Articles - Page 104

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

While COVID-19 continues to impact markets globally, the CMS world has been on a binge of buying, partnering, and releasing new features.
In case you’ve been distracted over the last few weeks by a chaotic news cycle and a U.S. presidential election, here’s a quick recap of what’s been happening in the content management and digital experience world.
<h3>Hyland Completes Acquisition of Alfresco</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/hyland-alfresco-acquisition.jpeg 1200w" /></figure>
Recently, <a href="https://www.hyland.com/">Hyland</a> the enterprise content management (ECM) provider <a href="/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">announced</a> that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/">Alfresco Software</a> – an open-source content services platform.
Last week, Hyland <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-completes-acquisition-of-alfresco/">completed</a> the transaction, bringing the entire Alfresco business, including all technology and products, under the Hyland umbrella.
“At Hyland, the Alfresco platform will continue to grow and to serve customers’ evolving business needs,” said Bill Priemer, Hyland’s President and Chief Executive Office. “Alfresco customers can confidently continue to use and expand their Alfresco solutions, whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud.”
Future Alfresco versions will enable customers to seamlessly leverage other areas of the Hyland portfolio. These include the Hyland Experience Platform (HxP) — the recently launched, next-generation, cloud-based platform — and newly developed HxP components, such as <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/platform/product-suite/HxC">Hyland Experience Capture</a>.
<h3>Episerver Completes Acquisition of Optimizely</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/episerver-optimizely.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/episerver-optimizely.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/episerver-optimizely.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/episerver-optimizely.png 1280w" /></figure>
In a big move to evolve their personalization strategy, <a href="https://www.episerver.com/">Episerver</a>, the customer-centric digital experience platform, recently <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">announced</a> its plans to buy <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/">Optimizely</a> – a leading A/B and multivariate testing platform. A few weeks ago, Episerver <a href="https://www.episerver.com/company/press-room/episerver-completes-acquisition-of-optimizely">completed</a> the acquisition.
“With its acquisition of Optimizely, as with its acquisitions of Idio and Insite in 2019, Episerver substantially increases the value proposition that the company offers to enterprise brands,” said Jacob Groshek, research manager, Digital Experience Management, at IDC. “The Optimizely acquisition adds AI-based experimentation and optimization to the Episerver portfolio. The purchase of Optimizely not only augments Episerver's capacity to automatically deliver personalized content as a central component of users' digital experiences, it also adds another layer of behavioral intelligence for organizations.”
Following the close, Episerver now serves approximately 9,000 customers and more than 900 partners globally in segments including retail, manufacturing &amp; distribution, financial services, insurance, healthcare, media, and technology, among others.
As part of Episerver, the Optimizely progressive delivery and experimentation platform will continue to support customers as a standalone solution, but will also be available as part of Episerver’s offerings immediately.
<h3>Acquia Announces Major Updates to Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP)</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/drupal_9_dxp_0-1.jpg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/drupal_9_dxp_0-1.jpg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/drupal_9_dxp_0-1.jpg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1600/2020/11/drupal_9_dxp_0-1.jpg 1600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/drupal_9_dxp_0-1.jpg 1920w" /></figure>
After <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">launching</a> its new Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP) this July, <a href="https://www.acquia.com/">Acquia</a> has accelerated their innovation by leaps and bounds. In fact, they recently <a href="https://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-announces-major-updates-open-digital-experience-platform">announced</a> major upgrades to their Drupal Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
So, what are these major upgrades? For starters, on the Drupal Cloud side, they <a href="https://www.acquia.com/drupal9">transitioned from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9</a>. For developers, these enhancements focus on decreasing the time to build, design, and run sites and applications.
Following the successful launch of Drupal 9 in June, the new <a href="https://www.acquia.com/drupal9/accelerate-your-migration">Acquia Migration Accelerator</a> tool significantly reduces the effort tied to a transition from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. Currently in beta, the tool reduces time to value for Drupal 9 by providing a user-friendly interface to streamline analysis and planning, DevOps, data imports, and content auditing for migrations.
Once organizations are migrated, the new <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/drupal-cloud/cloud-ide">Acquia Cloud IDE</a> makes it faster than ever to build Drupal sites and applications, with one-click access to a cloud-hosted development and testing environment. Acquia Cloud IDE integrates with existing Acquia command line and automated build tools for Drupal, making it faster and easier for developers to build and test their code – even in remote or hybrid work setups.
On the Marketing Cloud side, the major updates include new real-time 360-degree profiles, identity resolution, and unified segment capabilities within the Acquia Customer Data Platform (CDP). These capabilities aggregate data from various sources, eliminate redundancy, and unify data into a single source of the truth for real-time customer segmentation.
Finally, Acquia also added a COVID-19 dashboard that helps marketers understand their customers’ shifts from offline to online channels, as well as changes in channel preferences throughout the pandemic. The dashboard also helps marketers identify changes in product preferences, as well as opportunities for growth in their marketing campaigns.
<h3>Fabric Launches Headless Commerce Platform with $9.5 Million in Seed Funding</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/fabric-logo.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/fabric-logo.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/fabric-logo.png 855w" /></figure>
<a href="https://fabric.inc/">Fabric</a>, a headless commerce platform, launched its cloud-native experience and commerce product suite and <a href="https://resources.fabric.inc/blog/seed">announced</a> $9.5 million in seed funding led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from Sierra Ventures and Expa. In addition, e-commerce executive Faisal Masud, who led multi-billion-dollar commerce businesses at Amazon, eBay, Groupon and Staples, has joined the company as CEO.
