Red Rocket CMS (RRCMS) is a development framework that allows Flash developers to create fully content-managed, white-hat search-engine-optimized (and indexable), usable, interactive Flash websites. What RRCMS strives to do, conceptually, is to separate the project development into three distinct workflows: Content, Style, and Technology. In the traditional HTML development world, the same concepts exist in the form of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Background
Over the past decade, Flash developers have been creating immersive, interactive Flash websites that enrich user’s experiences, shedding the limitations of static content from traditional HTML websites. In doing so, however, tradeoffs were inevitable. The four pitfalls of traditional Flash development are:
RRCMS has addressed, and for the most part, completely eliminated all four of these hurdles for Flash development. We have created a platform that frees Flash developers that want all the benefits of interactive web development, without the hurdles typically associated with it.
The "Stateless" Page Concept
One of the things that make HTML sites, well … HTML sites, is the fact that they are "stateless". This means that in concept, each page of the website stands alone from any other. In this way, things like SEO and usability work, because they can index each stateless page.
This is the core concept of the RRCMS. RRCMS creates individual pages, or Buckets that get published to the server. What makes RRCMS tick is that for each page, it publishes 2 (or 3) static files that go to power the website. In actuality, for each site, there exist 2 identical websites. RRCMS creates a completely static HTML substrate for the interactive environment to overlay. Then, we’ve created a FlashSite framework that automatically syncs the static stateless pages, and it’s content-managed data to the interactive environment. In this way, the interactive, immersive flash website becomes stateless itself, and is the foundation for solving many of the issues of flash development.
Well, the ones that matter, anyway. One of the biggest criticisms of flash websites has been lack of usability features that most website visitors are accustomed to. The historical "Flash 99% Bad" article illustrates many of Flash’s shortcomings. While some of these concerns are irrelevant in the case for interactive, immersive environments, RRCMS has solved some of the bigger usability concerns. Sites created with the Red Rocket FlashSite framework, automatically resolve many of these issues without the developer understanding the technology behind how it works. This framework enables back/forward buttons, allows for bookmarking, updates page titles, and effectively emulates the "Stateless Page" concept of traditional HTML websites.
> Belzberg Architecure Website
Belzberg architecture is an excellent example of an interactive website that would seem like a traditional Flash website — it doesn’t even have a "navigation". But if you browse through the site you will notice the url changes for each "state" and you can use your back/forward buttons to change your history state.
We may have spoken too soon. SEO is hands-down the biggest drawback to Flash development. To date, there are still no effective, painless, guaranteed processes of creating SEO Flash sites. Some solutions exist, but none are where they need to be. Search engines like Google end up parsing the swf, but that isn’t really very helpful. In fact, with most of today’s complex Flash sites, their swf’s are essentially empty. Besides, who wants a link to the swf without the appropriate surrounding elements?
Other solutions for SEO are "black-hat" solutions. These solutions entail creating a hidden anchor or "link" that links to another page that has all the content for the entire site on one page. The problem with this solution (and the reason it’s black-hat) is that the content of that page does not actually reflect what the website looks like, and is considered spam by many search engines, and will have less relevance in general.
To understand how SEO works, is to understand that the power of search engine optimization and indexing lies in the stateless page concept of HTML. Because we’ve re-created these concepts for Flash, we can say, with complete confidence, white-hat SEO for Flash has been solved. As an example of SEO, we’ll use Chet Ross Rare Books. Here is a link to a Google search for "rare book antarctic":
There it is. CRRB, as small, independently-owed rare book seller, with a Flash website, is outranking sites like eBay, Barnes and Noble, and Bauman Rare Books — all which are traditional HTML sites, all which have been around longer, and all which are larger companies. How is this possible? Again, the secret lies in the HTML substrate that powers the stateless design for the Flash site. The concept is clearly illustrated here:
> Site Page WIth Flash Turned Off
Here, we are turning off Flash, and you are seeing just the html substrate (that is styled with CSS). You can browse around, like any traditional website — in fact — it IS a traditional website. At any point in the process, if you put "?flash=true" on the end of the url, it will re-enable the flash engine and load the right page content into the flash engine. It is this concept that creates the SEO properties. Search engines, since they don’t have Javascript, will index the HTML URL, and users with modern browsers, since they do have Javascript, will get the interactive Flash site (and as an ancillary benefit, if they have Javascript turned off, they will see the HTML version of the site instead of nothing — the concept of deprecation). Here is the same page with Flash turned back on. You will notice it’s almost identical in design and content:
> Same Page WIth Flash Turned On
Thus, white-hat search engine optimized and indexed Flash websites are now a reality — and proven to work. In addition to just allowing SEO flash sites to exist, there are numerous (and totally automatic) techniques built into the Publisher that not only make the sites indexable but optimized. Things such as contextual titles, dynamic meta tags (that change the page’s checksum regardless if the content has been changed) and publishing strict XHTML are all little things that succeed in getting your Flash site listed before the other guy.
