a bit of self-promo…

The last weeks, I spent a lot of time re-working my Shanti CMSes SEO-ability.

And the efforts are starting to bare fruit. Or so it seems anyways…
- I polished the function generating and submitting the sitemap.xml function (the webmaster-tools now fully approve it). The sitemap is submitted to Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, MSN (Live.com) and Moreover.com.
- added a robots.txt specifying the content we want indexed.
- the addresses are now SEO friendly, resulting in better ranking in search engines.
- Also modified some of the PHP generating the navigational structure allowing the site administrator more liberty as to the appearance of the content, as well as more SEO friendly code.

The results, 15% more visitors coming via search engines, a 15% drop in bounce rate, 4.8 page depth per visit (as opposed to 2.3 before).

And to top it all off, Olivier, the master acupuncturist called me today, he got two new clients because of his site today. The new features have been in place for a little more then one week.

SEO time well spent…

Shanti CMS by Valentin Backofen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.codeigniter.com.

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Another Shanti

Before Frieda was born I was working ridicules amount of hours with Marc-Antoine over the last month. We missed our initial goal of the 21st of October by a hair. Several issues came in our way, but in the end it was for the better I believe, as it allowed us to clean out several hicks in both front- and back- end.

The Flash (9, AS3) front end draws its data of a database managed and maintained through my own Shanti CMS (the db Structure remains the same as well). The data is fed to Flash via AMFPHP.
We also added SWF address into the mix allowing deeplinking within the site. I also completed a script for SEO google friendly content so that deeplinks can be properly indexed. As of yet, this function remains on the DEV server as Frieda came in the way. But as such the function is tested ready and true, and it will be my first order of business when back in action.

Just felt like that the news needed spreading, as this site had been in the making for quite some time. I remember hearing talk of a new web site back when I first started @ Marketel for the first time back in 2006 there was already talk of a new website. Many-an Art Director tried his and her luck, but to no avail. Nothing ever materialized. Funny how that goes. It took a determined president and way to little time to push it through. We had, admittedly, been dabbling on the project since the beginning of the summer. But there was no serious production time allocated to the project until Jaques Duval made it clear that he needed a new site, and he needed it pronto. He had a big announcement to make, both internally and externally and for it, a new web site was needed. The two weeks running up to the launch, Marc-Antoine and I clocked in at well above one hundred hours, but to no avail. so instead of launching a half finished product the launch was postponed, the press release, was not.

But look at us now, a good looking site. Deeplinkable, downloaded lightning fast (the site totals at below 200 Kb) and running smooth as a kitten. A result of a couple of late nights, honest hard work, and wayyyyy too much StHubert. But looking at it now I was well worth. With google analytics telling me that many visitors like what they are clicking, and a row of up-coming extensions I think we can be quite happy with the out come. The outcome, which, from the start, we wanted to be a framework that both Front- and Back-end could be taken on and easily implemented in any up-coming productions…

we rock!

and others think so too…

Shanti CMS by Valentin Backofen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.codeigniter.com.

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code ignited cms V

Two core elements have been keeping me busy on my Shanti CMS.
SEO and Remoting.

For SEO optimization I added implemented the Google Sitemap code found over on the CI Wiki. So now when adding content is modified via the CMS, the sitemap xml is automatically updated and Google is pinged to notify the surf monster that the content has been updated. Other engines robots also use the sitemap to quickly index a site.
I also revised the menu structure. Or the URLS rather. As opposed to targeting section/getSection/[id] I am now calling section/getSection/[title]. All this to make google happy. Ah well.

Finally I have been dabbling on integrating AMFPHP with Shanti. Sending the content to a Flash interface as well as a HTML one has something I wanted from the get-go. Several solutions are on offer on CI forums and Wiki. But after a lot of trial and error (more of the latter really), I am going for the Wiki entry on ‘Calling CI models from outside script ‘. So far integration has been a breeze. The AMFPHP service simply makes a call to the CI model wraps the data into a Flash friendly Array of Objects and shoots them back to the Flash requesting the data.

Shanti CMS by Valentin Backofen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.codeigniter.com.

Download Source Code

code ignited cms IV

Well it has been a while since I talked about this little pet of mine hasn’t it. I know that it is the one driving the most traffic to my blog so I thought it to be the time for a little update. I still work on it, and it keeps on rolling.

A little breakdown. The system remains, very simple. Essentially it breaks down into three classes. Sections, Pages and Media. The styling and visual layout is completely up to YOU!

Sections are the titles(building the upper level menu on below the logo). Attached to each section, you can add Pages, an unlimited amount as such. A page can be moved from section to section at will via the administrative interface (www.yourdomain.com/index.php/cms). The media section allows you to upload any kind of files to the system (filetypes can be added via the CMS)
Once a file is uploaded to the system (or a link has been added to it) these media’s can be linked to any page of the site. Each media type has an icon assigned to, again, modifiable via the CMS.

The CMS can be accessed by using the default user/pass administrator/administrator.

Note that before accessing the page YOU MUST add a published and default section and page, via the CMS. Otherwise your site will be returning you an unfriendly CodeIgniter Error.

Again, this system is really just something I am dabbling with on my own free time, but I am using it more and more frequently, extending and playing around with it. It needs a lot of work still, and for the download should be by developers only. I am more then willing to answer any questions that you might have for you to hit the ground running, and please please please let me know for any changes you might make to it.

The way I am developing it is, I deploy it to small websites and let the administrators play and give me feedback as to any kind of feature requests that they might have, and then I implement them.

a few changes I made as of late:
- move pages between sections
- set sort-key and -order of pages in sections
- billingual content

I am having fun with this one, based on my own experience and those that use it, Shanti grows. If you want to grow your own Shanti…let me know

Shanti CMS by Valentin Backofen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.codeigniter.com.

Download Source Code

code ignited cms III

My CMS, originally created for the Clinique Shanti in Montreal, is going places, I just published the second site with it. This new site is very simplistic, as there was no design part of the order, so I simply implemented a new instance of it, and of it went. After a 20 minute session with the client he was ready to take over the site on his own. Oh and a third one is on it’s way, I am currently transferring the site of ASFs Venner to the Shanti CMS as well…

any questions you might have regarding the CMS, I will gladly answer, also, do you code-ignite? I will gladly pass you my code…just contact me and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…

Shanti CMS by Valentin Backofen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.codeigniter.com.

Download Source Code

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