| Capability |
Question |
Answer |
| Administrative capabilities | Describe the administration capabilities of the product — for example, database administration, user and group administration, backup and recovery, cache management and Web administration. | dotCMS runs in Oracle, Postgres, MySQL and MSSQL. Just create an empty DB and then dotCMS manages for you. User and group administration is defined by Roles and Permissions. We recommend backing up the entire dotCMS directory nightly, as well as doing a nightly backup of the dotCMS database. If you are running on a cluster and your assets are stored outside of your root directory you need to include those folders as well. We recommend storing nightly incremental backups for a week with complete snapshots occurring weekly and storing those complete snapshots for up to a year. Every time a page is requested by a browser, dotCMS will look in its cache, if it doesn't find it, we generate the page using Velocity cached files and cache all the page's information using JBoss cache. Next time a user requests the same page it will be served entirely by the cache. |
| Application development tools | Describe the application development tools, programming languages and application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable users to develop and customize their enterprise content management (ECM) applications. Which standards and development environments are supported with the APIs (for example, Web services, .NET and Java)? Please describe all APIs available to customize the offering. | dotCMS is a Java based application and it can easily be customized to integrate with any Web service or to deliver content as a webservice. Plugins offer "extension" points and allow you to customize, enhance and add custom functionality without having to modify the core of the system. The web development APIs are based on Apache's Velocity templating language and the use of the Web Tool Kit. The recommended methodology for adding custom functionality is a combination of writing JSR-168 compliant administrative portlets and custom web APIs. |
| Applications | What built-in applications do you have that would reduce the need for development (for example: wiki, blog, chat, event, calendar, forums). | dotCMS ships with blog, event, and calendar applications. Chat, wikis and forums can be easily implemented. |
| RIA | Describe how your product supports application programming interfaces (APIs) for development and integration of RIAs such as product quick view, dynamic sort and filter tools. | dotCMS makes RAD development of rich interfaces easy. The structured content engine in dotCMS can be accessed and queried as JSON, or as XML, either of which is easy to plugin to RIA, flash, Jquery, Flex, etc.. |
| Applications | Describe any tools you have that simplify the linking or exporting of site content to social sites. | Because dotCMS can deliver content as JSON, it makes queries and content reuse across systems easy. We also offer a number of macros to allow for content sharing to social and web 2.0 sites. |
| Applications | What tools do you have that would support out-of-the-box polling and rating, and in-line feedback to content authors? | dotCMS offers macros that will build forms, polls, surveys, and allow you to add ratings and comments to any content type. |
| Development environment | Describe the architecture, languages and tools used to develop your proposed solution. | dotCMS is a J2EE based CMS, and uses Velocity, Struts, Hibernate, Lucene to drive content and content managed sites. dotCMS's widget system, scripting support and rich plugin architecture can allow users to create code, code libraries and other configuration modifications and reload those configurations as needed. Dynamic libraries, macros and widgets can be deployed real-time without having to reload the application container. |
| Development environment | Is a proprietary scripting/coding language required to customize your product | No. dotCMS is open source. Apache Velocity is our scripting language. |
| Edition management | Describe how editions (versions/rollback) of the Web site are managed. Do editions cover content only or content and code? | dotCMS versions all content objects, file assets, code and pages within the system. These versions are available for review or rollback when viewing a history of the content. Editions (i.e. specific versions) can be created and independently published. |
| Edition management | Does your tool natively support the storing of incremental site changes? Does it support business or power-user support for reproducing what a visitor saw in any channel at any given time. | Yes. Each content object is versioned. It is possible to store incremental changes. |
| Language | What language is your underlying source code written in? | Java |
| Multichannel output | Does your system have the ability to drive content to multiple channels (web, mobile, email, IPTV)? | Yes. |
| Multisite management | How does your solution ensure consistency across site pages, while allowing flexibility within a broader spectrum of sites and sub-sites? | Consistency can be driven with templates and limits on WYSIWYG controls. Also, through permissions not all users can have access to publish content thus creating a channel for consistency. Hosts can be copied identically also leading to consistent look and feel. |
| Page elements | Describe how your product ties content elements to pages. What mechanisms are used to map elements to pages? | In dotCMS, content is separate from pages. Yes, to create a new webpage in dotCMS, the user will be presented with a folder structure, like Windows folders. The user will click on the selected folder and be able to select from different options: Create new web page, Upload Image, Upload file. If the user selects create new web page, the user will be able to then enter the new page properties including the available templates. Every template has a thumbnail associated with it that shows the user how the page will look like when created (two column, three column, home page, etc). The separation between content and pages allows same object to be used in different pages or even different web sites. |
| Previewing | Describe how the Web site can be previewed before launch. To which components does this apply (content, templates, code, layout)? | dotCMS templates can be implemented to support other display formats such as PDAs or printer friendly versions by using one CSS file for each separate format. This could be previewed before publishing by creating pages for each one of them. |
| Reporting capabilities | Describe the reporting capabilities of the product with respect to administration and site development. | dotCMS provides the system administrator with tools to be able to view and manage the following functions:
- Memory caching: To flush independents memory caches such as: live cache, page not found cache, permission cache, etc
- Static file caching: To delete all files from static caches
- Content Index: To rebuild index, shrink index, reindex a structure, etc
- Import/Export dotCMS content
- Search and Replace utility
- Manage users, groups, permissions
Additionally, we have integrated Jasper Reports for integrated, pixel perfect reporting and build custom reports for the system as needed. For example, one report we wrote for a client is a list of all the groups and the users that belonged each group.
