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Cascade Server is a highly versatile content management system widely used by universities and colleges to manage multiple websites across …
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What is Cascade CMS?
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…
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- Publishing workflow (19)9.090%
- Role-based user permissions (19)8.080%
- Admin section (19)8.080%
- WYSIWYG editor (19)6.161%
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What is Cascade CMS?
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,…
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What is Cascade CMS?
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 web experiences. With it, users can build profiles and engage with audiences through targeted content delivery.
Cascade CMS Features
Web Content Creation Features
- Supported: WYSIWYG editor
- Supported: Code quality / cleanliness
- Supported: Content versioning
- Supported: Admin section
- Supported: Page templates
- Supported: Mobile optimization / responsive design
- Supported: Publishing workflow
- Supported: Form generator
- Supported: Content scheduling
Web Content Management Features
- Supported: Internal content search
- Supported: Content taxonomy
- Supported: SEO support
- Supported: Browser compatibility
- Supported: Bulk management
- Supported: Availability / breadth of extensions
- Supported: Import / export
- Supported: Website analytics
Platform & Infrastructure Features
- Supported: API
- Supported: Internationalization / multi-language
Security Features
- Supported: Role-based user permissions
- Supported: User-level audit trail
- Supported: Version history
- Supported: Simple roll-back capabilities
CMS programming language or framework Features
- Supported: PHP
- Supported: Python
- Supported: Java
- Supported: .NET
Additional Features
- Supported: Full support of COPE (create once, publish everywhere)
Cascade CMS Video
Using Velocity and XSLT in Cascade Server
Cascade CMS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Cascade CMS Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
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 web experiences. With it, users can build profiles and engage with audiences through targeted content delivery.
Reviewers rate Page templates and Publishing workflow and Bulk management highest, with a score of 9.
The most common users of Cascade CMS are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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Cascade Server is a highly versatile content management system widely used by universities and colleges to manage multiple websites across various departments and administrative offices. Users with no web technology experience have found Cascade Server to be easy to navigate and use, resulting in an efficient web publishing environment. This has allowed departments with high update rates to have immediate control and updates through the IT department's back-end design and structural support.
Scripps Research, for example, has implemented Cascade Server across its entire institute, empowering individuals, studies, and departments to create their own websites without extensive intervention from the IT department. This has significantly saved time and costs. Northern Illinois University also relies on Cascade Server as its main web client, enabling everyone in the organization to easily update and manage their web pages, particularly in the Marketing and Web Communications Department.
Cascade Server's robust features such as versioning, check-in/out assets, workflow management, and cross-site sharing capabilities make it a powerful tool for managing multiple sites, approving content, and maintaining version control. With its intuitive user interface, staff can efficiently retrieve information from the content repository throughout the workday. Additionally, Cascade Server's integration with Spectate allows for personalized web content, easy form generation, and lead tracking. It serves as a comprehensive suite of web content tools that cater to diverse organizational needs.
The flexibility, adaptability, and scalability of Cascade Server have made it ideal for universities and organizations seeking a powerful CMS solution. Its ability to assign different roles and levels of access has been praised by users for providing a self-service tool for end users without web management experience. Furthermore, Cascade Server has enabled departments and programs without technical resources to build and maintain their own sites effectively. It has become instrumental in managing content from hundreds of university web pages while ensuring consistency across the organization. Additionally, Cascade Server has proven valuable for managing online journals by simplifying text placement, image inclusion, document attachment tasks, thus enhancing efficiency in journal management.
Time-saving Tool: Users have found Cascade Server to be a valuable time-saving tool for monitoring stale content and broken links on their public site. They appreciate the automatic handling of version upgrades on the cloud, which has been lightning fast and only takes about half an hour to convert a site with a large number of assets.
Intuitive Permissions: Setting permissions in Cascade Server is described as intuitive and easy to set up at both high or granular levels. Many users have praised the CMS for its ability to track assets and links when moved, deleted, or renamed, as well as its capability for allowing relational publishing of all affected assets.
Great Integration with Third-Party Products: The integration of Cascade Server with third-party products such as Google Analytics, SiteImprove, and WebDam is highly valued by users. They specifically mention the excellent customer service provided by Hannon Hill, the company behind Cascade Server.
