Silva Features

Authoring

Authors can create an infinitely nested hierarchy of publications and folders to structure content.

Underwater, authors produce structured XML that is displayed as HTML in a web page. This also future proofs the information.

All text stored as unicode, which means content in multiple languages can be mixed in single documents freely.

Silva includes a WYSIWYG editor (CKEditor) that provides many features:

  • Full Silva integration; CKEditor handles Silva special data sources transparently.
  • Copy and paste HTML from any source (web page, word processor) into CKEditor.
  • Works in Internet Explorer (8.0 and higher) Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
  • People who work with word processors will be comfortable with CKEditor's user interface.
  • Assets (e.g. Silva Images and Files) are linked as a robust reference and therefore can be moved around the site without breaking reference links.
  • Silva provides dynamic elements that can be embedded in documents that fetch information from a relational database or by calling a script, using Data Sources.
  • Metadata is stored per content object. Metadata is extensible; new metadata sets can be added. The metadata can be automatically indexed for search purposes.
  • An automatic Table of Contents feature lets authors create complex listings of documents and other content types.

Media and assets

  • Images and files can be imported either singly or in bulk by importing a zip file. The entire zipped directory structure can be imported and will creat Silva Folders automatically.
  • Images can be manipulated for web publication. The original high resolution images can still be exported for print purposes.
  • Silva provides facilities for cropping and resizing images. This tool combined with the scaling possibilities offers Authors the means to both customize a high resolution image to a web suited image.
  • Images can be positioned in documents using standard styles.
  • Silva integrates with Mobi, a middleware suite for detecting mobile devices. Silva provides a layout system that is able to choose the appropriate presentation for a mobile device or desktop computer.

User interface

  • Silva has its own through-the-web user interface with easy access to all features. Authors can only access functionality relevant to Authors, while Editors and Chief Editors have more capabilities in specific screens.
  • The user interface is internationalized (using i18n)  so that it can be translated to different languages. Since Silva 1.2, there are English, German, French, Dutch and Traditional Chinese versions. Others are in progress.
  • Managers can descend into the Zope user interface for fine-grained system control.
  • A javascript pop up is used to select references. The pop up uses a REST API to query the site.
  • With the Preview functionality you can quickly check how the content will look in the public web layout.
  • The editor fullscreen functionality makes it possible to edit and preview in a wide screen layout.

User settings

Language settings

  • Users can set their preferred language for editing in Silva in the "Preferences" of the SMI.

Workflow and versioning

  • Publication workflow: approval by (Chief) Editor is needed in order to publish content. Content can be published as well as expired automatically at a set time.
  • Versioning of content: Authors can work on new versions of documents while a previous version remains published.
  • Editors can manage the publication status of large quantities of documents in one screen.
  • Silva can be configured to automatically send emails to Authors and Chief Editors for workflow events, informing them about the status of their documents.
  • For documents and other versioned content you can review older versions, compare them, revert the draft version to an older version or remove older versions completely.
  • It is possible for site visitors to subscribe to web pages. They will get an email message sent to them automatically when a new version of the page gets published.

Access management

  • Silva separates responsibilities between Author, Editor and Chief Editor roles.
  • Silva alllows delegation of responsibilities. Editors can approve for publication, Chief Editors can create new (Chief) Editors and Authors. This prevents a one-person bottleneck holding up publication.
  • LDAP connections are possible using LDAPUserFolder or the LDAP Multi-Plugin. This has a search interface for people in LDAP in order to assign roles, scaling to large quantities of users.
  • Group management and access can be handled with the Pluggable Authentication System (PAS). Visit the Silva groups and PAS documentation for more details. 
  • Public acces can be restricted to individual users, authenticated users, or users with Viewer, Viewer+ and Viewer++ roles.
  • Users who do not yet have access to edit objects can optionally be allowed to request this in a user interface.

Documentation

  • Extensive Silva user documentation for Author and Editors, site Managers, designers and system administrators is available on the SilvaCMS.org site.
  • Silva user documentation can be automatically installed in your Silva site.
  • Extensive documentation for developers can be found on the SilvaCMS.org developers section.

Site management

  • Layout templates provide flexible, customizable presentation using Zope or Chameleon Page Templates. Different sub-sites can have different publications and designs.
  • Granlular configuration per publication makes content available for Authors to add and edit. It is also possible to completely disable certain content site-wide.
  • Ghosts and Ghost folders allow presenting content in a different context than which they are authored in. This allows storing content in a structure paralleling that of the organization for access rights distribution and delegation, but reusing the same content inside topic oriented structures for web publication.
  • Virtual hosting support allows different areas of the site o be exposed in a separate virtual host for both viewing and authoring.
  • Table of contents (TOC) elements can be included in pages to present the local structure of the site.
  • Silva Links can manage references to external sites within the table of contents.
  • All Silva assets (images and files) can be stored on the file system. This provides substantial performance increases.
  • Content caching architecture ensures that the renderings of individual Silva content objects such as documents can be cached for high-performance display.
  • A quota subsystem lets Managers set a quota on publications (which can also be a virtual host root). Containers within the publication acquire the quota. The quota does not count the space used by the documents but tallies the assets. The space utilized is tracked on e container and displayed in the settings screen. Quotas can be set by Managers in the settings screen of the publication. The quota subsystem is off by default.
  • The Pluggable Authentication System (PAS) has been integrated into Silva. This means a whole range of existing plugins are available to integrate Silva with different authentication services. In addition to LDAP, there are integrations with Radius and a plugin for OpenID Authentication.

Content Layout Editor (extension)

  • Silva Pages make different flexible web layouts possible with restrictions set by the manger.
  • Silva Page Models allow easy use and reuse of preconfigured content with predefined flexible web layouts by Editors.

For more information on this extension you can have a look in the Silva Content Layout documentation section.

Silva External Sources (extension)

  • Enables the flexible inclusion of HTML or tabular data within Silva documents.
  • Authors can fill in a form within CKEditor to parameterize dynamic scripted content.
  • Integration within Silva's content caching architecture.
  • Display data from a relational database as a table within a Silva page.
  • Upload comma separated value (.csv) data into Silva and display it as a table within a Silva page.
  • External sources can be updated on the file system with or without a versioning system.

Silva News Network (extension)

  • Create and manage news and events in Silva.
  • News can be aggregated from various areas of the site, reflecting the structure of your organization.
  • Sub sites can have their own news displays, while the main page lists all news items.
  • Display news pages and/or agenda pages.
  • Make news available as Atom/RSS.
  • Aggregate news feeds from other sites. SNN reads standard feed formats.

Technical

  • Open source software (BSD license)
  • Silva External Sources provides integration with relational databases through SQL. Custom objects can be created that retrieve dynamic data from databases.
  • Extensible Model/View/Controller architecture for both the editor and user interface.
  • Silva can be easily extended with new custom objects.
  • Can be configured to integrate with Apache or Nginx web servers and Squid or Varnish caches.
  • Cross platform; runs on Linux, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS X.