I've been happily editing away on the upcoming eZ Publish Advanced Content Management book (which builds upon eZ Publish Content Management Basics) for the past few months. We're in the final stretch now, and I'm poking my head out to share a dozen handy eZ Publish features that are explained in the book. Even after working with eZ Publish for over a year, I regularly uncover amazing built-in features. Hopefully some of these facts are new and useful for even advanced content managers!

1. Custom virtual URLs

eZ Publish automatically generates a user and search engine friendly permalink, called a "virtual URL" for each content object that you create. For example, instead of an address such as "http://www.ezsystems.ca/content/view/132" for this blog, it is accessible at "http://www.ezsystems.ca/blog". You can also create your own custom virtual URLs, and can create as many as you want for each content node. In fact, in eZ Publish 3.10 and higher, there's a dedicated interface to manage virtual URLs for each node. Simply click "Manage URL aliases" under the "Advanced" sub-menu of the pop-up menu for the desired node.

You can even create URL wildcards, which are useful to redirect users who make typos (you could have "prod*" redirect to "products"). Check the URL translator interface in the Setup tab.

2. Automatic link checking script

Not only can you manage every link on your site from the URL management interface in the Setup tab, but you can also run the linkcheck.php cronjob to periodically check the validity of these links.

3. Policies with limitations = easy-to-create protected area

Policies are organized into roles, which are assigned to users and user groups. When you create policies with section limitations, this makes it really easy to create protected areas on your site.

Limitations for policies

In fact, the policies and limitations cover so many aspects of content management that you can create access permissions to grant or limit access to every page and function of a site. The level of granularity is astounding, with class, language, node, owner, parent class, section, siteaccess, status, subtree limitations.

4. Hiding a node when publishing it

Turn on the edit mode Locations window (in the My account tab in the Administration Interface). Then, you can hide a node before publishing it:

Locations window in edit mode

This way, you can create content, have it appear in the node tree, but hide it for further editing or structuring immediately.

5. Object creation timestamp options

With the delayed publishing feature, you can specify a future publish date and have the system "hold" the content and automatically publish it when the publish date arrives. By default, the object creation time is set to the time when you first created the content. However, when the "Modify the objects' publishing dates" checkbox is marked in the "Wait until date" workflow event, the object creation timestamp is set to the publish date. Therefore, those time-sensitive press releases can truly be marked with an exact time.

6. Timed unpublishing and timed hiding

Not only can you delay the publishing of nodes, but you can also time the unpublishing of nodes (put the objects in the trash) and time the hiding of nodes (changing the node visibility to hidden).

This is accomplished by using attributes of the "Date and time" datatype and modifying settings in the "[UnpublishSettings]" and "[HideSettings]" blocks in content.ini.

7. Customizable tag clouds and sitemaps

Built-in tag clouds and sitemaps help your visitors and make your site more palatable to search engines.

You can display a tag cloud or sitemap with any starting point by modifying the URL. In the following URLs, replace "node_id" with the Node ID number of the desired starting point:

• Tag clouds: "http://www.yoursite.com/content/view/tagcloud/node_id"
• Sitemaps: "http://www.yoursite.com/content/view/sitemap/node_id"

8. Swapping nodes

Suppose you've built an entire content structure but need to change the content class of a container. The hard way to do it would be to move the entire subtree, replace the container object, then move the tree back. Or, you can do what is called "node swapping". Technically, this swaps the objects that are contained within objects, preserving the structure beneath the nodes.

If you needed to change a top-level folder with a more sophisticated frontpage, simply create the frontpage elsewhere, then swap it in. To perform the operation, click the "Swap with another node" item under the "Advanced" sub-menu on the pop-up menu.

9. Smarter and better searching with eZ Find

The new eZ Find extension is an enhanced search engine. It adds many improvements to searching eZ Publish sites, including relevancy ranking, keyword highlighting, and excluding and requiring search terms.

With or without eZ Find, eZ Publish has a uber-useful search statistics page (you'll find it in the Setup tab). Here, you can see which terms people have used with the eZ Publish search engine, which helps to identify popular topics, or topics to expand upon and add to your site.

10. Multilingual URLs and more

eZ Publish has been chosen for its excellent multilingual features for many years. For example, each object can exist in multiple translations, and there is a sophisticated translation fallback system that ensures that content can be displayed for a siteaccess even if it doesn't exist in a particular language.

You can now also create multilingual URLs for each node. By default, you can have an object called "Easy" with a URL "/easy" but also create a French translation with a URL "/facile". You can also create multilingual custom virtual URLs (see feature #2) that exist in multiple siteaccesses, or only in certain siteaccesses. C'est facile!

11. Option nesting and dependency rules with the "Multi-option2" datatype

If you're running a Webshop, you'll definitely want to take a look at the powerful "Multi-option2" datatype. Often, products have options that depend on other options. You can customize these options for each of your products by nesting options and taking advantage of detailed but intuitive dependency rules. For example, if you only offer glossy finishing for the wedding-style book, the glossy option can easily be disabled for the other books, all within one product.

Nested option dependency rules

12. eZ Flow: timeline preview

If you haven't heard of the eZ Flow extension yet, go check it out!

Among the handy media and news features of eZ Flow is the ability to automatically rotate items within content blocks and to define overflow rules to transfer content between blocks. In a basic eZ Publish installation, you can have basic template functions that would display, for example, the latest 3 articles in a featured block and perhaps list the next newest 5 articles in an archive list. With eZ Flow, you can pick specific articles, specify specific rotation / flow times per article, and manage this all through the GUI!

One of the most useful features of eZ Flow is the timeline preview. Here, you can drag a time slider to preview exactly how your dynamic eZ Flow frontpage will appear at different times of the day, based on the scheduling, rotation and overflow rules:

eZ Flow timeline preview