BrightCite™ Websites Set You Free.
What Is A BrightCite?
No high level technical skills are required to add content to or manage your BrightCite website. If you are comfortable with a web browser and using a word processor like Microsoft Word, you have all the skills needed to work with your BrightCite. Below is a list of the functionality that gives you the ability to add and edit content.
Content Management System (CMS)
Your CMS system controls your entire website. You can access it from any Internet connected computer in the world. It lets you:
Easily Create Web Pages
You can create and organize and endless number of web pages. You create these pages using our editor that operates just like a word processor. After you create your pages the work is automatically turned into clean HTML code and uploaded to your website. Here is some of the editing functionality you have for creating web pages.
a.Text Editing
- Choose font, size, color
- Bold, italic, underline, highlight
b. Image Management
- Upload photos
- Move and size photos along the page
c. Create Links
- Link words and images to other websites or to other pages within your own site
d. Special Characters
- Add trademarks, copyrights, emoticons and other non keyboard symbols
e. Formatting and Beyond
- Add lines page breaks, anchor text, quotes, bullets, numbers, cross-outs, tables special formatting for indented text and more.
Managing Your Pages Is A Snap
You have complete control over your pages. You can edit them, categorize them, link to and from them, delete them, add permissions and password access to them and rearrange them fast.
Let Others Contribute Content From Anywhere
You can assign authors full or partial access to pages. They simply login and begin working. You can control their level of access to certain areas or pages. You can allow them to publish or only create drafts that you edit and review before allowing them to go live on the web.
The Advantage Of Optimized Online Publishing
Unleash The Power Of Blogging
An Influential Online Marketing and Communication Tool
Chances are you’ve heard of “blogging”. Publishing a web log (Blog) allows you to create community around your content. You create a post and readers can leave comments, link you to other websites and subscribe to your information with RSS feeds. Creating blog posts are a powerful way to create search engine optimized content that can dramatically increase qualified traffic to your website.
Blog functionality is built in to your BrightCite and automatically optimized for maximum search engine impact. There are hundreds of ways you can use blogging as a cutting edge marketing and customer retention tool. BrightCite can show you how.
Corporate Communications Blog
Many companies use blogs as an internal communication tool. You can use a blog as a company Intranet to keep everyone informed of key events and opportunities within your business. Simply password protect you blog for employee only access. Of course, all information is searchable so you can scan your blog for key comments and feedback. It’s a great way to capture ideas, facilitate communication and build your company culture.
BrightCite Blog Features
Leverage your content in multiple ways for maximum application and marketing impact. Here is some of the functionality of your BrightCite blogging tools.
- Password protection - So you want to share something with some people, but not everyone? Easy, protect the article in question with a password.
- Post Slug - If you are using clean PermaLinks on your website, you can define the link to an individual post by using a post-slug.
- Post to the future - You can write a post today and have it appear on the weblog at a future date, automatically.
- Multi paged posts - If your post is too long, cut it up into pages, so your readers don’t have to scroll to the end of the world.
- File/picture uploading - You can upload pictures or files, and link to them or display them in your articles. You have the option of creating thumbnails of pictures when you upload them.
- Categories - Organize your posts into categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub categories…
- Emoticons - Our CMS is smart enough to convert character smileys, like ":)" into the graphical image counterparts.
- Save Drafts - Save your unfinished articles, improve them later, publish when you’re done.
- Previewing Posts - Before you press the "Publish" button, you can look at the preview for the article you just wrote to check if everything is the way you want it. In fact, you can do that at any time, since the preview is "live".
- Desktop Tools - You don’t have to use a browser to update your weblog, you can use any desktop blogging tool that supports the MetaWeblog or Blogger API.
- Blog by email - You can send your posts as an email and have them appear on your weblog.
- Cruft-free Permalinks - The URLs for all the pages in your weblog can be made to conform to a standard, cruft-free system, and all the links are structured, sensible, and understable to human and machines, and that includes search engines. Clean URLs are essential for search engine optimization and an improved user experience.
- Inter-blog Communication -Your blog will automatically “ping” blog search engine sites every time you add new post content. This allows readers who are searching blogs to better find your site. We also offer two automatic and very useful ways of connecting to other weblogs, and to enable them to do the same.
- Archiving - After you’ve been blogging for an extended period of time, what matters is how well your posts are organized, and for that, you have several ready made options to display the archives of your blog, containing all the old posts. You can choose from yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, category-wise or author-wise archives, and easily link to the archive pages from the main page (or any other page) of your blog, using a template tag to generate the links to these archive pages.
- Searching - Your BrightCite has a built-in search tool, which allows visitors to your webpages or blog to search for terms they are interested in.