|
| Content auditing and reporting | Describe the granularity of auditing for site content changes. Does this auditing extend to other items of the configuration? | A report can be created to show all recently modified pages and content, complete with modifications to templates, and files. |
| Site changes | Describe how you would launch and rollback new site areas quickly. Do you provide any snapshot functionality? | Yes, dotCMS allows the user to rollback and view previous versions of any content object. Furthermore It is possible capture, store and even "replay" the entire website at a certain time including future dates. |
| Staging | Describe the capabilities to stage and migrate content between systems such as development, QA and production. | dotCMS conducts rigid quality assurance and browser testing to ensure our pages render correctly on the most common browsers (dotCMS does not support IE6). We also make every attempt to adhere to industry and government accessibility standards such as the W3CÕs web standards guidelines and Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act. During Implementation Acceptance Testing and Documentation can take several weeks. This would include Quality Assurance Testing for your site. After that phase is complete we will go into the Formal Launch Phase, where we do Production Server Setup and also Load Testing. From the official soft launch date, you have a 30 Day Warranty phase where we will fix any bugs that you find. |
| Staging | Describe the capabilities to stage and migrate code, configurations and customizations between systems such as development, QA and production. | Automated scripts migrate customizations and configurations between systems - but these happen outside the system itself. |
| Staging | Can code changes be staged across development and QA platforms before being deployed on production | dotCMS customization |
| Third-party content repository | Describe how your product interfaces with third-party content repositories. | dotCMS can be customized to import feeds from third party content providers. |
| Syndication | Describe how the syndication of content to third-party consumers is achieved. | dotCMS supports the publishing of all type of XML content, including but not limited to RSS syndication, ATOM Syndication, RESTful XML views of content, xHTML and other XML based formats. dotCMS allows for multichannel publishing as well, so news items, publications and other content items can be published as pages, PDF documents and XML/ATOM/RSS simultaneously. |
| Taxonomies | Describe how metatags (in general, not necessarily SEO) are managed and deployed and how internal taxonomies are defined. | dotCMS provides tooling to manage categories and taxonomies internally. |
| Testing | Describe tools within your product that supports testing pre-launch testing of sites. | dotCMS allows a site to be previewed or staged before it publishes the pages live. |
| Storage | What technologies and structures does your solution use for site content, template and code storage? (XML, relational, etc.) | Relational and disk for hard assets |
| Cloud services | Have you explored the deployment of your product in the cloud? Do you continue to offer this option and with whom | Yes. We utilize Amazon EC2 cloud deployment and have been very successful. |
| Cloud services | Are you able to publish to the cloud? If so, please describe how your product does this. | Yes. |
| Archiving and rollback | Describe how the product maintains and accesses previous versions of content when it is revised. Does this apply to objects (images, RIA objects, etc) as well as text? | Yes. |
| Annotation and version comparison of content items | Does your tool support annotated workflows, rollbacks, and side-by-side, red-line version comparisons out-of-the-box? Explain. | dotCMS allows annotated workflows and rollbacks. Versions of content can be visually compared against older existing versions using the simple "What's Changed" functionality. This functionality redlines the changes between versions of content and shows exactly what has been added, changed or removed. In the visual differential view, content added is highlighted in green and content that has been removed is crossed through and highlighted in red. The visual comparison can also be used to detect differences between staging and production environments |
| Audit trails | Describe how the product tracks modifications (i.e updater, timestamp, etc). | DotCMS versions all content objects, file assets and pages within the system. These versions, including mod user and timestamps are available for review or rollback when viewing a history of the content. |
| Authoring method | Describe the process of creating Web content. How is content authored? What options are available? | dotCMS allows a site administrator to define custom content types and delegate the management of them. There are many field types that can go into "Web Content", including a WYSIWYG, tags, metadata, etc... All of which are definable by the administrator. |
| Business user authoring | How do you support simple content creation and management for casual contributors? Is it possible to easily define and manage content restrictions (i.e., maximum word/character count, formatting) at the field level. | This is handled with Permissions. A user can have very limited access on a very granular level. Using a custom field, you can control a users input into any content item at the field level. |
| Page building | Does your solution support the ability to modify page layout with "drag and drop" functionality? Is it possible to define templates and allow them to be populated as defined by workflows and permissions? | Drag and drop can be supported if your template is built to allow that. IT is also possible to create a template that has editable areas that can be controlled by different roles, workflows. |
| Web templating and layout management | Describe any in-context or in-line template editing for business users, native developer support for template and page layout management, and support for providing same services to leading template management tools. | dotCMS allows users to create and edit templates through the administrative interface. This makes it easy to use tools like Dreamweaver to create your templates and page layouts. |
| Content life cycle | Describe how the product manages expiry and retirement of content and data. Does it handle time-based publishing and removal of pages? Does it handle time-based content versioning? | Content can have review and expiration dates that can be used for time based publishing and expiration of content. Because content lives singly in the content store, once a content item - say a news article - is expired, it is expired wherever it is used or re-used on the web site. Every publishing queue can be independently managed. |
| Content retention management | Describe how to define content retention rules and disposition actions in your tool. | dotCMS retains all content in a archived state, unless content is forcibly removed via and administrative tool. |
| In-context editing | Do you support in-context (what you see is what you get [WYSIWYG]) editing? Describe how this is achieved. Is it possible to do with all data types | Yes. We use tinyMCE WYSIWYG. All structure types can have a WYSIWYG. |
