Interview : Ametys 3.5 et 3.6 : more ergonomic and user friendly

Better multi-site management, improved ergonomics to make the interface more user friendly, new collaborative features ... version 3.5 of Ametys brings many new features. Discover the software, its features and future developments with Sylvie Suchet, CEO, and Cedric Damioli, CTO and co-founder of Anyware Services, publisher of Ametys.

What are the new and major improvements of this version?

Ametys 3.5 brings significant improvements in terms of multi-site management and user experience.

To be closer to the work habits of users, we homogenised all sharing opportunities within Ametys. Content or files can be shared before or after their publication on the Internet, regardless of their type or original location.

Many details of the ergonomics have been modified and improved: simplifying actions, reducing the number of clicks...

Always with the aim of facilitating the sharing of multi-site content, Ametys 3.5 improves the resources explorer natively available in the CMS, which allows a search to be performed on all sites.

We also took into account user feedback concerning the viewing of shared content. Webmasters want the content to be adapted to the context of the publication of each site: mobile site, blog, events ... That is why they can now choose for the same content a different appearance depending on the site: double columns, summary, display tabs...

Can you explain the other new features of this version?

Ametys 3.5 has been enhanced with collaborative features.
This version incorporates a tool which allows co-creation of content for the site visitors. The plug-in User Generated Content ("UGC") allows users to offer content via a form; this content is then checked and validated by the contributors of the site.

Also new in this release: webmasters can now offer site visitors the possibility of creating their own web space, where they can customise their profile and access specific content and services.

These new features allow for greater interactivity with end users and thus help to keep the site dynamic.

From a technical point of view, what are the major changes in this new version? How do the updates work?

Improvements have been made to the performance level (time required for the server to calculate and display a complex page and cache management).

A page monitoring tool has also been integrated into Ametys. It allows integrators to obtain reliable statistics on the performance of the templates created, based on actual visitor traffic. This type of tool is very valuable when it comes to deploying high traffic sites.

In terms of the update, the migration is simple and documented on our wiki.

The forum can also provide support if necessary.

When will the next stable version be released? What new features are planned?

Approximately every seven months Ametys proposes a major update. The next version is scheduled to be released for the first quarter of 2014.

Several developments are in the pipeline but we can already include a workshop dedicated to the management and use of graphic charts.

This workshop is essential in factory site projects and will resolve two recurring problems for webmasters in this type of deployment:

• How to allow webmasters to use their graphic chart in both an autonomous and scaled way?
• How to propagate graphic changes on multiple sites (adding templates, support for mobile devices ...) with a few clicks?

There will be more details in a few months on this feature.
The more impatient can already take a look at development versions of Ametys, which offer the beta function.

What do you plan in the future to increase your market share?

We believe that Open Source CMS’ must develop their ability to accommodate customised and industrialised developments, which are easy to maintain by integrators and end customers.

At Ametys, technical work is well underway to facilitate development and maintenance work of companies that integrate our CMS:

• Enriching the content model proposed by Ametys: the evolution of a site with dozens of models becomes much simpler for developers
• Webmaster tools to give full autonomy in answering questions relating to the CMS: Using the site tracking webmasters can respond quickly to questions such as "How much of the content is used in least two different pages?", "Who is the most regular contributor?", "Is the "event" content properly displayed for all users?", "What content is never updated?"
• Integration of the Sencha ExtJS 4 framework to simplify the creation of new modules.

Our goal is to better meet the needs of companies and agencies that integrate CMS’ through highly customised projects.

A demonstration site is available to try the solution.

In the coming weeks, you can also watch the webinar between Ametys and partner Smile, from last month (in French).