While I mainly work with Kentico 5 these days, I still have to maintain some sites that have not yet been upgraded. Now using the older interface feels like looking around my Grandma's kitchen: the UI of version 4 looks somewhat stuffy. This however, is the best proof that the UI introduced in version 5 was a big step in the right direction.
Two weeks ago version 5.5 was released, not a major update, but just think back to when version 4.1 was released, it included smart search and way better media handling. So every update is always something to be excited about.
The new features in a nutshell
Looking back over the version histories, here are the changes that I was most intrigued about:
- Integration of Meta Weblog API for Blogs
- New RSS web parts
- New Goggle Analytics web part
- New web part for mobile site integration
Meta Weblog API for Blogs
This feature should allow editors to use LiveWriter, a small desktop application for easy addition of new posts to blogs. The idea is simple: Supply a simple Word-like tool to your users, so they can edit their web site (or blog) content without working in a more complex CMS backend.
Windows LiverWriter application
I haven't tested this feature yet, but it certainly deserves a full blog post. Stay tuned!
A brief look into the documentation quickly uncovered a couple of weaknesses: LiveWriter does not support a custom post summary, like Kentico does. This means that the post summary, which I always use for the blog month listing and RSS feeds will be simply the first x number of characters of the actual blog post.
Once testing, I will also have a look into how page titles, blog tags, keywords and description text are handled. Interesting also to examine how versioning and workflow will work.
In any case, the Weblog API is sure to a welcome feature that can be useful for many clients.
RSS integration
I was really excited about this one. To date, creating an RSS feed was kind of pain and consuming RSS feeds almost impossible without custom code. While in previous versions standard RSS feeds could be reused once setup properly, it was more of a challenge to create custom RSS feeds for custom Flash modules, such as video and audio players.
Kentico 5.5 introduces a whole bunch of web parts that allow out-of-the-box RSS feed creation for some document types, such as news, events and articles, but also for blog posts, blog comments, forums and even from custom tables.
All these new RSS web parts, as well as a RSS Reader ship with Kentico 5.5
On top of all that it seems that the web part that allows for RSS feed consumption is finally working without slowing down site performance.
Google Analytics web part
Someone might actually ask, why you would need a web part for that. Inserting the GA code into the masterpage is really not a big deal. But there are situations where you do not want to have the GA code on all pages, but only on some sections. Managing this becomes a cleaner task using web parts. Also, hits from your cmsdesk are automatically filtered out.
Additionally, think about what happens when Google changes the tracking code. Such a thing just happened: last December Google launched asynchronous tracking. Unfortunately, Kentico didn't take note of this change and the web part was released with the old code...
UPDATE: Kentico immediatly fixed the web part, it will be included in RC2 and can until then be downloaded from the Marketplace.
The good news is that we [r42] fixed this web part. It will work with the new tracking code and be released on the Marketplace in the coming days.
Google introduced asynchronous tracking in December 2009
Integration of mobile sites
With the ever-increasing number of smartphone and internet-enabled mobile phones, offering a mobile site is getting imperative. And even if you can pretty much browse any HTML site with your iPhone, it will become standard to offer a basic web site with selected content that is specifically targeted for mobile devices.
How does Kentico face this challenge? Version 5.5 claims that it "supports creating mobile web sites".
Well, we can find an example of a very, really quite basic mobile web site in the new corporate sample site. It uses three new features:
- First, you can now use several master templates on the same site
- Second, you can change the style sheet in your general property tab
- And finally, there is a new mobile redirect web part
This means, that by creating a mobile layout using a mobile device optimized style sheet and pulling the content from your regular site through repeater web parts, you can create a separate mobile mini-site.
New (undocumented?) feature: Change the default style sheet at page level.
What does the mobile redirect web part do? It simply redirects mobile browsers to your mobile site, nothing more.
UPDATE: Bugfix 5.56 sets now cookies.
Wait a minute! What if a user wants to browse the full site with their iPhone? No luck. Looks like this mobile strategy needs some more thought...
Good news again, we [r42] fixed at least the web part, it will also be released in the upcoming days. Later on this summer we will try to create a real mobile sample site that actually works for most mobile phones.
Still bad news for multi-lingual site owners
UPDATE: Kentico immediatly fixed this issue! Please download bug fix 5.56 and all you will read on from here will be history.
The most disappointing thing in the Kentico 5.5 release is that multi-lingual URL support is still buggy.
Version 4.1 introduced the document URL path. Since then, documents that exist in more than one language can have distinct URLs. The solution was not perfect, but a step in the right direction.
In version 5.0 it is possible to create these URL path automatically. The bug however is, that special characters in the URL are not replaced and as we all know IE6, which is still used by 15% of online users can not handle these URLs, at least the way they are served by IIS 6. If you are using extensionless URLs, it does not work for any browsers.
I've complained about this for a while now. Automatic creation of distinct URLs for pages that exist in multiple cultures is a must, not a feature! Rendering special characters in a URL is a bug and should be fixed immediately.
It is a real obstacle for my clients. Here all clients need to have bi-lingual web sites.
IE6 can't handle special characters in URLs
The Kentico challenge
r42 will fix a third web part: A language switch web part that works. This web part checks to see if the document in the target culture exists and also takes into consideration the definition of a domain alias for a culture (like "my-web-site.com" and "mon-site-web.com" for a English/French site).
r42 fixes three web parts and will offer these for free on the Kentico Marketplace. All I ask in return is having a bug-free document URL path.
Kentico, are you jumping into the ring? There can be only winners!