Squiz Matrix Website Foundry

Sometimes You Need More Than One Website...

Squiz's Enterprise Open Source CMS and business intergration engine, Squiz Matrix, is used as a website 'publishing factory' in some of the world's most demanding web environments. Organisations such as Oxford University, the Australian Federal Government and Emap all use it to publish new websites on a daily basis for new audiences, new geographies and new applications.

Thankfully they don't need to work their technical department on a round the clock basis because we're helping them, and others, to develop a totally new approach to website publishing.

We call it the 'Squiz Matrix Website Foundry.' It enables Squiz Matrix users to roll out a series of new sites in a matter of hours. And, best of all, this publishing process costs them absolutely nothing.

Here's how it all works...

Rethinking Your Website Publishing Architecture

The Squiz Matrix Website Foundry enables multiple websites to be implemented and published at record speeds because we’ve re-imagined and re-architected the guts of the content management system as an antidote to the website 'mirroring' systems that cause so many implementation headaches today. Instead, our Foundry works as a remote repository of 'Content Services' that are designed to feed any number of satellite websites.

Unlike the static, hard-wired principles of most CMS’s, the Squiz Matrix Website Foundry bakes nothing in at source.

As the name suggests, the Foundry is a factory that gives you the flexibility to render (and re-render) an endless variety of websites using a standard work bench of content tools and services. Much like the advanced manufacturing techniques of today, it allows you to 'mass-customize' your entire stable of sites by recasting a common set of components under the guise of different front-end brands, looks and feels and user experiences.

It's hot stuff. It’s flexible, scalable, fast and incredibly cost-effective.

Here’s how we put it all together...

The Fast 'Time to Publish' Architecture: No More 'Clone, then Hack'

In practical terms, the Foundry approach means no more site cloning, template breaking, CSS hacking and content pasting each time you want to roll out a new batch of micro-sites. Instead, the Squiz Matrix Foundry enables you to apply a long term, strategic outlook to your website publishing requirements.

The Foundry’s 'Content Services' architecture enables you to turn each of your key content components into re-usable assets that can be re-compiled and re-applied to multiple website properties in super-quick time.

All it takes is a handful of Web CMS technology smarts and some sensible planning. Once it’s designed and implemented, the Website Foundry will help you deploy the following kinds of web property at the drop of a hat:

• Events Sites
• Blog networks
• Brand micro-sites
• Social Networking Platforms
• ...etc

Importantly, the design of this architecture is an exercise in abstraction. The Foundry is a factory, not a 'bakery'. This means we break down every single system asset into its constituent parts and leave the 'baking' until later in the site publication process. As a result, things like page design templates are never hardwired into the guts of the system, they're just one Content Service amongst many that your site editors are able to select during their site publishing workflow.

Foundry Website Publishing: 'Fast-Cast' and Roll!

From a site editor's point of view, this system-level intelligence is invisible - it just hums away in the background. In fact, website publishing in the Foundry requires zero technical know-how (site editors can be trained to use the Squiz Matrix backoffice interface within a day). Editors are presented with a series of simple panels that enable them to 'Fast-Cast' new sites using a point and click interface.

For example, in a magazine or events micro-site publishing environment, where the inclusion of a new music promo video may be a common content requirement across multiple new sites, an editor will choose his or her designs from a variety of pre-cast front end templates, attach this video service to them, add in some custom content, swap out the standard masthead for each site and then hit publish.

The resulting sites are rolled out immediately (with different looks and feels), and standard Content Services requirements like subscription forms, rich media files, 3rd party feeds and text copy are - thanks to some backend templating smarts - simply 'casted' into each site on the fly.

In short, the ‘Fast-Cast’ Foundry approach means that large numbers of new sites can be rapidly introduced from a common Content Services store, each with their own unique levels of customisation: be it at the design level, content level or functionality level ..or all three.

A Site a Day - No Extra License Costs

The Squiz Matrix Foundry is a perfect system for universities, media organisations and events management companies where new websites are published on a daily or weekly basis.

Aside from addressing a core need to speed, our Foundry solution is, of course, incredibly scalable and cost-effective as there are no additional ‘per-server’ (or ‘per-site’) license overheads associated with the act of publishing. Your only financial commitment is to fund the necessary time and skills to design and implement the system.

So, if you need to publish a website a day, then get in touch.