish languages, and most character sets.