| Indexing and search | Describe any built-in search tools provided by your solution. | We utilize Apache's Lucene to index and search content. By default, when creating content types in dotCMS allows an administrators to define exactly what fields, metadata and taxonomy to make searchable facets. In the administrative console, content manager can search the content repository by these facets, which can include metadata, dates, date ranges, categories and tags. When implementing sites in dotCMS, these facets can be used by visitors to perform similar faceted searches on specific content types such as events, publications, news items or products. dotCMS allows a site administrator to change the search criteria used to search content as the approximate string matching (fuzzy search) and affect the related rankings based on those changes. These changes to search criteria can be done directly in the Administrative GUI and on the sites served from dotCMS. |
| Library services | Describe the library services/locking mechanisms that you offer (check-in, check-out, versioning). | We support locking / unlocking and full versioning of content. |
| Previewing | Describe your ability to preview rendered content in a staging area. Does this require a separate server license | dotCMS handles staging within the system itself. A staging server used for authoring content would require an additional server license. |
| Records | Can the product migrate web-based content to a records management system? | Yes, through a customization |
| Searching content | Describe how the tool supports search within the authoring environment. Is it possible to search for objects by free text/metadata/content attributes? | Yes. You can search by content type, metadata, title, etc.. |
| Support for specific content types | How do you support the combination of text and other page elements, such as graphics? | Graphics and other page elements can be referenced inline or as external links. |
| Support for specific content types | How do you support page assets, such as graphics, logos and buttons? | Graphics and other page elements can be referenced inline or as external links. |
| Support for specific content types | How do you support pass-through content that may need to be converted, such as PDFs? | dotCMS support the creation of native "Exporters" which can transform content in different ways including PDF. dotCMS can leverage OpenOffice/LibreOffice server capabilities to export/transform content and documents into a variety formats including the xml based Open Document Format (ODT) |
| Support for specific content types | How do you support multimedia, such as audio/video and Flash? | dotCMS can store any type of digital file, which are stored in the physical drive of the web server. Files metadata and a link to the physical location are also stored in the database and in Lucene to be used in content searches. |
| Content import/export | How do you support the bulk import and export of XML content for integration and migration | Yes |
| Rich media management | Which of the following capabilities do you support: on-demand transformation, story boarding, assembly, image layering, thumbnailing, constrained cropping, resizing, rotation, color modification, and packaged integration with full-featured DAM tools enabling automated republishing of changed assets and format conversion. | dotCMS supports the resizing and thumbnailing of images inline. These are automatically republished if the underlying asset changes. Additional transformations can be created through our plugin architecture. |
| Web 2.0 | What Web 2.0 features do you employ to improve the authoring experience? | AJAX, RIA, Broad browser support |
| Web 3.0 | What Web 3.0 (e.g. personalization, semantic web) features are being explored for the current and roadmap implementations of the solution? | dotCMS is exploring all Web 3.0 technologies, including the semantic web. Microformats, etc. |
| Taxonomy and metadata management | Support for defining hierarchical metadata structures. Support for semantic web tagging (RDF) as well as SEO. Should be flexible -- i.e., can specify if metadata entry is mandatory on user, content type, and site/section levels. | Yes, can support hierarchical meta data, semantic links and semantic web tagging (RDF) and make metadata mandatory. |
| Rich Internet applications | Desired: Comprehensive support, with presentation code and content treated as discrete object types, in-line editing capabilities for both, and the ability to deploy search-engine-friendly versions of the content. Minimum: Business users have the ability to embed RIAs into presentation templates and associate pre-populated presentation options with XML or JSON content types. | Comprehensive support- yes, Minimum, yes, too. |
| Content access control | Describe the access control systems available including discrete methods (create, read, update, and delete) based on folders, groups, and metadata. How granular are the access control mechanisms? | Create, View, Edit, Publish can be assigned to groups or users, and can apply to the content object level |
| Product content/catalog management | Describe any rich product content and catalog management support your provide. How do you support search, browse and merchandising? Do you support multiple product content templates based on product type? Do you support workflow around product content? | Yes, all of these can be defined in the system and is done within implementation. |
| Product content/catalog management | Does your produce allow integration of product content from multiple sources (i.e. XML, CSV file, and webservices)? Can you enable automated catalog population via business rules? Can the catalog be segmented by geography and syndication? | CSV and XML can be imported and exported. |
| Analytics | What bundled tools do you provide? | Site statistics, page views and click trails. dotCMS Activity Streams summarizes all online activity for all users, including editing, posted, and publishing of content, pages, templates and all other file assets. This handy report of Users' activity can be sorted and filtered by date ranges, which allows an administrator to compare usage and trends between users automatically. dotCMS tracks all visitors clickstreams as they visit the site. This information can be reported on from the administrative console and can be used to target users based on their visit activity with custom content and other personalization features. dotCMS includes the ability to analyze user behavior and clickstreams. Visitors paths through a dotCMS site can be tracked and reported on at the page/visitor level. From the admin screen, users can view the statistics for any give page and see a report of where users are coming fro and where the users clicked on next. |
| Analytics | Can broken links be found and repaired quickly | This can be customized. |
| Analytics | Can the product track and report on-site use and demographics? | Yes, through our Personalization feature. This information can be exported. |
| Analytics | Do you have real-time analysis and response capabilities? | Yes, including an integrated campaign manager |
