LightCMS is built to help your business succeed. Want to know more? We've launched a new video about it on the LightCMS website. You can find the video on our resellers page or our video page. Or, you can just watch it below. Enjoy!

We've added a new video to our arsenal of CMS resources. "Getting started managing your website" is a four minute overview of basic CMS functionality. It's designed to get a new user up to speed quickly on what they need to know. Topics covered include: logging in, recognizing the toolbar, switching between admin and preview, recognizing editable regions, adding content elements, adjusting settings on content elements, utilizing the "explain this" help links, adding pages, adjusting page settings, and using the page manager and user manager.

The video is unbranded which means it's available for you to use as your own tool for your own clients. You can simply grab the embed code from the video below and paste it into your own site. Or, if you're using our reseller scripts, this video has been added to the features listing (if you're using the video option), and it will be added to the video script by the end of tomorrow.

We recently got a little video in our mailbag. We love video, so we thought we'd share. Thanks to Scott Magdalein for sending this in. Scott is an experienced LightCMS reseller and you can hear more from him on his blog and his Twitter feed.

Here's the clip:

We've added two new feature demonstration videos to our reseller marketing scripts. This includes our features list with video script and our video content script. If you are using these scripts, you don't have to do a thing, the new video content has been added automatically. Of course, you can also access and embed this video content directly on your own. Simply visit our Blip.tv CMS demos show page to get the embed code.

And for those of you who just want to watch, the videos are included below. Enjoy!

The Built-in Image Editor

The Photo Gallery

We're releasing another marketing script that you can use as a reseller to promote our CMS to your own clients in an unbranded way. This one is all about video. Earlier, we announced our features script with video which provides a complete features listing with links to launch videos about the features where available. The new video script generates just the video content, with the videos embedded right into the page so the user can view them without leaving the page or launching a separate window. The content includes all of the same feature videos included in the feature list, but just set apart by themselves in a different format.

Get started

You can find instructions on using the video script here on our account support website. You can also view an example of this script embedded into one of our default templates.

Please note, the video script currently only contains two feature videos, but there are more to come. New videos will be added as they are available. You won't have to do a thing once you've implemented the script on your site. All additions will happen automatically.

Lately, I've been spending quite a bit of time creating screencast videos for our content management products. Some of these videos have already been published (see our CMS demos and CMS tutorials) and others are on the way. I thought I'd share with you a little bit about our process for producing these videos.

Why make a screencast video?

Screencast videos are great for showing a product or process that takes place on a computer. Using a screencast lets you capture the action on your computer screen and use it in a demonstration. At Element Fusion, our screencast videos usually fall into one of two categories:

1. Marketing videos. These videos have a primary objective of generating interest in a product rather than actually showing someone how to use it.
2. Tutorial videos. These videos have the primary objective of teaching someone how to use a products, or a specific aspect of a product.

To script or not to script?

With marketing videos, my goal is to communicate as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. So, I choose to script these videos to make sure time is used most efficiently. Scripting also gives a slightly more polished feel to the video, which I like for marketing purposes. With our tutorial videos, we typically don't script them, but rather speak off the cuff (more on this below).

Equipment needed

You need a computer, a microphone, and some software. There are a ton of software options available, but after trying several, I've landed on Camtasia Studio. It costs about $300, but it is designed specifically for screen capture, so it makes the process really quick and easy. The editing side is limited if you're used to true video editing on something like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier, but at a fraction of the cost, I will make do with the options Camtasia provides. Again, since it's built for screencasts, it makes some of the most common things you want to do (like panning and zooming) very simple.

I also use Audacity for producing audio when working on scripted videos. Camtasia has very limited audio controls so producing audio first in Audacity gives me a little more control. I can't say Audacity is great, but it's the best free option I've found.

