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GeekPAK, the Social CMS

New Features: 2010 Quarter 1

March 24, 2010
Post. Link. Tweet. With GeekPAK, it’s that simple.

We all love social media because it helps us stay in touch with all of the people who are important to us.

GeekPAK is like a social CMS because it helps you stay in touch with all of the information that is important to your organization. Now we are pleased to announce that GeekPAK truly is a social CMS because now you can manage your social networking right alongside your website.

Now you can create content for your web page, promote that content on your social network using custom branded short URLs, all without ever leaving the comforts of the GeekPAK CMS.

Post. Link. Tweet. With GeekPAK, it's that simple.

We've been busy in 2010 on more than just social networking, and we are pleased to announce a comprehensive list of new features for our content management system. Stay tuned next quarter for more feature announcements.



Social Media and Information Sharing

GeekPAK not only enables you to manage all of the information your organization collects and distributes, but it also enables you to manage how you share that information on twitter. GeekPAK provides two key components to help you post on twitter:


Twitter

GeekPAK not only enables you to manage all of the information your organization collects and distributes, but it also enables you to manage how you share that information on twitter. GeekPAK provides two key components to help you post on twitter:

  1. create twitter posts that are directly linked to the content you are creating on your website.
  2. create short URLs that are trackable and that let people know the link they are clicking on will take them to your website.

Short URLs

GeekPAK not only enables you to manage all of the information your organization collects and distributes, but it also enables you to manage how you share that information on social networking sites. GeekPAK provides tools to facilitate the creation of short URLs that can be used in social networking posts.

Why Use GeekPAK For Short URLs?

Creating GeekPAK Short URLs provides several advantages:

  1. Short URL Tracking: When you create a short URL in GeekPAK, you are able to track the activity of that link. Specifically, you can view a particular link's activity in relationship to the other activity and statistics of your website.
  2. Meaningful Short URLs: Most short URL sites create non-sensical URLs. These URLs, while short, do not tell viewers where they will go or who posted this link. By using GeekPAK short URLs you can improve click through by clueing in visitors that the link is from your organization. In addition, you can use understandable links like "survey" or "social" rather than typical link names generated by short URL sites like "dbZSkY"
  3. Ease of Use / Single Source Data Management: When you create short URLs using GeekPAK, you don't have to manage passwords at other websites, you don't have to switch back and forth between multiple locations, or use 3rd party tools. All of your web data is housed, managed and related in one place.
  4. Direct Access to Information: When a user clicks on GeekPAK short URLs, they go directly to the information you want them to see. Links to tools like Facebook may require users to click additional times to see what is linked to directly through GeekPAK.

Community Tools

Building upon our existing community tools like our comment engine and tagging we've added additional community features including:

  1. Word Clouds
  2. Content Rating System
  3. User Content Preferences
  4. Custom branded twitter feeds


eBlasts and Mailings


Mailings Options

Mailing Sender

GeekPAK will generate eblasts and mailings with a default "name" and "address" for your website, however each mailing can have a custom "name" and "address" added on a per mailing basis.

Mailing Date and Time

GeekPAK will send an eblast as soon as it is added to the queue. However you can schedule an eblast to be delivered at any point in the future.

Mailing Fields

You can create customized emails that include each recipient's name, address and more. This allows you to create customized emails and messages with phrases like: Dear Jane…



Topics and Site Structure Tools


Topic Options / Topic Tray Options

In addition to being able to create topics and modify your site structure at any time, you can also modify how each topic page displays it's subtopics and assigned pages.

tray type: tray type allows you to choose a set of options that are configurable within a given template. Each tray type can be configured with custom settings for the following topic elements:

  • number of documents / rows displayed
  • table type used
  • content displayed in the table (title | abstract | full article)
  • type of image to display (thumbnail | photo | none)
  • how elements in the list can be clicked on (title | entire content block | read more links )
  • pager options ( normal | simple | advanced | jump to all )
  • pager position (top | bottom | both)
  • sort order for items in the list
  • sort descending or ascending
  • blog (on | off)

Subtopic Options

"Subtopic Options" behave in exactly the same manner as the topic options, but apply to all of the subtopics on a given topic page. The settings you choose will be applied to all subtopics when they are viewed on the master topic page.


Library Options

If you are using the Library module then these settings can be used to apply a Dewey Decimal / Cutter code to a topic. Assigning a book to a topic automatically generates the correct shelf code and bar code based on this setting.



Website / CMS Enhancements


Catalog Options / Catalog Tray Options

In addition to being able to create web pages and add new content at any time, you can also modify how each page displays and the features that are available on each page. Tray type allows you to choose a set of options that are configurable within a given template.

Each tray type can be configured with custom settings for the following features:


document features

  • show print / email: this toggles print and email buttons on and off
  • show social media: this toggles the social media buttons on and off
  • show ratings: this toggles page rating on and off.
  • show comments: this toggles the comment engine / blog features on and off
  • show description: in some cases the description might be a custom synopsis for a long page. This option enables the description to be displayed at the top of the page as a kind of executive summary.
  • breadcrumb: this toggles the navigation breadcrumb feature on and off
  • series style: this is used to set how a page will be formatted if it is part of a series
image / video
  • image vertical: this can be used to choose the position of an image at the top or bottom of the page.
  • image horizontal: this can be used to choose the position of an image at the left or right of the page.
  • video position: this can be used to position videos at the top or bottom of the page.
related URLs

A standard url title will be displayed, but if you want to enter a custom title for related URLs, you can use these fields to do so.

related documents

A standard title will be displayed for related documents. However, if you want to create a custom title you can use the title and subtitle to do so.

document kicker

This is used to create a custom header for use at the top of a page. For example at the top of a blog page you can use this to create a header like "Featured Discussion: We want to hear from you", or on press release pages you can use this field to create the standard "for more information contact" header used in many organization press releases.



General Features and Enhancements


Biography Pages

If you have regular authors that contribute content to your website, you can help people find other articles written by this author by creating an author biography page. When viewing a page on your site, users can click on the author's name to learn more about the author as well as see a list of other documents the author has written. GeekPAK allows you to manage both traditional authors and organizational authors.


Image Captions

With GeekPAK you can add informative text that provides additional information about a given image. There are two kinds of information you can add to an image:

  1. Visible photo caption: These kinds of captions will only appear on the specific page on which you entered them.
  2. Alt tag / rollover caption: These kinds of captions will appear where ever the image is used.
  3. When placing your mouse or cursor over an image in a web browser users can see the text entered in the "alt" tag for that image.


Website Statistics

Everyone has access to one kind of web statistics or another, but what if you could view your web statistics in the context of your larger web strategy? What if you could track short URLs? What if you knew which users were logging in and what they were doing?…all in the context of your general web traffic.

With the new GeekPAK Enhanced Web Statistics module, you can.

If you are an existing GeekPAK customer, these features can be added by upgrading your site to the latest version of GeekPAK.

If you are using another CMS without these features please consider switching to GeekPAK. Contact us now to learn more at 888.433.5725.

CMS Content Management Systems provide a structured, database driven suite of tools for managing your website. At GeekPAK our CMS can help you manage your website and your business.
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