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LiveWhale CMS Features

We don’t believe that content management systems should be judged by the length of their feature lists— a CMS is a tool for communications, and so whatever features best facilitate great communications on your campus are the features your CMS ought to have.

At the same time, we know that comparing features is the way most of our customers start their research process. And, the truth is, LiveWhale is packed with great features. So here we go— we’ll start with a general overview of LiveWhale’s features, followed by an annotated version of the feature list on LiveWhale’s CMSMatrix page.

If there’s a particular feature you’re interested in that isn’t on this list, contact us— it’s probably around here somewhere.

The Features

Page editing made so simple that it’s almost boring.

You want to make a change to a Web page. How hard can that be? In LiveWhale it’s a one-click process.

Manage news, events, galleries, Web forms, and (a lot) more.

There’s more to content management than just page editing. LiveWhale’s back end tools allow users and groups throughout your institution to easily manage dynamic content of all types.

Share everything (or at least as much as you want).

Create news, events, images and more and make them available throughout your institution. And if you don’t have the time to keep a lot of content up to date (imagine that!), it’s easy to find and use community-created content.

Built-in accessibility checking.

LiveWhale performs constant, on-the-fly compliance checks using common accessibility standards. The accessibility rating of each page of your site is clearly visible, making it easy to ensure your site caters to users with disabilities.

More than easy to use—it’s fun to use.

Content management shouldn’t be drudgery. LiveWhale’s interfaces are designed for clarity and efficiency, and are intended to make site maintenance an enjoyable process. Even our error messages are friendly!

The Product

Free upgrades and unlimited tech support for life.

Having all our clients on the same version means the improvements we make to our codebase can be shared with all our clients. That’s why upgrades to LiveWhale are always free.

The same goes for tech support. If you’re having a hard time using our system, that’s our problem too, and we want to hear about it. So every LiveWhale account comes with unlimited e-mail tech support.

Built for Web 2.0
(and Web 2.8, and Web 3.4).

Tagging, sharing, and content reuse are the building blocks of a LiveWhale-powered site. LiveWhale both consumes and produces RSS and ICAL feeds, allowing you to import content from anywhere on the Web— and easily syndicate your own content for subscription with Web standards.

Crystal clear pricing and licensing agreements.

It’s often hard to figure out how much a commercial CMS actually costs— and hidden fees for support, licensing, or upgrades can lead to CMS implementations that exceed their sticker price. Not with LiveWhale. Our white paper includes complete information about LiveWhale’s pricing.

Designed by and for human beings.

LiveWhale is a product of White Whale Web Services, a small California-based company that has been working collaboratively with great colleges and universities throughout North America for almost a decade. The evolution of our software is driven by the needs of our users, many of whom have taken an active role in developing for the LiveWhale platform.

System Requirements

   
Programming Language
PHP

Application Server
Apache
 
Operating System
*nix Only
 
Web Server
Apache
 
Database
MySQL
 
License
Closed Source
Blech, we hate this term.  LiveWhale’s source code is as open as it gets, for our customers at least; they’re free to do anything they want with LiveWhale’s code except sell or redistribute it.  

LiveWhale’s licensing arrangement is something we’ve seen called “commercial open source”; simply put, our customers hold the complete source code and are free to make modifications and extensions to their own installations as they see fit.  They just can’t directly modify the source code of the core software itself, which is used as a source for upgrades.
Approximate Cost
$25K annually or $99K perpetual license
There are no “add-on” or “hidden” fees for the LiveWhale CMS.
Root Access
Yes
LiveWhale customers have complete access to the application’s source code, with detailed documentation and an API for extensions and modifications.
Shell Access
Yes
 

Security

Granular Privileges
Yes
Page access can be restricted by user, directory, path, etc.  And permission to manage specific content types (news, events, etc.) can be controlled granularly.
LDAP Authentication
Yes
 
Pluggable Authentication
Yes
Our customers use a variety of login protocols, including Active Directory, LDAP, their own SSO, or LiveWhale’s built-in password authentication method. 
Versioning
Yes
 
Content Approval
Limited
There is less structured workflow in LiveWhale than in some other CMSs in the marketplace. That’s by design; it’s our philosophy that too much approval-style moderation can work against the cause of good Web content.  (And we’ve heard from too many “moderators” who’ve returned from a day off to an inbox full of trivial page changes awaiting approval.)  Read more about workflow in LiveWhale here.
Audit Trail
Yes
 
Sandbox
Yes

Login History
Limited
 Some login activities are recorded. Additional ones can easily be added via a callback in the development framework.
Session Management
No

SMB Authentication
No
 
NTLM Authentication
No
 
NIS Authentication
No
 
Kerberos Authentication
No
 
Problem Notification
Yes
Server monitoring services are not offered, as we do not currently provide hosting. (See hosting below for a note on that.) However some kinds of problem notifications are available for content itself.
SSL Compatible
Yes
 
SSL Logins
Yes
 
SSL Pages
Yes
 
Captcha
Yes
In addition to captchas (via recaptcha), all LiveWhale forms include honeypot traps designed to catch fraudulent or automated form submissions.
Email Verification
No
 
Two-factor Authentication
No  
PCI DSS Compliance
No
 

Support

We believe LiveWhale’s tech support is the best you’ll find in the CMS industry.  Although we’re a small company— or perhaps because we’re a small company— we pride ourselves on rapid response and personal service.  Support is available by email, instant message, Twitter direct message, or phone.