- Community Building - You can build communities around weblog, through the use of comments, trackbacks and pingbacks, helping you keep in touch with the audience and fostering friendship.
- Comment Moderation - For the control freak in all of us, you have an array of moderation options. You can moderate
- all comments before they appear on the blog
- comments with specific words in them
- comments posted from specific IP addresses
- comments containing more than some specified number of links.
- these moderation options keep spammers and vandals in check.
- New Comment Notification - an email can automatically be sent each time there is a new comment or a comment awaiting moderation.
More BrightCite Website Advantages
You Own Your Entire Site
Most clients choose BrightCite to host their websites. But you don’t need to. Local installation allows you to easily move your site to other hosts or servers. So you’re never locked in to a single provider.
Free Core Upgrades
BrightCite uses open source software to create your website. We believe our clients should always be up to date and we pass on core functionality upgrades to you at no cost.
Dynamic Page Generation Gives Better Web Performance
Your pages are not rebuilt (taking more upload time and server space) every time you update your website as many systems do. BrightCite pages are generated using database and templates each time a page from your website is requested by a viewer. This means that updating and adding content to your website, is as fast as possible, and required server storage space usage is minimal.
Publicizing Your Online Content
New RSS technology allows visitors to subscribe to “feeds” which can transfer your content directly to a specialized reader. These readers are becoming standard on most web browsers. Feed readers let viewers manage web content and be alerted when new information is posted to your website. The technology is still in the early stages of user adaptation and mostly applies to blog content.
Your BrightCite is fully RSS compliant and can support multiple feed formats.
Supported Feeds
The RSS 1.0 (aka RDF) (http://purl.org/rss/1.0/), RSS 2.0 (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss) and ATOM (http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php) specifications are fully supported by and what’s more, just about any page on your BrightCite weblog has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to - there’s a feed for the latest posts, for categories, comments, and essentially for anything you want. The more options your readers have to keep track of different sections of your weblog, the easier it is for you to spread the word around the world. We also fully support RSS 2.0 with enclosures, so adding mp3 files (such as podcasts) to your RSS feeds is a snap.
Comprehensive Analytics Package
Measure How Visitors Find Your Site and Where They Go On It
Knowledge Is Power
You get a server side comprehensive analytics package as part of your BrightCite hosting. It allows you to track and measure dozens of key data points about visitors to your website.
How many visits? How long did they stay? What are the most popular pages? What keywords did visitors use to find you? What websites did visitors come from? What search engines are they using? These are only some of the questions you can answer using our comprehensive analytics package.
BrightCite will also install any third party analytics package of your choice so you can monitor your web traffic any way you wish on whatever software you choose.
The BrightCite Development Process Advantage
Your Project Portal - Instant Comfort and Confidence
Developing a website is a collaborative process. There are many details and decisions to manage. Your project portal is the control center. In seconds you can have a complete overview of your project’s progress, submit feedback and collaborate with everyone associated with your site’s development.
Your BrightCite Project Portal also has its own RSS feed so you can subscribe to portal and automatically be informed as changes are made.
Because You Probably Hate Surprises (Unless they’re good)
Your project portal makes sure nothing slips through the cracks and that everyone gets on and stays on the same page from day one. It gives you confidence and comfort that your web work is progressing as you want it without you having to waste time and energy with endless follow-ups and phone calls.
Inside Your BrightCite Project Portal
The Dashboard
It’s your at-a-glance information center. See the links, messages, milestones and completed tasks related to your project in one view.
The BrightCite Blueprint
We conduct a discovery session and you fill out a proprietary and comprehensive diagnostic questionnaire. The information is formulated into a confidential strategic document and then reviewed with you to optimize further. The end result is your BrightCite Blueprint which becomes a working document that guides your web development process.
Your Blueprint is continuously enhanced as additional strategic insight is discovered over time. The document is housed in a dedicated area within your project portal using software that allows dynamic revisions. You can see how the document evolves and compare multiple versions. At the end of the development process your Blueprint becomes a valuable strategic document. It a resource you can use to guide your future content development plus compliment your ongoing web optimization and marketing efforts.
Project Milestone Tracking
Benchmarks are set for each phase of your project. You can track where we are in the development process and whether we’re running ahead of schedule (of course, we won’t be behind).
Project Task Tracking
You can see the tasks for each phase of your project. Some of these tasks will be assigned to you – such as providing us with content, images or feedback by a specific date. You can monitor your task completion deadlines and receive e-mail alert reminders.
Project Messaging and Support
Our messaging system allows you to ask questions, leave comments and get support. Your communications are categorized and displayed on the project portal. Messages and their associated responses are automatically e-mailed to everyone associated with your project. This system provides you with several advantages:
- Communicate once to talk with everyone - Forget having to call and explain things to several team members. Everyone is alerted and able to see the resulting feedback without you sending mass e-mails or making multiple calls.
