cmsXperts

Interspire, the maker of Website Publisher announced their upcoming and features rich Website Publisher 5.0 due early this year.

Most of the engine has been rebuilt and the entire system is now modular.

The main new feature is the “Content Type”. Content types allow you to create your own forms with configurable fields. Examples of current built-in content types are articles, blogs, and news. These are the one Website Publishers’ users are familiar with. Now you can use the drag and drop designer to build your own using as many fields as you want.

Website Publisher 5.0 will use TinyMCE as the default WYSIWYG editor.

“After testing all of the commercial and open source WYSIWYG editors we felt that TinyMCE had the best performance, the best support for customizations, undo/redo, etc.” Mitchell Harper said in his blog post.

Managing images with the new version will be easier. The built-in image manager is separate from the WYSIWYG editor and includes a nifty flash component which allows you to upload multiple images at once.

Menus and lists will be easier to manage. The new version will allow you to easily create group of items such as a recent press release and place it in anywhere on your website.

The new release will come with many new templats. Templates now only contain 1 html file and according to interprise, anyone should be able to customize their existing website  design and be up and running in 20 minutes.

Interspire recently announced in a blog post the launch of the fourth version of its “Shopping Cart” application, an user friendly, easy to manage e-commerce solution that now adds even more interesting features with its latest release.

According to Mitchell Harper on the company blog, the release is a cornerstone in the number of new functionalities being added, which include support for over 20 payment gateways (Google Checkout, PayPal, Visa/Mastercard/Discover, bank deposit, cash on delivery…) and shipping methods such as FedEx and UPS.

Interspire 'Software Store' theme

Included in the new version are also several new item-specific layouts, like the one pictured on the left, which are easy to preview and setup with just a few mouse clicks thanks to Interspire’s user friendly interface.

The software comes in three different editions, based on the maximum number of items featured on the site: up to 100 for the “starter edition”, up to 5,000 for the “professional edition”, and unlimited for the “ultimate edition”.

The limits have just been raised from 50, 500 and 100,000 items respectively as this latest version came out.

The pricing for the three versions amounts to $295, $995 and $1,795 respectively, while additional options include additional support and maintenance — the cost of which depends on the version chosen — installation for $49, a custom built store template for $2,500, and integration of an existing layout into the platform from a .pds file for $1,500.

While some could claim the pricing is too high, many Interspire customers agree that the services purchased are highly professional and worth the price. Moreover, you can even choose to split the payment into three monthly rates using the PayPal automatic billing system.

Another interesting option is the possibility, soon to come, to host the website from the Interspire servers. The page describing the feature is a little short on details, but invites readers to enter their email address to get a notification once the program will be rolled out.

As usual, those who are upgrading from a previous version of the shopping cart won’t have to pay the full price, but simply download the product from the client area, backup the old and upload the new version through an FTP client of choice, start the upgrade wizard by pointing their browsers to the www.yourstore.com/admin URL, and finally start the upgrade process, which will only take a few minutes.

For those owning a Web hosting business, Interspire is also open to partnerships that would include featuring one-click installation of the platform under Plesk, WHM or cPanel among others for all customers which, according to Interspire, would have the potential to increase the web hosting revenue and earn more clients because of the additional services that would be offered.

Just about a week ago, Michael Curving published a post on Interspire’s official blog explaining how Shopping Cart can now be integrated to “Interspire Knowledge Manager“, another leading and award-winning product by the company which allows to easily manage FAQ and Knowledge Base content for your website in order to reduce the need for customer support in your online business.

The software is currently being used by many reputed companies such as Vodafone, Xerox or LinkShare, just to name a few, and can be demoed by anyone directly from the Interspire website. If you try out the software and decide to integrate it with your Shopping Cart, this recently released instructional video will help you setting everything up.

While many webmaster might feel reluctant on having to pay to use a top-notch CMS — especially seen the quality level many open source tools in this area are achieving these days —, if your aim is to build a highly professional website and feel like investing in a solid content management system as well as unique design, Interspire Website Publisher is most definitely an option to consider.

