The Craft Community Takes Flight on Ektron CMS400.NET

EKSuccess Brands launches Spottedcanary.com, a resource community for crafters
NASHUA, N.H.--(Business Wire)--
Ektron Inc., a technology and market leader in Web content management, portals
and social media, today announced that EKSuccess Brands launched its online
community for crafters, www.spottedcanary.com on Ektron`s Web content management
platform, Ektron CMS400.NET.

Spotted Canary is about everything crafting, whether it is scrapbooking, jewelry
making, kids projects, paper crafting, needle work or crafts in general.
EKSuccess Brands worked with Ektron Certified partner PINT to build the Spotted
Canary community on CMS400.NET and leverage Ektron`s Web 2.0 and social media
features to enable interaction and collaboration between members.

Spotted Canary members can create their own personalized profile pages and
`craft spot` where they can upload and share the projects they are working on.
Members can add and invite friends, discuss craft projects through private
messaging and comment on and rate other members` projects that have been posted.
Members also participate in the community forums and blogs as well as surveys,
contests and polls that Spotted Canary hosts.

"We are excited about bringing our creative content to consumers in this new
way," stated Richard Ezra, Vice President of Marketing for EKSuccess Brands.
"Spotted Canary was designed to inspire, educate and cultivate an entire
community of craft enthusiasts. We think people will enjoy visiting the site as
much as we do creating for and working on it every day."

PINT developed custom functionality hooking in through Ektron`s API to display
membership rankings and increased functionality based on member involvement.
Active community members are awarded for their participation and can earn
"feathers," which act as a point system unlocking advanced functionality such as
more background options for their profile page.

"We've used the Ektron platform for a variety of Web sites over the years and
are pleased to see it continue to evolve to meet changing industry requirements.
In this engagement the CMS400.NET platform provides us the flexibility and
feature set we needed to implement a creative and social Web site like Spotted
Canary," said Thomas Powell, PINT's CEO.

In addition to the community features, Spottedcanary.com contains thousands of
informational articles and craft projects for members to read and try. There are
also multiple newsletters that members can sign up for based on their craft
interest, offering even more resources for project ideas and how-to advice.

"Spottedcanary.com is a perfect example of how dynamic a membership community
can become if you give your members the tools that they need to participate and
interact with each other," stated Bill Rogers, chief executive officer at
Ektron. "The site shows how Ektron`s out-of-the-box social media tools can be
leveraged as well as how customizable CMS400.NET is. PINT has created an
outstanding social community site and we are thrilled to see their creativity in
extending the platform to deliver the community EKSuccess Brands was looking
for."

About Ektron

Founded in 1998, Ektron is committed to providing revolutionary, scalable Web
content management and authoring solutions. Ektron CMS400.NET empowers
developers and non-technical business users alike: developers can take advantage
of built-in Server Controls to deploy a Web site out of the box or customize the
deployment using CMS400.NET`s well-documented API, and business users benefit
from an intuitive user interface for managing their Web site`s content and
messaging. From enterprise level deployments to single sites, CMS400.NET ships
with a wide array of functionality, including social networking, Web 2.0, SEO
and synchronization tools. Headquartered in Nashua, N.H., Ektron has more than
20,000 customer implementations worldwide, including LG, Sony, and Johnson &
Johnson. For more information, visit: http://www.ektron.com.

Ektron Inc.
Christina Paradis, 603-589-5287
christina.paradis@ektron.com
or
PINT
David Sánchez, 858-270-2086
dsanchez@pint.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009