Software specification

All the details

Please download a full specification of the functionality provided by the CommunitySites content management system, as at February 2008.

Sample features of the functionality are described below.

The best way to see how easy the software is to use is to contact us for a demo.

Visiting the website

Pages within the website can contain the following types of content:

• Text
• Individual photos
• Galleries of photos
• Documents (PDFs, Word, etc.)
• Audio (MP3)
• Video (FLV, MPG, YouTube)
• Flash
• Google maps
• Links to other websites

The website can be browsed and searched in the following ways:

• Hierarchical menus, based upon topics and categories
• 'See also' links, enabling easy navigation between pages within a category or cross-referencing to related categories
• 'Breadcrumb trails', showing the route taken to the current page
• Themed tours or virtual exhibitions, including commentary text from a tour guide
• Adverts, highlighting potentially interesting or recently added sections
• A simple text search
• An advanced search
• An automatically-updated list of the latest pages to be added
• An automatically-generated site map
• Links within the text of the page
• Linked images or areas within images

The website includes the following accessibility features:

• Resizable text
• Keyboard navigation, via 'access keys'
• 'Skip navigation' links at the top of each page
• Compliancy with W3C Accessibility Guidelines Level A
• Compliancy with XHTML Transitional and CSS2
• Further customisation to meet higher levels of the Accessibility Guidelines and/or different markup standards is available

Visitors can create their own collections of content from the site:

• The software includes a facility for allowing users to "bookmark" pages from around the site and store them in one or more albums
• Each album can have its own title, description and icon
• Once added to the album, pages can be re-ordered or removed
• A textual note can be added to any page within an album
• Albums can be private, available only to the user who created them; alternatively, they can be submitted for publication, moderated by the editors, and made available for others to view.

Contributing to the website

The website offers the following facilities for users to leave comments:

• A simple comments form at the bottom of each page
• Comments are placed in a holding area for approval by site editors
• Users can be notified by email when their comment is approved
• Spammers are deterred by a 'CAPTCHA' control
• The comments form can be made available to all, only to registered users, only to site editors, or removed altogether

Users can interact with each other in the following ways:

• Sending each other one-to-one messages (this facility can be disabled)
• Using threaded messageboards (for questions and answers, for example)
• Adding further comments in response to those already on a page

After a simple registration form, users can add new content to the site:

• A step-by-step process guides them through adding their own text, images and documents
• Original copies of images are retained, while scaled versions are automatically generated for display on the website
• Formatting can be applied to text (adding bold and italics; adding hyperlinks)
• Captions and credits can be added to images
• Images from other websites can be imported (subject to permission)
• One of three layouts can be chosen
• Contributions can be previewed, showing how they will appear on the website
• Unfinished contributions can be saved for later retrieval
• New contributions are placed in a holding area for approval by site editors
• Users can be notified by email when their contribution is added to the site
• Users can edit their own contributions after they have been added to the site (this facility can be disabled)
• If users forget their password, a new one can be requested by email
• If contributors' email addresses are displayed, they are encoded to prevent spam

If desired, further features can be added to the website:

• Users can have their own, named section of the website, created automatically when they register
• Users can add images and text to their section
• Users can add new contributions directly to their section, by-passing the editorial approval process
• Users can edit and approve comments on their own pages, by-passing the editorial approval process

Maintaining the website

One or more editors can add new content to the website in the following ways:

• Sub-editing submitted contributions, using the same user-friendly system described above
• Adding audio and video clips, with accompanying transcripts
• Adding approved contributions to the website by placing them into one or more categories
• Adding metadata keywords, if appropriate
• Customising page layouts to position images in relation to the text of the page
• Linking images or areas within images to other pages or websites
• Editing, approving and deleting submitted comments

The following features help editors to manage their workflow:

• Contributions or comments awaiting approval are highlighted
• Various filtering and ordering options - by date, by user, by category, by status - make it easy to find content items for editing, even in large websites
• 'Edit this page' buttons appear throughout, enabling quick corrections to be made while browsing the website
• Editors can be notified by email when a new contribution or comment is submitted

Editors can also control the content and structure throughout the website:

• Unlimited levels of hierarchical categories can be added and edited
• Each category has a variety of editable properties, including title, icon, banner image, introductory text, and keyboard shortcut
• Custom stylesheets can be used to make categories look different from the rest of the website
• Themed tours or virtual exhibitions can be added by selecting pages from the website, with optional commentary text from a tour guide
• Adverts can be added to particular pages or across areas of the website, whether commercial adverts (Amazon, Google, etc) or promotions of other parts of the website
• The introductory text on the home page can be changed, and 'quick links' added to direct visitors to particular areas of the website
• Threaded messageboards can be added, whether for general use or for password-protected discussions among the editorial group

Administering the website

A site administrator can control the running of the website in the following ways:

• Registering new users
• Conferring editorial or administrative privileges upon registered users
• Changing settings (whether unregistered users can add comments, the number of new pages that are listed on the home page, etc.)
• Changing the layout code upon which the website's pages are based
• Viewing Google Analytics usage statistics