The functionalitiy of GEM is made available through various specialized consoles. The following provides an overview of the individual consoles:

Welcome Page

Provides an overview and direct access (via links) to the main functionality of GEM.

Main Websites Console / Siteadmin

The main Websites console lets you create, view and manage your sites created in GEM. You can create, copy, move and delete website pages, access the Page Properties and activate (publish) pages. You can also open a page for editing. 

DAM Console for digital assets

This console lets you import and manage digital assets such as images, videos, documents and audio files. These assets can then be used in various components in various templates.

Tagging Console

The Tagging console lets you administer tags. Tags are short names or phrases that you can use to classify pieces of content making it easier to find and organize them. Additionally, tags are used in a variety of components that offer filtering or categorization.

Content Editing

Not actually a Console but nevertheless the most important page is the Content Editing Mode of any content page. When opening a page for editing, the page's content can be configured by adding components from the Sidekick on the left and assets from the Content Finder on the right.

Creating content im GEM is done with various templates. Each template provides certain functionalities and offers different components. A component is a content block that is used to create a desired functionality or display (e.g. a Text with Image component can be used to add text and images to the main content).

This list provides an overview of the most commonly used templates in GEM:

Standard Content Page

The Standard Content Page template is the default template to create the main content. It offers a big variety of components, divided into a Common and Entity specific components.

Modal Content Page

The Modal Content Page template is used to create Forms or Leads. It is available under the /configurations node as child of the Leads Configuration Page template. It contains form specific components as well as all components available in the Standard Content Page template.

Configuration

Under the /configuration node there are a bunch of templates used to create specific pages, configurations or page content. Most importantly, the following templates can be found there:

• Header Navigation Configuration Page template
• Footer Configuration Page template
• Lead Configuration Page template (as parent of the Modal Content Page template)
• Site Configuration Page template
• Contact Configuration Page template
• Errors Confiuguration Page template
• Dictionary Configuration Page template
• Snippet Content template

News Content Page

News Content Pages are used to create the press release content. For each release in each language, one page must be created. It offers all components from the Standard Content Page template and can display the designated News Archive Teaser in the main content. It is only available as child of the News Day Entry Template.

Question and Answer Page

Thie Question and Answer Page templates are used to create the questions and answers that are used in the Help Center / FAQ feature. They contain a designated Question component along with some commonly used components from the Standard Content Page template. It is only available as child of a Standard Content Page template.

Snippet Content

The Snippet Content template is used to create re-usable content snippets that are embedded to Standard Content Pages with the Snippet Reference component. It offers all components that are available in the Standard Content Page template.

Activation of content / life cycle

Importance: high

Every content needs to be activated / published in order to be displayed on your website. This includes assets and tags. If a content becomes outdated, it can be deactivated in order not to be visible on your website anymore.

Browser upgrade notice for old Internet Explorers

Importance: feature, recommended

A modern website like a GEM based site is flawlessly displayed on all major desktop browsers and mobile devices. We are using up-to-date technology which unfortunately is not 100% correctly running on very old browsers. We therefore advise to you to set up the Browser Upgrade Notice page in order for all Internet Explorer below the version 9 users to get motivated to switch to a modern browser.

Contact Configuration for Site Contact, Contact option in header, Help Center

Importance: feature, if needed

Create a central Contact Configuration page that can display multiple contact options in a box alike style. These Contact Options can be used in the Header, the Site Contact and Help Center components.

Contact Form (for E-Mail Link)

Importance: feature, recommended

Every site should have its Contact Form to provide the possibility to get in touch with your entity. This Contact Form, or also a dedicated E-Mail Contact Form, can then be used for the E-Mail Link option, when offering to contact a specific addressee of your entity directly.

Digital Assets

Importance: high

Order and obtain your digital assets. In the DAM, create a thematical or file-type based folder structure to meet your needs. Upload and activate your assets in order for them to be ready for usage.

Disclaimer

Importance: feature, if needed

If a certain page or also an entire site needs to be access protected by a disclaimer, it can be easily set up with a common Form.

Domain- / Language node redirect

Importance: high

In the Page Properties of the Site Page and the Language Page, a redirect to your start- or homepage must be set in order to display your startpage when calling up your domain without a child node, e.g. www.example.com would then redirect to www.example.com/en/startpage.

Error pages (404)

Importance: high

Every site must have its Error Pages defined. GEM therefore offers the possibility to individually create the pages for 404 and 500 errors.

Facebook sharing

Importance: feature, recommended

Create a Site Configuration page to define the Facebook App ID used in the Multimedia components for sharing pages on Facebook.

