Fiona CMS Finding Success with Simplicity

By Geoff Spick (@Goffee71) Apr 3, 2009

The Fiona CMS from Infopark is one web content management system that if you're not in Germany you may not have heard much about. However, the German product is now doing some brisk business around EU and is picking up a wider following with its easy-to-use approach to content management.

Fiona's success is yet another reminder that the dream of simplicity is more than just a gleam in many a vendor's eye.

Hello, My Name is Fiona

The latest news from Infopark relates to the coming version of Fiona. They've got a beta release out with the stated aims being improved speed of content creation, flexible system integration and delivering a more adaptable architecture. With such frills Fiona could possibly become the object of many affections.

Fiona CMS — In-context Content Editing

Sold on the premise of Friendly, Easy, Powerful Fiona combines content management services with your company's portal and CRM to produce a well-rounded system that delivers value to the developer, customer and the company, all while making it easy to create, update and improve the resulting sites and content over time.

Fiona's Fine Features

High-level product features include:

A content manager interface that is menu-oriented and adaptable
Support for back office, wizard-based and in-context content management/authoring
Content item versions, history and change auditing
Multi-lingual content support
Workflow engine with notifications
Content publishing and expiration scheduling
Content security, sign sign-on and ACL-driven personalization
Dynamic or static content delivery with support for multi-channel (cross media) output
Broad systems integration options (Web Services, JSR 168, Tcl, Java API, Ruby API, etc.)

Enamoring Content Authors

At the top end, WYSIWYG design tools, a task-oriented approach and plenty of wizards will help non-expert staff create attractive content, all done in a platform independent manner.

Fiona CMS — Wizard Based Authoring

Fiona shows a full preview as you add content, and there plenty of wizards that can be used to automate repetitive steps. The ability to use other editors such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage is a boon for the content control freaks out there, who simply must do things their way.

Fiona CMS — Asset Management

Content Management Flexibility

Fiona provides several viewing modes, making it easy to navigate through all of your electronic content. The thumbnail view for example, is particularly suitable for image databases. Workflow and reminder features will help the daily processes moving.

Fiona's Geeky Side

While she has her graceful side, underneath, our dear Fiona hides a lust for technology. With a Java core and good relations with databases the likes of MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase and SQLite (for testing), she is definitely one who goes in for the geeks.

Further, Fiona is designed to play nicely with whatever architecture you already have in place. Connectors for Rails and Java, a Java API, support for SOAP web services, JSR 168 compatibility, links to social content and features like scripting support keep the tech requirements on the flexible side.

The system can also deliver various output formats, including RSS, mobile content and PDF. Nice, nice, nice.