| Analytics & integrations | Do you partner or integrate with any third-party analytics tools? Describe how customer data analytics from back-end systems empower your commerce capabilities. | yes. We can integrate with 3rd party analytics, pass product id and other information to Google, Omniture, etc... |
| Analytics & integrations | Partnerships (what analytics tools do you partner or integrate with?) Specify how web and e-commerce analytical information be meshed up with other Enterprise analytics. Describe actual implementations of this. | yes. We can integrate with 3rd party analytics, pass product id and other information to Google, Omniture, etc... |
| Audit reporting | Does your product have the ability for users to define audit reports on an ad hoc basis | Through their analytics provider |
| Behavioral analysis | What mechanisms do you employ to assess the behavior of an individual user (known or unknown) in real time and enable choice of delivered content based on that analysis? Can the behavioral data be drawn from a third-party such as social networking sites, marketing databases, etc. | dotCMS has a built-in rules engine (JBoss Rules) that allows to tag users on different actions they take when viewing your website. Then content tagged with similar tags can be displayed to the user in different sections of the site to recommend content they might be interested in based on their browsing history. |
| Content recommendations (personalization) | Native or packaged integration with algorithm-based recommendations engine. | See above. |
| Personalization | Explain how the product can display content targeted toward specific user profiles. | dotCMS allows rich content personalization based on explicit or implicit profiles of visitors to the site. In dotCMS, visitors can explicitly create profiles, indicate interest in specific topics and enter information about themselves (language spoken, geo-location, tags interested in, etc...) which can be used by dotCMS to deliver relevant content directly to the user. Additionally, dotCMS can "learn" about visitors by how they are browsing the site, what site they come from, from the pages/content they select to view and other criteria and can use that information to deliver content that has been categorized or tagged in a similar manner which can allow for "recommended" content. dotCMS ships with a rules engine that allows administrators to create complex business rules that can trigger specific actions when a visitor has met the proper conditions |
| Personalization | Does the product target content based on visitor-supplied preferences? If so, how? | Yes, see above |
| Personalization | Can the product personalize a site based on customer transaction data? Explain how this is done. | Yes, see above |
| Personalization | Can the product apply personalization rules to elements smaller than pages? | Yes, the above is also true for content objects. |
| Compliance | How does your system verify content for hygiene (e.g. accessibility, spelling, format validation, privacy, security, speed of deployment)? | XHTML compliance. |
| Recommendations | Do you support on-the-fly catalog creation/customization | Yes. All template creation and customization is done through the admin tool. |
| Design tool integration | What IDE/desktop design tools can be integrated with the product | dotCMS allows users to create and edit templates through the administrative interface. This makes it easy to use tools like Dreamweaver to create your templates and page layouts. |
| Dynamic presentation of content | Describe how templates support dynamic presentation of content. | dotCMS supports both static and dynamic content presentation. Lists of content objects can be dynamically delivered or they can managed as static lists. |
| Link management | Describe your link management capabilities. | Link management can be handled with 3rd party. |
| Maintaining consistency | Describe how the solution allows for the reuse of contents and templates to enforce a common "look and feel" and brand identity. | Content is separated from the page and therefore lives independently and can be reused easily. When adding new content, users will have the option to reuse content. Users can also select from provided list of templates from a dropdown list with a thumbnail preview. All of this is controlled to enforce common "look and feel". |
| Multivariate testing | Describe your multivariate testing capabilities. | In dotCMS, it would be possible to create a multivariate widget to use multiple pieces of content and based upon them, to track views and success rates of particular campaigns. This would be done during a sites implementation. |
| A/B and multivariate testing | Native or proven integrations for rapid A/B and MV testing of site alternatives. (Note: MVT requires automated testing of dozens of alternatives (i.e. "full factorial"). Enable automated content testing. | dotCMS supports customization and personalization. As mentioned above, a widget could provide full factorial testing of multiple content items for a given area. |
| Devices | Does the product support preview of site pages on multiple virtual or real devices such as print, mobile, IPTV? If so, how? | Yes. dotCMS templates can be implemented to support other display formats such as PDAs or printer friendly versions by using one CSS file for each separate format. This could be previewed before publishing by creating pages for each one of them. |
| Localization | Can the product support content in multiple languages? If so, how? | dotCMS fully supports content and containers, pages and templates in multiple languages. We have a macro that allows you to pull content that is language specific. |
| Localization | Can you support multiple versions of the same site using the same WCM instance | Yes. |
| Layout | Does your tool support the creation and management of multilingual (including R-to-L) content? | Yes, including R-to-L. |
| Process-driven translation | Does your product support or integrate with translation management process software | dotCMS supports the translation process through intelligent prepopulation of language defaults and the workflow process. |
| Supported languages | If your product supports a certain subset of languages, which ones are supported? | Out of the box it can support all languages. |
| Multilingual content management | Does your tool support versioning and rollback of source/target pairs content? Does it display side-by-side pairs with highlighting of differences? Does you r product support automated extraction/return of content in appropriate formats? Does it support the export of content marked for localization? Does it support this via a web-based UI | dotCMS has versioning and rollback of source/target pairs content. It does not have side-by-side comparison in the Multilingual management module. This could be customized. |
| Tool localization | Describe any ability to localize product's administration tools, including templates, error messages, documentation, and administration interfaces | All admin tools, error messages, templates and admin interface can be internationalized in many languages including Italian. |