Favicon

Importance: feature, recommended

A favicon can be set in the Page Properties, tab Site, of the Site Page. Favicons are displayed in your browser's tab title.

Header / Footer

Importance: high

Every page needs a Header (Header Navigation Configuration Page template) and a Footer (Footer Configuration Page template). Once added to a page, both contents get inherited to all derived child pages. This means, that the contents only need to be added to all first level pages of your site.

FAQ aka Help Center

Importance: feature, recommended

A FAQ section is always a very good way to offer help for advice seeking portal visitors. With the Help Center feature, an entire FAQ Archive (Help Center List component) can be set up that can be filtered by help categories (based on Tags). On ordinary content pages, the Help Center component can be added to give first answers and to promote the Help Center Archive.

HTML in footer

Importance: feature, if needed

If any style or other changes need to be applied to all pages, HTML code can be injected in the Footer page that is then loaded on all content pages.

Internal search

Importance: high

The internal site search in GEM is powered by the Elastic Search. To set up the search areas, you need to get in touch with the GEM helpdesk. On your search page, which should be available like this: www.example.com/search, additional settings can be configured.

Language Copy

Importance: feature, if needed

In a multilingual site, it is possible to set up a Language Copy of the already created default language. By doing so, all defined pages are copied to the newly created language. In there, as the page structure is already available, they only have to be translated. The language switch on the website itself can be performed in the Language Link, available in the Header.

Main content pages / Standard Content Page template

Importance: high

Create your actual content pages using a Standard Content Page template. Pages can be copied or moved after creation. Content can be copied from page to page by using the Copy Parsys feature or by copying components. If a site is transferred from an existing web portal, text content can easiliy be added using copy/paste.

Every page should be divided into contextual sections by using Section With Headline components. For easy navigation within a page, add an In-page Navigation component just below the page introducing Hero or Superhero component and add all further components within it.

On the bottom of the main content, add a Help Center or Site Contact  component or Page Teasers with additional, context relevant information.

Migration Helper

Importance: feature, if needed

When first launching your site (or also later for a marketing campaign or such), the Migration Helper slideshow can be set up. This feature offers a simple to set-up slideshow in a modal overlay that is loaded on first page visit.

News / press releases

Importance: feature, recommended

Create a News Archive for all your previous and current press releases. For each news entry, a dedicated News Content Page can be created that is then displayed in a filterable Archive, created with the News Filter Container component. On overview pages, a Timeline slider of your most recent press releases can be added.

Page Forward form

Importance: feature, if needed

With the option Page Forward, it is possible to share the current page per e-mail to a defined recipient. This option is available in the Service Links in the Footer of each page.

Page structure / navigation tree

Importance: high

Plan the page structure of your site according to your navigational intentions. In GEM, no extra navigation tree must be created. The navigation structure follows entirely the order your pages are created in the site tree in the Main Console.

Page Teaser Boxes

Importance: high

For every content page created that needs to be promoted by a Teaser Box (used in Box Container & Box Filter Container components), a Page Teaser needs to be created in the page's Configuration Page.

Redirects

Importance: high

Set up your desired (Root)-Redirects or TinyURL Redirects in the Redirect Manager. Upon launching your site, your list of existing redirects can also be imported by the GEM team.

SEO

Importance: feature, recommended

Search Enginge Optimization is a powerful feature that needs to be carefully hosted in order to get good search results on search engine pages such as Google. GEM is offering multiple settings to boost your search performance.

Smart App Banner

Importance: feature, if needed

If your entity provides an app, such as Netbanking, it is possible to have a link to the app store displayed on your pages, when called up from a mobile device. This applies for all major mobile operating systems.

Tagging structure

Importance: high

Create a tags structure according to your needs and intended usage. Tags are used for organizing your assets, the Help Center feature, Page Teasers (Box Filter Container component), File Lists component, Multimedia Filter Container component, the News feature and to provide another filter option in the internal site Search.

Title Postfix

Importance: feature, if needed

In the Page Properties of the Language Page, the Title Postfix can be set that is displayed in the browser tab title just after the content page's tite. So if the Title of a page is called Girokonto and the Title Postfix Erste Bank, the displayed browser tab title would be Girokonto | Erste Bank. As the Title Postfix is defined on the Language Page level, it is inherited to all child pages of this language.

Webtrekk web traffic analyzing tool

Importance: feature, recommended

In the Page Properties of the Site Page, the Webtrekk GEM Code can be added in order to track the traffic with Webtrekk on your page. Please get in touch with the GEM helpdesk for further information.