Some helpful hints

1. Choose your final output size. You need to know the size of your final video so you can keep that in mind when you're shooting screenshots. This is really the trickiest part of creating screencasts. In order for the viewer to see the whole picture, you need a very large video (upwards of 800x600) but that makes for inconvenient display options and sometimes even difficult playback. So, picking a smaller output size is good (we use 640x360 for most of our stuff, sometimes smaller) but it means you'll have to do some zooming and panning to make sure the viewer can see what you're doing.
2. Determine how you'll handle audio. You really have three options:
   1. Script it and produce the audio first, then add visuals on top. We use this method for most marketing videos.
   2. Create the visuals first, then record narration live on top of the video once it's ready. We do this for most tutorial videos.
   3. "Click and talk" and just record everything live in one take, talking and operating the computer at the same time. We almost never do this anymore (some of our earlier videos were created this way) because it leads to videos that are much longer than necessary and also provides very limited options for editing. However, this method is less time consuming to produce and can be good for some applications like more detailed how-to instructions where you will have a more captive audience.
3. Carefully use noise reduction filters on narration audio. It's almost impossible to capture raw narration that doesn't have background noise, unless you have a sound proof studio. So, run noise reduction filters, but be careful that you don't overdo it and make it sound muddy.
4. The point of editing is to cut out unwanted stuff. If you've got editing software, use it. No need to make the viewer sit and watch you type in a bunch of text on the screen or do other tasks not related to what you're trying to demonstrate. Cut out the boring stuff and keep things moving.

I hope this helps to give you an idea of the process and equipment we use to create screencast videos. If you have your own methods or products that have worked well for you, please share them in the comments. Your questions are welcomed as well.

A couple of weeks ago, we announced our new CMS Demos show on Blip.tv which houses the unbranded marketing videos we create and make available for you to use as a reseller (for more information, please review our original post). Well, we've made a slight enhancement to our system by adding a second show, CMS Tutorials.

Both shows contain unbranded videos that are available for you to use on your own sites. The CMS Demos show will house marketing-related feature overviews while the CMS Tutorials show will house support-oriented videos on how to use the system. Separating these two types of content will allow you to better control the user experience on your site. So, you'll likely want to subscribe to them both. You can use any content from either show however you see fit. We plan to add many more videos to both shows in the weeks, months and years to come.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Photo Gallery Slideshow tutorial will be moved from the CMS Demos show to the new CMS Tutorials show. If you previously embedded this particular video, you will need to re-embed it from its new location. We will be removing the video from the old location at the end of day tomorrow (Tuesday, November 25th). We apologize for this inconvenience. This is a unique situation and this type of re-embedding should not be required in the future.

Resellers, as you know, we've started creating some unbranded video content to demonstrate the CMS system. This content provides you a simple way to use our video marketing work to promote the CMS to your own clients. As we mentioned in a recent post, we are including feature demo videos inside our reseller features script, which gives you a way to drop a full features list onto your own web page complete with link that launch video demonstrations of features where available.

Yesterday, I published a new video tutorial on the blog. This is different than a feature demo and it won’t be included in the features list script. But, the content is still unbranded and could be helpful as you market the CMS to your clients.

So, here’s what you do

In an effort to provide you a way to utilize this content outside of the context of the reseller scripts, and to utilize any video content that’s not included in the reseller scripts, we’ve set up an unbranded “show” on blip.tv (our video hosting provider). The show, simply called “CMS Demos,” will contain every unbranded feature demo, tutorial, and CMS-related video content that we produce. Here’s the link to our show page: cmsdemos.blip.tv

When you access the show page, you’ll notice that you can view the episode archive to browse available videos. You can also grab the embed code for any video to drop it onto your own website. In fact, if you want, you can even subscribe to the show and get episodes delivered to you as soon as they are released. This access gives you a lot of flexibility to use our video content how you want.

Note: as long as you use the blip-provided embed code to display the videos on your site, they will stay up to date, even if we later update the videos to reflect new UI changes, features, or for whatever reason.

Another note: you will know whether or not a video is included in the reseller feature list because any video that is included in this list will be prefaced with "Feature demo:" in its title.

Enjoy

So, please feel free to utilize the video content found in our show in whatever way you wish to promote your CMS to your clients. The inventory of videos is minimal right now, but we plan to continue to add videos in the weeks and months and years to come.

As part of the launch of the new Icebrrg redesign I wanted to show a little bit of insight into how a website goes from a design comp into a fully functioning website. By using a clever bit of scripting, this movie shows the CSS styles being applied rule by rule right in the browser. It is not a literal timeline of my actual process or the order in which I applied styling, but it has been optimized to show a reasonable facsimile of the process and to be as interesting as possible. Even as the designer behind this website, I find this movie fascinating.

Special thanks to Matthew Buchanan who's Timelapse CSS script made this post possible.