Cons:
- Overwhelming and Challenging Interface: Many users have found Cascade CMS overwhelming and challenging to understand, especially without programming knowledge. The complex nature of the system makes it difficult for non-technical users to navigate and utilize effectively.
- Limitations with Images: Users have mentioned that Cascade CMS has limitations when it comes to working with images. Specifically, they find it challenging to save multiple versions of uploaded images and encounter difficulties in managing image-related tasks within the system.
- Complex Maintenance for Large Websites: Maintaining a large website can be difficult in Cascade Server due to its push architecture and the need to write a web services application for re-publishing template-specific pages. Users express frustration with these complexities, which make it time-consuming and labor-intensive to manage their websites efficiently.
Users commonly recommend purchasing consulting time from Hannon Hill to configure and set up Cascade CMS. They suggest considering WordPress for its ease of use and overall design, while acknowledging that Cascade CMS excels in revisions and file structure management. Additionally, users find Cascade CMS to be a powerful solution for enterprise-level content management, although it does require familiarity with Velocity templating language, XML, and structured content markup. They also highlight the ease of use for basic daily functions in Cascade CMS and praise Hannon Hill's customer support. Lastly, for users with advanced technical expertise, they suggest considering Drupal as an alternative option.
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Reviews
(26-44 of 44)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
December 30, 2014
Cascade Server -- Serves all your needs to its best !!
Cascade Server is being used by the whole organization to develop and maintain the main university website and the individual department websites. The Communication Department of the university takes charge of maintaining Cascade Server for our university, and there are a whole bunch of employees including developers, managers, administrators etc. who have done a tremendous job in developing and maintaining the web and mobile version of the college website.
I work for the Architecture Department of our university, and my job is to create templates as per the department requirements, and I feel proud of being a part of this.
I work for the Architecture Department of our university, and my job is to create templates as per the department requirements, and I feel proud of being a part of this.
- What I personally like about Cascade Server is the fact that it does its best as a Content Management Website by providing minimum work of just entering text and uploading files to the department people who have to maintain the website but have no programming and development background.
- The Asset factories, Metadatas etc. makes it much more easier for the people who maintain their websites using Cascade. It makes every feature available in just one click.
- The above points were from the maintenance point of view. Now, as I developer, I would say, I enjoyed working on Cascade as it provides an easy way to write and execute your code. Also it provides the upload feature, where in you can simply upload the existing code file onto Cascade and use it as is or edit it if required.
- Also, I like that Cascade Server automatically generates code for some complex features such as index blocks.
- Personally, as a developer I feel it would be better to have a facility to see the page source directly from Cascade, rather than publishing the entire page and then looking the page source code, as sometimes looking at page source becomes important while debugging.
- Also, Cascade provides detailed documentation on how to implement different features provided by Cascade, however, I felt a little more documentation should be provided about what each features does, what is it exactly for. This would help the naive developers to understand the workflow easily. It took me sometime to understand what are content types for, why do we need configuration set, data definitions, format files etc.
- Apart from these, I find everything else perfect and easy to use, both as a developer and a website maintenance person.
December 18, 2014
Cascade Server - Just do it.
We use Cascade Server across our entire university web site. It allows us to maintain consistency with branding while allowing individual departments to take control and ownership of their content.
- It is very easy to customize to your needs as well as your users needs. You can build out custom editors for different departments based on what kind of content the need to display.
- It is really easy to use one editor to populate multiple pages not only in the same site but using different sites as well.
- Since you can have multiple publish points, it is really easy to test out different design options when working on a redesign.
- A bit of a learning curve from administration stand point if you don't have any programming knowledge.
September 06, 2014
Good But Not Great
I used Cascade Server when I was managing my residential housing website. I found that while I was able to input text and pictures quite easily, I found the other features less accessible. Facets such as, background design and enhancements, were difficult to navigate and took away from the overall experience of website development. At another position, I used the software for a similar purpose, but again I was not pleased with the ease of use. As an individual who is at a beginner level with website management, I struggled to produce the creative ideas that I wished to implement. I would prefer an interface that allows for easy transitions and apparent features.
