Escenic Community Engine Goes RESTful, Adds Dashboard

Offering web publishing and strategic content management, Escenic packs in 140 fixes and improvements into its latest updates of Escenic Community Engine 3.3-1 platform.

Take the Escenic Route

For those in the media and web publishing industries, Escenic is a platform comprised of tools to manage and publish content. At its core is the Content Engine, which stores any type of digital assets, offers advanced metadata and tag searching, and makes all those assets available to other programs or sites via a Java API.

Background on Escenic Content Engine

Content Engine is the heart of the package, a repository for a company's data across one or many servers. It uses a presentation layer and templates to display the data and uses JSP tag libraries to assist in development for custom solutions. With easy import, export, a full administration suite and statistics information, the Content Engine provides the spine off which the other modules can be linked.

The latest version of the Content Engine has just been released. Version 5.1-1 adds a new plug-in for migration support, allowing two versions of the engine and data to exist side-by-side, while helping to move content from V4 to V5.

Another update is the Community Engine which moves on to 3.3-1. This adds a Google-inspired dashboard, which helps monitor user comments and expands compatibility with the new Content Engine.

What's Escenic Community Engine

The Community Engine is an optional component to Escenic and adds those, now essential, social networking elements to the package. With Community Engine added, users can build their own tailor-made communities to engage with customers.

The features can be added to existing sites or new areas can be created, with user profiles, forums, comments and more. Users can network together as well as post and tag their own content. It supports Facebook Connect, Single Sign-On and other methods to speed up logging in.

What's New in Escenic Community Engine 3

Version 3 of Community Engine offers a new dashboard, which it admits is unashamedly inspired by Google Reader and a RESTful API to aid integration, among the other features listed on the roadmap are:

• Tight integration with Escenic Content Engine 5
• Third-party API for extending Escenic Community Engine
• Widgetized template development
• Single sign-on (SSO)
• Support for OpenID
• Administration dashboard

Another feature of the new Content Engine is plug-in support for Content Studio, which is where writers and editors get their hands on the files and data. Designed for multi-channel and content support, it offers live content caching, so information will remain constant across all servers, no matter how big the company.

The editor runs happily on PCs and Macs and offers easy access to all data, the ability to work on multiple documents at once. Offering compatibility with advanced editing and proofing tools like Tansa and Vizrt, users can edit images and video as well as text from the one space.

Manage your company rich media in Java-style

Big Over There

Escenic is a Scandinavian-originated Web CMS with a HQ in Norway, popular in the web publishing industry in Europe and globally. With more modules and features constantly being added and updated — including a Mobile Solution to get media on smartphones and other devices and a Community Engine to manage forums and user input — Escenic is worth taking a look at.

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