Cascade CMS (formerly Cascade Server) by Hannon Hill is a content management system, with built-in tools to help users eliminate stale content, increase digital outreach, and promote end-user adoption and accountability. Cascade CMS is designed for decentralized web teams in most major industries, including higher education, government, healthcare, and technology.
Included is Clive, an engagement and real-time personalization tool for collecting information and using it to craft personalized…
N/A
Jahia Digital Experience Platform
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Jahia is a Java-based enterprise content management system. It features an integrated user portal, web publishing and content management, document management, collaboration, and multi-channel publishing.
Cascade Server is well suited with it's WYSIWYG editor being better than most editors that I have used in other systems. In context, editing makes adding content easy compared to the last CMS I used where you had to wing it and view the page outside of the CMS to see if it was correct. The ability mix HTML, CSS, and the Script of your choice anywhere and with ease.
The scenarios were Cascade Server is less appropriate would be in the use of compilers or programs like Visual studio. You need to go out of Cascade Server and go to other environments to perform tasks and then copy the result to Cascade Server. You can write directly in Cascade Server, but it's easier to do in and editor that is specific to a function.
In my experience, Jahia Digital Experience Platform as a CMS platform is excellent when you have a large amount of content that needs to be customized. It is also good for when you have templated content that has minor variations. I would say it is less appropriate when the content has numerous mathematical computations, or a large amount of business logic that comes into play with data processing.
Cascade CMS is not an out-of-the-box pre-built system that you can install, turn on and expect to be serving sites and pages on day one. It's not a blogging system like WordPress, or a drag-and-drop system like SquareSpace (both of which I've used for their own purposes). You need to have someone tasked with management and system administration – and if you implement the on-premise self-hosted version, you ought to have several people. We have the university's IT shop handling infrastructure (server hardware, containers, clustering, operating systems, load-balancing, DNS, database servers, NAS/SAN drives), our Web & Design team managing Cascade CMS (system settings, sites, templates, permissions) and managers coordinating each respective academic unit (A&S, business, education, law, marine science).
It lacks the ability to manage multiple versions of a page or content in general.
The back office interface sometimes encounters bugs or display problems.
It's difficult to keep pre-production sites up to date in terms of content compared to production, because the time required to import/export sites is very long once the site is rich in content.
Changing systems would require too much effort. Our institution is using Cascade Server, WordPress and Drupal but we only serve 2200 students so we have 1 too many content management systems. Reflecting on current technical resources we would like to drop down to 2. This effort hasn't moved forward because of the extensive work required to migrate content and train users in a new system.
I would not use Jahia as it proved too complex for our needs and didn't help our over goal of customer satisfaction. Along with the man hours to build and execute, it wasn't worth the hassle
Cascade CMS is completely usable on mobile devices, we can train our content editors in a single 2-hour session, and we support 1,000 users with a very small team.
There is a level of complexity for the system administrators, site managers and web programmers who implement templates and content types. But the complexity is neither arbitrary nor inconsistent – and once learned provides a powerful environment within which we can develop robust sites that are beautiful and powerful, yet easy for our content editors to manage.
The interface and ergonomics are designed to facilitate the use of the product. The creation of template is easy which allows to minimize the actions necessary for the provision of content.
[I give it this rating because it] was up most of the time. There are so many scheduled reboots that I don't think it would be a good choice for a 95% SLA.
They have always regarded any question or problem we encountered as very important. We have never felt that they ignore or downplay any issue and not once has anything been left unresolved. They also hold an annual conference where users are invited to attend and share their experiences and wisdom with the entire Cascade community. And with the care and support the provide, we all feel a part of that community.
As I was saying, the support makes sure to be available for any question, or any technical point that we may need to discuss about. Moreover, whenever we have an issue with the platform they get alerted and also send us an email so that we are aware. We had multiple complex topics to work on in the past, but they always have been answering our question
The key to any CMS implementation is PLAN, PLAN, PLAN. Proper planning with Cascade can increase your satisfaction exponentially once the site migration/creation is complete. When all is said and done, your implementation can make your site run like a Yugo or Maserati. Be smart and deliberate in your decisions. Drive the Maserati. It is already paid for.
We selected Cascade server seven years ago, and the CMS environment at the time was clearly different than it is today. We decided to go with a vendor solution rather than a free solution because the long term cost in hosting a free solution is not, in fact, free; we've found Cascade to have been an excellent choice for us.
Jahia provides a similar user experience to other CMS I have used in the past - it features a simple interface that makes navigating and learning how to use the platform easy and the ability to copy and paste content saves time and effort when building new pages. The ease in which you can manage the site in different languages is also a big plus!
Initially, ROI was positive - because we completely redesigned the website when we implemented Cascade.
Over time, the inability to keep up with the latest interactive tools has reduced visitors time on site.
Also over time, the difficulty of use has led to less buy-in by backend users, leading to outdated pages, little timely information, and lower visitors.
