Oracle WebCenter Sites

Score5.5 out of 10

37 Reviews and Ratings

What is Oracle WebCenter Sites?

Oracle WebCenter Sites is the new name for FatWire which Oracle acquired in 2011. It is a complete CMS often bundled with other Oracle WebCenter products to present a more comprehensive management solution for businesses and enterprises.

Categories & Use Cases

Content Management

Form generator
Users can build website forms for visitors to fill out.
Category average: 7
WYSIWYG editor
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool allows users to build pages without writing code.
Category average: 8.1
Code quality / cleanliness
Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.
Category average: 8

API
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
Category average: 8
Availability / breadth of extensions
There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.
Category average: 7.5
Mobile optimization / responsive design
The CMS helps users build webpages that work well on mobile devices – whether m-dot pages or responsively designed pages.
Category average: 8.1

Rachel Friedlander-Holm View profile

Social Impact Program Manager at Uber (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

Repository for massive amount of company information.
Uniform process across thousands of employees.

Cons

Complicated to finalize orders which can cause frustration.
Not an easy help section to resolve issues quickly.

Return on Investment

Negative because it takes an incredible amount of time to get items into the system in order to be shipped.

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

It makes content changes simple.
Publishing changes is a breeze.

Cons

Oracle should provide better documentation and tutorials.
There are cheaper alternatives.

Return on Investment

It has alleviated some of the burden on our IT staff.
It has allowed our Marketing department to be more hands-on with content changes, and they have more flexibility with the types of changes and how often they make them.

Other Software Used

Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle CPQ Cloud (BigMachines), Oracle Database, Oracle ATG Web Commerce, Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle SCM Cloud, Jira Software, Atlassian Confluence, RoboForm

Vijay Shah View profile

Sr Consultant in Information Technology at UXC Red Rock Consulting (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

WSISYG editor for content authors
Workflow
User ACL
Publishing method
Caching
Vanity URL

Cons

Cloud
Publishing
Workflow
ACL

Return on Investment

Content Author finds it easy to use
Publishing is integrated with user ACL and workflow making it easy
Existing Java developers can be retrained to code in WCS

Other Software Used

Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, WordPress

Earl Powers View profile

Sr. Technical Lead in Information Technology at Element Solutions LLC (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

Contributor UI: A robust, intuitive and customizable user interface for business content contributors, with in-context editing and preview capabilities. This allows a contributor to preview the content without leaving WCS and also allows the contributor to edit content directly in the context of the web page.
Application Integration: The Web Experience Management (WEM) framework allows easy integration with external applications needed in the content lifecycle. Applications such as cloud-based media or document libraries can be conveniently accessed within the context of WCS during content creation, vastly simplifying the contributor's workflow.
Digital Experience Marketing: On top of the CMS, organizations can optimize the experience for end users by providing personalization and segmentation rules to content, making content much more relevant and engaging to customers.

Cons

Release Management: It is difficult to group content together and manage as a unit. This is most noticeable with content like promotions, where there might be a number of different types of content that need to be published at the same time when the promotion takes effect.
Development Patterns: On the technical side, a lot of the code is contained in JSP files, using a combination of JSP tags and scriptlets. This can be tedious to manage from development perspective, though with some thought, an MVC-type pattern can be achieved. However, with every new release, the WCS product team continues to deliver a better environment for developers.

Return on Investment

More efficient use of content (i.e. write once, use in multiple places)
Faster Time to Publish on time sensitive content (stock market news, breaking announcements)
More easily target content to specific segments of customer base

Verified User

C-Level Executive (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

Timely management of web content including examining future designs and enhancements.
Targeting of customer groups.
Analytical capabilities to help define usage and gather info for future refinements.

Cons

More customer examples to help new users understand the capabilities better.

Return on Investment

Considerable time sharing in managing content between sites which are located across multiple time zones.
We don't formally evaluate ROI on projects such as this as there tend to be too many assumptions that have to be made.

Alternatives Considered

Zimbra

Other Software Used

Amazon Web Services, WordPress

HCL Digital Experience

OpenText WEM

Sitecore Digital Experience Platform

Ektron Web Content Management System (Discontinued), part of Episerver

Adobe CQ

IBM FileNet Content Manager

Oracle WebCenter Sites

What is Oracle WebCenter Sites?

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Form generator

WYSIWYG editor

Code quality / cleanliness

Areas for Improvement

API

Availability / breadth of extensions

Mobile optimization / responsive design

Reviews