Content Management
By: Sally Smith
April 23, 2007
Developed over 11 years, OTHERobjects is a mature, stable and secure online content management system. It is used by organisations such as Paul Smith, Hornby, ZSL, the Virgin Group, Delia Online and the Royal Academy of Arts.
OTHERobjects is a powerful, highly flexible and very simple to use content management system. It is quick to roll out and can be adapted to manage virtually any web service.
Controlled via a web-interface, users can access the system to update or publish site content and add new pages using predesigned templates without having to format text or resize graphics. OTHERobjects also lets you see how changes will look before the page goes live.
OTHERobjects promotes site consistency by producing templated pages; it allows a stuctured editing process and separates the underlying code from the content, preventing errors occuring due to accidental code alterations. OTHERobjects also creates websites that are quick to load, fully accessible and compatible with any browser or operating system.
Benefits of OTHERobjects
- Highly flexible (modularity)
- Open interface allowing OTHERobjects to communicate with any type of network system
- Highly scalable
- Changes to your site can be made from anywhere and at any time, as updates are made via an internet connection
- No HTML knowledge is required to use the system, with links and image placement being handled automatically. As the interface is browser-based, training is minimal with each user requiring between one to two hours.
- OTHERobjects is a scaleable service that can support increasing numbers of users. Existing clients range from 1 to 2,000 users, different users having responsibility for different areas of site.
Modular build
Rather than an out-of-the-box system, OTHERobjects consists of a set of components which combine to form a coherent system. For example OTHERobjects has additional modules such as a site survey builder and eCommerce analysis tools. the OTHER media will advise you as to the best solution for your site and can build additional components to cater for your particular business needs.
OTHERobjects communicates with any network system which means that is possible to integrate your website's backend systems.
Editing process
OTHERobjects supports a range of different users from contributors and correspondents to editors and sub-editors, depending on the needs of particular clients. 
Correspondents can create and edit but not publish content. Editors/sub editors can publish content although multi-level approval may be needed in the case of a sub editor.
A user can be a correspondent on one section of the site, having only read and write access, and an editor with full publishing rights on another section. We set up the access permissions based on your needs.
OTHERobjects also supports the publication of approved ‘published’ content to more than one site and in multiple formats including XML. This is currently in place for WWF learning and ZSL London Zoo. We have experience of syndicating content to third party sites including MSN for Lord’s, Virgin and WWF.
Technical
OTHERobjects 5 is written in Java. It connects to most database systems and is currently used with open-source databases such as PostgreSQL as well as Microsoft’s SQL Server. Because OTHERobjects uses standard Java Servlet technology, it can run on Windows 2000, Linux and Mac OSX.
For more information, please visit the OTHERobjects product page