Tutorials & articles written by Bergfrid Skaara

All text content in eZ Publish can be translated to multiple languages. Having only one website to administer is efficient and makes it easier to maintain a consistent brand across languages and countries. Site visitors can choose from a list the language in which to view a site.

The built-in eZ Publish versioning feature makes it possible to have several versions of a content object. It automatically keeps track of which content changes were made by which users at what time, and provides the option to revert content to a previous version. Every time you click either the Create or Edit button, the system automatically creates a new version of the content. It is always the new version that is edited; old versions remain untouched. In other words, the version mechanism follows a "copy-and-edit" approach rather than an "overwrite / replace" approach.

The cross publishing feature (also called the "add locations" feature) in eZ Publish makes it easy to reuse material on a site, having it appear at multiple locations in the content hierarchy. For example, this feature can be used to place a specific news article at two locations: the front page and the news archive.

In the eZ Publish Administration Interface, the Object Edit Interface provides tools and information to assist you when editing content. Features such as version management and front-end previewing are accessed with a single click.

The Administration Interface is the advanced, back-end eZ Publish interface used to add and manage content and to perform many administration tasks, such as configuring user accounts. Everyday content creation and editing tasks can be performed via the the Administration Interface or the front-end Website Interface (which was introduced in the second article in this series). A good understanding of the main layout makes your work easier and more efficient.

The eZ Publish Online Editor (OE for short) is an extension that enables you to create formatted pages using an intuitive interface. With the OE, you can easily format text for your articles, product descriptions, weblogs and so on. The OE interface is very similar to the one found in word processors. There is no need to know XML or manipulate tags manually. As you click the buttons, the OE will automatically convert your instructions into valid eZ Publish XML code.

Adding and editing content on your eZ Publish website can be as simple as logging in to the front-end of your site with editor privileges, navigating to the location where you want your new content to appear, then selecting the appropriate action on the Website Toolbar. This brings up an editing interface with intuitive WYSIWYG features.

eZ Publish is a highly flexible and customizable Content Management System (CMS). It can be used to build everything from personal home pages to multinational corporate web solutions with role-based multi-user access, online shopping, discussion forums and other advanced functions. Based on Open Source technologies and principles, it can be easily extended and customized to interact with other solutions.