Sitecore CMS 6.3 is now published on the SDN, this is a technical release. This is an exciting release for Sitecore that brings true enterprise class scalability to the product, and supports for some of the most sophisticated deployment requirements a customer can have.

Summary of Benefits:

1. Improved Scalability
2. Dedicated Publishing Server
3. Improved Change Management
4. Architectural Consistency Between CM and CD

This is a scenario that I’ve seen materialize far too often in my time as a search engine marketer. A client commits significant time and resources towards a large scale website redesign and development, only to see the inbound traffic to the new site virtually disappear on launch day. Phones stop ringing, lead funnel shrinks to nearly nothing and everyone is left scratching their head after such a positive design and development phase. The effect is instant and with the right planning and transition strategy, this ‘traffic tragedy’ can be averted.

Why Does Your Search Engine Traffic Disappear?

When a website undergoes a redevelopment, nine times out of ten the page names will change (fix this forever by using extentionless URL’s). A search engines’ inventory is made up of web pages, or more specifically, precise URL’s. Once you change those URL’s the page which Google has indexed will break resulting in a 404 Not Found error when clicked. All of the historical value and reputation built up over time is gone in an instant. The only constant is the domain name itself which does not change and so (as long as the content is preserved) will retain its pre launch traffic volume.

Identify Where the Website Value Is

The first step in protecting your historical traffic equity is to know how to identify it. This is accomplished by a combination of website traffic statistics (search engine traffic) and tools which identify inbound links from other websites also known as Back Links. If you don’t know how you are tracking your website, or know that you don’t have Google Analytics running, do it now! Really, stop reading and set that up!

Welcome back! The search engines themselves provide many free and useful tools which will provide most of this information. These tools are used to recover, among other things, the following key information:

• - Which pages are receiving search engine traffic
• - Which pages are linked to from other websites (back links)
• - Do you have an RSS feed which is subscribed to?
• - Also watch for traffic to Videos, PDF documents and other multi-media

Tell the Search Engines Where the New Pages Are

By using a series of precise redirects using a particular search engine friendly method (the 301 Redirect Savior) you will preserve the traffic and the majority of the value from the previous URL. This also transfers a marginal amount of reputation or PR built up from back links as well.

Transitioning a website is quite a time consuming process which includes building a list of high value pages which receive search engine and direct traffic as well as which pages are linked to from other websites, arguably the #1 search engine ranking factor. Further if you ignore the other Ranking signals such as content, titles, linking structure and page hierarchy you risk a longer term reduction in search engine traffic as Google realized the change in content and drops your rankings for certain pages. That last bit is a discussion for 10 more blog posts.

Rebuilding a Website? Ask the Right Questions

So if you find yourself in the middle of a website redevelopment, be sure to ask your developers if they have a Website Transition Plan in place and have them elaborate. Below are some key factors to consider:

1. A redirect strategy which places a global redirect back to the Homepage is not an appropriate strategy. You will lose your rankings and value for your secondary web pages.
2. Redirect pages on a 1 to 1 basis to maintain relevance, back links and bookmarks. Content between these pages should also be of the same topic.
3. Do not rely on default website ‘stats’. Low level metrics such as Hits and Referrers from ‘log based’ analytics can often be skewed and inaccurate. Google analytics is a minimum starting point for researching your traffic accurately.
4. Use the Search Engines’ webmaster tools interfaces to assist in further data collection.

More Information: http://www.falcon-software.com/eBusiness-solutions/search-engine-marketing

About the Author

Jade Carter is Falcon-Software’s SEO Analyst. Over the last 7-years he has helped small to enterprise level clientele such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Birks Jewelers, and Safe Auto Insurance experience the full potential of their online presence by identifying exactly what it is that the client expects from their website and developing realistic and relevant traffic.

Kentico provides web content management software on the Microsoft .NET platform. Kentico is constantly developing and improving their flagship product – Kentico CMS for ASP.NET that allows you to set up the whole website, online store and intranet or community site through a browser-based user interface. Kentico allows you to configure built-in modules rather than programming them from scratch or integrating third-party modules. The product was created with developers in mind and it was designed as a flexible solution that can be easily customized or extended with custom code when required.

Kentico CMS version 5.5 was released earlier this year and it brings several new features and improvements, and significant performance improvements through code and database optimizations.
including:   

1. Support for VS 2010 and .NET 4.0
2. Support for creating mobile websites
3. Facebook connect and OpenID authentication
4. Easy creation of RSS feeds from any content using web parts
5. Template scopes for different site sections
6. Improved paging in the administration interface
7. Global administrators may be denied access to the Site Manager
8. Support for Bing and Yahoo maps
9. Out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft SharePoint Server
10. Out-of-the-box MetaWeblogAPI interface that enables you to use editors like Windows Live Writer of MS Word to write your blog posts.