Another problem with Flash development, especially in the case with developers of beginning to intermediate skill sets, is that the content of the site is hard-coded in the SWF and it’s FLA. Making changes to the site’s content is usually a very tedious process: opening up the FLA, editing library symbols, re-positioning elements, publishing the SWF, uploading it … sound familiar?
Even in the best-case scenario of extremely high-level Flash developers, it’s still not very conducive to editing content. Let us guess — editing XML? Using FTP to log into the web server, manually dropping in new images to specific folders? Have you ever mistyped data in your XML document to find your site broken because of an unclosed XML tag? And you wouldn’t THINK of allowing your customers to do this for themselves — they don’t have the technical experience to do it — they’ll break it for sure. So you are still stuck managing the content yourself.
The CMS in Red Rocket CMS means that the content for the site is managed. It’s a very simple tool for managing all the content that is delivered to the website. The tool only manages content — not design. In fact, we’ve left it this way specifically to disassociate the workflow of content away from the design. The concept is simple — leave the design to the developers and leave the content to the people with it. Need to redesign the site a year later? You’ll be glad the content is a separate entity.
What kind of content can you create? What we’ve done is distilled down the most basic type of content, and built out our content "types" based on them. Below is a very simplified overview of the types of content that you can create.
This is a very generalized overview. For a more complete description of how content works within RRCMS, the different types of content, their limitations, and their unique properties, follow the following link:
> Understanding the Content Management Tool
> Understanding the Different Content Types
Typically developing complete flash websites requires high-level Actionscript programmers, site architecture planning, and diverse skills ranging from database programming, XML loading, progressive asset loading, HTML, CSS and Javascript coding practices. Developing a complete flash-driven website usually takes weeks or months of development time, and multiple developers working in parallel to get the project complete. And even then, it’s not usually content-managed, as home-grown CMS systems are usually proprietary, only working with the individual site, and is a development project unto itself also requiring high-level programming, web services, and server-side development of it’s own. Even after that, it takes training and knowledge of third-party applications to create the content, format it, and implement. And when all is said and done, is it SEO? Probably not.
RRCMS can virtually eliminate all off the headaches and bottlenecks involved with this process.
We have developed a set of Actionscript 2 components that do all the heavy lifting for you. The components are developed with the entire range of Flash skills in mind. For beginning and intermediate Flash developers, these components can be dragged onto the stage, and using the Component Inspector, a developer can create an entire flash website without using any Actionscript whatsoever. Admittedly, creating a website solely with drag and drop component functionality won’t get you very far, but as a stepping stone, it begins the process of learning more advanced techniques.
Each component has a vast array of methods and properties to enhance and unlock the potential of Flash. All the high-level techniques employed by Flash developers around the globe are already built right into the component framework. While there is a learning curve, it is no more so than any other component set, and the more you learn about the components, and what they are capable of doing, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without them.
For advanced Flash developers with intimate knowledge of Actionscript, the components are also entirely class-based. This allows Actionscript developers to import classes directly, and create a high level of functionality without all the day-to-day hassles of doing the same coding over and over again. Each class builds upon other classes, and create a framework to allow almost limitless possibilities. Things like loadMovie, importing and parsing XML, enabling cross-domain security, bitmap smoothing, stylesheets, font-aliasing, scrolling text, and FLV implementation are all done either automatically, or with just a few lines of code to setup the individual components.
To find out more about the RRCMS Flash Components, and how they are used, see the following pages:
> RRCMS Component Documentation
> RRCMS Project Setup
If we’ve peaked your interest, and you want to learn more about RRCMS and how it can help you to create fully content-managed, white-hat SEO, usable, interactive Flash websites in a way you never thought of (or might not be capable of), please contact us! If you are a Flash developer with ideas on how to further improve our system, please contact us! If you are a design agency, and need someone to fulfill website designs with a consistent, professional, and affordable methodology, please contact us! We’d love to hear what you have to say.
The truth is, Red Rocket isn’t for everyone. If you are the kind of developer or designer that is leading the bleeding edge of motion graphics, FLV streaming, or crazy-insane Actionscript transition madness, Red Rocket probably isn’t for you. It’s for the other guys. That said, still give us a jingle, it just might come in handy some day, and we always enjoy discussing the future of Flash and it’s possibilities with smart developers just like you!