Native taxonomy and facet-based navigation support available in latest release increases content value and improves user experience Boston, October 18, 2005 -- PaperThin, Inc., a leading mid-market Web publishing and content management software vendor today announced advanced content classification and discovery capabilities in CommonSpot™ Content Server version 4.6. The product’s taxonomy module now provides complete out-of-the-box taxonomy management for Web content administrators and contributors. New features include a taxonomy term editor and a taxonomy API, along with a powerful facet-based navigation element.
"The overload of data on many Web sites today makes managing content a cumbersome process," said Todd Peters, founder and president of PaperThin. "At the same time, visitors to a site often find it difficult to access information that is pertinent to them. Our new taxonomy functionality addresses these inefficiencies by allowing organizations to easily classify and manage their content. And, it gives users the ability to intuitively ‘find and discover’ information within subject areas. We believe this functionality further differentiates PaperThin in the marketplace and will deliver real business value to our customers."
The taxonomy term editor lets organizations build and manage flexible taxonomies directly within CommonSpot. Each taxonomy defines one or more facets or hierarchical views into the data by defining ‘broader than’ and ‘narrower than’ relationships between terms. Terms can also be defined to have other relationships in accordance with the ANSI Z.39 standard, allowing for the definition of taxonomies that meet critical business requirements. Content can then be rapidly assigned to terms using the taxonomy classification custom metadata field. Taxonomies can be easily refined as an organization’s classification needs evolve over time.
The taxonomy API allows developers to programmatically access any of the terms and relationships within a taxonomy. This capability enables easy development of unlimited custom-interfaces to related content.
"Urban Institute is making use of CommonSpot's taxonomy module to classify the roughly 3,700 Web publications which are accessible on our website," said Doug Murray, Lead Programmer & Analyst, Urban Institute. "We were able to map our current topic structure onto a taxonomy-based scheme which has 4 facets and 119 terms. In our new site, appropriate publications are displayed on a given CommonSpot page based on that page's association with a taxonomy term. This approach has enabled us to simplify our topic structure and we're pleased with the results."
CommonSpot’s new facet-based navigation element leverages content classification by allowing users to intuitively navigate through a defined taxonomy. Users can easily browse and discover information within topic areas based on one or more selected facets within a taxonomy. By narrowing terms under a facet, a filtered subset of narrower terms and possibly other related ‘see-also’ references are presented. Facet-based navigation dramatically enhances the user experience and facilitates a faster information discovery process by only displaying content that is relevant to the user.
"Introducing full taxonomy management and navigation capabilities is a major strategic gain for Cornell University and any of the increasing number of organizations that are turning to taxonomies to efficiently categorize content," said Paul Davis, Senior Programmer & Analyst, Cornell University, College of Engineering. "Having the ability to directly manage a taxonomy and change and expand the navigation as our site grows from hundreds to thousands of pages is critical. The taxonomy has allowed us to tag pages and target content to specific audiences. Faculty can gain direct access to information about initiating a purchase without being distracted by non-relevant information pertaining to the entire purchase process. PaperThin has worked closely with us to make the delivery of our taxonomy solution a success and we’re very pleased with the outcome."
Also included in version 4.6 is a container element which provides Web designers and developers increased control and flexibility over the positioning and scheduling of content on a page. The element delivers support for table-less layout of content using Cascading Style Sheet Positioning (CSS-P). It provides a number of benefits to organizations including standards-based development, improved site compliance, and direct support for publishing content to non-Web devices such as PDAs, phones, etc.
About PaperThin: PaperThin, Inc. is a privately held Massachusetts-based company. Since 1993, PaperThin has helped organizations and government agencies of all sizes to significantly reduce the time and expense involved in creating, updating and managing Web content. PaperThin’s flagship product, CommonSpot™ Content Server, powers Internet, intranet and extranet sites worldwide for organizations of all sizes including: the AFL-CIO, Booz Allen Hamilton, Business Software Alliance, Mayo Clinic, National Park Service, Stanford University, The Gillette Company, Turner Sports (PGA.com), and Voice of America. CommonSpot was named a “Trend-Setting Product of 2005” by KMWorld and has been twice recognized for Good Value among leading content management vendors by industry analysts at CMS Watch. And, PaperThin was recognized as one of New England’s fastest growing technology companies in the 2004 & 2005 Deloitte Technology Fast 50.
PaperThin’s select group of partners includes industry leading Web design and development firms, system integrators, software manufacturers, and training firms, worldwide. For more information about PaperThin, Inc., please visit
http://www.paperthin.com and for additional details about CommonSpot Content Server, visit
http://www.paperthin.com/Products/Index.cfm.
