ExSite Feature Overview

Existing features in black; features in development in grey.

Website and Content ManagementDatabase Integration
  • edit/update website content online
  • WYSIWYG web authoring tools work on Windows, Mac, or Linux
  • multiple levels of access and security
  • maintain any number of sites simultaneously, each with their own webmasters
  • publish pages to HTML, or render them dynamically
  • member-only and administrator-only pages
  • nested sites and sub-sites
  • automatic site map and menu generation
  • flexible templating system
  • content versioning, rollbacks
  • user-friendly administrator back-end
  • workflows and content approval mechanisms
  • scheduled publishing
  • scheduled content updates
  • remote publishing via FTP/SCP
  • connect to wide variety of database engines, from plain text to SQL.
  • connect to multiple databases simultaneously
  • web-based database administration tools
  • import/export tools to/from text or Excel
  • table-, record- and field-level access control, independent of the database engine
  • simple database API makes it easy to extend to new database engines
  • toolkits for automatic form generation and processing of database inserts, updates, and searches.
  • extended set of datatypes that are independent of the underlying database engine, including html (allows WYSIWYG editing of HTML data in any database), crypt (automatically encrypts/decrypts data from the database), email (to display hotlinked but spambot-proof email addresses), file (for automatic file uploading), and more.
  • database drivers for Foxpro/Xbase, DBM, File System, and fixed-record length binary files.
Software Development and IntegrationIT
  • many plug-and-play applications and applets available
  • supports server-side web apps, such as PHP
  • supports all client-side apps, eg. Javascript, Java, Flash
  • driver API for integrating any server application into ExSite CMS - allows your web app to be handled like a content object, thereby gaining all of the features and advantages of the content management tools.
  • web applications can call each other, without any knowledge of their internal coding.
  • multiple web applications can share space on the same page.
  • supports multiple development languages (C, C++, Java, Python, etc) via the Perl Inline toolkits, perlxs, or IPC.
  • CGI wrappers, to integrate existing CGI programs into the ExSite CMS without any re-writing. (Normal CGI programs will function normally on an ExSite site, but they can't take advantage of ExSite's CMS, site management, and templating features without some re-coding.)
  • based on stable, industry-standard web technologies, eg. Perl CGI, Linux, Apache, MySQL.
  • no special server configuration required; can be installed on most ISP setups.
  • flexible installation options, eg. server-wide install, local site install, shared code/separate database install, etc.
  • no client-side applications or plugins required
  • customizable authentication procedures
  • logs and audit trails
  • open source
  • email account and DNS management modules
  • support for mod_perl high-performance web serving
  • support for other web server and OS environments
  • web-based site software installation and upgrades