What is Pivotx ?
Yes, it's a blogging tool - and a pretty brilliant one if you ask us - but PivotX is also a great tool to maintain more complex websites as well. Its powerful core and flexible template system make it easy for developers to adjust and extend. No matter if you want an easy-to-use, robust blogging tool or are looking to push things to the max - PivotX offers the best of both worlds.
Key features
Entries and Pages
The main reason that most people use an application like PivotX is because they have something they'd like to share with the rest of the world. PivotX allows you to maintain multiple weblogs as well as separate pages. The main difference between these is that Pages can have any template you like, whereas weblog items are grouped chronologically and displayed in the same way as the other stuff in the same weblog.
Easy Blogging
Several functions make weblogging really easy using PivotX. You can choose whether you'd like to use the built-in Wysiwyg editor, or if you'd like to craft your HTML by hand. Inserting a clickable image (like the ones you see on this page), audio file or Youtube video is very simple and can be done without leaving the "Write an Entry" screen.
Images and Files
Handling images and text-files is very easy with PivotX 2. You'll be able to see all the files you've uploaded and edit or delete them.
Using the built-in Picnik extension you can even have a fully functional web-based Photo Editor without leaving PivotX.
Extensions
We've created a very powerful and flexible extension framework. Developers can create Extensions that 'hook' into the core PivotX functionality. Things like adding items to the Admin Interface, processing the page before it is sent to the user, or adding functionality to the 'front-end' like fully configurable widgets or extras you can use in your templates.
The Extensions are manageable through the admin interface. You can enable and disable them. Extensions can have their own configuration screens, so you can administer them without messing about in the PHP code.
The type of extension that might get used the most is the so called Widget. Basically this is a 'thing' that somebody made, so you can place it on your website. In the Admin Interface you can enable them and re-order them as you like. They will then show up on you site without having to change your templates at all. Some other weblog tools have this functionality as well, but what makes them so special in PivotX is the way we put them on your page. Normally they are just included in the page, which means that if the server providing the widget is down, your site will take up to a minute to load. We've done this in such a way that broken widgets will not negatively impact the performance of your website.
Themes
Applying themes to your pages has never been so easy. You can build your own or download themes made by other PivotX users. If you are using pages you can apply different templates to each page.
Template engine
Under the hood, PivotX 2.0 is powered by a powerful template engine called Smarty. In fact, it's so good, that it's not just used for the templates for your site, but the Pivot Admin Interface itself is completely powered by Smarty as well.
This new template engine has a few great benefits: Templates are easy to understand, yet very powerful. You don't even have to know PHP to do the more complicated things. If you want to you're always able to do so.
There are more clever things we've done with the templates. Whenever you insert a popup or use a widget, Pivot automatically adds the correct javascript to the section of the page, so you won't have to edit the template. This works the same for feed autodiscovery: If you enable XML-feeds in the configuration screens, the correct tags will be added to your pages, so people can easily subscribe to your Feeds.
Multiple weblogs
PivotX allows you to maintain multiple weblogs with only one installation. Each weblog is fully configurable. With this very flexible system you can maintain weblogs with different languages, completely different themes, publish seperate categories and create seperate XML feeds.
Multiple authors
You can create as much authors as you need with different levels of users regarding managing and editing privileges.
Flat files or MySQL database
You can choose if you want a flat files database or a MySQL database. Running your PivotX on MySQL will give you more flexibility in searching and ordering your weblogposts and is better for large weblogs. Still, if your webhost doesn't support MySQL, you can also use a flat file database. This way PivotX is backwards compatible with previous releases of Pivot.
No rebuilding
Unlike previous Pivot releases, everytime someone visits your website, PivotX generates that page and immediately shows it on your screen. No more hassle with rebuilding, and no generated files taking up space on your webserver.
Commenting & moderation
With the built-in Comment Editor commenting is as easy as ever. The Editor will allow your visitors to add some extra style to their comments and if you allow the to use emoticons in their comments, they'll get help adding the proper codes in the emoticons reference.
Spam protection
PivotX weblogs have state of the art anti-spamming measurements built in, with HashCash your weblog will be protected by one of the most effective technologies to reduce spam. This makes it harder to leave comment spam, but it won't irritate legitimate commenters. You can also choose the spamquiz. With the spamquiz you can create a question that your users have to answer to check if they are human like 1 + 1 = ?.
The great thing about this is that you don't have to activate or download extra things to get this working. PivotX will automatically protect you from spammers.
More info at http://pivotx.net
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