Sitemaker CMS

Sitemaker's Automated Tools

CIP Sitemaker© from Clark Internet Publishing automates many standard and otherwise tedious site construction tasks. Use Sitemaker tools to build your newsletter, your image gallery, your calendar, your forms - most tools install with a single click. New tools are constantly under development based on user feedback.

All sites have

tools: web log, contact form, calendar, image gallery, guest book
multiple general-purpose pages
generous storage and bandwidth

Our Premium package also includes at the option of the user

directory (yellow pages)
roster (contact manager)
multiple forms for polls, questionnaires...
QuickTime video uploads and pseudo-streaming

Our Enterprise package lets you add departmental or member sites within your domain.

Our Journalmaker™ package can manage the online edition of your newspaper or magazine.

When you're ready, you can use ordinary HTML to extend the built-in layouts. Built in features and intrinsic flexibility make Sitemaker truly Point, Click, Publish!

Detailed Feature List

Frequently updated list of features, switches, and options.

Jump Links

Article list with graphic and commentary.

Image Gallery

Each site can have an image gallery. You can display your photos easily. Photos are automatically indexed and a thumbnail view of each image is shown.

Photos can be extensively annotated. You can add title, caption, descriptive paragraphs, and data about the history of the image itself. Finally, as with all Sitemaker images, an 'ALT' text is provided to enable a blind visitor to know the content of pictures by means of a talking browser.

Click here for an example.

iCalendar

Sitemaker provides a calendar of events with every site. The calendar uses the standard iCalendar format that is available from many software vendors.

Other sites can subscribe to your calendar. You can subscribe to theirs; when you do so, a link to that calendar will appear on your site. For example, if you're a sports fan, you can subscribe to the schedule of your favorite team, if it's published with iCalendar.

Depending on the software you use on your own computer, your Sitemaker calendar can be incorporated into your local calendar. (For example, all Macs running OS X come with 'iCal' and can easily adopt your calendar.)

Guestbook

Each site has a Guestbook. This guest registry lets your site accept comments from visitors. It also lets you collect the email addresses of persons who leave a message. You can manage entries in the Sitemaker Editing Suite.

Inquiry Form

A standard Inquiry Form is available on every site. Just activate it, and it will accept message on your site and send them to your email address.

This approach prevents your site from becoming a source of spam. Your email address is not displayed by Sitemaker to prevent web robots from collecting it in their regular sweeps. (If you display it as text, of course, all bets are off.)

As with other tools, you can rename the inquiry form. Many people use 'Contacts' or 'Write to me...' for example.

Document Lists: Newsletters, etc.

Among the components available for pagebuilding is the document list component. A newsletter, case studies, or other reporting can be organized by use of article lists. Create an document list and then add your document(s) or article(s). Optionally link the documents to additional resources like PDF files. Each document in a list will appear in an index page.

A site can have multiple document lists, and this is an effective way to create subordinate indices of many types. the News section of this site is an example of an document list.

Podcasts

Sitemaker's Podcast tool automatically manages audio files, presents podcast episodes and series lists, and plays or downloads sound files. It also automatically updates such sites as the iTunes music store and others with standard podcasting support whenever your podcast changes or you add a new episode.

Unlike sites that only host podcasts, the Sitemaker Podcast tool is embedded among other content. This allows a visitor to experience sound files without leaving the site (and being diverted to other content by advertising). Content managed by the podcast tool may also be embedded in other parts of the site, erasing the distinction between visible and audible content.

This is also an exciting new way to add parallel content for the visually impaired, which has been a major deficiency of the web experience since its origin in the 1990s. (Beta version available November 2006. Full service available December 2006.)

Flexibility

ADVANCED TOPIC. If you know how to compose HTML tags and cascading style sheets (CSS), you can make your pages do whatever you want. Just create a text block and type away! Apply CSS style and classes with the component, the page or the whole site. Override the preconfigured layout and component rules, or extend them by adding your own classes. It's a little trickier, and your potential for odd-looking pages is quite real, but it gives you great control of the appearance of your pages. You can use color. You can use styles. There is more, of course, but that's beyond the scope of this page.

Bordered Text This text is enclosed in a border. It also has a different font than the main body of the page. If you don't see it, perhaps it's time to upgrade your browser. This text is enclosed in a border. If you don't see it, perhaps it's time to upgrade your browser. This text has yellow text on a brown background. This text is enclosed in a border. If you don't see it, perhaps it's time to upgrade your browser. If you're still reading this, you have too much time on your hands and should find a hobby. This text is enclosed in a border. If you don't see it, perhaps it's time to upgrade your browser.

As an example, all the parts of this page, except for the section on instant messaging and this one on flexibility, have been prepared without any HTML. It's all just text. The subheadings and other styles are managed entirely by Sitemaker.

In addition to typing HTML tags, you can have Sitemaker apply styles and classes of your own definition to components of pages. You can define a global style, too, with your own preferred fonts, text sizes and colors, along with background colors and background graphics. Did we mention flexibility?