| Multisite management support | Does the product directly support site cloning and template/content inheritance to enable, for example, rapid creation new (possibly password-protected) micro-sites from existing ones? Does this include the ability to inherit site management permissions? Can the copy then be modified to suit? | Hosts can be copied. This includes all folder, pages, files, etc... under the host. Hosts are treated as content and can have extra fields and variables added to them. |
| Site cloning | Explain how someone would go about creating a duplicate or template of a subset of pages for further modification. How does inheritance in your tool support this process? | Templates can be copied and containers can be modified to support a subset of templates. Templates can be not inherit, thought. |
| Content distribution | How would your product take advantage of a content distribution network to speed up the delivery of content | dotCMS can leverage CDN through a plugin created for that purpose. |
| Content distribution | How would your product take advantage of a content distribution network to ensure a failsafe, highly available network of servers? | See above. |
| Content distribution | Is there edge network support | See above |
| Layered approach | Explain how your product supports the separation of user interface from application from data models. What support is inherent in the tool for enforcing this separation and the creation of new resources in each layer? | dotCMS supports this through our plugin architecture, which allows an organization to extend dotCMS at various layers of the application, from the DAO level to the API level to the UI level. |
| Mobile browsing natively | In what ways does your platform support the creation of mobile web sites? | Yes. dotCMS provides a framework to reuse content across channels, including mobile. |
| Single sign-on | Does your content management backend allow for foreign user databases via LDAP, oAuth, etc.? Alternately, can your content management user database easily serve as a user database for third-party applications? | dotCMS integrates with LDAP and easily with other third-party applications. |
| Code reuse techniques | Describe how your solution allows for code reuse within and across sites? How does the system allow for overriding these standards? | dotCMS allows code and content to be used across sites. Code can be referenced, or not, across domains if the proper permissions are applied. |
| Field types | Describe the variety of built-in field types in your product (video, hierarchical, etc.). Describe all customization options available (API, programmability, customization, inheritance and code reuse, etc.) | Text, Hierarchical, Binary (video, file assets) images, numeric, dates, rich text. Custom fields and field types can be created by administrators. |
| Multiple domain support | Describe how your product supports publishing content to multiple domains, possibly stored on disparate machines | A single dotCMS instance can effectively manage hundreds of domains and can publish content to them, share content across them all based on permissions. The status of every single publishing process can be filtered or monitored in aggregate form. |
| Test-driven development | Describe how your product supports test-driven development. | dotCMS provides a simple, understandable development environment that can be used to extend dotCMS in a multitude of ways that can include multiple development methodologies, including test driven development. |
| Browser-based application testing | Describe how your product supports browser-based application testing. | dotCMS can be tested with browsers or browser automation tools. |
| Aggregation during publishing | Describe how your product supports the ability to publish/compose pages with content/data/functionality from disparate repositories, sites, and/or applications. | dotCMS allows users to connect to external resources and use them in pages served by the dotCMS platform, including resources in XML, accessible via web services, or via JDBC. |
| Cache configuration | Explain how your product supports the definition of cached objects and frequency of cache refresh at serve time. | dotCMS automatically caches objects in the system and invalidates the cache when the objects are updated. |
| Mixed models | Explain how your product supports publishing of both static and dynamic content within a site. | dotCMS allows the presentation of pages created using the CMS, and also provides the possibility of serving HTML pages external to the CMS. These external pages need to be saved under the webroot of the dotCMS installation, and they will be served by Tomcat as a regular resource. |
| Publish to portals | Describe your support for publishing content to leading portals, including single point of presentation management, and in-line editing of content in the portal environment. | dotCMS can publish content to a variety of channels. Portals can consume content in dotCMS using XML feeds or via RSS. Content can be updated in a portal if the portal is a CMIS compliant client with editing capabilities. |
| Publishing and dependency management | Explain how you support dependencies during publishing , including transactional publishing and deployment, automatic detection of dependencies, in-line link checking, and detailed error reporting. | Publishing in dotCMS is transactional and when publishing a page, all content dependencies are resolved and can be published together. Error reporting is shown inline, in edit mode, to provide easy debugging of any issues. |
| Publishing diagnostic tools | Describe the diagnostic tools available to troubleshoot publishing issues. | dotCMS provides inline error reporting viewable in edit mode in when publishing content. This allows a web user to update or correct any errors without affecting the live pages. |
| SEO | Describe all URL customization mechanisms available in your product. | dotCMS allows URL Aliases, URL rewriting and vanity URLs. Additionally all pages in dotCMS use real URLs that can be user specified by default. |
| SEO | Describe the built-in mechanisms used to support SEO. For example: site map generation, URL rewrite, 301 redirects, and metadata requirements? Describe who and how these capabilities are managed. | Yes, dotCMS provides a built-in macro to create sitemaps. The formatting of the sitemap is determined by creating the necessary styles. dotCMS also provides the function for vanity URLS, redirects and metadata. |
| Benchmarks: number of concurrent workflows | How many concurrent workflows can the system support | No limit. |
| Benchmarks: number of users (consumers) | How many concurrent consumers can the system support | No limit. |
| Benchmarks: number of users (contributors) | How many concurrent contributors can the system support | No limit. |
| Clustering | What kind of flexibility do you offer for the placement of public and internal-facing components near to their respective consumers | This is dictated by the template design. We do not limit this in dotCMS. |
| Performance | Describe the scalability of your solution and the features that enable that scalability. | The dotCMS system, in a clustered configuration, is designed to scale as more front end servers are brought into the cluster. At the core, node file system IO is the limiting factor for scalability.