Brands struggle to compete with Amazon’s continued market dominance in the e-commerce and digital retail space. While big retailers can afford to invest heavily in their own proprietary systems, widening their advantage in data, speed, pricing and convenience, many D2C and B2B brands are challenged by the cost and complexity of modernizing their outdated commerce platforms. COVID-19 has further raised the stakes: during the pandemic, e-commerce sales have grown as much as 55% year-over-year.
“Unlike Amazon, which wins on selection, price and availability, emerging and growing D2C and B2B companies need to win on brand and experience,” said Faisal Masud, CEO at Fabric.
Fabric’s headless commerce platform enables marketers and merchants to deliver world-class commerce experiences without the engineering burden. Its modular API-first platform enables brands to utilize tools that address their specific needs, rather than re-platforming. Fabric gives brands sophisticated capabilities with its Experience Platform Manager (XPM), Product Information Manager (PIM), pricing and offers and Order Management (OMS).
The Fabric platform offers a suite of commerce APIs that allow brands to orchestrate their offerings across all channels, enabling them to support the entire lifecycle of each customer. In addition, Fabric runs on a completely serverless infrastructure to effectively scale during high-traffic retail peaks.
<h3>Cloudinary and Contentful Partner to Help Brands Create “Visual-First” Experiences More Efficiently</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/apps-cloudinary-dialog.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/apps-cloudinary-dialog.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/apps-cloudinary-dialog.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/apps-cloudinary-dialog.png 1340w" /></figure>
<a href="https://cloudinary.com/">Cloudinary</a>, the media experience platform, announced a partnership with <a href="https://www.contentful.com/">Contentful</a>, a headless content management system (CMS). The new partnership offers Contentful users seamless access to Cloudinary’s award-winning media experience solutions, including its headless digital asset management (DAM) within Contentful’s CMS – allowing Contentful users to more easily upload, optimize and deliver engaging visual-first experiences at scale.
"In today's visual economy, fast and flawless rich media experiences are no longer a nice to have, they are critical components to any company’s success,” said Scott Doughman, vice president of Business Development at Cloudinary. “Equally critical is the ability to deliver the right, high-performant content as efficiently as possible to eliminate the challenges that often keep experiences from reaching their true engagement potential. The Contentful-Cloudinary integration eliminates these challenges and we’re pleased to be bringing our media management expertise to the Contentful ecosystem."
With the API-first approach of Cloudinary and Contentful, you can now build a seamlessly-integrated, future-proof stack with your preferred development frameworks and platforms.
<h3>Microsoft Announces Clarity, a Free Visitor Behavior Analytics Platform</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/microsoft-clarity-heatmaps.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/microsoft-clarity-heatmaps.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/microsoft-clarity-heatmaps.png 626w" /></figure>
The elder statesman of the digital realm, <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/">Microsoft</a> continues to shock and awe the experience and development fiefdoms with bold moves – including their acquisitions of both <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://github.com/">GitHub</a>.
Now, Microsoft has announced a resource that will have an impact on digital experience in the usability, governance, and analytics categories. With <a href="https://clarity.microsoft.com/">Microsoft Clarity</a>, website and content owners will now have access to a GDPR compliant, free-to-use analytics tool to help improve their website experiences by better understanding their visitors' behaviors.
Microsoft Clarity has three main features: heatmaps, session playbacks, and an insights dashboard. Because of their unique delivery, Clarity’s tools won’t negatively impact a website's latency, and can handle variable traffic without incurring additional costs.
Clarity’s heatmaps come in two forms: clickmaps and scrollmaps. The combination will allow users to qualify behavior and trends, and make it easy to provide data-driven justifications for design decisions. The session playbacks allow site managers to record page visits and track where visitors clicked and scrolled, and the insights dashboard provides an overall understanding of the traffic to your site.
<h3>Contentsquare Acquires Dareboost And Launches Find &amp; Fix Product to Solve Revenue-Killing Errors</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/contentsquare-dareboost.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/contentsquare-dareboost.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/contentsquare-dareboost.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1600/2020/11/contentsquare-dareboost.png 1600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/contentsquare-dareboost.png 1755w" /></figure>
<a href="https://contentsquare.com/">Contentsquare</a>, the Digital Experience Analytics (DXP Analytics) company, <a href="https://contentsquare.com/blog/contentsquare-acquires-dareboost-and-launches-find-fix-product-to-solve-revenue-killing-errors/">announced</a> its acquisition of <a href="https://www.dareboost.com/en">Dareboost</a>, an online tool to test, analyze and monitor websites. Dareboost has been a Find &amp; Fix product for Contentsquare. The integration breaks silos between marketing and IT teams, as well as the rest of a business.
The core capabilities of the new Contentsquare Find &amp; Fix product include web performance monitoring and scoring, error reporting and impact quantification, advanced retroactive search, advanced APM integrations, and comparison and benchmarking capabilities.
<h3>Mediafly Acquires Presentify to Transform Marketing and Sales Content</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sap_mediafly_cloud_diagram.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/11/SAP_Mediafly_Cloud_Diagram.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/11/SAP_Mediafly_Cloud_Diagram.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/11/SAP_Mediafly_Cloud_Diagram.png 1280w" /></figure>
<a href="https://www.mediafly.com/">Mediafly</a> – a provider of sales enablement technology, content management, and advisory services that create interactive, value-based selling experiences – <a href="https://www.mediafly.com/mediafly-acquires-presentify/">announced</a> its acquisition of <a href="https://www.presentify.co.uk/">Presentify</a>, a global visual communication solution.
By adding Presentify’s capabilities, Mediafly users can now build “selling stories” using sophisticated visual communication capabilities all through the Mediafly app – which natively supports the most advanced content formats, animations and modularized assets for elevated sales storytelling.
“More companies are recognizing the need for digital sales transformation, and the importance of using a modern sales enablement platform. But all too often they don’t want to take their antiquated, boring sales content and put it into a sophisticated sales app for fear of garbage in, garbage out,” said Carson Conant, CEO and founder of Mediafly. “With Presentify, Mediafly now tears down the barrier of entry for these companies, allowing them to quickly refresh their sales stories with interactive, animated content — and learn the ‘Presentification’ techniques to create and maintain sales collateral that is a league above their competition.”
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for another installment next month.

