At Long Last… The Perfect CMS!

Written by Rosalind Gardner on April 23, 2007 · Comments (21)
Filed Under Software, Build a Site ·

Well, the Year of the Pig really is already proving to be my year. Not only was I born in a pig year - but I also finally found the content management system (CMS) software that answers many of my prayers… ergo, I now look as happy as the little pig you see pictured here to the left. :-)

Let me explain…

Up until now, I’ve recommended that affiliates - who have little or no knowledge of HTML - put up a blog on their own domain using the Wordpress platform on a cPanel host.

Compared with using an HTML editor to build static pages, blogging with Wordpress is a simple and inexpensive web-based site-building method that allows a new webmaster to get their site online very quickly, and requires only a TINY bit of effort to use Fantastico within the cPanel interface to install Wordpress. Best of all, blogs are traffic magnets.

Wordpress has a few limitations that can be a bit frustrating, however. Although creating categories and sub-categories for posts is simple and straightforward, page (article) categorization is clunky. If you are inclined to make a page for each one of your articles, the list of pages in the interface could just go on and on and ON and a minor ‘clunkiness’ could become ‘VERY frustrating’ in a big hurry.

To solve this problem, I’ve been hunting for a better system for more than a year, and am happy to report that after reviewing a great many free and paid content management systems (CMS), I’ve finally settled on what I think is the very best of the bunch.

That CMS is … ArticleLive.

I’ve been using ArticleLive to build out the article portion of the NPT site (in the background) for awhile now and the more I use it, the more I like it.

Here’s a little sneek preview of how things are shaping up so far.

Because there are SO many articles and newsletters and product reviews on NPT that have to be categorized and input, I estimate it’ll be another month before it goes live — but it will be SO worth the work in the end. :-)

For example, in addition to superior article categorization, ArticleLive users have the ability to order articles and assign related articles.

So, in the “Affiliate Marketing” top-level category, I could place “Can I Really Make Money as an Affiliate Marketer?” at the top of the page, and assign “Top 10 Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer” as the ‘Next’ article and “Affiliate Marketing: A Planned Approach” as a ‘Related’ article, providing the reader with a natural flow or way to progress through the site.

It’s also easy to split articles into more than one page which provides more food for the search engine spiders. And being the gluttonous little devils that they are, the more you feed them, the happier they are and the higher your site will rank.

Speaking of ranking, your search engine rankings will also improve with ArticleLive because it uses static, keyword-rich URL’s that the SE’s prefer to URL’s that show up as a query string with question marks.

In addition to posting articles under categories, you can also create individual pages outside the category system. These are most suitable for pages such as your About Us, Privacy Policy, Testimonial and Disclaimer pages.

While categorization makes it simple for your users to browse through your site, ArticleLive also includes 3 different ways to search your site, including smart search, phrase search and word search.

Although I may continue to use my Wordpress blog and will have to make a few tweaks to integrate the two systems, new ArticleLive users will appreciate that the program includes both a Blog and a News platform.

Both the Article and the News platforms allow you to create content that can be expired on a certain date. This is a particularly stellar feature when you have time-limited offers to post and don’t want to disappoint or frustrate visitors who find the information after the offer expires.

Alternatively, you can Feature articles that you want your visitors to see right away. By default, Featured articles are shown at the top of the homepage with Recent articles right below them.
You may of course choose to display any content you want on the homepage. :-)

Installing ArticleLive was super easy.

It took only a few minutes to download, unzip, upload to the server and set my variables - many of which (such as the Database Settings) are pre-configured, which makes things easier for non-geeks like myself. :-)

There are 5 Templates from which to choose, and a variety of color options for each template, all of which can be easily changed after the fact just by selecting another option from the drop-down menu.

So, for example, if you choose the ‘Bright Light’ template in blue, you can easily change it to green for St. Patrick’s Day, Arbor Day and Earth Day. :-)

I did encounter a minor glitch when I first installed the program, as the template didn’t render correctly. I sent an email to Interspire who determined that there was a small issue with my server configuration. So I emailed my hosting account manager, Steve, who had the ‘problem’ resolved in minutes.

The only other minor issue I had was with the Glossary. I had Ed copy each item from the NPT glossary into ArticleLive, but then I couldn’t find the entries. My mistake! I really should read the documentation that comes with software! :-)

Again, the nice folks at Interspire quickly replied to my email and explained that glossary terms are used directly within an article. When an article is being viewed, ArticleLive checks through the contents of that article and any terms you have in your glossary. For any terms found in the article that are in the glossary, a little help description will be added for visitors to your website. It’s actually a really cool feature.