- DB hits are eliminated or minimized
- The system is designed to use clustered caches that eliminate any reliance on the database to serve front end pages.
- Node level content index
- Each node is responsible for maintaining an up to date content index on it's file system (required for content searches and dynamic content delivery).
- Distributed Caching Mechanism
- Invalidates objects cluster wide, objects which are then re-instantiated lazily, as needed.
- Tree like virtual file system insures that files are distributed evenly across folders.
Multiple instances could be deployed for different business units. A large scale cluster could be deployed, though the administrative interface would require an infinitely scalable db to provide service unlimited for unlimited dotCMS users.
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| Performance-enhancing capabilities | Describe the performance-enhancing features provided by your product — for example, caching, server clustering, load balancing and replication. | Every time a page is requested by a browser, dotCMS will look in its cache, if it doesn't find it, we generate the page using Velocity cached files and cache all the page's information using JBoss cache. Next time a user requests the same page it will be served entirely by the cache.dotCMS can run on multiple servers out of the box and we have worked with our clients in the past to have multiple webservers and replicate content between them. This is something we can definitely work with you on setting up and configuring. |
| Sample scale | Describe the largest known installation of your solution. How many public servers? How many internal-facing servers? How many users? | Hospital Corporation of America will be deploying over 700 sites on one instance of dotCMS. They have 2 cluster nodes for production, 2 db boxes for production, 1 staging, 1 development, 1 load balancer and 1 utility box. They are also running 1 stand alone instances of dotCMS as well as 1 sandbox environment. There are hundreds of users. |
| Scalability | What is the maximum number of pages and components per server | There is no maximum. |
| Scalability | What is the maximum number of interoperating servers | No maximum. |
| Captcha | Do you provide Captcha capability within the solution? What about other challenge-response mechanisms | Yes. |
| Authentication | Describe how your application supports authentication (for example, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol [LDAP], Windows NT Domains, Active Directory; please specify). With what other solutions does it connect? | dotCMS supports authentication via LDAP. On login dotCMS will first attempt to login the user against the LDAP authentication system configured, if not found, it will search for a local user. Local users can be created by CMS Administrators. Once authenticated, Users have single sign-on access to all of the system's components and all the website hosts that they have permission to edit. Provisioning and Group membership can also be driven by information in LDAP, which in turn affects which content and workflows a user has access to.
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| Group-level security and permissions | Describe the capabilities for group creation and rights assignments. | dotCMS has always shipped with very powerful and granular permissions. Simplification can mean many things. In this case we have made managing complex and simple tasks easier.
- We have hierarchical roles and role membership
- Permissions can be set from a role for folders and hosts. This means that folders and hosts can inherit permissions or can set their own permissions individually. These inherited permissions can be controlled from the role manager making pushing large changes of permissions and adding a new permission much simpler then in previous versions of dotCMS. You can even cascade your changes from the role manager forcing permissions down from any host/folder.
- The owner is visible and controllable via the UI.