What’s coming next? Kentico CMS 6.0 in 2011

Version 6.0 will be one of Kentico’s biggest releases ever and will include:

• - New On-line Marketing Package (campaign and lead management, improved web analytics)
• - Windows Azure support
• - Dashboards within user interface
• - On-site editing – new simplified editing interface for basic users
• - Widgets placed into text and support for widgets in ASPX page templates
• - Multi-file uploader
• - Bi-directional staging
• - Improvements in Newsletter module –double opt-in, click tracking
• - Object versioning and locking for development objects (stylesheets, transformations, etc.)
• - Show and edit language versions side by side
• - E-commerce improvements – taxes per state and ZIP, better shipping calculation, and many others
• - Export data into Excel, CSV and XML
• - CKEditor integration instead of FCKeditor
• - Microsoft Chart Controls integration

Kentico Compares to

Ektron, EPiServer, Sitefinity and Sitecore.

Strengths

1. Feature-rich product, with a plethora of modules (including various community and collaboration facilities), at a relatively modest price point.
2. Well suited for multi-site management from one instance.
3. Good support and documentation.
4. Adheres to modern .NET standards.

Technical

1. Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows
2. Repository Database: MS SQL
3. Client: Browser.
4. App Platform: .NET

License costs

Based on options, number of sites, and servers, which ranges from one website base license at US$1,999, to one server ultimate license for unlimited sites at US$22,499.

According to the Aberdeen Group, nearly 70% of small and medium-sized businesses outsource some or their entire web hosting needs. This growing percentage of companies are reaping the benefits of leveraging technology to streamline business operations and automate their business processes to create greater efficiencies by turning to outsourced web hosting. For small to medium-sized businesses with no IT staff, or an already over-burdened IT department, there is often no other choice. However, there is a trend, even among companies with the resources necessary to host their own websites to outsource their hosting needs. For these companies, the issue of ensuring that the hosting environment is secure, reliable, and scalable, makes the choice of outsourced hosting an attractive one.

The Bottom Line

In almost all cases, for most small and medium-sized businesses, establishing internal hosting capabilities is a larger investment than outsourcing. The major costs of in-house management of a website is an in-house IT staff (consisting of at least one person), equipment, software, initial set up costs, ongoing equipment and software upgrading costs, as well as the costs associated with around-the-clock monitoring and management. By outsourcing web hosting services to a managed provider such as Falcon-Software, companies can expect a 25 to 80 percent cost savings over in-house solutions. Such outsourcing enables a company to reduce costs by freeing assets otherwise allocated to capital expenditures and the expense associated with a specially trained staff. Such assets often account for anywhere from 22 percent to 47 percent of the total budget for a website.

Hosting Options

Managed hosting isn’t only about storing website files. Most hosting companies offer a range of hosting solutions to accommodate the diverse needs of small and medium-sized businesses. These solutions usually range from hosting small static sites in a shared environment to hosting larger, database-driven sites on minimally shared or dedicated machine. With the trend moving away from static websites—even for a small sales and marketing website, today’s hosting companies need to be able to provide more advanced services such as the ability to set up, host, and support database solutions such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL, as well as the ability to set up and configure content management systems. Additionally, website hosting and email hosting go hand-in-hand. Most companies who are outsourcing their web hosting are also outsourcing their email hosting. And, most companies would rather have a single hosting company handle both tasks.

Security

Security is something that can’t be divorced from either web hosting or email hosting. Even businesses with simple websites and minimal email needs should expect the servers their website and email are residing on are housed in an ultra-secure facility. In terms of physical security, hosting facilities should employ 24/7 on-site security guards. Entry into the facility should require an ID badge and an escort for visitors. The facility should also be under constant video surveillance. Power to the facility should be obtained via separate power feeds from separate power grids. The facility should be protected by a fire detection and suppression system with a direct alarm to the local fire department. All essential equipment should be fully redundant, and “hot spares” should be on-site at the facility. Finally, the facility should be equipped with stand-by generator power supplies. In addition to physical security, a hosting provider must have systems in place to minimize the threat from hackers and viruses. This means such security threats must be continually monitored, and the latest software and security patches must be tested and installed. Additionally, daily backups must be performed and such files should be stored off location.

Costs

The decision to host in-house or outsource to a web hosting company usually comes down to cost. Realistically, what is the cost for a small to medium-sized company to properly host a website in-house?

