Adobe Communique 5
What is a CMS?
In web terminology, CMS stands for “Content Management System,” and describes a method of managing content, workflow, and collaboration online. Web CMS’ are designed to simplify the production and publication of content on a website, allowing less technically inclined users to create and publish without having to know a lot of web programming. Today, “open source” content management systems like WordPress, ExpressionEngine and Drupal, are free to download, install, and customize.
Content management systems present businesses of all shapes, sizes, and industries with powerful means of creating and maintaining their own website and online content. With the growth and development of open source technologies, versatile content management systems have never been more affordable and powerful.
CQ5 – Introduction
Adobe Communique 5, or CQ5, is a large-scale web content management system that is currently available from Adobe Systems (the makers of Photoshop and Illustrator). Originally developed by Swiss company Day Software, the CQ platform changed hands when Adobe acquired Day in October 2010.
Day Software is a global technology and software company headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Day Software’s flagship product is a leading-edge enterprise web content management (WCM) system called Communiqué, or “CQ” for short. CQ5, the current version of Communiqué, uses open source standards and advanced technologies targeted to serve large enterprises and organizations. In 2010 Day was acquired by Adobe Systems, Inc. With Adobe’s backing, CQ5 is certain to maintain its reputation as a robust, enterprise-level solution for companies with diverse and difficult WCM demands.
Adobe CQ5 is geared specifically for large companies and corporations with substantial -and often global- infrastructures. It combines web content management, digital asset management, and social collaboration to deliver a solution that allows large companies to manage incredible amounts of information, multiple internal and external websites, a myriad of media assets, and detailed workflow.
CQ4 to CQ5 Migration
The release of Adobe CQ5 was a significant shift and foundational change in the Enterprise WCM product. The migration of content and features from CQ4 to CQ5 has been a major concern for many Adobe CQ customers. Many CQ4 components may need to be rewritten and retooled for CQ5. Transferring of large amounts of content may need to be done with a combination of automated migration tools and manual intervention.
Several of CQ5′s key benefits include:
- Substantial reduction in organizational training costs
- Significant control over brand presentation
- The reuse of templates and components while maintaining a unique look & feel
- Adobe also contributes significant resources to the open source community, with over 12 Apache and 25 open source projects currently underway.
- Some notable companies that use the Adobe CQ5 platform include General Motors, McDonald’s, Kodak, Volkswagen, Audi, and NBC Universal.
- CQ5 has outstanding features that compete with the best Enterprise Web Content Management and Portal systems. At the heart of CQ5 is Apache Sling and a Java Content Repository (JCR). Main features of CQ5 include the following:
1. Web Content Management, including in-place editing of content, workflow, localization, personalization. etc.
2. Marketing Campaign Management that can segment visitors for push marketing
3. Mobile web experiences and you can preview your site in many different mobile simulators
4. Targeting which integrates Adobe’s online marketing suite powered by Omniture
5. Social Collaboration such as profiles, wikis, forums, blogs, etc.
6. Digitial Asset Management with easy access from the content editing screens
7. Portal integration can easily surface content on a portal or include JSR portlets on a content page
8. Forms Builder to create forms for the site
CQ5 Capabilities
Following is a listing of the major features and capabilities of the Adobe CQ5 enterprise web content management system.
1. Simple, Intuitive Web Publishing
- In-context, drag-and-drop page design
- In-context content authoring
2. Business User Drag-and-Drop Page Component Library
- Text, image, and teaser components
- Dynamic lists
- Adobe Flash and Slideshow components
- Tables and charts
- Search and site maps
3. Creative Site and Page Design within Corporate Standards
- Page templates by site and site section
- Fine-grained control over available page components
- CSS-driven
- Full design inheritance
Why Adobe CQ5 is a Great WCM Solution
CQ5 empowers business users to create, analyze and optimize site content, campaigns, and targeted user experiences. Content authors with no programming experience will find CQ5′s in-place page editing intuitive and easy to master. An easily accessible content library with drag-and-drop functionality ensures that media assets are uploaded once and referenced across the site from one location instead of being duplicated and uploaded hundreds of times by many different users. Every aspect of a webpage, from title tags and meta information to paragraphs of content, can be adjusted by content authors or restricted to only advanced administrators.
Developers will be excited to use the more advanced capabilities of Adobe CQ5, like managing multi-lingual content and global brand messaging across local market web presences, creating and testing changes in real-time to customer segmentation and content targeting rules, and real-time A/B and multi-variant tests. CQ5 leverages Adobe CMIS and JSR-283-compliant CRX platform and provides IT a 24×7 operating environment. This means hot application updates, hot backups and hot join clustering with on-demand scalability through support for hybrid on-premises and Cloud-hosted deployments are all provided.
Adobe CQ5 Drawbacks
Leveraging CQ5 to make use of all its advanced features requires advanced planning and strategy with an advanced team of developers for building, testing and deployment. Corporations unprepared to invest the necessary resources towards an Adobe CQ5 project will find it extremely difficult to deploy and maintain. The licensing costs for CQ5 are substantial.
Latest Adobe CQ5 WCM Release
- Version: 5.4.0
- Released: February 22nd, 2011
References
General information