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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
(1-13 of 13)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 24, 2019
Cascade Server Gets the Job Done
We manage content from across hundreds of university web pages with Cascade Server. It allows us to implement a consistent style and others meet other guidelines in a central location, as well as assign different roles and levels of access to different people.
- Simplified page layout.
- Allow quick editing and previewing.
- Use templates and apply CSS.
- Image uploading and linking can be cumbersome.
- Users posting in div tags and inadvertent coding into content HTML can mess up page design and navigation display.
December 07, 2018
A robust CMS for all of your digital publishing needs
We use Cascade CMS for our institution's main website. While it is primarily used by the Communications Department to manage the visual display, most other departments have a presence and update their own content within the system. A major benefit is Cascade CMS's workflows. Workflows allows content contributors to make changes that are then approved by their supervisor before being published online.
- Cascade CMS makes no assumptions about your content. Templates control how the content gets displayed.
- Workflows are intuitive and allow for one or more people to review content before it is published.
- The published site is static (no database connection) which allows for faster page loads and reduced risk of attack.
- Upgrades require some technical knowledge; there is not a one-button upgrade.
- There is not an integrated backup/restore. Our IT department manages backups for this server.
December 01, 2018
A fully-baked enterprise web content management platform
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cascade CMS is the university's primary content management system, supporting multiple web sites including all administrative offices, all Arts & Sciences undergraduate and graduate programs, and our four graduate and professional schools (business, education, law & marine science). The CMS currently has approximately 200,000 objects (pages, images and files) managed by about 1,000 web content editors.
- Cascade CMS uses a simple folder–page paradigm that our content editors can quickly grasp, as it parallels the drive structures they find on their Mac and Windows computers and the URL paths within their sites.
- A powerful and flexible Content Type system allows site managers and administrators to simplify complex page structures and user interactions into manageable fields and WYSIWYG content blocks our content editors can maintain.
- Cascade CMS implements a fully-baked-publishing paradigm. This allows public-facing web pages to be served by an arbitrary number of front-end web servers, while isolating the CMS itself from any spikes in external traffic.
- Cascade CMS provides granular control of permissions/actions pertaining to non-publishable (administrative) and publishable assets assigned to users, groups and site-specific roles. Additionally, optional workflows, asset-naming criteria, file-size limits, spelling and accessibility checks, and other restrictions/automations can be applied and enforced.
- 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).
February 16, 2016
Cascade in California
Cascade Server is the campus central content management system. It is being used across the entire organization. Approximately 80% of our campus web sites are managed with Cascade. Cascade helps the central web team support campus web development through providing accessible, branded templates. Content managers can focus on the content and not the code behind the pages.
- Cascade Server pushes pages to a static web server via SFTP so when we need to apply an update to the database or application, public pages remain available but not updateable. This is very tolerable for our users especially during off hours.
- Cascade Server has a built in link checking so links don't break when pages are moved or renamed.
- Hannon Hill does a great job of listening to its customers. The company is Higher Ed focused and feature requests are often included in future releases.
- The way Cascade handles permissions can be difficult if users move between areas in a large organization. If users leave the organization entirely, it is easy to de-provision by removing from the global AD group.
- Workflow is available in Cascade Server but is a bit complex and not as user-friendly as some other systems.
December 23, 2015
Cascade Server is Highly Customizable
We use Cascade Server to build and maintain the http://law.hofstra.edu Website. The product allows us to easily expand and customize our website on a daily basis.
- We can customize the edit screen to add form fields which allows us to then customize the output.
- We can set permissions to view or edit content on a very granular level.
- We can customize the site template as needed.
- Cascade has few pre-built templates or plugins, so our site is a fully customized build.
- XSLT formats can be challenging to edit.
April 17, 2015
Cascade Server - Great support and Flexibility
Cascade Server is the web content management system used throughout our organization to maintain the official college website. It's used to solve countless business needs, including admissions marketing, fund-raising, news, events, photo galleries, staff directories and job openings. It's also used by the central marketing department to improve search engine optimization and accessibility, and manage a mobile-friendly website (Kurogo).
- Cascade Server comes with several avenues of support. The main resource is help.hannonhill.com, where all support requests are handled by staff but other users frequently contribute. Other avenues include the annual user training conference and the "Idea Exchange," where users vote on new features.
- Because Cascade Server is XML-based, it can ingest any XML-formatted feed (e.g. RSS) from external platforms like Flickr, Tumblr and WordPress. Conversely, content can be published in multiple formats, following the "Create Once, Publish Everywhere" (COPE) strategy. For example, a single page, published as a traditional HTML file, can also be published as a mobile friendly page and PDF document. Similarly, a groups of press releases can be published as an RSS feed and a group of website pages can be published as an XML Google sitemap.
- Cascade Server user interface is customizable for different content types. We've created custom interfaces for admissions open house pages, job openings, staff directories, events and press releases.
- One of the drawbacks of being an XML-based content management system is that any text entered, that isn't XML-compliant, triggers an XML error and the content can't be saved. The company seems to be working on this, as it recently released a new feature allowing content to be saved as JSON and CSS, which don't have to be XML-compliant.
- There is room for improvement when working with images. While the company has made improvements to the image editor and recently added the ability upload images via "drag and drop", the system can't save multiple versions of uploaded images automatically (e.g. original, medium, thumbnail).
- While Cascade Server's push architecture offers performance and security benefits, it can make maintaining a large website challenging. For example, the only way to re-publish template-specific pages is by writing your own web services application in either PHP or Java.
April 08, 2015
Power has a price
Cascade Server is used to maintain the official website for the college primarily devoted to recruitment and alumni/parent relations. It also supports many official office websites. It allowed us to transfer content maintenance duties to various office staff involved with the content development rather than funnel all updates through Web Communications.
- Very flexible. The system is based in XML which allows for a lot of flexibility for distributed and syndicated content with XSLT and Velocity.
- Large and active user community in Higher Ed. This system is used by many other higher education institutions so there are many relevant resources beyond the vendor and Higher Ed is an industry where other institutions help each other.
- Distinct separation of content from layout. It is very easy to break content out into separate blocks for reuse while leaving a template and layout intact.
- No inherit control over types of content that users can upload such as pdf, jpg, or other files. This has to be done via regular expressions. It's also possible for users to create files/folders that don't use web-safe naming conventions.
- Requires an experienced XML/XSLT developer to implement and structure. Because it's so flexible it's also very complicated to implement a structured solution that allows users to maintain content without getting frustrated with layout and formatting challenges with the WYSIWYG.
- The system doesn't support the latest XML/XSLT standards so you must use a lesser known scripting language Velocity to accomplish more advanced tasks.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)