- There is Login As functionality in dotCMS
- iT is possible to create and manage unlimited custom roles
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| Levels of security access | Describe and list the levels of permission needed for security access. | You can designate the levels. |
| Role-based security | Can the product restrict access to content or areas based on the user's role within the system | Yes. |
| Security | How does the product provide administrative access control on a subpage level | This is based on a users Permissions. All content and subpages can be permissioned. |
| SAML | Does the product support Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) | dotCMS does not support SAML. |
| OWASP | Describe how your technology can prevent clients from being exposed to SQL injections by hackers | We lock the db down so that only the required permissions are being used. We also can lock the file system and underneath OS down to further prevent attacks therefore making secure remote access available for users outside the internal network. |
| OWASP | Describe what other built-in methods are available to prevent other deliberate attacks on the website | dotCMS provides tooling to prevent XSS and SQL injection attacks at the request level. Captcha and internal tools prevent form spam attacks. |
| Security architecture | Describe your security architecture and how your application handles security/access to content — definition, authentication and implementation. | dotCMS uses standard Internet protocols to communicate with various other systems. This includes HTTP, HTTPS, JDBC, SMTP, LDAP, JMS and Multicast. To ensure security, we use SSL to encrypt content that is transported over non-trusted networks. The site can be configured to be accessed remotely through a secure SSL connection. |
| Campaign execution | Does your tool provide the ability to manage multi-channel dynamic campaigns? If so, how? | Yes, dotCMS can publish and manage multichannel campaigns, mobile, RSS, email and web through the administrative tools within the system. |
| Accessibility | What accessibility standards does your tool support | All HTML generated by dotCMS is generated from the templates. All templates are created by website administrators or webmasters so this depends on whether the templates are compliant to start with. If we are responsible for developing your templates we ensure that all code generated is valid and compliant. |
| Site navigation management | What tools do you have that would support the automatic generation of navigational elements, for example, from site hierarchy, taxonomy, etc. | All menus, crumbtrails, hierarchies and site maps are automatically generated by the system based upon where a page resides given the sites information architecture. If a section or page is created, moved, renamed, the navigational elements on the page will reflect that change. All content in the dotCMS system can be placed within a customized taxonomy that is definable at runtime. Site developers can use this taxonomy to pull customized or related content and provide a site visitor with a personalized experience. |
| Email | Describe any tools your have that support the creation of MIME emails using native capabilities. | Yes, dotCMS allows Multipart (rich html) Emails to be created and sent through the campaign manager |
| Print-on-demand | Describe native capabilities to published content into defined print templates. | Yes, a stylesheet for media print needs to be created to allow for a print version to be generated automatically. This stylesheet needs to be added to all templates where the printer version is needed. |
| Ad servers | Do you provide integration with ad servers? If so, describe how. | Ad server integration can occur at the host, template, channel or content level, with appropriate calls being made dynamically, based on rules applied by the web master. |
| Client platforms | If your product is not browser-based, describe the client platforms supported, the operating system supported, and the minimum hardware requirements of client systems. | dotCMS is browser based. |
| Database support | List the database management systems you support. | PostgreSQL 8.0+, MySQL 5.0+, Oracle 9+, MSSQL 2005, DB2 (requires customization) |
| Integration features | Identify the digital asset management products that you integrate with out of the box or for which you have prepackaged connectors. | dotCMS allows users to connect to external resources and use them in pages served by the dotCMS platform, including resources in XML, accessible via web services, or via JDBC. |
| Integration features | Identify any other products that you integrate with out of the box or for which you have prepackaged connectors. | dotCMS is a very robust platform for integration and expansion, and this is exactly how the system should be approached. It is extremely easy to integrate with 3rd party datasources or create custom administrative modules as needed. |
| Portal integrations | Identify the portal products that you integrate with out of the box or for which you have prepackaged connectors. List the portal products with which you currently integrate using custom solutions. | The CMS has been integrated with SCT Banner, Jenzabar, IMIS, and TIMMS. |
| Product release | Describe and explain your product release and update schedule, and any future strategy. | A. dotCMS releases patches every month. Releases are every year and are not mandatory. With dotCMS Enterprise¨ is the automatic updater. All releases and upgrades under our Enterprise model are covered under warranty. |
| Server platforms | Describe the server operating systems, Web servers and application servers you support. | dotCMS is a 100% J2EE Java application that can run equally on Windows or Unix Servers over any JSP / Servlet container such as:
- Tomcat
- Resin
- Orion
- Oracle App Server
- JRUN
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| Source code | Is the source code available to purchase | dotCMS is an open source product. |
| Standards | Describe the industry standards with which your product is compliant — for example, XML, WebDAV, SOAP, REST, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and JSR 170/283. | XML, WebDav, SOAP, REST, drool, and Jboss rules. We have the same feature stack as JSR 170, but we do not support it. dotCMS include CMIS 1.0 Server compliance, which provides a unified RESTful interface to the dotCMS content and document repository. Remote systems can use the CMIS interface to query, deliver and manage content and digital assets that are stored within the dotCMS system. dotCMS' CMIS Server capability provides a ATOM based RESTful interface to the dotCMS content and document repository. Using standards based protocols, content and content metadata from the dotCMS can be delivered and integrated with any number of third party content consumers. |
| Supported APIs | What open APIs and standard languages do you support? | dotCMS is JSR - 168, written in Java 5 and above. We support HTML, CSS, Flash, Velocity, and other web based languages. |
| Web services and SOA | Describe how your product supports Web Services or service-oriented architecture (SOA). If this is planned for a future release, please provide a time frame for availability. | dotCMS is a Java based application and it can easily be customized to integrate with any Web service or to deliver content as a webservice. |
| Additional features | List additional features that you provide out of the box that enhance the usability of the authoring interface. | WYSIWYG authoring tool, Content types, tagging, searchable content, Easy Form Builder tool. |
| Logging | Can the product log reports of the status and history of a piece of content? What logging system are you using? | Yes. Logging in dotCMS is configured in the java standard log4j and can be configured to be output to the filesystem, to a database, to a centralized server and or to the RFC Standard 5424 syslog formats |