Interspire’s Website Publisher Features

In order to fully test the CMS features, you can apply for a demo by filling a form with your personal information and indicating your interest in this software. Once approved, a 48 hours account will be automatically created and you will be able to login and test the full suite.

The admin dashboard at the first login is somewhat different from what you might be used to if you’ve only worked with open source tools: instead of a one-click interface that allows quick access to the various core sections of the administrative interface, Interspire Website Publisher’s main admin page is more of a tutorial with the aim of guiding you to a full setup of your new site.

At first, you are prompted to choose a new theme for your website. Included in the package are 50 custom, general purpose themes which you can easily preview and set as default with a single mouse click.

The second step involves of course creating content for your site. For this, you can make use of the powerful wysiwyg interface that allows you to add text, media as well as set categories and other options such as meta keywords and description all from a single page, like users of open source CMS are used to.

Finally, you are prompted to add categories to better organize the content of your site. Each category features its own description and you can also set other categories to be their “Parent category” for an even clearer taxonomy.

Once you are done with the initial setup, a series of ten “Quick Links” will appear, allowing you to manage your site in the way most webmasters are used to — that is, using a one-click interface that allows you to quickly perform the action you want, be it adding new content, manage comments or modify the general settings.

A very interesting feature which unluckily is not common in other content management systems is the flexibility with which Website Publisher allows you to manage user groups: it’s very easy to create a new user group and set their permission with absolute precision, controlling exactly what any given user is allowed to do or even access once logged into the system.

Personalization: Skins and Plugins

While the fifty themes included in the package may seem like a lot, they certainly can’t be compared to the wealth of hundreds, maybe even thousands of custom layouts available for other, open source CMS.

However, the skins featured in Website Publisher are all generic and eye-catching, and you may find the one you’re looking for without much trouble.

The template section of Interspire.com also features a wealth of completely free material such as website and newsletter templates, as well as free, easily adaptable logo designs (which is a somewhat rare resource).

All the material hosted in this section of the site has been very well designed, and the fact that it is freely available not just for customers, but for any visitor to download certainly puts Interspire under a good light.

In case you have a specific layout in mind, or if you want a theme that better reflects your website topic, you will need to either create it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. The templates are not particularly difficult to make, in fact you can download one for free and tailor it to your needs in a matter of a few minutes, given of course that you have the necessary experience.

We couldn’t find anything resembling plugins or extensions for this specific platform. In fact, the licensing for this product makes it hard to contribute to the software by adding your own features, but we also never felt the need for any such thing as all the common functions are there for you to use, and the level of customization you can achieve by playing with the various settings is indeed quite high.

Interspire Website Publisher Pros and Cons

Many webmasters will scoff at the one-site license price of $289, however it can’t be denied that some of the features of this tool, including the ability to manage user permissions with absolute precision, are simply inexistent on many other platforms, making it irreplaceable for a certain client target.

For this reason, Interspire’s Website Publisher is an excellent tool for medium to large size website with big loads of traffic and a large staff to manage, but may not be your preferred choice if you have reason to think the traffic you will generate won’t be worth the one-time fee as well as the additional design costs you might have to face in order to set everything up.

There is also an entire set of features that those used to open source tools might take for granted, but which are simply not there due to the product licensing. First and foremost, a closed source license inevitably means a limited amount of free themes and templates, having to rely on Interspire to provide the technical support you might need, and the lack of a volunteer community of programmers that continuously expand the product functionality with new plugins and extensions.

Of course, you will have to carefully evaluate these as well as many other factors in order to decide if purchasing Interspire Website Publisher will be a worthwile investment for your website. Either way, we strongly suggest you to try out the 2-days demo and get a first-hand impression as to what the capabilities of this tool are, and whether your specific needs make it worth purchasing.

The overall feeling we got while testing Website Publisher is however of a very solid, stable piece of software that is capable of handling and adapting to your specific website needs. The user interface is particularly user-friendly with its tips and tutorials, and we are overall very satisfied with the product quality. Webmasters with large sites might consider switching to this product and see for themselves the validity of this piece of software.