• Equipment: A server and communications gear (routers, etc.). One-time cost: $5,000 to $15,000.
• Communications: Typically a T-1 line (or fraction thereof). Annual cost: $8,000 to $12,000.
• Physical location: A room for the server and worker(s) that is secure and has communications access. This is difficult to estimate, but let’s say about $5,000 a year and that’s conservative.
• Staff: At least one dedicated IT specialist. Other technicians and specialists may be needed from time to time. Yearly cost: $40,000 to $75,000.

In total, the minimal operating costs for an in-house hosting infrastructure can reach $60,000 to $110,000 the first year, with a minimum of $50,000 to $100,000 per year after that, and that is nowhere near the type of world-class datacenter Falcon-Software uses and substantially more affordable.

For example: Hosting a corporate website with a commercial .NET CMS platform costs:

• - $3,000 to $5,000 per year for a dedicated managed server at Falcon-Software.
• - Includes robust 2(N+1) state-of-the-art power and cooling technologies maintained 24/7. The datacenter is engineered to suffer multiple points of failure and still maintain a standard level of redundancy.  

You Get What You Pay For

Some businesses are lured to outsourcing their hosting by ultra-cheap hosting prices. A quick search for “hosting companies” on the Internet will turn up a cadre of companies charging prices as low as $5.99 per month for gigs of space. You can be sure that low prices mean that the web hosting provider is judiciously controlling expenses in order to make a profit. If you decide to outsource your website to such a provider, you must ask yourself if you can afford to take the risk of your website crawling at a snail’s pace, or worse–being down more than it’s up? Common cost cutting measures by such low-priced hosting companies include packing servers to the gill with websites to the point where your website is sharing space with thousands of other websites on the same server, failing to upgrade to new versions of server software and failing to install crucial software patches provided by vendors whose software runs the server. The result? Your website ends up running very slowly on technology several years old, and becomes more vulnerable to being hacked. Cheap hosting companies will often surprise their clients with oddball charges that pop up here and there such as charges for extra bandwidth. A few months of these odd ball charges and that bargain monthly price is no longer a bargain. The cheap hosting companies are a good bargain for a personal or family website, but they’re a poor choice for a business website.

To clarify, the main advantage with open source CMS solutions is the source code (the code the program consists of) is made available to website integrators such as Falcon-Software, providing them with the ability to make customized changes to the software program as they see fit. An approach which is great for immediate updates, but is it wise for the long-term? Customized changes to the underlying code can severely limit the future support and growth of the application. This is because changes made to the core software program can impede the ability to apply future updates, fixes or additional modules that are developed for the improvement of the CMS platform. In the event of this happening an organization may find itself in the precarious position of having to remain with an outdated version together with any limitations or bugs that version may have.

Free does not mean inexpensive:

Free access to an open source solution does not equate to a free or cheap content managed website. The nature of open source implies that the product is not going to be as ‘out-of-the-box’ as you would expect in comparison to a commercial package. This could equate to longer implementation times and a higher level of expertise required when implementing and customizing website projects properly (successfully) and most likely will not be discussed upfront with most open source web developers.  

 If you can’t use it why have it:

When developing a commercial CMS package, usability and client support is essential for the survival of the product. For these reasons, CMS specialists take the time to ensure that the usability of the product is advanced and help and training guides are thorough, enabling non-technical staff to take control of their website. Conversely, open source solutions are developed around technically minded users. Arguably this defeats the purpose of a client’s investment in a CMS by limiting content management to those with technical expertise.

Plagued with an uncertain future:

Developers of open source CMS are generally not driven by commercial gain. Consequently the completion times for fixes and updates can be significantly longer than one would experience (or tolerate) when partnering with a commercial CMS provider. Fixes or updates that could jeopardize the effectiveness of an organizations online strategy are not necessarily prioritized efficiently.

Community support model:

Open source products rely on its community network to deliver support to its user base via forums and web blogs. For organizations looking for a basic support, open source solutions are unable to provide the responsiveness that a product specialist willing to take ownership of that issue is capable of. In addition, while the community aspect is an appealing argument for open source, many commercial CMS providers are offering that approach as well. The .NET CMS software we support (Kentico, Ektron, Sitecore and Sitefinity) all have full documentation and technical support while also managing interactive forum environments.

Final Word:

We strongly feel that the additional value and value-added services that commercial CMS software provides justifies the extra cost. That doesn’t mean that it’s the right solution for everyone — if you have a deployment budget of under $15,000, an open source solution is a more realistic option. However, drawing on our vast CMS experience, training and support simply cannot be understated when it comes to a successful CMS implementation and those are two areas where commercial CMS clearly wins when compared to open source.

