Bitrix Site Manager 7.0 Delivers Bang For The Buck

Bitrix Software has historically made a name for itself by providing a feature-rich content management system at a low price point. This approach has won it a substantial customer base, both in the U.S. and abroad. With Site Manager 7.0, the newest incarnation of their flagship CMS, it looks poised to make even further inroads; it includes strong support for multiple languages as well as a solid set of new features.The multilanguage capabilities, both for administration and for user-facing content, are enabled by the introduction of native UTF-8 support. This means that in addition to support for the typical languages you'd expect -- English, Spanish, French, German -- Site Manager 7.0 can support Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages.

Other significant feature enhancements include a more intuitive user interface, intended to make the system feel like a Microsoft Office program. It even incorporates the Windows-style Start button, which we've also seen employed in Sitecore's CMS. On the content creation side, Site Manager 7 now includes a feature-rich WYSIWYG editor that content admins can use to immediately update the page they're visiting. It's a feature that a number of other CMS products have, and it's a welcome addition here.

The system also adds a number of photo-centric Web 2.0 features with its new Photo Gallery module, which allows site visitors to upload and add comments to images, create photo galleries and slide shows, and rate pictures from other people.

From the initial setup, Site Manager 7.0 now includes install wizards that allow the system to be tailored to specific needs from the start. The wizard capability allows the admin to set up the site with a theme of their choosing, ranging from an e-commerce storefront to a site aimed at a specific vertical industry, such as travel, medical, or real estate.

For the most part, new features in Bitrix's value-minded CMS focus on delivering bang-for-the-buck rather than bleeding-edge new technology, and for many sites, that's enough. It has an easy to use online demo, which is worth taking for a spin.