Ektron released CMS400.NET v8 a few months ago for testing by partners, and we started working with this significant upgrade from Ektron CMS400.NET v7.6. If you are an Ektron user or developer and have not seen version 8 yet, it’s worth a look. Here’s a starting look at what we found about Interface and Performance improvements, plus a dicey Indexing bug:

New Graphical User Interface for Workarea

The new GUI offers a higher level of performance and a better way to organize and access each section of the Workarea. The improvements are not simply limited to a facelift of new icons or graphic design. The key is that the new GUI communicates power and performance, while providing feedback about the Workarea load time. The improved Workarea leverages AJAX technology which helps to make screen load faster and more appealing to the eye.

The new right-click functionality under folders is one of the best features in the Workarea, this helps save time since you can now create your website folder structure more easily and faster directly from the tree view.

(Fully compatible with: IE 7, IE 8, Firefox) – Chrome has some little bugs but they don’t affect anything in the functionality.

The Ektron 8 GUI Workarea has a new way to create menus, taxonomies and collections, and are also right-click enabled so you can create taxonomy, menus or collections much faster than before with fewer steps. You will also notice that under the Content section you will find these new items using the Tabs from the left panel without redirecting it like in previous versions.

Performance

Performance is one of Ektron’s goals and they did an amazing job with the revamped Workarea. They are forgetting something important: the Indexing Service. We found a bug in our local tests, pulling load up to 100% of your CPU when the Indexing Service is running.

This bug ultimately cycles enough load to crash the server it’s on, which could affect live websites, which could be down or very slow. This Bug was found under Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. To avoid this problem temporarily, you can stop the service. We have not yet tested Windows Server 2008 R2.

Conclusion

Now Ektron v8 has been released for clients everywhere, it’s time for you to consider upgrading. Ektron CMS400.NET v8 is a major update over v7.6, this version offers new and improved features that you must see and try.

It’s true that there still are some sections that can be changed or improved; I think Ektron is heading the right direction and I am confident that we will see some patch/fixes/updates for this new version.

But wait, there’s more…

In an additional review, I will focus on a Developer perspective on Smart Forms in the new Ektron CMS400.NET v8.