- Context is always maintained – No more confusion about what something pertains to. Messages and comments are always organized in context.
- Keep great records – there’s no “he said, she said”. Development communications are captured and archived for everyone to refer back to instantly.
- Stay in the loop – your dashboard will always alert you to the most recent messages.
BrightCite Development Packages
The BrightCite
This package provides you with a custom strategic web presence that puts you in complete control. It’s for those who want to take the functionality and run with it.
Strategic Analysis
A discovery phone interview and a proprietary questionnaire uncover the hidden assets and opportunities within your business and transfer them to your web presence. It’s not uncommon for clients to have strategic breakthroughs as we draw out your unique messaging, value and profit opportunities with our unique diagnostic methodology.
BrightCite Blueprint
Your strategic analysis is formulated into a comprehensive blueprint that guides the web development process. It’s a working document created with unique collaborative software that allows blueprint to be refined and mined for key marketing insights. Your BrightCite Blueprint makes sure the vision and strategy for your web property is articulated clearly and always embedded in the work we do for you.
Custom Design
The visual identity of your website is developed using your blueprint. With your feedback we create three different design options. We the further refine your preferred design.
BrightCite Project Management and Support Portal
Developing a website is a collaborative process. There are many details and decisions to manage. Your project portal is the control center. In seconds you can have a complete overview of your project’s progress, submit feedback and collaborate with everyone associated with your site’s development.
Your BrightCite Project Portal also has its own RSS feed so you can subscribe to the portal content and automatically be informed as changes are made.
Your project portal makes sure nothing slips through the cracks and that everyone gets on and stays on the same page from day one. It gives you confidence and comfort that your web work is progressing as you want it without you having to waste time and energy with endless follow-ups and phone calls. Here’s some of your portal features:
Project Milestone Tracking
Benchmarks are set for each phase of your project. You can track where we are in the development process and whether we’re running ahead of schedule (of course, we won’t be behind).
Project Task Tracking
You can see the tasks for each phase of your project. Some of these tasks will be assigned to you – such as providing us with content, images or feedback by a specific date. You can monitor your task completion deadlines and receive e-mail alert reminders.
Project Messaging and Support
Our messaging system allows you to ask questions, leave comments and get support. Your communications are categorized and displayed on the project portal. Messages and their associated responses are automatically e-mailed to everyone associated with your project. This system provides you with several advantages:
- Communicate once to talk with everyone - Forget having to call and explain things to several team members. Everyone is alerted and able to see the resulting feedback without you sending mass e-mails or making multiple calls.
- Context is always maintained – No more confusion about what something pertains to. Messages and comments are always organized in context.
- Keep great records – there’s no “he said, she said”. Development communications are captured and archived for everyone to refer back to instantly.
- Stay in the loop – your dashboard will always alert you to the most recent messages.
BrightCite Functionality Training
Your BrightCite CMS system was designed to be intuitive and easy to use. We provide two hours of training to make sure you are comfortable with the tools and show you how to strategically use them in ways that specifically support your business goals.
Core Search Engine Optimization
BrightCite’s use clean HTML (need Aarons information about what fundamental bcite functionality is built in to enhance seo)
StayBright™ Website Optimization Services
The web is constantly changing. How people use it to find your website is always a moving target. A website that is optimized to drive maximum traffic today may not be effective tomorrow.
It’s also important to carefully watch how visitors are finding and using your site so opportunities to profit can be seized. To pull this off takes extracting the visitor behavior patterns coming from your data and refining them to amplify the positive results. It’s the 80/20 rule in action. Our StayBright Services help you stay on the profitable edge of the learning curve. Your website will always be working as hard as possible for you and you’ll have meaningful strategic information to help build your business.
Sometimes It’s Good To Keep Up With The Joneses
Especially if the Joneses are search engines that can bring you lots of business. BrightCite offers a complete suite of StayBright optimization services to keep your site ahead of the pack.
StayBright Services Pay For Themselves
StayBright analytics reports help you measure your return on web investment. You’ll see exactly how our services contribute to your bottom line. We also break up our optimization services into strategic packages. So even if you’re on a tight budget, there is a StayBright Package that’s affordable for you.
StayBright Analytics Services
Analytics Reports
We provide you with key metrics and strategic analysis to help you stay connected with your market online.
- Comprehensive performance report
- SWOT analysis
- Competitive rank
- Business Development Chain Ranking
- Best Keyword, Competitor and Clickstream (KCC) adjustment recommendations
StayBright Search Engine Optimization Services
Tune up Package
We keep your website optimized to attract the most natural search traffic.
