New Kid on the WCM Block: Edicy

By Irina Guseva | Published Aug 6, 2008

If you were under the impression that the WCM market was overpopulated, think again. There's yet another addition to the happy WCM family – a little baby named Edicy. Fraktal, a start-up software company based in Tartu, Estonia, is behind the new CMS tool.

We’ve been watching Edicy for more than a couple of weeks now trying to figure out where it is going. We still are waiting, but thought we’d share what we know so far.

Fraktal is Tõnu Runnel and Priit Haamer, as well as Toivo Annus and Märt Kelder, who used to work for Skype.

Mid-July, Edicy announced that it was “opening up (a little),” and that the general public can take a peek at their new hosted WCM system by beta-registering on their web site. Following which, Fraktal must have received a lot of feedback and fixed quite a few bugs, including:

The ability to embed Flash files
The ability to modify a blogs' publish date
UI improvements
Enhanced sign-up process
Fixed HTML bugs

Edicy’s customer support department is represented by Andres Sehr, a former Skype employee, and Tõnu Runnel via Skype. When we tried to reach out to support, both of the gentlemen were offline. Oops — the ever-present pains of time differences. This is all great, but we are still wondering where the “Publish” button is located.

Some of Edicy features available so far include:

Templating

edicy templates.jpg
Edicy Templates

Frankly, the templates (all seven of them) are quite basic and remind one of early Blogger/Blogspot days. The templates are not configurable just yet, as the “ability to change the colors and pictures is coming soon.”

Preview and Edit Modes

Edicy Preview Mode

The only difference between the two is that there is a toolbar at the bottom of the Edit mode window.

Blogging Module

Edicy Blogging Interface

This module can also be used for company-related news.

Digital Asset Management

Edicy DAM

Very rudimentary, but it is there.

Site Organizer

Not much to say about this one.

While, it does not appear to be a full-fledged WCM, Edicy can be a viable solution for small, brochure-like sites with no budget. But that won't be until Fraktal makes a real release of Edicy, which is now in a public beta.

We look forward to being impressed by Edicy. After all, they say “We know that you often only get one chance to impress someone so you better make it good.” Great thought!

As you can imagine, more news on Edicy may follow.