CMS Monthly Recap: Acquia Gets Feature Boosts, Cloudinary and Contentful Partner, Big Acquisition Updates and More

paris-tuzun

After being founded in 2007, SocialGO has grown from strength to strength, becoming one of the best social networking CMS available today, supporting well over 400,000 websites.
SocialGo actually offers two separate social platform builders. SocialGo Classic is the option which allows you to use pre-set configurations to quickly create a social network. Alternatively, SocialGo Pro offers a wider range of features, directed at more experienced users who are aiming to create a fully customizable, feature rich social website.
Both options allow you to get your website and content online within minutes, in a way which is professional and socially optimized. You can be completely hands-on, by editing themes and creating custom pages, or you can opt for a more hands-off option, allowing the SocialGO experts to take on the task of building your social website for you.
<h2>Extensive Social Features</h2>
Since SocialGO is all about social networking, it's vital that it gives our users the ability to utilize their handles from the biggest social media websites around, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Your users will be able to sign up with your website quickly and easily via Facebook, embed videos and images from YouTube and Flickr, and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-3.png" alt="SocialGo" />
SocialGO Pro users will also be able to offer their members access to a Twitter sign up option alongside the standard Facebook feature, advancing an already solid social integration feature.
Whether you are looking to build a social network from scratch, or offer a new residence for an existing one, having these integrated social features is vital for any online community. This is down to the fact that, instead of competing with the giants of social media, SocialGO enables you to use them for the benefit of your members.
<h2>Leave it to the Pros</h2>
If you're weary of setting up your social network, SocialGO offers a service to help give you the running start you need.
From as little as $250, SocialGO offer three comprehensive design and build packages. The packages ensure that your website is built by SocialGo's professionals, who will take your brand and idea, and put them into action for you. Once they're done, you will have a social network which is aesthetically pleasing, and tailored to your own taste.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-4700x0.png" alt="SocialGo" />
Services offered within the packages include bespoke theme designs, custom pages, headers and even CSS coding. What's more is, SocialGO also offer search engine optimization services, logos and a 3 year redesign.
<h2>Everything You Need to Build a Thriving Community</h2>
As well as service to design and build your SocialGO website as previously mentioned, you can also rest assured that you won't be left without the right tools once you begin recruiting members, marketing, expanding and even monetizing your online community.
SocialGO gives you everything you need to build a successful social network, and then some. For example, you can monetize your online community via membership fees, which can be paid via PayPal and ClickandBuy.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-2.png" alt="SocialGo" />
Additionally, you and your members can enjoy the functions of instant messaging, video chat, blogs, forums, and much more. You also don't need to worry about the size of your community, as SocialGO allows you to have an unlimited number of members.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-1700x0.png" alt="SocialGo" /> 
Overall, SocialGO offers a pretty comprehensive social network building solution, dividing their services into both the Classic and Pro platforms. Both platforms have their advantages, with one being suited to a quick, streamlined launch, whilst the other enables you to take a more detailed and executive approach to building your social network or online community.
Whichever of the two platforms you opt for, you can take comfort in the fact that SocialGO has a solid history and a thriving user base, both of which prove the effectiveness of their community building products.
Sound good? Find out more about SocialGO, or check out their 14-day free trial.

SocialGO: Online Community Building Made Easy

mike-johnston

CushyCMS is a relatively new approach to content management that allows you to take any website and add editing functionality and management to it using a very simple and easy to use interface. Today we're going to examine this new system in this CushyCMS Review and give you an overall view of how it works as well as rate it.
In order to use Cushy, you do not install anything nor do you require another web host. You can use Cushy to manage your existing sites. To do so, simply add your site into Cushy and you've now got a usable interface for easy site management.
The way it works is simple, you visit the website <a href="http://cushycms.com/">CushyCMS.com</a>:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy1.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
One there, you login with your account and are presented with the Cushy Control Panel page:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy2.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
In this case, you can see I have a website added to it already, however, if you wanted to do add a new site, you could simply do so by selecting the add site button which will present you with the following page:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy3.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
Once here, you fill in the details of you existing site and Cushy will import them into it's control panel which then allows you to edit them. Once you've told Cushy where the site is and how to access it, you then add pages to Cushy like so:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy4.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
We then have to tell Cushy what parts of your pages you would like to have editable. You do this by following these intructions:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy9.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
Once you do this, you will be shown the pages detected by Cushy and be allowed to select which ones you would like to manage from the Cushy interface:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy51.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
Simply click on the page you'd like to add, and add a Page Name:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy61.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
Congratulations, you have assigned a page. Now all you need to do is click on the control panel button to get back to the main page and you'll see the page you just added:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy71.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
Now simply click on it's name and you will be dropped into the Wysiwyg editor and you can now start editing your site:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cushy8.jpg" alt="CushyCMS Review" />
That pretty much covers it. You can read more about the advanced features at the <a href="http://cushycms.com/">CushyCMS website</a> and there is also a great video on their front page that explains in more detail.
Items that could be improved upon are the detection of editable elements, if the team at Cushy could figure out a way to auto detect editable areas without the end user having to modify their html and define it, they would have an exceptional product. As it stands now, however, it's still a very very nice interface and a very good option for those who have moderate html experience and just need a simple easy to use interface.
Try out <a href="http://cushycms.com/">CushyCMS</a> on your site, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Overall, although this is very difficult to rate, I would say that Cushy gets:
<h2>8/10</h2>

CushyCMS Review - A New approach to Content Management?

