Jadu is a PHP based proprietary content management system from the company of the same name. Its architecture is cross platform and runs in Windows in the .Net framework, Linux, and Solaris.
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Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is purpose-built for marketers, and fully composable for developers. The CMS supports the end-to-end content lifecycle, helping users to deliver on-brand, high-impact digital experiences that 'wow' audiences.
Jadu CMS is not currently geared toward the academic side, but more of the business/government types of organizations. Things can be tweaked to suit your needs, but sometimes there are limitations. The programmers are very helpful in assisting with that.
If you have some in house programmers, and you can get developer training, they will be able to program their own custom widgets to use on your website. We did not have programmers but managed to create a few simple widgets.
There's also a marketplace to look for other widgets that you could use on your site.
It's definitely well suited for a large organization where you need to have multiple users paying attention to the content on specific pages, especially pages that are buried in a robust site. It's great for that, for the non-techie to be able to edit the information on their page, so to speak. Where I think it could be more robust is in the ability to kind of support more multimedia content and maybe make it a little bit easier to do forms because it has a capability obviously, but to some extent that is too complex for the non-techie to be able to create their own form as well as just some of the content blocks. I mean, I'm sure that a lot of time has been spent studying the complexity of that and whether the non-techie can manage something like a block. But I've found in my experience that even just basic group content block that's like the accordion, if you will, is too difficult for the non-techie person to be able to edit.
Reliability. The LAMP-powered server/software rarely has any problems and can handle hundreds of concurrent users without issue. It was developed with scalability in mind.
Ease of Use. Our users find the backend GUI very easy to use. The layout is intuitive and follows the same format throughout the entire control panel.
Powerful. Even if it doesn't do something you would like it to out of the box, the code is well formatted and easy to customize.
I decided not to give it a 10 because I don't know what else is out there in terms of CMS products, and there's a bias when you've only been exposed to one product. At my current job, I used Jadu sparingly but it's easy to get reacquainted with the software and the look and feel of the CMS
Since I work on the implementation side of things, and do not directly own licensing for Ektron CMS, I have to base this rating off of how I think it will be received or presented to customers looking to start a new site deployment. I try to remain CMS agnostic, though my specialty is with the .NET and Microsoft stack. Because of the experience I have working with Ektron, I tend to be more forgiving with the shortcomings as I am familiar with how to work around them or past them from experience. Being familiar with the community available also helps, as you become familiar with the best approaches to find solutions to your issues. Each product has it's ups and downs and all of them are only going to be as good as the company or development team implementing them can make them. This is EXTREMELY important to remember when choosing a CMS, as it can make or break your expensive investment.
For the common user, Jadu is very easy to use and to understand. For the more complex user/administrator, there's a lot of power to be harnessed in HTML editing, creating widgets, editing styles, creating workflows, and other advanced features Jadu can work up for the customer.
Optimizely puts a clear emphasis on making this usable for people that do not have a coding background. It's tabs are easy to navigate and make it very straightforward when searching for capabilities needed for building a website. The workflow management platform especially makes content approval processes which can typically get jumbled and overlogged, become simple and manageable.
I attended multiple trainings/tutorials early in the process. The vendor-supplied content about Optimizely was engaging for users/attendees (I often analyze training content, compliance programs, governance plans), which helps our OCM people by having good "word of mouth" about the product long before a rollout ever happens. I actually when the user-focused portion of the Optimizely Academy twice in 2022 to ensure I had a grasp on operability and to be able to support the training and OCM efforts
Ektron is one of the best solution for .Net platform. Over the years have improved the performance issues that the previous versions had. My only complain is right now you can't do Page builder pages if you choose to have a MVC architecture
Jadu is miles behind these and many other CMSs. The others are much more up to date with their code and ease of use. The ability to customize other CMSs is much easier and the code structure actually makes sense. Jadu was selected because it had a portal out of the box.
It's comparable to the ones that I mentioned in most ways. I selected this product because it was the easiest and most affordable. Easiest in terms of we already were on the Optimizely platform, so to go to another would be lots of work time and money. So it was truly the least path of resistance.