| Reporting | Can the product view content source and descriptive information | Yes. |
| Reporting | Is there the ability for user-definable audit reporting on an ad hoc basis? | Yes, on a per object basis. |
| Reporting | Can the product integrate with external reporting tools | Yes. |
| Required training | Describe incorporated functionality that reduces the required level of technical training of users to interact with your product. | dotCMS's use of velocity as our templating language provides webmasters to easily create functional and dynamic web sites without having to resort to XSLT or Java. Our web tools allows webmasters to create widgets that abstract complexity and can then be used on pages to easily allow content editors to display different functionality such as Photo Galleries, Content tickers, RSS feeds, etc. |
| Unique capabilities | Describe any distinguishing usability features that make your product better than that of the competition. | In dotCMS, Roles and Permissions are extremely granular. What this means for Administrators and Content contributors is that based on your permissions, you will only have access to certain tools and functions. Therefore the process of contributing content can be extremely simple and fast...even down to the WYSIWYG tools provided. This also means some users may have access to only certain pages. The power of granularity dotCMS provides contributes to a simple and powerful WCM experience for all users. |
| Wizards | Do you supply wizards to help users with frequently performed tasks | Yes |
| Archiving | Describe how content from the Web site is archived and removed using workflow. | Content can be set to expire during the workflow task itself. A review date can be set for content that will automatically create a workflow based on the date set for content review. |
| Audit trails | Is it possible to create an audit trail of all actions carried out on the workflow package | Yes |
| Creating workflow | Describe the method of workflow creation (graphical/scripting, Visio, etc)? | dotCMS provides a linear workflow out of the box. |
| Review and approval | Explain the review and approval process for Web content. | Users are typically set up by the administrator to be notified by email with either read, write and or publish access depending on their access rights. Notifications are standard, but dotCMS also provides the ability to add additional comments to each workflow task if needed. Not every user will have publishing permissions and therefore can send the content back for review and then publishing. |
| Workflow | Can the product move a package of associated content through workflow together? | If the content is packaged as a single structure, yes. |
| Workflow administration | Can administrators copy and modify existing workflows | This can be customized. |
| Workflow administration | Can administrators add or change business rules in the tool? | Yes, based on roles and permissions |
| Workflow alerts | Can users define how and when they wish to receive notifications? | Currently all workflow notification is through email, but can be configured differently if desired. |
| Workflow capabilities | Can content be flowed backward for rerouting | Yes. |
| Workflow capabilities | Can users configure authority for everyone in the workflow chain | Yes. This is done with Permissions. |
| Workflow capabilities | Can one author route different workflows based on document type | Yes. |
| Workflow capabilities | Can a package of associated content be moved through workflow together? | If the content is packaged as a single structure, yes. |
| Workflow capabilities | Is it possible to copy and modify existing workflows | Yes. This is done with Permissions. |
| Workflow capabilities | Can a workflow be overridden? | Yes, if the user has proper permissions to do so. |
| Workflow capabilities | How are business rules managed in the solution | Either through the interface or through the plugin architecture. |
| Workflow capabilities | Does the solution offer journaling - the ability to annotate content inside the workflow without it affecting the content? | Yes, comments and notes can be added to workflow tasks. |
| Workflow capabilities | Does the product provide a status of content progress through the workflow? | From the dotCMS workflow screen, administrators can view workflow and publication progress for all sites by selecting the appropriate workflow filter. Administrators can filter their workflow views by user or role and by status of the given workflow item by using the controls provided. |
| Workflow capabilities | How flexible is the process to define who is alerted at which steps in the workflow? | Workflow is task and role based. If user has proper permissions, he or she can notify any other user. However, if user has limited permission, he or she will only be able to notify designated users. |
| Workflow capabilities | Does the product have the ability for users to define how and when they receive notifications? | Currently all workflow notification is through email, but can be configured differently if desired. |
| Workflow complexity | Can the product create dynamic, if/then workflow decision trees? | Yes: this feature allows escalation criteria definition and task attributes overriding |
| Workflow configuration | Can users configure authority for everyone in the workflow chain? | Yes, if they have the proper permissions. |
| Workflow configuration | Can one author route different workflows based on document type? | Yes, if they have the proper permissions. |
Workflow extendability
| What is the maximum length/width (nodes/threads) of a workflow chain | Unlimited: workflow levels can be just set according to their complexity. |
| Workflow flexibility | Can users alter or override the workflow for specific content objects? | Yes, if they have the proper permissions. |
| Workflow reporting | Can administrators define who is alerted at which steps in the workflow | Yes. |
| Workflow GUI | Is it available a GUI to manage all workflow related item? | dotCMS allows you to change and manage workflows through the GUI interface that gives you control of who can review, edit and ultimately publish all content and assets in the system. Separate workflows can be defined for each content type and even for meta data/taxonomy which allow editors and managers full control of their content throughout the life cycle. |
| Workflow administration | Is workflow flexible (for instance based on the user)? Describe how workflows are managed. What kind of workflow reporting (i.e., status, aggregate reporting, and bottleneck reporting) is available? | Users are typically set up by the administrator to be notified by email with either read, write and or publish access depending on their access rights. Notifications are standard, but dotCMS also provides the ability to add additional comments to each workflow task if needed. Users can track their tasks and assignments by login to the backend of the site. |
| Services | Describe the range of commerce services that are provided by, and/or integrate best with, your product. Describe the means by which these services are typically integrated and customized. | dotCMS comes with basic commerce capabilities out of the box. However, we have partnered with KonaKart to create CMS driven eCommerce. This architecture introduces system segmentation from core infrastructures, which is vital to the stability and security of e-commerce inner-workings. Benefits include: * Enabling the marketing and community managers to introduce new campaigns and functionality with minimal IT participation.
- Empower marketers and channel/outreach specialists with tools to help promote local events for stores and partners.
- Enable the unification of community content with standard e-commerce content.
- Enable a unified tagging solution for products, expert advice, product review, etc.
- Syndicate data between wholesalers, retailers, industry experts and customers.
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