Zenario is a multilingual, web-based content management system that can be used to create (very) simple or complex sites depending on your needs.
This is an open source website builder/CMS with no price tag attached, but it’s not really designed with the basic or casual user in mind. If you want to use Zenario you’ll need to install it in the back-end of your site.
Read on for my Zenario review.
<h2>Getting Started</h2>
To begin, you’ll need to <a href="https://zenar.io/download-zenario">download</a> Zenario as a ZIP file and install it in your website’s hosting package.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/download_screen573x0-is.png" />
Less advanced users will need to have <a href="http://www.softaculous.com/softaculous/apps/cms/Zenario">Softalicious</a>, which is a free backend installer tool that comes with a lot of hosting packages as standard.
Once you have it installed (don’t forget to check their <a href="https://zenar.io/system-requirements">hosting requirements</a>), you can get started with your site.
<h2>The Site Editor</h2>
The interface is very, very basic – but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/edit_screen620x0-is.png" />
The Zenario interface allows you total control over the elements you see – pixel width, colours, CSS elements, etc. If you’re in any way technical with this kind of web coding, you can make a perfectly passable website pretty quickly. It probably won’t be winning any design awards but I don’t think this CMS is aimed at that market. It’s really more suitable for a consumer portal or company intranet.
The interface does have a very basic WYSIWYG editor but it’s pretty clunky and counterintuitive. Moving a box from one point to the other is a little confusing, to say the least.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/complex_wysiwg643x0-is.png" />
This is a website builder with a very ‘old school’ feel. Remember, this website builder is free and open source – so anyone expecting top of the line drag-and-drop style interaction is going to be disappointed.
Everything, down to the way you add pages or a menu entry, is text based. It isn’t an easy or intuitive process so it’s definitely one for the advanced, experienced back-end user only.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/complex_menu_system973x0-is.png" />
<h2>Design</h2>
This is a CMS that gives the advanced user 100% control of their website and the no-frills design reflects this functionality. You can control your cookies, your CAPTCHA test forms, your contact sheets, your branding, your IP blacklist, your data, and your sitemaps.
You won’t find a range of fancy templates here but you still use Zenario to create a highly functional site.
It’s possible to fully customize this CMS with your own branding and completely white label the entire build.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/edit_branding.png" />
It does have two basic templates – Snowline and Deepdive – but they’re very basic and only really offer a difference in template layout. It also has some preset arrangements that you can customize and these are all pretty useful without being outstandingly contemporary.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/templates_1716x0-is.png" />
<h2>Features</h2>
The app itself has very few features that will be of interest to your average website builder. However, it does have some powerful features that would be extremely useful in the creation of a consumer portal or corporate intranet.
It has a powerful language pack that has dozens of different languages to choose from, and you can also set up automated newsletters, pre formatted emails, contact forms and user accounts
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/language658x0-is.png" />
Users can also add raw HTML and script to the site homepage, so externals apps or widgets can be added as/if required.
<h2>Overall</h2>
This is not a CMS for everyone. Zenario is definitely a decent option for intranets, moodle programs in universities, or as a platform to handle customer complaints or multiple users; but it is in no way suited to anyone other than trained back-end developers. If you aren’t versed in this, you’ll barely be able to get the site installed (you don’t want to know how many attempts it took me).
Zenario isn’t the platform for a regular consumer who wants a site for their business. But for the experienced back-end developer, who wants something that is eminently customizable and completely controllable, then this is probably the perfect CMS.
<h3>Pros:</h3>
<ul>
<li>
Free and opensource
</li>
<li>
Completely customizable
</li>
<li>
Allows you complete control over your source code and files
</li>
<li>
Has a great multilingual feature
</li>
<li>
Can be completely white labelled
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Cons:</h3>
<ul>
<li>
Only available as a download. No online hosting
</li>
<li>
Extremely complex for all but the most advanced users
</li>
<li>
Limited design capacity
</li>
<li>
Poor WYSIWYG editor and extremely technical front-end
</li>
</ul>

Zenario Review

grainne-logue

Agility CMS has <a href="https://agilitycms.com/resources/posts/agility-pricing-structure">announced</a> a new pricing model for their all-in-one headless content management system, aimed at helping a broad range of customers ­– from developers to the enterprise – expand their digital strategies. 
Founded in 2002, Agility CMS has positioned itself as a “Content-First” SaaS headless platform, giving users a significant amount of flexibility over their digital experiences through powerful, lightweight APIs. This includes the full array of JAMstack (Javascript, API, Markup) and browser-based frameworks – including static React site generators like Gatsby – that simplify and accelerate website performance while acting as a unified content hub.
Agility’s new pricing tiers reflect a shift in the CMS market, where platforms are offering both developers and enterprise organizations expanded options while simplifying the procurement process. As licensing has shifted to more subscription and SaaS-based models, many CMS platforms have raced to add more value to their offerings, including free entry points and streamlined pricing at multiple levels.
"We want to give [users] more, yet simplify things,” said Jon Voigt, CEO of Agility CMS. “We kept hearing that people are upset with the complex pricing models out there; we wanted to provide a better free edition and an unlimited community-supported edition that was based on value."
The chief reason behind the pricing change is to provide greater access to the Agility CMS across the marketplace, allowing users to increase productivity and collaboration between marketing, sales, and development teams. In addition to their advanced headless capabilities, unmatched load speeds, rapid development, and low-code content management, each of Agility’s paid packages are loaded with features.
<h3>The New Agility CMS Pricing Model</h3>
Agility is now offering four pricing tiers: a free Developer option, a Standard package for small teams, a Pro tier for high-performing businesses, and a custom enterprise option. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/agility-cms-pricing.png" /></figure>
Let’s take a look at these <a href="https://agilitycms.com/pricing">packages</a> in more detail:
Free: Agility CMS offers a free package for web developers. This plan includes 5 users, 10GB bandwidth, 2,500 content items, and community support – and it’s free forever. You can even <a href="https://account.agilitycms.com/sign-up?product=agility-free">sign up</a> without giving your credit card information. This plan is ideal for users who want to learn web development and content management, do some general tinkering, and have fun building. If you feel like you reached the limits of the free package, you can easily upgrade. 
Standard: For $47 per month, this package delivers unlimited users and content items. Community support and 500GB of bandwidth is also included. Starting with the Standard Package, every Agility CMS tier includes Content Management, Ecommerce, Ticketing, Search and User Generated Content. If you're running a small site with 500 pages or less, this package is ideal. 
Pro: At $579 per month, the Pro package is designed for high-performance business websites and includes unlimited users, unlimited content items, 1TB of bandwidth, and direct support from the Agility CMS team. With Pro, you can sell more products with rich eCommerce, generate custom reports, manage federated search over multiple domains, and more. 
Enterprise: Starting at $2,500 per month, the Agility CMS Enterprise package is for large-scale organizations that need highly customized setup with world-class support. Enterprise includes more direct support, a dedicated account manager, and greater control over the granular needs of your organization. Pricing varies based on the bespoke requirements of an organization; for a custom quote, contact their sales team.
All Agility CMS plans – including the free tier – include these features:
<ul>
<li>Roles &amp; Permissions     </li>
<li>Approval Workflows</li>
<li>Content Modelling and Versioning</li>
<li>Rich Text Editor</li>
<li>RESTful API &amp; Webhooks</li>
<li>Open Source SDKs (Javascript &amp; .Net)</li>
<li>Single Sign-on (SSO)</li>
<li>24/7 Monitoring</li>
<li>Unlimited Languages/Locales</li>
<li>Unlimited Content Definitions</li>
<li>Unlimited Asset Requests</li>
<li>Unlimited API Requests</li>
</ul>
<h3>Focused on Developers</h3>
One of the best parts of Agility’s pricing is its free tier for developers. Like most “freemium” models, it’s limited in its scope and capabilities. But it can still power an actual production solution, including access to APIs. An enterprising coder can build a basic proof-of-concept for a project or even power a small website – all for free. But be warned: the API will not charge overages for this package, so if you hit your limits, your calls will be blocked.
With a path for easy upgrades – and even alerts to tell you when you’re approaching your limits – Agility helps its users to scale more seamlessly based on their needs. As a headless platform, this is even more advantageous, as developers have more freedom to create in the language or framework of their choice and shape digital experience across a multitude of channels.
Because it’s a multi-tenant SaaS-based solution, Agility appears to have more control and flexibility over their pricing, and they’ve endeavored to make it easier to understand. However, because it’s a multi-tenant SaaS-based solution, it might be a limitation for organizations that require on-prem hosting or security governance for all of their websites and CMS platforms.
You can try Agility CMS for free <a href="https://account.agilitycms.com/sign-up?product=agility-free">here</a>.
<h3>About Agility CMS</h3>
<a href="https://agilitycms.com/">Agility CMS</a> is a SaaS headless “Content-First” platform with fast, flexible development and familiar authoring tools. Designed for developers, marketers, and enterprise organizations, Agility CMS is trusted by customers in the US, Canada, and across the globe – including Visit Orlando, PepsiCo, Polaroid, Hockey Canada, California State University Long Beach, Cineplex Entertainment, Scotiabank and more.

