Portfolio Project - WinCMSExplorer

WinCMSExplorer is a fully-functioning Windows Forms utility. It is designed for effective management of web site content, which are developed with the help of Microsoft Content Management Server.

Project background

Microsoft Content Management Server is known for its usage in Techie-Dan projects, such as Regus Website, and United Portal Initiative. It was used for the purpose of web site content management.

In the course of the software development for different projects, our software engineers repeatedly faced the same problem: we had to make one-type changes in the web site content. The development of the WinCMSExplorer utility was encouraged by the following task. It was required to develop 18 micro-sites, the content of which differed from each other in company names, contact data, and other company-related information. To avoid time-consuming work caused by manual changes, we decided to automate content management process. An ideal solution was to develop a proprietary utility and use it effectively in the future for other projects as well.

Solution highlights

The functionality of the WinCMSExplorer utility includes:

• Ability to view channel hierarchy, templates and resources library
• Posting creation with the usage of available templates
• Posting management, including its copying, re-location and deletion
• Posting editing facilities

Additional functionality for prompt development tasks:

• Content Replacement Tool designed for the replacement of text passages in all postings
• Set Custom Property Tool used for the assignment of the same value to a user property in all postings
• Set Placeholder Content Tool used for the assignment of the same value to a placeholder property in all postings
• Microsoft Word Spellchecker for checking the spelling in postings

WinCMSExplorer enabled us to reduce development time frames due to automated content management process. The time for updating the content of 18 micro-sites was reduced in from 14 up to 18 times, approximately.
Combining the capabilities of posting creation and its editing in one application made the content management process more comfortable and less labour-intensive.

Competitive benefits

Paramount benefits of WinCMSExplorer are as follows:

• Combining the most of Publishing API functionality features in one application
• Tools for prompt development tasks, including content replacement, spellchecking, and some other

Solution enhancement strategy:

• Implementation of the possibility of posting editing by a number of concurrent developers and merging of results with the help of external application, Araxis Merge, for example.
• Development of the engine, which loads specific functions of content handling in the form of scripts.

Project utilizes