A soon to be open-sourced state of the art, Ajax and Content Repository driven content management system: Flow content management

* Update

Since i don’t work at Intermax anymore, i can’t guarantee when and if Flow will be open sourced, however it is an excellent CMS, so if your looking for a good cms with a state of the art content repository, i would advice contacting Intermax about Flow CMS.

Highlights and functional overview

Intermax has a rich history developing Content Management System (CMS) software since 1995, in which we have used Open Source Software components such as Apache, PHP, MySql and many others as basis for our products. The main goal of our systems has always been to create a rich and easy-to-use end-user experience.

The websites we’ve developed for our customers were often designed and created by Intermax using our CMS. Thus, the Intermax’ CMS was delivered as an integrated service to hundreds of customers, together with state-of-the-art managed hosting services, consulting and training.

Intermax, founded in 1994 and with more then a decade of experience, has grown into a stable and profitable company of about 40 highly skilled people.

In 2006 Intermax decided to create a new CMS, redesigned from the ground up. Under the supervision of senior software developer and long-time open source guru Chris Chabot, this enabled us to play a leading role in implementing new emerging technologies in practice on the Internet. Technologies such as a Content Repository (a new, intuitive way of storing data and information), creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA) using Ajax and DHTML technologies, the social web and web services. And it had to be high-performance enough to allow these new technologies to work instantly with high levels of interaction.

The new CMS was finished late summer 2006 when it was deployed to the first customers who were upgraded from our old CMS to the new one, codenamed ‘Flow’. The results and feedback from these pilot projects were overwhelming, citing ease-of-use, simplicity, powerful content functions, performance and the desktop-application like experience managing their websites.

Flow is now being used by a significant number clients, ranging from large enterprises, the broadcasting industry, from healthcare to government and NGO’s.

Usability and ease-of-use

A sleek, intuitive, multi-language Ajax-driven management interface which mimics a desktop application-like experience that allows the user to feel in control of their website. And without having to invest in extensive training. The system works as “you would expect it to”, gets out of your way and just lets you do your job.

Multi-site & multi-language management

An unlimited number of sites can be easily deployed and managed using one central interface. All information contained in the central content repository can be freely used and linked across multiple sites and web applications, in different languages.

Content repository

A Content Repository is a new and innovative way of storing and making information accessible. It stores all information like text, pictures, movies, flash, general files and makes these accessible through a consistent, easy to use and transparent interface. It allows information to be re-used throughout all sites and gives a consistent permission and history model. Any information that was changed in the central repository is instantly updated throughout all relevant websites and application instances.

Performance
The core of Flow was specially designed to handle thousands of requests per second using several advanced caching techniques and a lot of smart design.

Flow scales from small to large enterprise websites and can be deployed in a load balanced fashion to deal with the extreme number of requests on high traffic websites. A typical installation of Flow can handle approximately 1700 requests per second while maintaining a completely dynamic website.

Latency is also a huge factor in the end-user experience. Whether it’s how long it takes for the page to be generated (about 0.08 ms), or how fast a Rich Internet Application (RIA) can change the information in response to a user’s action, it defines how ‘interactive’ the user experience will be. Using Flow, it’s a breeze!

Industry standards

Using the latest standard technologies such as SOAP, RSS, ATOM, xml-rpc, xslt and xml, the Flow Content Management System is fully compliant and easy to integrate into any technology landscape.

Search engine optimization

Under the hood, Flow presents a wealth of information to search engine robots and browsers, resulting in optimum searchability and higher page ranks with all major search engines. It also features easy to read URL’s and integrates seamlessly with Google sitemap.

Tagging and Labeling

Information can be labeled and tagged which allow for a slew of applications such as tag-clouds, dynamic news categorizing, popularity measurements, and allows the web master to easily create sub-sites and extranets based on specific content tags.

WorkFlow

All information in Flow is fully versioned, including audit-trails and controlled using a flexible work flow management system that creates accountability. It also enables novice users to add content that can be checked and authorized by the web master and/or legal departments.

Search

Flow incorporates a Live Search feature which presents up-to-date instant results while the author or web master is typing in the search query. The search feature can be implemented on the front- and backend of a site giving the same user-friendly technology to all users and administrators.

Generic module based functionality

A wealth of different module-based functions can be switched on and off depending on the various specifications of a site or application such as a Blogging functionality, Forum, Media libraries, slideshows, News including tagging and auto archives, smart searching and matching, tag-clouds, etc.

Flow Content Management is platform independent and comes with optional consulting and training. A commercial license with various service levels is available, as well as a hosted edition. A special Flow open source edition under the GPL license can be obtained at no cost.

Flow Content Management is a registered trademark.