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Contensive is pleased to announce the release Version 4.0. The new software is a dramatic change in the framework for the Contensive application. The biggest change in the newest release is in the core architecture. All of the non-core functions within Contensive have been converted to Add-ons. There are several reasons why the major architectural change has been done.
- This allows us to more quickly react to changes and updates. Add-ons are separately coded and changes can be made without affecting any other core systems accelerating release schedules
- This add-on architecture allows us to easily incorporate third party programs into the Contensive environment
- Makes it easy for others to contribute to the functionality of Contensive by creating and modifying add-ons, essentially taking the best attributes of open source (community collaboration and sharing) while leaving out the worst (non-centralized architecture control and strategy direction).
"This new framework will allow us to take advantage of the explosion of web applications that exist out there," says Jay Kidwell, Chief Technology Officer. "If you look at Google Apps, for example, they have done a great job of building web ready functions for use on web sites. The problem is that they still require a content manager to have some technical knowledge of HTML and java script to actually implement the apps. It's like they drove the ball 90 yards down the field then handed it over and said "OK, now score". Using our new add-on system we handle last 10 yards of programming and truly make the addition of new functionality cut-and-paste."
Now, if you want to add a countdown clock app to your site you can take the provided code cut and paste it into an add-on record and then simply drop the function on a page just like you would any Contensive add-on. Now clients can add a Twitter feed to their site, use Google's open social tools or any of the other 1000's of freely available applications without having to program.
Some of the specific changes to the software are:
Administrators can now turn on and off Link aliasing and workflow in the preferences section under Settings.
You can now add a “FavIcon” for your site also in the preferences section.
The admin area now contains “Field Help” for all the fields in the back end. The Contensive team is working to populate these fields over the coming months, but administrators can also create their own site specific Field helps by turning on their edit tags and editing them.
This version of Contensive supports background processing. This allows certain functions to run in the background so they don’t affect site performance.
The new text search add-on contains the Contensive spider which runs as a background process.
There is a new look to the admin area that is the dashboard area. The dashboard provides graphical summary reports and a quick view (hourly snapshot) of current users, as well as the Contensive tweet.
The navigator has a new node called Legacy menu that mimics the old drop down menus in the navigator format. This for those who are still reticent to give up their legacy menus for fear of not finding items in the navigator. (FYI-We highly recommend you start using the navigator as this will eventually be phased out.)
Quick edit now allows access to the headline field and child pages.
Your site now has the ability to set a review pages to help you make sure your content doesn’t get out of date.
You can now create a page with a custom “404- page not found” message
There is a new template tab for mobile browsers. Build simplified templates sets for mobile device browsers and when a user hits the page from their phone it will deliver the content in the simplified template.
One of the most important changes is in the housekeeping functionality. The system now automatically cleans up the visit and visitors table of all spider (non-cookie) visits. This will deliver more accurate reporting of site visitation and reduce the size of your database improving the over-all performance of your site. | 
