About eBitions - the opcs in-house Content Management System
Introduction
eBitions is a content management system (CMS) written by opcs, initially in order to learn programming in PHP, Javascript and also give us a more detailed understanding of HTML, CSS and MySQL, technologies commonly used in designing and developing web sites.
Like other CMS's, eBitions allows the user to make quick changes to the content of their website via an intuitive interface which insulates the user from the technicalities of web development.
From the external viewers point of view, the fact a site is running a CMS should be pretty much invisible - at least without knowing what to look for. In fact, this site here is running on our CMS. Could you tell?
History
eBitions started off in life in 2009 as a CMS specifically for photographers and artists. The name, "e" "Exhibitions" came about through a discussion with a friend and artist about how best to present art on the web.
eBitions has excellent image management functionality allowing artists to use and reuse their images in the content of their website. For example once an image is uploaded, you can use it stand-alone, as part of a gallery, exhibition or collection. You can even use them aas part of a carousel or slide show. We also added ecommerce features for images allowing artists to sell their originals, reprints or as downloads. It also has a "products" store which can be used for merchandising.
Further developments allowed the build up of other, more generic features which are useful to alternative types of website. For example: - News, Commenting, User Registration, Links Management, Announcements and Booking.
The system is over 300,000 lines of code (not including third-party libraries) written in PHP, HTML/CSS and JavaScript utilising MySQL for data storage and contains the following functionality all accessible via a comprehensive administration panel.
Features
- Easy upload and management of images
- Comments from Flickr can be imported into your site
- Creation of Galleries, Exhibitions and Collections
- Integrated store allowing you to sell prints of your images, originals, downloads or merchandise.
- Integrated Flickr uploading/downloading.
- Great keyword handling for images helping to get your photos or artwork noticed in search engines.
- WYSIWYG editor for all text content such as
- Page content.
- Image, Gallery, Exhibition and Collection descriptions.
- Blog posts.
- News articles.
- Blog System
- User Registration
- Site Menu Editor
- News Editor
- Links Management
- Form Editor
- Downloads Management
- Advertisement Blocks
- Redirects
- Sitemaps
- Reads and writes to an assigned Twitter account.
- Announcements system. Make an announcement to selected (or all) visitors to your site.
- Comments System with integrated anti-spam functions.
- You can allow / disallow comments on news articles, individual pages, blog posts and images.
- Optional internal search functions.
- Integrated Booking System.
- Real-Time log viewer.
eBitions requires hosting to arranged and maintained by opcs. We can't give our clients access to any of the source code or run it on a server not controlled by us. In the event you leave opcs then we'll render your website as plain HTML/Javascript/CSS and pass those materials on to you. In this even you would loose any dynamic features you may have been using however all the content, design, layout would still be yours.