Commercial Support
Free Add On
Unlimited email tech support is free with every LiveWhale license.

Unlimited phone/ IM support is available for an additional fee of $500 per month; if assistance with an upgrade is needed, a one-time fee of $500 applies. Phone/IM support is included for the first 30 days after launch of a LiveWhale-powered Web site.
Commercial Training
Free Add On
One day of on-site training is included with every LiveWhale license.  Additional days or videoconference training are also available.
Public Mailing List
No
 
Public Forum
No
 
Developer Community
Yes
 
Commercial Manuals
No
 
Online Help
No

Professional Hosting
No
However, we are considering offering hosted LiveWhale. (Email us if interested.)
Professional Services
No

Pluggable API
Yes
The LiveWhale API is very robust, with a variety of options for pulling data from the CMS in standard formats as well as the ability to perform submissions from mobile apps, friendly formatted API URLs, a pluggable development environment, and a suite of developer callbacks to add or modify API behavior.
Third-Party Developers
No
 
Certification Program
No
 
Users Conference
Yes
Last year’s conference was in Portland, Oregon; here’s its homepage and a photo gallery.  #LWDC 2012 will be held this August.
Test Framework
Yes
 
Code Skeletons
Yes
 
Toolkit No  

Ease of Use

Ease of use is LiveWhale’s most important feature, but you can’t judge ease of use from a feature list.  We believe managing Web content should be both easy and fun— not only for less skilled page editors but for department heads, faculty, geeks, Web Services staff, IT managers and senior staff.  You’ll know what we mean when you schedule a demo.

Email To Discussion
Limited
 
Macro Language
Yes
 
UI Levels
Yes
 
Template Language
Yes
 
Server Page Language
Yes
 
WYSIWYG Editor
Yes
LiveWhale uses a modified instance of the open source TinyMCE WYSIWYG plugin. (“Modified” meaning that we’ve bulked it up in some areas, stripped it down in others, and corrected for a number of bugs in the plugin itself.)
Friendly URLs
Yes
 
Undo
Yes
 
Drag-N-Drop Content
Limited
 
Spell Checker
Yes
All content editing functionality integrates the built-in OS level spell checking features.
Subscriptions
Yes
 
Image Resizing
Yes
Uploaded images are stored at a large size, and smaller instances are created to order and saved to the filesystem, with regular garbage collection as needed.
Mass Upload
Yes
 
Prototyping
Yes
 
Zip Archives
No
 
Style Wizard
No
 
Site Setup Wizard
No
 
Drag-n-drop Navigation Yes  
Video Conversion
No
 

Performance

Load Balancing
Yes
 
Page Caching
Yes
 
Advanced Caching
Yes
 
Database Replication
Limited
Writes to master / reads from slaves are supported at the database level through clustering.
Static Content Export
Limited
Certain types of static content can be delivered over CDNs.

Management

Web-based Style/Template Management
Yes
 
Inline Administration
Yes
 
Online Administration
Yes
 
Workflow Engine
Limited
There is less structured workflow in LiveWhale than in some other CMSs in the marketplace. That’s by design; it’s our philosophy that too much approval-style moderation can work against the cause of good Web content. (And we’ve heard from too many “moderators” who’ve returned from a day off to an inbox full of trivial page changes awaiting approval.) Read more about workflow in LiveWhale here.
Asset Management
Yes
 
Web-based Translation Management
No
 
Package Deployment
No
 
Clipboard
No
Except the one that comes with your computer.  :)
Trash
Yes
 
Sub-sites / Roots
Yes
 
Content Scheduling
Yes
 
Advertising Management
No
 
Themes / Skins
No
 
Web Statistics
Free Add On
Google Analytics support is built into LiveWhale, and each page’s pageview count, relative popularity and top search keywords are provided. 
Content Staging
Yes
 
Automatic Updates
Yes
We push core software updates and patches to you on your schedule.