Agility CMS Introduces Simplified Pricing Tiers For Headless Content Management

<a target="_blank" href="https://flextype.org/">Flextype</a> is an open source flat file CMS that was developed in 2018 by <a target="_blank" href="https://romanenko.digital/">Sergey Romanenko</a>. It's purpose is to provide a lean, open source solution without the complexities found in many other content management systems. Today, we're going to take a look at Flextype and see what it's made of and what the administrative interface looks like.Before I get started, let me just explain a bit more about Flextype for those who are unfamiliar. If you aren't familiar with the concept of a flat file CMS, what it means is that this system does not require a database but rather stores everything in files within a directory structure. This may not be suitable for every type of website; such as one with thousands of complex pages; but it does work for the majority of them. To learn more about flat file CMS and how they work, read my <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/static-site-generators-vs-flat-file-cms-is-there-a-difference/">Static Site Generators vs Flat File CMS post</a>.The advantage, of course, is that should you need to change hosting providers, it simply requires you to zip up the contents of your website and extract them somewhere else. No messy database exports to deal with. There are numerous flat file CMS out there (see our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/flat-file-cms/">Flat File CMS list</a> for instance) and Flextype is simply one of the options.Flextype uses a number of technologies to achieve it's simplicity and overall functionality.Some of these key technologies include:<ul><li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.slimframework.com/">Slim PHP</a>: Framework for powerful web applications and APIs.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://twig.symfony.com/">Twig Templating</a>: Flexible, fast, and secure template engine for PHP.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.doctrine-project.org/">Doctrine Project</a>: A set of decoupled and reusable PHP libraries for powerful web applications.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://thephpleague.com/">The PHP League</a>: The League of Extraordinary PHP Packages well tested and using modern coding standards.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://respect-validation.readthedocs.io/">Respect Validation</a>: The most awesome validation engine ever created for PHP.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/thunderer/Shortcode">Thunderer Shortcode</a>: Advanced shortcode (BBCode) parser and engine for PHP.</li></ul>Now that we've covered that, let's move on with the review.<h2>Getting Started with Flextype</h2>To get started with Flextype, you'll need to download the latest release from their <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/flextype/flextype/releases">GitHub repository</a>. Once downloaded, simply upload the zipped file to your web host and extract it. Copy the files and directories within the extracted directory to /public_html/ if you want everything accessible on your root domain and visit the domain to get started.You should see something like this:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-review---1.png" />The initial welcome pageIf for some reason you don't see this, you may want to check out their <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.flextype.org/en/basics/requirements">requirements page</a> to make sure your server is compatible and / or has the right requirements installed.<h3>Creating an admin user</h3>Once you've managed to sort things out and are ready, visit the admin panel by following the link on the homepage. This will prompt you to create a user account for the CMS.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-review---create-a-user-account.png" />Creating a user account<h2>The Flextype Admin Panel</h2>Once you've created your user account and logged in, you'll be greeted with the admin panel.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-review---the-admin-panel.png" />Flextype Admin PanelAs you can see, the admin panel has been designed to minimize complexity. It's very simple, straight forward and easy to navigate within. Let's check out some of it's functionality.First, we'll take a look at Entries.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-admin---entries.png" />Flextype EntriesClicking on the three dots to the right of the Home entry, you'll get a context menu where you can add, edit, preview, delete, etc. Clicking on edit will launch the editor.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-editor.png" />Flextype EditorFrom here, you can make modifications to the individual entries (in this case the home page) and change some of it's settings. The integrated editor works well and provides plenty of functionality to do the job.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-entry-settings.png" />Flextype Entry SettingsWithin the settings you can modify pretty much everything about your entry, from the meta description to the template that's being used for it, visibility, the Url and more.The next tab in line is the media tab which, you guessed it, let's you upload media to be used with your entry. The odd part here, however, is that once you upload it and go back to the editor to insert it, there's no means to select the image.Instead, you have to copy the URL from the media upload tab to your clipboard, switch to the editor tab, click the image insert button and paste it in.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-editor---inserting-media.png" />Flextype Editor - Inserting an Image into the editorPersonally, I feel that this method is a bit cumbersome and can be improved on and I'd recommend the developers take it into consideration. It's a minor inconvenience, but since Flextype is focused improving productivity and ease of use, it's definitely something that needs correcting.Moving along. On the source tab you'll fine the source for the entry which you can modify and save if you prefer working with the code rather than a WYSIWYG editor.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype---source.png" />Flextype Entries - Viewing the sourceNext up are Fieldsets. According to the <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.flextype.org/en/fieldsets/fieldsets">Flextype documentation</a>, fieldsets can best be described as configuration files written in YAML for Admin Panel to  create publish forms. They establish your content model. Essentially, a  schema that defines your fields, data types, and the interface used to  manage them.You can create new fieldsets and modify their source just as you would an entry. Here's a look at the structure:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-fieldsets.png" />Flextype FieldsetsSnippets are rather self explanatory. You use them for certain things such as inserting your Google Analytics code into your website and other types of code that you'd typically find within your websites' header.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-snippets.png" />Flextype SnippetsUnder the Tools menu you will find three items; information about your server, a cache tab where you can clear your cache and a registry tab showing all of the keys that Flextype uses. I won't get into all of them but here's what the cache page looks like. As you can see, it's very simple and just lets you clear your cache should you need to. Cache settings themselves are a bit further on and I'll show you those in a moment.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-tools---cache.png" />Flextype ToolsUnder the Settings tab is where you'll find the main settings for your CMS (and website). Everything from your site title and description to managing your robots.txt file are done from within this page.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-settings.png" />Flextype SettingsYou can also manage your cache settings from the cache section of the settings tab. Here's how it looks:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-cache-settings.png" />Flextype Cache SettingsLast but not least, there's one killer feature that you won't want to miss. Dark Mode.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flextype-dark-mode.png" /><h2>Conclusion</h2>A solid new entry into the Flat File CMS space, Flextype accomplishes what it set out to do; offer simplicity and ease of use to users. Where it's lacking at the moment is in themes and plugins. While I'm sure most developers won't require them for the majority of websites, they do make life easier for non-developers that are interested in using the CMS.There are links to a plugins page on the Flextype website but it's a bit weird how they have it organized. Plugins are listed under issues for some reason instead of just in an organized manner on homepage itself. I'm sure there was some logic to it but it's not super obvious unless you are stubborn and tend to click through every link like I am. You can find them here: https://github.com/flextype/plugins/issuesThemes are organized in a similar manner and you can find them here: https://github.com/flextype/themes/issues. I'd recommend a restructuring to make these easier to locate in the future.I'm looking forward to seeing what the future brings for Flextype. There is no doubt the development team is on the right path, they just need to keep plugging away and hopefully, expanding their community as the word spreads.You can check out Flextype yourself on their website: <a target="_blank" href="https://flextype.org/">https://flextype.org/</a>