- Text editing
- Picture implementation
- Basic display functions
- User interface
- Media implementation utilities
- Basic start-up guide
September 05, 2014
Cascade Server review by student
We use Cascade Server as a content management tool for managing the websites for the Purdue University College of Science. There are several departments within this reach (Math, Stats, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Computer Sc.), plus the College of Science itself. We manage their websites according to their requests of new information, new design of their websites, or delete old information. Furthermore, we also look for broken links and errors by making use of another software called InSite, and try to fix them. Mostly, we manipulate the individual web pages to include new information by using their HTML scripts. There are only around 5-7 of use in charge of using this system for the College of Science, three of them being full-time, and the others including me being part-time since we are students.
- Content addition including pictures, text, video
- Template creation common across various pages, thereby greatly reducing time
- Making header and footer blocks
- Managing the left and right panes
- Individual pages need to load faster
- Publish message sometimes takes a long time to be pushed across all machines, perhaps increase the speed of the publish message
- There is a problem with the hierarchy of the publish message pages, in other words, we have to publish the individual pages before publishing the page that calls them. This is a little confusing. Perhaps this could be addressed.
September 05, 2014
Cascade Server Review from a beginner user
Currently, our university is using Cascade Server for our website, including creating new pages and making edits and updates on existing pages. It is very helpful to have a single application that everyone working on the website can go to, and I like that there are limits to what different pages are accessible to certain employees.
- Organizes pages- The organizational chart that Cascade has is very easy to navigate and makes it easy for employees to quickly find the page they are looking to edit.
- Simplicity of design- I appreciate that everything is very straightforward on Cascade when it comes to making edits, viewing pages and so on.
- Size of Cascade- there is plenty of room on this server to create as many pages as the website needs.
- Spell Check- I would love it if Cascade could learn to recognize names; it would be one less step I'd have to go through, but it is not a significant issue that causes me to believe Cascade needs improvement.
- Although I use Cascade Server regularly to update the website, the edits I do are not complex enough to reveal any problems at this time, so I don't have any suggestions from room for improvement.
We use Cascade Server 7 to develop the College of Liberal Arts’ website. Each department’s web designer develops and services their site independently but reports to the IT manager. I serviced the Department of Learning Design and Technology last year. I used Cascade to display information about programs, faculty, academic groups, department's activities, and to make documentation accessible for prospective and current students and faculty.
- Stable (server never went down on me).
- Their online documentation makes it easier to solve (daily) issues you may face.
- Does not have a steep learning curve. You only need some hours of hands-on instruction.
- The WYSIWYG can be improved. Extremely basic for widely used CMS
- Image editing can be improved. Pictures need to be uploaded as you want them to see. Cropping or size reduction are not handy.
- The HTML editor can be improved. The HTML editor is simpler than Microsoft Wordpad. Taking into consideration that front end users just edit the pages, you need to have an intermediate-to-advance command of HTML
Cascade Server is being used both by my department and in most other academic and administrative units across campus, both for generating new web content and for updating existing pages on a regular basis. Common examples include creating and updating event calendars, informational resources for academic advising and other programmatic content, financial aid, tech support, university news, and various interactive and informational pages for accounting and HR-related purposes.
- The user interface provides a clear, easily navigable way to work on web pages, both insofar as small-scale edits and the wholesale generation of new pages are concerned. Any given site's hierarchical structure and your current position (if any) within it is clearly visible in the sidebar at all times, which makes for efficient work.
- Powerful context menus that allow for easy editing of existing pages, the generation of new content, adding new files, deleting, moving, and publishing assets.
- The overall editing interface is fairly intuitive and easy to use, including both GUI-style elements and the ability to write or edit in HTML mode for more precise page creation and modification. Videos and links can be easily embedded as well.
- Copy/cut/paste shortcuts triggered via the editing context menu don't work in Firefox, although the corresponding keyboard shortcuts are fortunately still usable (for example, CTRL-C/X/V). This is a bit annoying, although not a deal-breaker since I normally use keyboard shortcuts anyway, but it would be good to see this addressed in future builds.
- It would be nice if there was an actual drag-and-drop move function, in addition to the context menu's "move" function. It would certainly simplify some of the basic recurring website updates, and particularly when older files and other embedded content needs to be moved to another area for archival purposes.
- It's nice that the CMS will check your edits for seeming-errors when you go to publish, but many of the error messages are unclear insofar as exactly what they mean. Since I have only limited fluency in HTML, more instructive error feedback would be very helpful.
