SocialEngine 4.1.8 is now available and brings with it a number of new features such as:

• New Pages in the Layout Editor - Over 35 pages now available for editing with the layout editor – enhancing the full content management system experience.
• Google Analytics ID Integration - Track your traffic. Easily integrate Google Analytics tracking code by just inputing your ID.
• Affiliate branding option - Earn back your SocialEngine product fees and more! Join our SocialEngine affiliate program and input your affiliate ID into a field.
• MaxCDN pull or rsync-based implementation of a custom CDN - Speed up your site! We’ve added StaticBaseUrl configuration parameters to allow static resources to be served and hosted by MaxCDN’s pull zone or other CDN/file-hosting services.
• Viglink - Add an additional revenue source! To help increase our monetization offerings, we’ve partnered with Viglink – where if one of your users clicks through to a product or service and buys something, you earn a commission.

Here’s a new video showcasing the layout editor:

To learn more, visit their website: http://www.socialengine.net/

Twitter is, without question, the best example of positive change in the way that both companies and organizations communicate with the public. In 140 characters or less, you can get quick updates on road conditions, traffic problems, news updates from around the world and even technical support.

In fact, a lot of these means of gathering knowledge quickly and easily are the exact reason why it is so successful. I can recall a number of occasions where I’ve been driving on the highway and have come up on a major delay where I am suddenly stuck for an extended period inching along. Without hesitating, my first move is to check the traffic reports on Twitter via @AMARoadReports where I am informed of the nature of the delay and how long I can expect to wait. This is, to me, invaluable information that I wouldn’t normally have access to without an excessive amount of searching.

Had the organizations that provide this service not taken to Twitter as they have, this information would be much more difficult to access and as a result, I am also less likely to find value in the services they offer.  As a customer, knowing that they openly provide me with this service (without the need for being a customer in the first place) makes me more inclined to do business with them by other means (ie: emergency services, etc).

A number of companies have also taken to Twitter as a means of providing technical support to their customers, whether intentionally or otherwise. For example, Zendesk is a provider of one of the largest web based support products out there. If you check out their Twitter account, you’ll see that they often get questions from users who are either experiencing issues or have inquiries.

Here’s an excerpt from their Twitter account (@zendesk) as an example:

Zendesk (zendesk) on Twitter

Firing off a quick response is a great way to show your customers that you are listening and helps build confidence in the product and Zendesk does this very well.

(Quick tip: If you are looking to buy software or a service from a company and they have a Twitter account, check out their profile and see how well they interact with their user base. This is often a great way of determining how a company handles their customers and in turn, how you can expect to be handled should you become one!)

Does this type of interaction occur with other sites such as Facebook? Yes, but to a lesser degree. The main issue being that on Facebook, it’s more difficult to filter through all of the interactions  to get to the replies whereas Twitter feels more like it’s been (deliberately or not) designed for this type of interaction.

Facebook’s strength is in the way that users are able to show they are fans of a product. This is a great way  to show potential customers how popular your product or brand is. There is certainly interaction on Facebook between customers and the organizations they are fans of but it’s less personal. There is definite value to having a Facebook page, but there are also plenty of issues with the way they have been implemented.

As an example: Let’s say Joe sets up a fan page for the company he works for and a few weeks later, Joe is dismissed or goes to work for another company. Good luck changing the ownership of that page to someone else if Joe is disgruntled. Do a simple Google search for “facebook fan page transfer ownership” and you will see how many people have encountered this issue. This particular problem has been an issue since they were implemented and there still has not been a solution for it.  Most of the time, Facebook fan pages tend to be treated more like feed subscriptions whereby you can get the latest updates without cracking a news reader such as Google Reader.

With the recent introduction of Google+ (in beta and invite only at the moment), I am starting to notice that it offers somewhat of a best of both worlds scenario. Google+ offers a clean and uncluttered interface and very good interaction. It is, in my opinion, a cleaner and more professional approach to communicating than Facebook.  Will it replace or challenge Twitter in the future? No, I don’t think so but I also don’t think that’s it’s intention either.  I see it as more of a LinkedIn meets Facebook without the clutter social network and I think it will likely be quite successful.

Where Google+ is likely to do best is with the Circles method of sharing. Right now, Google+ only allows personal accounts but should they introduce the same for businesses, I can see huge value in the way that it allows you to communicate with specific circles of people. We’ll have to see whether Google allows businesses to form a presence in the future. If they are smart, they will as this will drive up their usage and adoption significantly.