Flextype Review

techcto2

<a href="http://www.gutensite.com/?refcode=CMSCRITIC" target="_blank"> Gutensite</a> has now implemented Stripe, the popular payment gateway, its its eCommerce offering.
With features focused on elegant and professional presentation, Gutensite is a website builder which fits the corporate website mould perfectly. You can read more about it in our full <a href="/gutensite-review/" target="_blank">review of Gutensite</a>.
For existing Gutensite users making use of the platform's eCommerce features, will be please to know that Stripe is now integrated with the Gutensite Pro and Premium package.
<a href="http://www.gutensite.com/?refcode=CMSCRITIC"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutensite_logo-1.png" style="max-width:98px" /></a>
<h2>A More flexible &amp; Cost Effective Option</h2>
Gutensite eCommerce users were previously having to deal with other ways of accepting card payments.
But now, with Stripe, payment gateway setup is instant and free, and there are no monthly costs. The processing rate is a flat 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, which happens to also be cheaper than most traditional bank merchant accounts.
Stripe also has web and mobile payment options for accepting credit cards as a mobile point of sale tool, and can power marketplaces to facilitate payment between buyers and sellers.
So if you want to sell your products, or accept donations for your non-profit using Gutensite, your life just became a lot easier. If you have a Gutensite Pro account, the store is already included for free, or you can add on the store to your existing site. Then create an account at Stripe, and copy/paste your secret key into your store settings.
For more information on this new Gutensite-Stripe integration, <a href="http://www.gutensite.com/Stripe-Integration-For-Instant-Affordable-Credit-Card-Processing-In-Store" target="_blank">check out the Gutensite announcement</a>.
Furthermore, be sure to check out <a href="/products/gutensite/" target="_blank">Gutensite via our CMS Directory</a>.

Gutensite Announces Stripe Integration

If your site runs on the powerful SquareSpace CMS (see our <a href="/squarespace-review-the-long-awaited-commerce-solution/">squarespace review</a> for more info) and you own an iPad, you absolutely must try their iPad app.
SquareSpace for iOS is an exceptional app that allows you to post and manage your SquareSpace site directly from your iPad and it's one of the best apps we've seen so far for content management. As you can see from the video above, it's a slick and powerful interface that allows you to easily add post content, pictures and more to your site.
Using the text editor is quite easy and allows input in a variety of formats such as Markdown, Textile, Plain text and HTML. The editor works very well and is nice and clean. Adding pictures from the iPad is as easy as selecting from the camera roll / photo library and they too work without issue.
One of the best inclusions that they made with this app was that of the metrics. It's nice to be able to have a quick look at your stats on the go and they are formatted well for the iPad screen with more than enough stats for the metrics obsessed.
In my time using the app, I experienced only smoothness and no issues with forced closures or crashes. It's a slick interface that makes you actually WANT to use the app for publishing.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mzl_aodbyhyt_1024x1024-65.jpg" alt="Squarespace ipad app review" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-blog.png" alt="squarespace ipad app review" />
If you don't have SquareSpace or haven't heard of it, check it out here: <a href="http://www.squarespace.com/?channel=pp&amp;subchannel=general&amp;source=cmscritic">SquareSpace</a>