September 02, 2014
Cascade Server - Easy to design, tough to bring down
Cascade Server is being used across all the departments at Syracuse University. It is primarily used for maintaining the university website and the websites for individual departments. The common IT department at the university holds the administrative privileges for defining and maintaining the style sheets and design of all the websites. This takes care of maintaining the uniformity among all the websites hosted.
- Dashboard - This gives the summary of all the major notifications and status updates. For example, the documents that are pending or need to be published.
- Saves draft of edited pages before publishing them. This helps in continuing the work back from where it was left.
- Assets can be uploaded from anywhere in the document. For example, while creating hyperlinks to internal documents, cascade gives you the ability to upload documents from that position without having to navigate to a different screen/page.
- If changes are made and published in one page, I've often had to publish the entire base folder to push forward the same changes and see them on the front end.
- Pages stored in cache memory can create some problem. I had to open a new incognito window and refresh the website to see the changes in the front end.
- The biggest problem I've had is ghosting of pages. If by any chance while moving or deleting the pages, Unpublish is unchecked the pages still remain in the backend and they are tough to find for deleting them. Because of this, they cannot be over written, old versions load on the website and new updates are not seen.
- One thing that can be done is display a popup of Unpublish checkbox or give a tool tip to explain what will happen if the user doesn't unpublish the pages while moving or deleting them.
September 02, 2014
Cascade server simple yet decent tool for a CMS.
It's being used by a department to manage our webpage.
- Easy Interface
- Simple and an relate to HTML
- Short learning curve
- Well for starters the hierarchy implementation is a bit of pain
- Secondly, changing a link, we need to make sure other places referencing the link isn't broken
August 30, 2014
Cascade, all positive
I use Cascade Server to construct the departmental page on the university website. Cascade addresses the need for publicity on the university level.
- Publishes quickly
- Allows for repeat modifications and reviews
- Difficult to move and edit images and text within the page layout
August 30, 2014
Cascade Super Server
Cascade Server is a content management system I use to maintain web content for the departments website and have been using this for a while. It is very easy to use and user friendly even if you have a non technical background. When I started using Cascade I was worried, "what if I accidentally delete something or something goes wrong"? With Cascade you don't need to worry because all your deleted data is stored in a repository and is available to restore if you think you deleted it accidentally. I would give 3 1/2 stars to users and would recommend it to beginners and non technical background users.
- Web Content Maintainence
- Recovery of content
- User friendly
- Too much tree structure.
- Not able to to view live on the browser.
- Browser dependent.
August 28, 2014
The true cost of Cascade Server: Hannon Hill understands that content management is more about people than technology
Cascade Server has been Philadelphia University's primary means of web content management for five years now and approximately 90% of our website is generated via a push from Cascade. With the web communications team (roughly 3 people in marketing and public relations) serving as designers, developers, writers, managers, trainers and consultants, faculty from almost every one of our 75 graduate and undergraduate programs along with staff from approximately 10 administrative departments act as content editors. Using Cascade, we have addressed the need to decentralize basic content updates while maintaining control over not only the technology, but in many ways more importantly, the brand.
- In-context (i.e., in page as it appears) editing with a simple WYSIWYG editor that anyone who can use a word processor can understand
- Push system that results in easier server management and clean, compliant output
- Support from LIVE human beings that don't just refer you to a help document but will actually help you by telephone and email (i.e., great customer service)
- To be used to fullest potential, Cascade Server requires at least one developer who knows or is willing to learn Velocity script
- Setting permissions for users could be simplified as, depending on your build, there are some redundancies regarding user setup
August 27, 2014
Is Hannon Hill's Cascade Server Right for you?
At our college we use this CMS for our main website and a few smaller sites. We have been using Cascade Server since 2004. We were one of Hannon Hill's first customers. Cascade Server runs the college's main website. With any organization we have business problems that need to be met. The biggest is having a large number of users that work in different departments on campus that need to update their department's site. These users do not have coding experience. Cascade has a simple solution to do this by using your standard WYSIWYG editor. To add to this we are also able to add student interns into the mix of using Cascade Server by using "workflows". This allows a student to make changes to a page. Once the page is submitted it goes to someone higher up in the chain for approval of that page. If the page checks out okay it gets published. If changes need to be made it gets rejected and sent back to the student. Cascade has answers for our biggest hurdle of having so many users that need to update the site.