Do you want to allow other authors to submit their own articles? You can do that to the extent you are comfortable and at the unique user level.

For example, you can set permissions to allow your trusted friend Jack to create and approve his own articles, whereas loose-lipped Jill could be restricted to posting - but not approving - her articles. You would have to approve her articles before they went public. Your visitors can click on any author’s name to view all the articles published by that author. Author pictures may also be displayed.

If you allow it, your users can rate and comment on individual articles. The top 5 most Popular articles are shown in the right sidebar by default… which you can move anywhere else or you can completely delete this display if you prefer.

Your regular visitors will appreciate that they can keep a list of their Favorite articles, as well as print and email article and page content.

ArticleLive also provides you with useful statistics about your site including most viewed pages, popular categories and articles, most discussed articles, and most popular authors. Use the information to find out which subjects your visitors are most interested in and give them even more good information on those topics.

Last but not least, ArticleLive includes a very robust WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor that outshines the one offered by the Wordpress interface by a long shot.

Up to this point, I’ve covered only a fraction of this software’s capabilities and benefits. To learn more about the program, visit the ArticleLive site and check out the features, the demo and some of the other testimonials from happy users.

Very reasonably priced at $239, ArticleLive includes free installation and 12 months of support and updates.

Best of all, this program will save you time (which equals money) and frustration in the future as you won’t have to transfer your very large collection of articles into a far more robust, easier-to-use system. :-)

Crank up your site’s capabilities ten-fold in minutes - get ArticleLive today!

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    • Comments

    21 Responses to “At Long Last… The Perfect CMS!”

    ALEX NEWELL on April 24th, 2007 4:22 am

    I’ve just spent a few days reviewing Joomla. Like you Rosalind I think a CMS system is the way to go. HTML editors will be defunct in a few years. But please tell us why you chose ArticleLive. Especially since Joomla is free! I like the ArticleLive site but I am really new to CMS and do not know what features to look for.

    Cheers

    Alex Newell

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    Rosalind Gardner on April 24th, 2007 6:22 am

    Hi Alex ,

    Like you, I reviewed all the free content management systems (like Mambo and Joomla) before I finally decided to use Article Live.

    I’ve detailed what I really like about the product above, but to be really concise, Article Live is far more robust and less complicated to use than the others… and EASY always gets a really high score from me. :-)

    Cheers,
    Ros

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    Annabel on April 24th, 2007 6:30 am

    Very interesting product. Unfortunately, the links don’t seem to be working. It just hangs there on a blank page.

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    Rosalind Gardner on April 24th, 2007 7:24 am

    Hi Annabel ,

    Interesting. The ArticleLive links are all working for me. Anyone else having a problem?

    Cheers,
    Ros

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    Stephanie on April 24th, 2007 8:39 am

    No problems here. Probably just a touch of downtime.

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    Robert on May 4th, 2007 9:04 am

    Hi Ros,
    One of the things that attracted me to Wordpress is how fast a post can be SE indexed via the ping.
    I didn’t read you address this in your presentation.
    So…
    Can this product get an article/post indexed as timely as Wordpress?

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    Robert on May 4th, 2007 9:37 am

    Blast you Ros! Blast you I say!
    Just when I thought Wordpress to be the be all and end all you find something new to tease with…
    I got into Wordpress on your recommendation.
    And now this!
    What to do. What to do… ;0)

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    Mark on May 4th, 2007 11:06 am

    Was very interested to read your article on CMS’s and it did take my attention…

    I am almost solely focused on websites for affiliates using CMS systems and it nice to see a commercial article focused product.

    I would agree that your recommendation to newer affiliates is a simple CMS system, however longer term their site, if not just content related, would be far better suited to the open source (no cost - Fr ee) CMS system such as joomla.

    Much more is possible with Joomla whilst graphically more appealing, and can be extended and learned incrementally with plenty of video tutorials and user forums.

    My clients, both website and mentoring, predominantly now use Joomla for their sites.

    So if an affiliate has more than a basic content website planed or needs a more individual look for their site, then a more complete CMS system would be ideal.

    Mark

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    Kristy on May 22nd, 2007 11:47 am

    Great tips and advice, thank you. :)

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    Sukarto on May 25th, 2007 0:37 am

    Hi Rosalind, I just purchased ArticleLive based on your recommendations (and thru link of course ;)
    Same with you, I already research and trying using Joomla as my website platform but the need to make my website up and running asap, made me give ArticleLive as my solution.

