WPS; real easy web-publishing

What is WPS?

WPS stands for Web Publishing System.  WPS is not a traditional Content Management System (CMS) but much more. A classic CMS only provides you with the means to  edit content on your website,  and editting is always done on a  separate website (also called backend). Nice, but there is also a “front” of a website, which needs to be programmed, and that may well be a time consuming job. WPS is a publishing system and will not only feature the CMS, but also to publish the front of your website.

Publication System

There are  other publishing systems, eg. Joomla or Wordpress, but I-V-O has opted to develop a whole new system. Why? Flexibility.

Most other systems are quite rigid in functionality and layout. WPS is extremely flexible by using XML. All data in WPS is handled as XML and is converted into 1 single document; the WPSDoc. XML is a special way of formatting data that is extremely suitable for “translations”. Imagine that you have entered a text and you want to make it bold, normally in html you’d use the b-tag. WPS also has a bold tag, not “b”, but <bold> and when the page is parsed (published) WPS will translate this <bold> tag into <b>. But; if the programmer determines the bold-tags are not supposed to be <b> he/she can change the output to eg. a h1-tag, or <span style=”font-weight:bold;”></span>. Now take this to the next level, and you have real separation between your data and the way it’s displayed.

The language used for this translation is called XSL-T, a type of HTML, but with logic, you can include a programmer if-then-else, loops, and variables. This make the XML much smarter, and therefore your site!
XML + XSL-t equals the most powerfull templating method available at this time; WPS uses both extensively.

Edit and manage

What makes WPS even more special is the way you edit text in your site. You won’t need a special backend, you edit the text in your website.  This makes much more sense and  is much friendlier than the standard CMS’.

Plugins

A default WPS site can do a lot

• Create and customize pages and texts
• Manage meta-tags (for search engines)
• Check if the links in your website are still OK
• Upload files (PDFs, Word documents, pictures)
• Set permissions per page

Furthermore, there are many additional features made in the form of “plugins”, a selection from the collection of currently available plugins;

• News Plugin:  management and publishing of news messages (including RSS-output !)
• Poll Plugin: Make a poll and have your visitors vote
• Search-Plugin: allows visitors to search through your site  (and the plugins)
• Shop-plugin: complete shop, with payment module for IDEAL and Mollie (micropayments)
• Survey-plugin: plugin for creating large surveys,  with email function, access codes and export functions.
• Catalog / Portofolio-plugin: let your visitors see what you’re selling or what you’ve created.
• Google Maps Plugin: allows your visitors where your business is located
• Reaction-plugin: give your visitors the opportunity to post comments on your web site (and they can also reply to eachother (threading))
• PDF output, automatically creates PDF files from the text on a WPS-page
• Blog-Plugin: news and reactions plugin put together
• Gallery Plugin: automatically creates a beautiful gallery from uploaded photo’s
• And in development, Google WAVE-integration

Websites running WPS

The following websites already use WPS:

• Koerswijzer.info
• Editpoint.nl
• Leesmij.nu
• Viewpointdocs.com
• Keesvanhoekarchitect.nl
• Tilenkhuizen.nl
• i-v-o.nl
• Beperkthoudbaar.info
• GBOW.org
• Soundmuseum.fm
• Kiddies.nl
• Homeless-songs.com
• Mollenhagen.com
• kernzorg.nu
• dj-dieter.nl

For more information about WPS, check out the (dutch) website wps.i-v-o.nl or contact me