One goal that Mark and I set ourselves was that the site was to be fully Search engine optimized. That part was my job. I added a multitude of tools to the Shanti CMS like autogeneration of a sitemap (that is resubmittted) upon content updates, HTML only page generation linked to the SWFaddress library etc. And I am really happy today as I see that this really payed off.

"Marketel" googled

First off, we got site links. Those links showing right below the Page Title, letting users access pertinent content directly. This is something that is generated by Google, only if the robot deems the site pertinent. Well I guess our code was good enough for them.

The number of pages indexed:
Google: 228
Bing: 164

Including these two as well just for show:
Altavista: 477
AlltheWeb: 479

I am really happy with the result here. So I felt like sharing. Feel free to get in touch if you think your site needs some more Search Engine Friendlier PHP.

“ Ann-Karine Degrâce was born in the province of Québec in 1977. As a child, she rarely slept and often spent her nights drawing images on her sketchboard. Ann-Karine has taken to surround herself with animals ever since her childhood – many birds, dogs, cats and reptiles have found refuge in her welcoming arms. Holding a bachelor’s degree in Arts and Science from the Glendon College, Ann-Karine has worked as a flight attendant for a major aviation company and has travelled to Africa, Central America and Europe before entirely dedicating herself to her art and her children. Mother of Daphnée and Elsa, she and her husband are currently awaiting the birth of a third child in their home near Chelsea in the Outaouais region. Ann-Karine has started studying at the Ottawa School of Art a few years ago and intends on completing the program as soon as Mother Nature will allow.

Ann-Karine is a multidisciplinary artist who enjoys sculpting and using various mediums to achieve one piece of work. Through her art, she brings us closer to nature and invites us to a peaceful, introspective universe.

Apart from art, her family, her animals and her garden, Ann-Karine particularly enjoys reading and getting involved in her community.“

visit degrace.net

I am really happy about this as future use of ShantiCMS with Flash sites will be a breeze like this. A week ago or so I built a CSS file for a site template of one of Marketel‘s clients, and it reminded me of what a headache browser compatability. Having spent most of my time, these last years, working on either the deep end of the back end (as in Terminal administration of servers, or classing apps or, when having to create front ends, I would use Flash. There is one Flash player, versions yet, but one version will look the same on either platform, and on either Browser.

(also have to admit that I like AS3 more and more – for those who know me, I had been ranting quite a bit against it)

anyways, enough rant, what ever the front end. My trusted Shanti will stay in the backend. Google, live and ask like my  sitemap.xml generator as well. It really has boosted those sites that I use for indexed content. Especially since I tweaked the ‘priority’ variable. Anyways. I tweak it, what have you done for Shanti as of late?

A few things that need to building:

1. Betterment of the CMS media management
2. Add a custom contact us template or maybe a custom include much like the wordpress [contact]
   1. Add a subscribe Template allowing site owners to collect email addresses.

these I come up with of the top of my head. Also, part of my RubyRails self teaching classes. I am rewriting my shanti classes with RaR.

So while I continue my way through my RubyRail literature I will use this to further use CI!

Now the AMFPHP library has come true.  Will integrate this into Shanti CMS shortly. Now using the CI controllers would be nice too. The library allows AMFPHP services to directly connect to and consume CodeIgniter Models. Nice library!

check out the Library here

download here

PS: Added the library to Shanti CMS, and all is working well…

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…

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 along. 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…

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.

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/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

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…

Well the CMS is definetly taking shape. As a matter fact the most of the items that I listed in my previous post are completed. All but the multiple admin levels. That item I will be waiting with.

I am currently working on a function that instead of setting background and font colors, lets the administrator select from a set of themes for his section. I built the section template quite cleanly so I think this should not be too problematic. Just needs some preset designs though. But they will come. For now I keeping it all very clean and slick, but once the system itself is set I think that a bit of play with the CSS can make this look quite funky. I am quite exited. The client has been working with the administrative interface for about a week now and has been pointing faults out for me that I never saw….more to follow.