    However, I need special template and I notice you use ArticleLive template that very different from template that provided by ArticleLive. And I like your template ;) I really want to know how you come up with that template. I already spend several hours to learn customized about ArticleLive template, but it’s almost impossible for me to create the one that I want from scratch.

    Huge thanks.

    Sukarto

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    Rosalind Gardner on May 26th, 2007 8:15 am

    Hi Sukarto,

    Actually, the template that I’m using isn’t all that different — I just took a few components out and moved a few around.

    I’ve been working with CSS / HTML for years, so it’s not that big a deal for me to do stuff like that.

    If you’re just starting out, I would contact the folks at Interspire, the people who developed ArticleLive and ask whether they can recommend someone to modify your template for you. I think that would be preferable to going to Elance and getting a designer that hasn’t worked with the product before - especially if you are paying an hourly rate for the changes.

    Hope that helps!

    Ros

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    Philippe Foubert on June 5th, 2007 17:07 pm

    Your links to the ArticleLive site from the ‘at long last the perfect CMS’ are not loading properly … Cheers and All the Best, Philippe

    Thanks Philippe! The links came coded with ‘target=”_new”… (note the underscore) BAD code.

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    Batsirai on June 25th, 2007 20:47 pm

    Great to see that you are moving to ArticleLive - it is a great product! I have been using it for a few years onmy site: called2music.com

    I am also starting a template store - many people need them, and I have quite a bit of experience with them. In fact I did some design work for Interspire. Don’t mind helping people out.

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    Ryan on August 1st, 2007 7:00 am

    Hey Rosalind.

    I know all of you might think Article Live sounds amazing…it too has some limitations.

    Nothing on earth will ever compare to Joomla.
    The only thing so attractive about ArticleLive is it’s ease of use.
    Noobs will benefit greatly from it.

    But Joomla is the king under the sun and any CMS expert can…no WILL tell you that.

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    Frank Eckdall on August 17th, 2007 9:23 am

    Hi Ms Vacation,

    As time permits I have been reviewing CMS for several years now. I dismissed Article Live but that was a long time ago. I will have another look now that it has improved.

    When it comes to Joomla or previously Mambo I have been leaning towards Drupal.

    I recently read a book called Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress.

    Did you evaluate Drupal?

    Kind regards,
    Frank Eckdall

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    Rosalind Gardner on August 18th, 2007 7:41 am

    Hi Frank,

    Actually, Drupal was one of the first CMS’s that I installed for review purposes — what also seems long ago.

    If memory serves me correctly, it was perhaps best of the opensource bunch. And although there is a great forum at drupal.org to source information, I would rather pay for software that guarantees me a response when I need it, as opposed to having to fish around for answers and help. Granted, I’ve only asked for their help once to date, but it’s still nice knowing that they’re there. :-)

    Cheers,
    Ros

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    Nick Mukherjee on November 4th, 2007 22:09 pm

    Thank you Ros for the valuable information including the CMS– Article Alive.
    I will buy it and start using it.

    Thanks,

    Nick

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    BILL HACKENBERGER on November 6th, 2007 14:32 pm

    Your office looks great compared to mine! I’ve got piles everywhere and still don’t have a site. Can this CMS-type site be used for a full-blown site with Aweber,cart,opt-ins, Ebook,etc.? Also, can they take a “Search” box out of a template? Also, I just wrote to DataWebPro who you recommended in your book and received an answer from Steve. Do you still like them? He sounds like a great guy. Also, on this affiliate business, if I host with them, do I have to order through the link in your book for you to get credit or was my click recorded?

    Also, My Ebook is for people wanting their own business,buying or starting, home, internet or brick and mortar. I’d like to get some testimonials but several gurus don’t appear to do this because of time constraints and just being too busy, which I can understand. Sorry I rambled. You shouldn’t ask me to speak my mind. You asked for it!!! You’re great and thanks.

    BILL

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    Curious on March 6th, 2008 23:58 pm

    Soooooo it looks like you changed back to wordpress and are using a revolution theme here?

    Just curious why the change.

    Any inf would be helpful.

    Thanks.

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    Rosalind Gardner on March 7th, 2008 9:18 am

    Hi Curious… I never went away from Wordpress, actually. Just moved the blog’s homepage to the site’s homepage and the ArticleLive component sits under the “How-To Articles” header. :-)

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    Curious on March 7th, 2008 20:58 pm

    Wow, great idea. You’re such a “smarty pants” ha ha. :) I should have known there was an elegant and ingenious methodology going on here. Sweeeeet.

    Thanks!

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