 This project will focus on the overhaul of the website structure and developing a social networking platform that will meet the growing needs of their users to interact and collaborate with their peers. Once the new CharityVillage site is launched, users will find even more value from the site, getting them to needed resources, information and connections more quickly and effectively than ever before.  

“This was a very interesting bidding process for Falcon-Software as CharityVillage requested that we provide a proposal for both CMS vendors Kentico and Sitecore solutions”, say’s Gary Eisenstein, Falcon-Software’s President and founder. “We had to stay completely neutral and let the client decide since we have strong partnerships with both vendors”, states Eisenstein.

Although Sitecore and Kentico are both commercial .NET CMS systems and are both solidly built, there are fundamental differences between the two products, which makes it uncommon for Falcon-Software to compare the two platforms head-to-head. Sitecore is a true enterprise  CMS solution and is extremely flexible to work with and customize. Kentico is best suited for small to medium-sized business that are looking for an affordable all-in-one feature rich application.

More Information:

- CharityVillage (www.charityvillage.com)
- Kentico CMS (www.kentico.com)
- Sitecore CMS (www.sitecore.net)

The Gartner report evaluated numerous Web Content Management (WCM) vendors based on a rigorous set of criteria that included customer experience, innovation, market understanding, marketing and sales strategy, product strategy and business model.

• - Link To Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management Report: http://is.gd/eGJbN

Jade Carter – SEO Analyst
Jade comes to us from Metamend Software, an SEO firm where he held the position of Technical Services Manger. Over the last 7-years he has helped small business to enterprise level clientele such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Birks Jewelers, and Safe Auto Insurance Corp., experience the full potential of their online presence by identifying exactly what it is that the client expects from their website and developing realistic and relevant traffic. Jade also has a very strong competency with HTML, XHTML, CSS and web compliance standards and a particular interest in landing page user interface (UI) techniques and tracking using statistics programs dedicated to monitoring Search Engine Traffic.

Marisa Flora – Account Manager
Marisa comes to us from Convergent Media Networks, where she spent the last year working closely with management, clients and project teams on Web CMS systems. Over the past 10 years Marisa has worked in various dynamic industries as a Client Service and Account Manager.

Mirko Freund – .NET Developer
Mirko comes to us from Proximity Technology located in Hamburg, Germany as their Senior .NET Web Application Developer with fifteen years of extensive experience in software design and development of complex applications. Mirko helped develop key parts in several content management web applications projects using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2007, MS Commerce Server 2007, MS BizTalk Server, MS Internet Information Server and MS SQL Server.

Nathan Kelerstein – Project Manager
Nathan come to us from NewHeights Software Corporation as their Project Manager. He has a B.Sc. EE with a major in Computer Engineering, possessing strong web technology experience and well-rounded project management skills working as a Systems Engineer, Technical Marketing Executive, Web Developer and Project Manager.

2010 has been a very busy year for Falcon-Software and the need to build up capacity was a must over the Summer months. “Each new staff member brings a high level of experience and proven track records of success in the area of their expertise, which will be invaluable in meeting the goals and objectives of the company for the remainder of 2010.”, states Gary Eisenstein, Falcon-Software’s President and Founder. “I am confident that our new hirings — Jade, Marisa, Mirko and Nathan will be an excellent match for their positions and a strong asset to the Falcon Web Team”, say’s Eisenstein.

Jason Crea, Vice President of Client and Partner Management for Sitecore, USA, spoke with Varvid.tv at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2010. Jason spoke about Sitecore’s service offerings for Microsoft’s new cloud-based Windows Azure platform. Jason would also like to see more websites to stop being so generic and start communicating like real people do. Sitecore offers website content management and marketing services.

Sitecore’s dynamic delivery architecture has evolved to a fully balanced architecture that is well-suited for cloud deployment or with a more traditional server configuration. To maintain consistency between the content management and content delivery layer, Sitecore CMS 6.3 is designed with load-distribution, redundancy and scalability – a benefit for content owners and website visitors.

When using a cloud-based delivery model, Sitecore provides the ability to quickly scale to additional needs without the costs associated with a 24X7 environment for hosting Web applications.  Furthermore, a cloud computing strategy can shorten time to market and can be more adaptive as new capabilities and functionality are added to a Web solution.

“Speed matters when it comes to managing websites for global audiences with varying content and device preferences,” said Michael Seifert, CEO, Sitecore. “By offering a cloud computing solution, Sitecore continues to innovate for customers and partners to improve their online business results.”

Later this quarter, as part of Sitecore’s cloud computing initiative, the company will offer integration with Windows Azure™, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. Azure provides scalable computing power and storage, as well as a number of other online services hosted on Microsoft data centers.