CSMonitor.com Launches Site Upgrade on eZ Publish Enterprise

Award-winning news organization is the most visited eZ Publish site in North America

Skien, Norway – February 7, 2012 – eZ Systems AS, creator of the award winning Open Source Web Content Management Platform eZ Publish, today announced the successful upgrade of CSMonitor.com by long time business partner Mugo Web.

CSMonitor.com (www.csmonitor.com) has been using eZ Publish to complete their Web first strategy, driving growth through their online channels since 2009. The Christian Science Monitor turned to eZ for their out-of-the-box functionality to handle their publishing and editorial process. eZ Publish is able to track and manage the state of each piece of content as it moves through the workflow. This enables the editorial team to be more agile, while keeping much-needed control over the production and placement of the content. Now journalists and editors around the world can publish articles efficiently, intuitively and around-the-clock.

With greater control and agility, over the past year, the site has enjoyed increased traffic overall. „A key contributor to our increasing traffic is the fact that editors are now asked to enhance their articles with related content such as other articles, blogs, photo galleries and videos. To help them do that efficiently, we needed a simple mechanism to find relevant associations,“ commented David Scott, Online Director, The Christian Science Monitor. „eZ provided the solution so we could more easily enrich the content and increase page views-per-visit and therefore impressions and revenue.“

In November of 2011, CSMonitor.com upgraded its content management system and server architecture in response to recent traffic growth and to better position itself for future growth and innovation.

„Working with CSMonitor.com, we’ve seen increased commitment, investment, and success in their Web presence,“ added Peter Keung, Managing Director, Mugo Web. „Keeping the environment in tune with the latest releases from eZ Publish Enterprise ensured that we can capitalize on the continued enhancements and increased stability.“

Since drastically innovating their production model in 2009 by shifting from a print-first to a web-first model, The Christian Science Monitor has consistently increased monthly traffic. They increased page views from 9 million to 19 million page views in just the first 12 months, and to 30 million in only 2 years. Over the past one and a half years, web development partner Mugo Web has helped the Monitor become the most visited eZ Publish site in North America. In the past year, CSMonitor.com has also achieved a 30% increase in the average number of page views per visit (from 2.2 to 2.85). In addition, CSMonitor.com saw a 58% increase in total page views per month (from 19.4 in December 2010 to 30.7 in December 2011) while increasing unique visitors by 24% (from 6.6 million to 8.2 million).

Recent upgrades have allowed CSMonitor.com to achieve these milestones by adding new features that have focused on increasing reader engagement including quizzes, social networking tools, improved video content, and auto-tagging and grouping of related articles. Its internal, global news team continues to publish breaking news and commentary daily. The site also hosts archive content as far back as 1980.

The upgraded content management system eZ Publish Enterprise has brought performance and stability improvements, as well as enhanced front page management and enterprise-grade search functionality. The upgraded server architecture includes failover database replication and improved clustering for increased scalability.

About Mugo Web: Mugo Web (http://www.mugo.ca) is a leading vendor of services around eZ Publish in the Americas. They do all web development work in-house and have clients in publishing, health care, legal services, non-profit organizations, government, and more. They are a long-time eZ Publish partner and a contributor to the eZ Publish kernel.

About eZ Systems AS: Founded in 1999, eZ Systems is the creator of eZ Publish, the award winning Open Source Web Content Management Platform, used by more than 250,000 installations in over 160 countries. eZ empowers digital business with a platform that not only enables organizations to manage content across multiple sites in many languages, but also ensures that the information is delivered regardless of the channel. The result – right content, right time, right experience. The core element of the product is based on the open source paradigm enriched by enterprise services and completed by the eZ market offerings, resulting into enterprise grade subscription offerings with high-quality assurance, software maintenance and support services.

eZ Systems is trusted by well-known brands worldwide across a wide range of industries. Its customers include: CNBC, T-Mobile, France Telecom, Orange, BPCE, Clearchannel, Random House, EMI Music, Lagardère Active, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal Asia, UBM, Oslo Stock Exchange, Harvard University and MIT, United States Navy and French Ministry of Defense.

Additional information: eZ Systems Headquarters, Klostergata 30, N-3732 Skien, Norway, Tel. +47 35587020, email: info@ez.no, Web: www.ez.no

Media contact: Stefanie Lightman, ifridge & Company, email: Stefanie.lightman@ifridge.com