What all of this leads us to is the importance of utilizing all of the available tools out there to interact with your customers. No longer can an organization expect to simply put up a website and consider that sufficient. Social networks have become a very valuable addition to the repertoire and they need to be considered carefully during the CMS selection process. Does the system you are considering have solid social network integration? If not, it’s probably not the best tool for this day and age.

In my test install, I created a new website at my web host and FTP’d the necessary files to install Elgg 1.6.1 to the root of my new site. One thing that was different in this install compared to others I’ve tested is that Elgg requires you to create a data directory the system uses to store uploaded files, profile icons and photos that sits outside the root of the website.

Not a big deal, just something to note as you follow Elgg’s installation documentation.

Administration

Once installed, I was perplexed with a sparse login page that sported basically a blank page and login box. I retraced the installation steps in my mind trying to remember if I had created an administrator account. If you’re like me, you don’t necessarily read all the documentation every time. Finally I registered as a user just to see what would happen. The message “You have successfully registered for New Elgg site.” appeared. Then, after logging in, a new message told me that my administration account had been successfully created. Of course, I could have saved some angst on my part by actually reading in the configuration documentation that the first user account is the
administrator account. Lesson learned.

Elgg presents the administrative account with a site management interface that is very gray, but decently organized. As prescribed by its creators, I navigated to the tools administration page and enabled all of the widgets provided by the typical installation which includes such standards as pages and blogs, but also niceties like captcha, notifications, content reporting, garbage collection, and validation emails. From the left navigation bar in the administrative area, all
management functions are easily accessible. And, while it’s not eye-grabbing, the interface is functional and easy to understand.

Dashboards

In addition to my administration account, I created two more user level accounts. Mike1 was added via the administrative panel and Mike2 was created by a typical front-end registration on the site itself.

Both methods worked as advertised and each member was provided a dashboard from where they could add and edit the amount of information displayed. The default dashboard comes blank but the site administrator has the option on determining which of the base widgets are pushed out to the subsequent dashboard of each registered user. I can see where an admin would want to push basics out like pages, friends, activity, and the file widget just to get things started. The individual member has full control of their dashboard so they also have the privileges of removing widgets they don’t want as well. As Mike1, you can see that I added the pages, friends, activity, group membership and wire posts widgets. What’s nice about this system particularly is that I can click Edit page and simply drag the /widgets to the appropriate channel position, save, and I have new widgets to work with. If you’ve worked at all with WordPress, the channel management feature in Elgg will feel familar.

Pages

To add a new page, a member simply navigates from their Pages widget to the More Pages link. This link goes to the Pages home where you can add a new page and/or edit your welcome message that will appear on your pages home.

You can also reach your pages by navigating the top navigation bar from Tools > Pages to arrive at the pages home as well. Regardless of which path you take, you arrive at a nicely organized interface that offers a clean, basic method to add content pages. Pages have the ability to accept comments from other members, have sub-pages,
as well as the ability of the author to set read/write permissions.

I do have one gripe regarding the editor. I use the tab key a lot to advance to the next text field or box, but in Elgg’s editor I have to depress the tab key 16 times to move from the page title text box to the body of the page. Then five more times to get from the body to the tag text box. This feature I could definitely live without.

Blogging

The blogging widget also comes with the default Elgg installation and in my test, I created one blog entry for users, Mike1 and Mike2. Neither could see the other’s blog from their dashboard under the Activity widget until they either became friends or visited the homepage of the website where the widget Latest Blog Posts displays all of the latest posts from members. Each member is provided an interface that includes links to not only their blog but to their friends blogs, all site blogs, and of course, the ability to write a blog post link.

If the user decides to write a blog post, they will find that the new post interface is nearly identical to the new page interface. The only difference I could see is that when I user creates a new page, edit permissions is assignable and with blogs, only viewing levels can be assigned.

One feature that I either wasn’t able to figure out or isn’t available with the default installation was how to add the
blog widget to either of my user’s dashboard. It would be nice to have something similar to that of the pages widget only for blogs.

Currently, at least from the experience I had, you can only access your blog homepage from the top navigation bar going from Tools > Blog. If you know how, please comment and let me in on it.

Summary

In addition to the page and blog widgets, the default installation provides recent bookmarks, twitter integration, group membership, activity, wire posts, and file management. All performed well and I was especially fond of the wire posts where you can make a quick post similar to that of Twitter and tell everyone who is a member of the sight special news or make an announcement. Even though I focused mainly on the default widgets, there is a slew of add-ons available at the Elgg community site offering everything from sitemaps and polls to Facebook, MySpace and AdBrite integration.

