LOS ANGELES — Adult content management system provider Elevated X has announced the launch of Elevated X CMS version 4.0, based on its new PHP driven template engine, which replaces its former “Smarty” technology.
Elevated X won XBIZ Awards for “Software Company of The Year” in 2012, 2014 and 2015. Now in its 10th year, the company attributes much of its success to its consistent large scale product updates.
Author of the “Pay Site Power” column in XBIZ World magazine, Elevated X CEO AJ Hall, explains that although Smarty is also PHP based, it uses custom tags that are substituted with other code at runtime — a process that adds unnecessary complexity, and which has been a big thorn in the company’s side. The new template system, Hall says, is “a big deal” that will not only positively impact the company, but its customers, designers and developers, as well.
“Among those most impacted will be our users and a large number of industry designers and developers who up until now were overwhelmed by the learning curve of our ‘Smarty’ templates,” Hall told XBIZ. “The 4.0 CMS version framework is will open things up to a large network of coders being able to work with Elevated X.”
Hall explains that Elevated X’s new PHP template system features easier operation and simpler code, with shorter, more sensible variable names, and the ability to integrate with other features, such as live cams that operate via PHP code.
For example, the old Elevated X Smarty variable constructs are a thing of the past, so now instead of using variables such as $root.page.content.item, easier to use variables such as $sets, $set and $news, can be employed. Standard CSS and tags that make it easier for designers to customize the site, while PHP makes it possible to directly integrate more code into a site.
“There are lots more PHP developers out there than Smarty developers, so your coder of choice can now more easily customize your templates,” Hall explains. “Less code and more friendly code means customizations can be made in a fraction of the time, reducing coding, design and development costs.”
The new template engine and templates offer an updated look and feel, with easier to browse photos, and no longer need to compile Smarty code — so any template code used by the system can potentially be tied in with PHP caching systems.
“The new design code is 100 percent tableless CSS, so this template is easier to customize by designers using standard CSS. Page elements and CSS have been combined, so styles edited in one area can be applied to the other, simply by copying and pasting,” Hall says. “Templates now contain up to 30 percent less code, making editing much faster, and the templates have been reduced to now require only a handful of template files to be worked on to change a site’s theme, or to make more extensive design changes inside and out.”
Other upgrades include a new video player setup that allows all videos to play inline on gallery pages, so end users won’t have to click around to find content; while light box-style photo browsing offers an easy popup within the gallery page. Users can quickly scroll through pictures using their mouse or arrow keys, click small preview thumbnails, or enable a slideshow. The system also intelligently loads the right sized photo based on the window size and customer’s display — with customers using Retina displays seeing crisp, full images — while customers on smaller displays will see smaller, faster loading images.
Another upgrade makes it easier for customers to find and enjoy the site’s content, and to engage and interact with admins and other members.
“It’s possible to rate scenes, DVDs and models from anywhere in the site, not just on the DVD, model or scene page. This encourages more customer interaction, as they tell you what they like, and what they don’t like, about your site,” Hall told XBIZ. “Users can also ‘favorite’ scenes from the front page, category and DVD pages, so they can browse a site, save the scenes that they find interesting, and then later go to their ‘favorites’ page to see those scenes.”
Users of sites produced by Elevated X can also report any problems they have, directly from the site.
“If there’s a problem with a video for example, the user can report their problem directly from the page and site admins will receive the report as a private message inside their CMS admin panel,” Hall added. “This way, you’ll know right away if something is missing, or if a customer can’t view your content, and as an admin, you can then message back the customer to let them know that you have fixed the video — and all of this happens via the Elevated X CMS.”
Finally, Elevated X sites get an SEO boost through automated support for Google Sitemaps built into the new tour templates, to help boost traffic for a competitive advantage.
For more information, visit ElevatedX.com, or email aj@elevatedx.com.