Infradox XS is our latest iteration of the Infradox system.
Infradox XS is now entirely API based, the front end uses JQuery as opposed to our proprietary JavaScript library, it doesn’t use frames, it uses clean URLs, it is optimized for search engines. And it comes with the new version of Infradox back office – which allows our clients to do much more without our help.
API based
As part of the Infradox system, we developed a 3rd party API years ago to allow others to setup live connections with our client’s databases. It was however not possible to set up live connections with other API’s from within Infradox picture library websites. We used syndication instead. With Infradox XS however, this is now possible.
We have developed middleware (Infradox API broker) that enables our new websites to search other databases through live API connections – concurrently. If a user types a search in your website, the system can search your own database and at the same time it can search other linked databases. The search results will be displayed as if coming from a single source.
In addition to the so called live API connections, it is also possible to have semi live API connections. You import only the metadata into your own database without having any high res files on our servers. Only when a client of yours wants to download a high res file, the Infradox system will use an API connection with the provider to download the file and to then make it available to your client. The advantage of this option is that you can also control/edit the metadata as you please.
JQuery
We’ve always thought of Infradox websites as online applications rather than just websites. Infradox websites offer a huge amount of functions for both end users and website operators. A lot of those functions depend on Javascript. The problem with this is that it hampers search engines. The new Infradox XS front end has been rewritten entirely to use only JQuery and none of the proprietary script that we developed over the years. The advantage is that the JQuery library has a small footprint, it is free open source software, it is cross platform and it is being kept up to date by a large community of developers. JQuery is used by millions of websites, it is reliable and fast and it allows us to offer you state-of-the-art user interfaces without limiting SEO.
No more frames
The Infradox AS front end does not use frames anymore. Although the use of frames allowed us to develop very functional user interfaces, the importance of being found by search engines (e.g. Google) far outweighs almost anything else. The use of frames interferes with search engine optimisation and so the new front end does not use frames without sacrificing the functions that are expected from Infradox picture library websites.
Clean URLs
Again, for the sake of search engine optimisation, the new system uses so called clean URLs. This means that you will no longer see long URLs in the address bar of your browser. You can copy any URL and post it on blogs, other websites or pages of your own website without having to worry about session id’s etc. All URLs are carefully created, following all the specifications that can be found with regards to SEO.
New back office
Both the fact that Infradox XS is entirely API based – your own database is searched using our own API – and the decision to move away from our proprietary script library and to use JQuery instead, meant that we had to rewrite Infradox back office as well. We will only develop Infradox back office XS further. It can now be used with all well known browsers and brower versions.
SEO
As the previous paragraphs already show, we’ve made sure that our new front end (client facing pages) can be found, accessed and indexed by the major search engines. For instance, every preview page has its own unique URL, any URL can be copied and sent to others without a problem, all images have titles. Virtually all links, buttons et cetera are normal hrefs as opposed to calling Javascript functions to create URLs when clicked. All pages have titles and you can configure which metadata tags are to be included on all the pages yourself.