SquareSpace iPad app Review

Semrush - Be an SEO hero

Be an SEO hero with Semrush

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Key Website Builders: A Comprehensive Overview

Sometimes, you just want an extremely simple store, offering some extremely simple products. Yet too many e-commerce CMS often make the process of setting up and populating an online store lengthier than it has to be.With Wazala! you can have an elegantly simple online store ready to go within minutes.Essentially, Wazala! allows you to add a store to your website in a rather unique way. Instead of having to build and design an entirely new page or section of your website, Wazala! enables you to beautifully overlay your store on top of an existing web page.Unsure of what I mean? Allow me to explain.<h2>A Store from Within</h2>Wazala! allows you to create a store, unlike traditional online stores. Wazala! brings a button to your website, which activates the storefront. Your website's web page is dimmed, and your store is presented to the user over the top of it, without leaving the page.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1700x0.png" alt="Wazala!" />Adding an online store to your website in this way means, you won't have to worry about building a new section of your site. The store is simply there, within the pages of your website.Alternatively, if you would prefer that your store is presented in a more traditional way, Wazala! have you covered there too.As well as being able to overlay your online store, you can also have your store located on a separate page on your website, or even embedded into an existing page, making it look more integrated.<h2>Simple Yet Detailed</h2>Without doubt, the appeal of Wazala! lies mainly in it's elegant, minimalistic design. But on top of its aesthetic simplicity, Wazala! still has some useful features to help get the most out of your store.Wazala! excels at getting your products online extremely fast, but it also does a great job of helping you market and evaluate the progress of your store in a more constructive way.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2700x0.png" alt="Wazala!" /> For example, as the store admin, you can access in-store analytics within your dashboard screen, which presents the sales and revenue made over certain periods of time. You can also view customer details, total store views, and much more.Additionally, Wazala! gives you a helping hand when it comes to marketing your products. Using the admin panel, you can create coupons that give customers access to discounts in a variety of ways.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4700x0.png" alt="Wazala!" />Your coupons can cover the entire store, or simply a small selection of products or categories, and can also run between dates which can be easily set and modified at will. You may also set percentage discounts, or make the discounts value-based, allowing you to market them as both discount coupons and gift vouchers.Other features include inventory tracking, the ability to receive payments through PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize, and even the option to sell both physical and digital products.<h2>Hugely Accessible</h2>As previously mentioned, Wazala! allows you to present your store within your website in a variety of different ways, including embedding and overlaying. However, the accessibility and presentation features don't end there.Wazala! also enables you to reach your customers via a variety of platforms and networks, in a way that suits their needs.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/5700x0.png" alt="Wazala!" />Your Wazala! store will come fully optimized for mobile web browsers, which means that customers browsing your store from a mobile device will be able to do so seamlessly. All features available to desktop users are a the fingertips of mobile users, including the ability to pay and checkout.What's more is, Wazala! stores can be integrated into many popular CMS, including WordPress, Wix, <a href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a> and Blogger. Additionally, you can even integrate your store into social networks like Facebook and Tumblr.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/6700x0.png" alt="Wazala!" />To further extend the accessibility of Wazala! there is an incredibly easy way for your customers to switch between languages whilst they browse through your products. No less than 15 languages are available, ensuring that your store can be enjoyed by an audience from across the globe.Sound good? check out their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wazala.com/">15-day free trial</a>.

Build an Online Store Within Minutes Using Wazala!

Hannon Hill has released Cascade 6.10 and this new version includes a new Facebook Connector as well as number of additional tools for developers. The Facebook Connector allows end-users to automatically share information about newly published content to a Facebook page.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/facebook-post-580x416.png" alt="Facebook Connector" />
For developers, they have upgraded <a href="http://velocity.apache.org/engine/">the Velocity engine</a> to version 1.7 and added a number of new tools for developers including:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Script-Formats/index.html#escape-tool">Escape Tool</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Script-Formats/index.html#math-tool">Math Tool</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Script-Formats/index.html#loop-tool">Loop Tool</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Script-Formats/index.html#display-tool">Display Tool</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Script-Formats/index.html#number-tool">Number Tool</a></li>
</ul>
The goal is to allow developers to do more with less code.
In an effort to improve usability for Administrators, they've introduced filtering and sorting functionality to the users, groups and roles interface.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/users-groups-roles-filter-580x180.png" alt="Users, Groups, Roles filter" />
For additional details about this release, you can read the <a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/Release-Notes/6.10/index.html#release-summary">release summary</a> or visit their website @ <a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/">http://www.hannonhill.com</a>