- Includes Analytics Report (Above)
- We make the KCC Optimization adjustments and provide you with a report of the changes made.
Competitive Edge Package
We track your online results against your competitors and optimize your site to perform better against them. We also optimize to make sure that online customers who see you competitors online will see you as well.
- Analytics Report Package, Tune-up Package, plus…
- Piggyback – Helps you benefit from the online efforts of your competitors.
"Unleash The Lions" Package
You want to agressively get visitor traffic to your site, crush your web competitors and essentially dominate your marketplace online. Just say the word and fasten your seat belt…
- All of the above plus
- LinkCite – Strategic Inbound link development
- Content Syndication Marketing
- PR
- Blog and RSS Marketing
- Pay Per Click Campaign with Landing Page Optimization
- ShhhZAM – Our proprietary, we could tell you but would have to kill you, online traffic optimization process. (Yep it’s all legal)
Newsletter
Build your own online subscription list and publish an electronic newsletter. You control content, layout and publishing schedule with easy to use tools. The newsletter has an automatic opt-in function that prevents violation of spam laws. You can set your newsletter to alert subscribers by e-mail every time you post to your blog as well.
BrightCite Hosting
Your website software will need to be hosted on an always on industrial server so that it can access the Internet. You can host your website with whatever company you wish. Your website is fully transferable and you can switch between host providers at any time.
Most clients host their website on our BrightCite contracted secure server. It’s housed in a top tier facility and features network connectivity over local fiber loop to one of the two main Telco Hotel vaults in Atlanta, Georgia with access to all major fiber and IP backbones. The network utilizes a RouteScience PathControl 5014 device for automatic route and speed optimization which ensures your website is rendered in the most fast and efficient manner. Network security is increased by automatic scanning of all traffic by a Tipping Point 1200E IDS system and Mcaffee IntruShield IDS system. This two-level scanning occurs over all network traffic to ensure only valid and safe requests are made towards you site.
Several crucial measures have been taken to make the network and building infrastructure reliable and secure. The building is protected with a pre-action fire suppression system and is monitored by the fire department. A state-of-the-art, fully redundant, parallel UPS system ensures continuous power via battery backup for up to 15 minutes at full capacity and several hours at current capacity. For longer term power outages, Cummins and ONAN diesel generator sets are located on site to provide fully redundant, parallel power with onsite 12,000 gallon tank and an emergency fuel delivery contract. These generators go from cold start to full power in 30 seconds to provide quick backup to the UPS battery system. Security is multi-layered to ensure maximum protection and efficiency. The facility is continuously monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week by staff, guards, and security cameras.
Needless to say, with these sorts of facilities, you can rest assured that your BrightCite hosted website is in good hands.
Analytics
A comprehensive server side log analysis analytics program is provided with every BrightCite hosted account. This specialized software tracks what is happening on your website. It tells you who is visiting your site, the pages they visit, how long they are on them, how the visitor found your site, the keywords they used and much more.
Here are some of the analytic statistics features:
- Number of visits, and number of unique visitors,
- Visits duration and last visits,
- Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits,
- Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week),
- Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection),
- Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list,
- Most viewed, entry and exit pages,
- Files type,
- Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate),
- OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected),
- Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version (Web, Wap, Media browsers: 97 browsers, more than 450 if using browsers_phone.pm library file),
- Visits of robots (319 robots detected),
- Worms attacks (5 worm’s families),
- Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc…),
- HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, …),
- Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose,
- Number of times your site is "added to favourites bookmarks".
- Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
- Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
- Cluster report for load balanced servers ratio.
In addition, BrightCite will support third party analytics programs of your choice.
Content Coaching
BrightCite will provide content development coaching to help you create maximum value with your web property. You’ll learn how to write content specifically for the web. How to structure sentences for maximum readability. Discover how to optimize copy for better search engine ranking. How to use links to increase the value and marketing impact of you web content and much more.
Basic Support Package
Your BrightCite is supported on an ongoing basis. We stand behind its functionality and reliability. BrightCite is always at the ready to support any fundamental technical problems that arise.
Monthly Consultative Support Package
We provide 5 hours of monthly support. It can be technical, strategic, content development, training or any other consultative applications you need assistance with. Our hourly consultative support rate is $100.00 per hour.
Table Feature Items:
Strategic Analysis
BrightCite Blueprint
Project Management and Support Portal
Custom Design
Comprehensive CMS
Unlimited Page Creation
Unlimited Post Creation
Intra-site Search Functionality
Related Content Functionality
BrightCite Functionality Training
Built In Search Engine Optimization Features
Comprehensive Analytics Package
Basic Support Package
Consultative Support Package
StayBright™ Website Optimization Services
Hosting
Electronic Newsletter Functionality
Tagging Functionality