I like simplicity and this seems to be a running theme throughout Elgg. While my review was focused more or less on the management of content that the user creates via pages, blogs, I only scratched the surface on my test of Elgg and look forward to working with it more to see what it can really do.

Pros

• Comparable to some commercial offerings.
• Easily extensible with a vast collection of widgets.
• Easy to navigate and administrate.

Cons

• Tabbing in the editor was tough to work with.
• Look and feel of the default install fell flat.
• Remember, the first account is the administrator account.

Website: http://www.elgg.org

About the Author

Based in the Pacific Northwest, Michael Childress has been a system analyst and writer for 10 years. He currently writes for CMS Critic and is a full-time analyst.

Kentico is an advanced system that offers extreme usability and point and click editing, but can they hold up in a market where so many other systems exist? Let’s find out.

Version 4.0 cites such improvements as the integration of Social Networking and other improvements which you can read about here or at the following locations:

http://devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Petr-Palas/February-2009/Kentico-CMS-4-0-Released.aspx

http://www.kentico.com/Company/News/Kentico-CMS-4-0-Brings-Social-Networking-Features.aspx

http://www.kentico.com/Download/Version_history.aspx

Today, we are going to examine this system and see what features it brings to the table.

Now, First off.. this is the Personal site template/theme:

Nice isn’t it? Pretty good considering this is a sample of what it can look like.

Here is the Corporate starter site:

These are all very beautiful themes so far. Two more to go. eCommerce:

We can’t say this enough times.. for starter templates, these are better than some professionaly designed ones we’ve seen. Finally, here’s the one we’ve been waiting for…

The Community starter site:

For the purposes of this review, we’re going to test it out using the above Community starter site. It seems fitting since the latest
release focused largely on social and community enhancements.

When you first log in to the Community starter site, you’ll notice some new menus appear in place of the Sign in box:

Let’s explore these a bit. Click on My profile takes us to a pretty good looking profile page with options to view our blogs, leave us a
message, see what groups we’re a member of, etc.

Clicking on the Edit my profile link lets us modify our avatar from a pretty decent selection. It also lets us upload our own if we choose to do so:

There are groups and blogs as well.. which look very nice:

The abilities that Kentico has for developing a really nice social networking site go above and beyond what we’ve seen in similar
products. They’ve done an amazing job of integrating an attractive interface, ease of use and group membership functionality into one simple platform.

There are so many changes in this release that we can’t even begin to cover all of them and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s examine the administrative interfaces next.

Kentico has two different Admin panels so to speak. One, which is called CMS Desk allows multiple options such as the ability to
interactively design the site and the other is called CMS Site Manager, which we’ll get to in a moment.

First the CMS Desk:

From here you are able to edit, preview and manage your site content from an easy to use and nicely laid out interface. By switching to design mode, you can edit and modify any of the elements on any of the pages with ease:

There are 3 other sections of the CMS Desk. You can switch the My Desk which allows you to manage your content, approve content that has entered the workflow process, etc. There is also the Tools section which allows you to managed Media, Create forms and much, much more:

The Administration menu allows you to managed users, review your banned IP addresses , etc.

Ok. We’re impressed. Let’s see what their other control panel looks like shall we?

Switching to Site Manager you are immediately presented with all running sites in a simple list with quick management buttons:

Then there is the Administration Tab, which provides you with the following management menus:

Followed by the Settings Tab:

Just when you thought it couldn’t get better… they added the option to allow you to manage payments with Paypal and Authorize.net.

It gets better. Are you ready for this? Check out the Development tab:

We think that’s enough screenshots to get across the point.

In summary:

Wow. Kentico has done an outstanding job on this release. We’re fairly comfortable saying that we don’t think there’s anything we can
think of that they missed. In fact, in our opinion, they’ve gone above and beyond. If you are looking for a CMS for any need, Kentico
definitely fits the bill. This is an amazing product at an amazing price.

You can find out more on the pricing at their website here: http://www.kentico.com/Buy.aspx

This was a great product to play with and has the potential of creating some incredible sites, we can only hope that someone takes
advantage of it and puts it to use creating the next big thing on the web.

Ratings wise, it’s uncomparable. There literally is nothing on the market that comes close to touching this software as far as Social
Networking integration goes that we’ve tested to date. (If you know of something, definitely let us know.)

With the options it presents, we’re very very excited to see what they could possibly improve in their next release.

The only thing that prevents Kentico from getting a 10 is that the help system built into the admin pages is lacking and needs to
be improved upon.

Our final score:

9/10