- One thing that is nice about Cascade Server is it sits on a different server than where it publishes to. The thought process behind this is if you ever need to upgrade or do maintenance or if your server running Cascade Server crashes, your site will still be live because the content that gets published sits on a different server. Unlike a CMS like WordPress. If WordPress crashes, your site crashes.
- Another awesome thing the Cascade Server does very well is they offer great customer service. You can give them a call at anytime and speak to a user support specialist who will walk you through a problem. You can also expect an email back within the day if you chose to send an email to user support instead. You might not even have to send an email if you search through the very well organized knowledge base they have on their site.
- Hannon Hill specialized in higher education. So being in Higher Ed, it makes it easier on both the college and Cascade Server to troubleshoot/compare/contrast with other colleges.
- Hannon Hill does have a handful of sites that they run that are not Higher Ed sites. So if you aren't in Higher Ed I wouldn't let that scare you away.
- One major thing that I would like to see differently is how often a new version gets rolled out. Recently, they decided to start rolling out a new version every few months rather than just having one big rollout once a year. It sounds great on paper that they are making so many improvements. But to gather the time it takes to upgrade Cascade Server at a particular time when it isn't affecting a ton of users across campus is tough. This usually ends with me being in my office upgrading Cascade at 3am every few months.
- Going based off of my last example, they have a remedy for this but it's a costly one. They have service plans that include Hannon Hill doing all of the hosting instead of you having Cascade hosted in house. With this plan they will upgrade Cascade Server whenever an update becomes available. Once again, sounds great on paper but it comes with a heavy price tag that makes it not affordable to do.
- Being web based makes for some clunky user interaction. It is a very robust system. With it being web based it makes it hard for Hannon Hill to make it portable. If you had a quick change to make on a page I wouldn't suggest trying to conquer that task on your phone. A tablet even is pushing it. Also going off of usability, it is very friendly in all browsers. Works wonders in Chrome and Firefox, works not so hot in any other browser.
- For all of their backend functions, they use Velocity. Which is a Java based language. It is very similar to your typical languages but to do anything other than your basic functions you need to know Java in order to accomplish something.
We use Cascade Server at MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities. It hosts the website for the unit and will soon host a few smaller websites that fall under our jurisdiction. While the Communications office (my office) is the main user, other departments have contributor access to certain parts of the system to be able to update their own departmental content (but not publish it). The product helps us manage the massive amount of web content in a smart way.
- It is very customizable provided that you have a good development team. You can make it work best for your content.
- Levels of user permissions and workflow allow you to give just enough access to employees in your organization so that they can update their own content, thus taking some work out of the admin's hands, while still requiring an approval process before publishing so that content can meet the Communications/PR office's standards.
- The system can be used to run multiple websites while your users have the same user accounts for those different websites.
- Workflow steps are clumsy. While workflow itself is good, there is a separate screen after the "Submit" button for users to add comments. The screens should be combined or developers should have an option to turn the comment field off.
- The notification e-mails Cascade sends with workflow steps are horrid. They contain no information about which page the e-mail is notifying you of. Due to this, our office had to come up with a standard for naming workflows after the page we are editing.
- The default interface text size is quite small. I always hit "Ctrl +" a few times before I start working to zoom the screen in.
Cascade Server is used mainly by people without hands on experience with web technologies like HTML/CSS. I am a member of the technical staff and advise non-technical people of the usage of the Cascade Server. The main business problem it solves is abstraction from the underlying technical details of our website and allows for easy content creation.
- It handles the underlying HTML/CSS details very well. In my experience, in most of the cases, our accounts and HR department was easily able to create content quickly on the Cascade Server without needing help from any technical staff.
- It provides the ability to define multiple kinds of layout. This is essential for creating a decent UI without too much hassle.
- The style sheets are centrally located. I can change the logos for the entire website with just a few clicks. Also, I have restricted access to these config files to ensure that the site is not tarnished unknowingly by other employees. I thus don't have to worry about any sudden changes on the live server.
- Cascade Server does not allow for easy integration of JQuery plugins. Every time I hit enter on the content manager, it creates a new div. This really messes up my JQuery.
- The publisher queue SHOULD be multi-threaded especially when pushing to different sections of the website. It will greatly reduce waiting time for users.
- The "new" feature on the menu bar inside the Cascade Server takes forever to load. Why are the links on generated dynamically while the page is loaded like a normal menu-bar? It starts to load when I click on it and it takes about 3-6 seconds to load. Thats very bad response time.