Interoperability

WebDAV Support
No
 
FTP Support
Yes
FTP supported, SFTP recommended.
WAI Compliant
Yes
LiveWhale calculates an accessibility score for each page of your site (based on the UIC FAE) and displays it to page editors when logged in.
XHTML Compliant
Yes
All pages are validated (and common validation errors corrected) when saved.
Content Syndication (RSS)
Yes
RSS is central to many of LiveWhale’s functions. Many types of content can be imported into the CMS via RSS; all content types can be syndicated via RESTful RSS feeds; and feed content itself can be placed directly on pages via LiveWhale’s feed widgets.
UTF-8 Support
Yes
 
iCal
Yes
 
HTML5 Support
Yes
LiveWhale is front-end agnostic, so long as your markup validates to your document type.
EU Directive 2009/136/EC Compliance
No
 

Flexibility

Extensible User Profiles
No
 
URL Rewriting
Yes
 
CGI-mode Support
No

Interface Localization
No
 
Content Reuse
Yes
 
Multi-lingual Content
Yes

Multi-lingual Content Integration
No
 
Metadata
Yes
 
Multi-Site Deployment
Yes
 
Content Indexing and Search
Yes
 
Faceted Search
Limited
Out of the box, LiveWhale offers faceted search by content type, e.g. news story, event, profile, etc.

Built-in Applications

We believe in making the right tool for the job.  Because LiveWhale’s job is to manage Web content for colleges and universities, not all the functions on this list exist in LiveWhale.  (We expect you’ll use another tool to manage your expense reports.)  

But because LiveWhale’s architecture is flexible, most of these applications can be easily built from LiveWhale’s existing tools.  Need a guestbook?  Create a news item, call it “Guestbook,” and open it to public comments.  Done!   The same applies to other things on this list, like FAQs, job postings, etc.

Discussion / Forum
No

Blog
Yes

Photo Gallery
Yes
 
User Contributions
Yes
 
Product Management
No
 
FAQ Management
Limited
Existing content types are designed for flexibility and are suitable for FAQs.
Link Management
Yes
LiveWhale features dynamic background link-checking in all Web pages.
File Distribution
Yes
 
Events Calendar
Yes
LiveWhale includes a full-featured calendaring system.  Calendars can be quickly and easily deployed to users and groups throughout your organization, and personalized by the use of tags and custom formatting as needed.
Time Tracking
No
 
Contact Management
No

Polls
Yes
LiveWhale includes a robust module for deploying Web forms that can be used for polls and surveys as well as more lengthy forms.
Surveys
Yes
 
Mail Form
Yes
Data collected via LiveWhale forms can be emailed, stored in a database (and exported as CSV), or both.
Data Entry
Limited
The forms module can be deployed for data entry tasks, and will collect data in the database.
Database Reports
Limited
 Database reporting is available in a limited diagnostic fashion.
Expense Reports
No
 
My Page / Dashboard
Limited LiveWhale has a welcome page that keeps you up-to-date, but we don’t believe LiveWhale should be your Portal.
Classifieds
No
 
Guest Book
Limited
Existing content types are designed for flexibility and are suitable for guestbooks.
Project Tracking
No
 
Help Desk / Bug Reporting
No

Groupware
No
 
Syndicated Content (RSS)
Yes
RSS is central to many of LiveWhale’s functions.  Many types of content can be imported into the CMS via RSS; all content types can be syndicated via RESTful RSS feeds; and feed content itself can be placed directly on pages via LiveWhale’s feed widgets.
Tests / Quizzes
No
LiveWhale’s Web form management can be used for any number of applications.  We think this question refers to something a little more specific, so we’re giving this one a “no.”
Document Management
No

Chat
No
 
Job Postings
Limited
  Existing content types are designed for flexibility and are suitable for job postings.
Web Services Front End
No

HTTP Proxy
No

Search Engine
Yes
 Integration with Google is a popular option, however any content type, including pages, can be easily added as a search engine component. A search engine is integrated into the management interfaces to allow users to search for dynamically managed content as well.
In/Out Board
No
 
Graphs and Charts
No
 
Wiki
No
LiveWhale’s edit-in-place page editing process actually works very much like a wiki.  
Newsletter
Limited
 By default, LiveWhale users are automatically notified for a variety of reasons related to CMS services. They can opt out of this feature as desired.
Site Map
Limited
LiveWhale supports automatic lists of pages according to a variety of parameters, as well as tree-based navigation output.
Stock Quotes
No
 
Weather
No
 
Matrix
No
This is probably the weirdest item on the CMSmatrix feature list.
Events Management
Yes
LiveWhale events (see above) allow registration in addition to other event-specific functions.

Commerce

LiveWhale offers simple and secure e-commerce.  

Affiliate Tracking
No

Shopping Cart
No
 
Subscriptions
No
 
Pluggable Shipping
No
 
Pluggable Tax
No
 
Pluggable Payments
Yes We currently have online payments gateway Stripe enabled, but through our extensible development framework, you can add any other you wish. (We will undoubtedly add others with client interest.)
Wish Lists
No
 
Inventory Management
No
 
Point of Sale
Yes