Multi-sites content platform

A single Novadeck platform is able to handle a large number of various web sites, each of these sites running on its own data's structures, its own design and navigation tree, its own domain name and naturally its own content.
Nonetheless, it is possible to share both data and structures among the sites (for instance to publish a common content on several sites, search content through multiple sites or aggregate content from multiple sites on a single portal), or to apply the same presentation to various sites. Similarly, all the sites on the platform can share the same users' base: a user can have different rights on different sites and a single sign on system can ease the navigation between these various sites by keeping the visitor's identity from one site to the next, even if they are not hosted under the same domain name. Besides, visitors' tracking is common for the entire platform, which enables consolidated cross-sites statistics, available through Novadeck innovative JXLA multi-site log analyzing tool.
Novadeck CMS has been designed from the ground up to run in a redundant, fault tolerant, scalable architecture. Its cluster-based design, powered by an advanced distributed cache system, delivers constant performance under critical condition and intense traffic. By relying on large arrays of redundant low cost hardware for scalability and security, Novadeck platform is a cost-effective solution for large scale, multi-sites, content hosting.

Redundant, fault tolerant cluster architecture of the Novadeck platform

Template based sites generation

The descriptive nature of a web site's creation on a Novadeck's platform and its intrinsic multi-sites design make it possible to generate independent web sites based on a single site template.
The process is fairly easy: a web site model is created just like any independent web site. The content management engine derivates from this site a template that will be applied to create new web sites: perfect clones, though totally independent from each other, can be created anytime. This enables to create networks of sites based on one single template. According to the features of the template, derived sites may share or not some common attributes (for instance their graphical design or part of their content).
This unique and original feature directly results from Novadeck's technology's specificities. It also gives the possibility to deploy in no time pre-formatted web sites answering specific and identified needs.

Dynamic web sites' generation from a template

Descriptive approach to web sites' conception

The conception of a dynamic web site usually implies a programmatic approach: business processes are implemented in an executable code (PHP, ASP, JSP, Servlet) in order to handle data specific to the web site. Business processes are coded by specialized engineers in order to enable the management of content (data recovering, data updating, data formatting, etc.). The integration & design team then links these data structures and objects to a layout, building a user interface.

Web site conception as proposed by Novadeck puts an end to this programmatic paradigm by using a descriptive approach of web site development.

Once the data structures that will be handled have been defined through a simple web interface for business object's creation, handling methods are immediately available without the need to write a single line of code, and cover all sorts of needs: content attached to each object can be displayed, formatted, published or de-published, moderated, searched, updated or deleted through universal interfaces.

The conception of each page follows this descriptive approach. It is limited to the description of types of data for each page, possibly under specific conditions, and integrated in a structuring XML framework. Lastly, the resulting XML content is adapted to the display terminal (web browser, PDF, wap, etc.) by applying a standard XSL stylesheet, which enables various layouts of a unique content.

Such an approach features unquestionable advantages: much shorter development time, lower technical level for advanced site's creators, and interfaces' standardization.

Native Multilingual support

Native support for multilingualism is deeply rooted in the Content Management Platform. As a benefit, each content's structure can be declined in as many languages as needed. When content is retrieved for publication, it is possible to precise the language in which it should be published (for the whole object or field by field). If the field has not been translated in the specified language, content will be published in the primary language of the site, thanks to a fallback feature that insures that content will be delivered - even if each piece of information is not available in each language.

Such features allow very fast deployments of complex, rich, multilingual content sites without the need for the developer to care about the tedious work of implementing multilingual data handler.

Thanks to Unicode support from the front office tools to the back office instratructure, handling of non-European alphabets is natively supported by the platform (including Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Arab).

Online WYSIWYG HTML editor

Content creation and update interfaces built with Novadeck CMS can easily support an online WYSIWYG HTML editor. Editors can publish rich content through an intuitive, word processor like, interface custom-designed for their own needs. Usage of a limited set of tag can also be easily enforced.

Advanced stylesheet based presentation of content

Content accessed through Novadeck CMS is formated on the fly for the end user, according to his navigation terminal (PC browser, interactive TV terminal, PDA etc.). By designing several stylesheets aimed at several browsing experiences, it is easy to deliver the same content in a rich, multimedia enhanced, html version for PC browsers, and a simplified TV friendly version for interactive television hardware.

Novadeck CMS uses the XSLT standard for content presentation of XML structured data. By using an open standard backed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Novadeck ensures that the broadest access to training, tutorial, documentation and examples will be available from third parties companies. Moreover, XSL is the most versatile system for dynamic presentation of content available for web developers.

Users and rights management

The management of every content object (create, modify, delete) is limited by a very precise administration's rights policy (for example, each field of an object can have different creation and modification rights). Rights enforcement and management is based on a simple web interface accessible to sites administrators. Security can be managed at the platform level (and not only on each site level) thanks to a unified users base so that one user can be granted special editing and administration rights on several sites.

Such a system enables a large flexibility and accuracy in content management.

Syndication of content

Content available for publication on the platform is not limited to content stored locally in the database. XML content available on any remote system can be used for publication on any site of a Novadeck platform, ensuring seemless integration of local content and syndicated, external content. Flexible caching mecanisms help to limit remote connexion for data retrieval by storing locally for a limited amount of time any content accessed remotely.If external data were to be available in a non XML compliant format, automatic filters can be set up in no time to let local developers access their content nonetheless.

Rock solid, standard compliant technology

The Novadeck platform is based on the most advanced solutions available on the market. Entirely developed in Java (J2EE / EJB1.1), it relies on technological partnerships with BEA (Weblogic) and Oracle for high availability, scalable implementation.Novadeck CMS is a cross-platform product running on major flavor of Unix (including Linux) and Windows NT/2000.