It's time for a more friendly CMS

Web designers have drag-and-drop control over page layouts, with tools to edit CSS and HTML source code.

Our brilliant Gridmaker interface has a drag-and-drop interface, allowing even unskilled administrators to create a stunning page layout. It provides a range of controls over page behavior, size, CSS class and mobile/desktop visibility.

When viewing a rendered page as an administrator, there's easy access to edit CSS files. These can be tried out in a preview mode, and then applied for immediate effect.

As with other Zenario tools, permission to use Gridmaker and the CSS Editor can be granted or withheld on a per-administrator basis.

Other HTML and JavaScript code can be edited. It's possible to apply HTML/JS on a site-wide basis, for all pages using a given layout, or for a specific page. There are even controls over whether to run JavaScript, according to whether a visitor has accepted appropriate types of cookies.

For site authors, there is a version-controlled editing environment, with the ability to preview pages before they go live.

There are plugins for page elements that are used in multiple places, such as call-out banners and auto-updating lists.

Zenario has a system of administrator permissions, so you have precise control over who can do what.

Zenario-powered sites are ready-geared for speed and search engine optimisation.

It's easy to set page metadata and keywords, with helpful tips for authors. Every page has an "alias", which is a unique, SEO-friendly word or phrase, and which has a context-related path from the home page.

Sitemaps are easy to expand and modify, with a simple drag and drop tree-like interface. Whenever a page is added, it is automatically added to the sitemap (though can be omitted if you'd prefer it to be private).

robots.txt and sitemap.xml files are automatically created and can be fine-tuned where needed.

All images can have fixed URLs and ALT tags. Every page can have a "featured image", that appears when the page is posted on social media.

Read more about Zenario's SEO tools.

Zenario doesn't just handle HTML pages, but also a range of other "content types", which have different characteristics.

It supports News and Blog articles. These usually contain time-sensitive information and so are displayed in auto-generated lists, most recent or "pinned" items at the top.

There's support for Document downloads, and it's easy to support anything from a single file up to a large, searchable library.

Events are supported, so you can promote what's coming up, whether online or real-world. These can be displayed in a calendar or in a list.

There is a ready-to-go video library, so you can deliver public or private videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

Read more about content types

Zenario supports locations that have a real-world address.

They can be stored in Zenario's database and presented to visitors on maps and listings.

Locations are based on Zenario's Dataset system, which means that it's easy to add images, URLs, categorisations, additional checkboxes, text fields and other custom properties.

This makes it easy to manage and present a range of different types of locations, such as resellers, partners or related organisations.

Explore locations now

If you're building a secure area for partners or team-members, Zenario has a complete, secure extranet system built in. It has a full management area for users and other contacts.

With a Zenario extranet, there is functionality for user sign-up, email verification, your choice of approval process, plus tools for users to recover a lost password, and view and edit their details.

Data protection is a key feature, with control over how Zenario stores and eventually deletes user data.

There are means for sharing information, using Groups and Roles.

While the most simple extranet allows all valid users to access all private material, with Groups it is possible to segregate who-can-see-what.

With Roles (requires Zenario Enterprise), users can be linked with physical locations, so that they can access information related with their own location. Roles can also allow local managers to enlist further users to their location.

Creating forms is a doddle. A simple contact-us form it built in, but with a simple drag-and-drop interface you can build more powerful data-capture forms in minutes.

These can include multi-step forms, and a range of field types including user-dataset lookups and file uploads.

It's possible to link Zenario forms with a separate customer relationship management system (CRM), such as Salesforce or Mailchimp. So whenever someone completes a form, Zenario can feed their data into your separate CRM system.

Zenario pays attention to data protection, and records confirmation from each user of their acceptance of privacy terms.

There is support for multiple languages, so any site can be deployed in any language of languages of your choice.

All pages have the appropriate embedded language ISO code in their HTML source, and the language code can be included in the page URL for correct SEO.

Pages in the site's original language can easily be duplicated and translated into a new language, without losing their relationship with the original page.

Where occasional phrases are used on the site, these are handled through a central area, so that it's easy to view, export, import and do ad hoc translations.

Zenario is free!

Under the open source BSD license, Zenario can be downloaded and used for free.