August 26, 2014
Whatever you want, Cascade Server can do it!
We are currently using Cascade Server in the College of Sciences and Mathematics, but it is also being used in other colleges and offices across campus as well. In our college, it helps us manage the website easily by letting multiple users in each department/office manage their own pages without having to be proficient in website code. Also, it allows us to control exactly what they can edit, which helps keep our pages uniform and makes it less likely the other users could mess something up.
- Cascade Server can be used to break down pages into "blocks" which are basically snippets of code that can be reused over and over again. Using index blocks makes many things on our site so much easier because the block basically finds the information for us, and then all we have to do is write a small XSLT or Velocity format to process that information. Cascade Server makes use of this very well so that we can easily make our pages more dynamic. It's almost like they write themselves at times.
- In Cascade Server, templates can be used in a way that can make updating the design of your site a breeze. Basically you have one or two base templates that every page on your site references, plus your css files. When it's time to change the design, all you really need to do is replace the css and change your template. You can rearrange and modify your blocks to make sure that they don't go crazy, but once the css and template have been updated, the rest is a piece of cake.
- User management is handled well in Cascade Server. We have ours tied in to Active Directory, and we add our users through the ldap connection. Once they have been added, however, managing them is easing with groups. I just give a group the permissions it needs and drop the users in. I think it's vital to be able to restrict what a user can edit, and at times, what they can even see. Cascade lets you show your users as much or as little as you want.
- For me, writing formats has been the bane of my existence at times. Now I am not technically a programmer, so it may come as no surprise that XSLT does not come easily to me. I can modify formats that have already been written, but not write new ones. That being said, the formats do work great, it can just be very technical for those who may not have those skills. However, I have found Velocity much easier to write and understand, but the only problem I have with it is the lack of documentation at times. Hannon Hill has been working to provide more support for Velocity though, so even though the formats can be very technical, they are becoming easier with Velocity.
- Workflows are great, but they can be confusing. Using the workflow builder is the way to go, but for the ones I have made, I have had to follow a tutorial each time. They can definitely take some getting used to as far as setting them up.
August 26, 2014
Some issues, but you can get by.
Cascade Server manages the entire university's website. All staff has access to update webpages as needed. With its MS Word-like interface, it's pretty easy to add new text and formatting, however, phantom HTML code gets embedded sometimes so editing can be a challenge. For example, on the preview pane, everything looks properly aligned and formatted, but when you publish the page, things get a little wacky and you'll lose the consistency and formatting that you've set up. I don't know how much of this is Cascade's problem or if it has to do with the website parameters that the university sets up so individual users don't totally destroy the look and feel of the school's whole website. But, it's been problematic. There have been times I have had to delete an entire page and start from scratch to clear it out. I'm not too savvy with HTML, but I can get around if needed and I still have trouble with the source coding at times.
- MS Word-like interface for creating text
- Editing multiple times can be challenging since HTML code gets integrated and can lead to misformatting.
- Accordian features are not formattable.
- Limited options in sidebar (if you're not super fluent in HTML coding)
August 26, 2014
Cascade from a Support Staff member
Being at a large university, Cascade Server allows us the easiest method and Web Content Management System for a wide array of users. We have staff, students, and faculty that all have very unique needs, yet Cascade's easy navigation and quick response time lead to a very efficient web publishing environment.
- Cascade Server has a simple user interface. Along the left side there is a menu that is very easy to learn.
- Cascade Server responds very quickly. Some user interfaces take minutes to respond; Cascade takes only a couple of seconds.
- Cascade Server is very powerful. It is able to address a variety of web needs.
- It would be nice to customize the color scheme across the whole platform. More customization would allow for more comfortable use for some users.
- There are a lot of folders that are named something that a lot of users may not understand. Having a clean default name for top directories would be very helpful to newer users.
- Migration into Cascade server isn't the easiest. There could be many ways to improve this functionality.
August 26, 2014
Novice Cascade Server user review
Cascade Server is being used by the Mathematics department of University of Texas Arlington to maintain the department website.
- Easy to get used to the product because of the simple UI.
- Can design clean because of the editor view and code view
- Publishing and maintaining the structure of the website resources becomes lot easier because of the navigation view
- Highlight the corresponding code of the component clicked in design view, helps to find the it's code easily than searching it manually