Salesforce.com Sites was announced at Dreamforce in November 2009. Since then, there has been a lot of activity and even some confusion around what Sites is and what it means to Force.com users and developers. Salesforce.com purports that you can build websites on Sites. While this is 'technically' true, you have to know javascript, visualforce, apex (in many cases) and how to set up a domain etc. That's just to get the pages built. That doesn't include web templates, Flash (if you're so inclined), images etc. And it doesn't provide a system to manage content - a Web Content Management System.
So, while it's technical true that you can build your websites on Salesforce.com Sites, it would make Joomla and Drupal look easy by comparison - speaking from a business user perspective of course.
Enter OrchestraCMS from the STANTIVE Technologies Group Inc. OrchestraCMS is a complete web content management system (CMS) built, 100% natively, on the Force.com platform. It leverages Sites for domain, security, web caching and the other core features, but takes content creation and management and puts it in the hands of the business user. To create content, pages, menus, forms etc., there is no need to utilize a developer. OrchestraCMS is a very visual system employing 'drag and drop' functionality that literally lets you create content, pages and forms by dragging content from your library and dropping it into the appropriate spot on the page.
You can preview your pages, before they are published using our "TrueView Preview" capability that renders that page exactly as it will look. Using our "Time Travel" capability, you can step through your site, minute by minute, from the day it was first published and into the future. Our drag and drop Forms Generator automatically discovers all of the data on your instance of Salesforce.com and allows you to create forms in minutes. All of this, with no developer required.
Millions of websites lay stagnant today because content management systems are too difficult to use for those tasked with managing and creating content. Websites are also, typically, standalone platforms that require expensive and complex integration software to integrate with business applications. With OrchestraCMS, leveraging the power of the Force.com platform and Sites, all of the data your house on the Force.com platform is auto-discovered and instantly integrated. Stagnant, standalone websites are a thing of the past. Developers can do what they do best and content managers can move their website at the speed of their business.