Hannon Hill's Cascade 6.10 introduces Facebook Connector, Dev tools and more

Content curation is a concept that has been on the rise over the last couple of years. Curation, derived from the Latin word ‘cura' which essentially means to care of or oversee something, basically means the collection and presentation of content in a way that is interesting and useful to the end user. A recent survey revealed that each Facebook user created about 90 pieces of content each month. There are currently more than a billion people using Facebook as of July of this year. Do the math and you’ll realize that people love finding, creating and sharing content. With the explosion of the internet and social media, people all over the world are looking to make sense of content and are wanting to have a platform where someone has already done the hard work so they can simply congregate on a forum and take what is meaningful to them, served up in bite-size information that’s easy to take in.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/content-curation.jpg" alt="Content Curation" />
Content curators are thus tasked with the responsibility of collecting links, resources and posts from all over the internet and coming up with interest portals (think Pinterest, but with text) that people can use in the here and now. You might be tempted to think of this system as being an automated one (much like Google news). Content curation is far from being automated as people expect something that has a human element, as well as something that is interactive whereby they can leave responses and get answers to the same.
Content curation is especially important for organizations that want to be recognizable brands as it gives them a platform to establish thought leadership and stand out from the millions of competing companies. One such media company that has been able to do this is Huffington Post, whose blog currently tops the Alexa Global Traffic Rank. This means that people trust and access the HuffPost webpage and series of blogs to get up-to-date information regarding current news and affairs. Some people may point out that HuffPost is just a vacuous media company with inane stories about celebrities and random animals doing funny things, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that web users gravitate towards the website to glean valuable information as it breaks.
A great way of visualizing the process of content curation would be to think back to your childhood and remembering those years when you spent time cutting up photos and putting them in a scrapbook. If you never did that, I’m sure you at least had photos of your favorite celebrities or bands on your bedroom wall. As your interests changed, so did the media on your bedroom wall and scrapbook. This means that even before the advent of social media, people were content hunters and gatherers in the simplest form of the word. In 2013, the same people who did this in during their childhood and in their teens are wanting an easier way of curating content, and this is where you come in as a content curator.
There are three tenets governing content curation, and they are:
<ol>
<li>Seek</li>
<li>Sense</li>
<li>Share</li>
</ol>
Seeking information involves doing some research on the topics you want to cover and organizing your sources. You can spend half an hour doing this on a daily basis, spending 15 minutes in the morning and the remainder late in the afternoon or evening. You want to scan information, blog posts and web content and capture only high quality links in preparation for the second stage of the curation process.
Making sense of it all requires you to have a keen eye regarding what works and what doesn’t, as well as how all this information fits together in the bigger scheme of things. For example, you may write a post and include links leading out to other articles and news pieces that expound on the topic that you’re covering. You may also need to know how to annotate links and archive the information you’re presenting for future access. This should you anywhere between 30 minutes to a full hour each day.
Sharing is the last part of the process, and it involves sharing the best bits of information and posts in a way that adds value to your reader. You can do this via social media, as well as via email and influential websites such as LinkedIn.
The most important aspect of content curation has to be consistency. You want to develop a relationship with your readers or followers and have a reputation for providing them with insightful content that can enrich their lives on a daily basis. This is especially important for web-based businesses that are wanting to convert followers into customers. The truth is that once you earn the trust of your audience, they’ll be more willing to purchase whatever physical or digital items you have to offer.
Here’s a list of content curation tools to help you tell your story to a waiting audience:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://get.meddle.it/">Meddle</a></li>
<li><a href="http://opentopic.com/">Opentopic</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.storify.com">Storify</a></li>
</ul>
Please leave your thoughts and comments in the text box below and share with us your content curation strategies.

Content Curation – Building Your Brand via Targeted Story Telling

A landing page. 
On the Internet, you've seen it countless times. And still, a good landing page is something of a rarity. A good landing page is something you fall in love with.
A landing page is something you've created specifically for your the people who you want to attract. It's like a date or an important speech. A good landing page conveys not only an idea of your service but also the feeling.
For it to work, you have to pay a lot of attention during the development of your landing page.
There are five important things you should look for. Those five things together make or break your landing page strategy. After all, in the modern Internet the interaction between you and your potential audience happens in a matter of seconds. You have to catch attention before the page finishes loading.
Are you interested to find out how your next landing page strategy should be shaping up? There <a href="http://blog.templatemonster.com/2013/08/08/how-to-optimize-landing-page/">a lot of different techniques</a> and tips. Today, we'll be talking about the five that are essential to every landing page.
<h2>1. A Call-to-Action</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace700x0.png" />
Your call-to-action is the most important part of your landing page. It informs the reader of what action to take.
Steer clear of going with the dull, overused “submit” text on your call-to-action button. Try something descriptive like:
<ul>
<li>
Give Me a Free 30 Day Trial
</li>
<li>
100% Money Back Guarantee
</li>
<li>
Show Me What I’m Missing
</li>
<li>
Yes! I Want To Be A Winner
</li>
<li>
Schedule A Meeting
</li>
<li>
Take the Tour
</li>
<li>
Yes! Place My Order
</li>
</ul>
The list goes on and on, but you see how all of these buttons are more engaging than “submit.” And, who wants to submit anyway? Empower the reader.
Additionally, make your call-to-action stand out. Most call-to-action buttons are red, yellow, or orange because these colors pop off the page.
Another key point — get to your call-to-action early. Readers shouldn’t need to scroll down your page to find it. In fact, <a href="http://www.nngroup.com/articles/scrolling-and-attention/">people spend 80% of their time</a> on your website above the fold.
Your call-to-action shouldn’t be an after-thought, it should be the main driver.
<h2>2. A UX Friendly Form</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/yourfirstcustomers700x0.png" />
There’s nothing worse than a needy form. If your form is asking for my phone number, my date of birth, the name of my first born children, and whether I believe in unicorns, it’s asking for too much information. In fact, I’m a big believer in asking for just name and email address — and maybe that’s too much.
With social logins, it’s not even necessary to ask a user to create a new account. Most people hate that anyway, and <a href="http://growthhackers.com/9-things-you-should-know-about-social-login-cro/">88% of people enter incorrect or incomplete information on registration</a> forms anyway. Instead, get them to sign up with their social login, if possible. That way, the information is likely correct, you get a huge amount of information about them, and you don’t annoy them by asking that they join yet another site.
If social logins won’t work for your application, just remember to only ask for the information you need, and most of the time, it’s a name and email address. When you ask for more (like a phone number), you’re entering the scary “I’m going to call you during dinner” telemarketer zone, and potential leads will just leave.
<h2>3. Social Proof</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/contatta700x0.png" />
People trust other people. That’s why it’s a good idea to add testimonials on your landing page. I prefer to do it below the fold for two reasons:
<ul>
<li>
To keep the main message uncluttered
</li>
<li>
To capitalize on the 20% of time that readers spend below the fold
</li>
</ul>
Don’t simply settle for word-only testimonials. They’re not as effectual as having an image of the person smiling next to the testimonial. Bonus points for linking to the actual website or social media profile for that person or company.
Videos are fun, engaging, and adds even more validity to social proof.
In lieu of actual testimonials, you can add the logos of well-known companies with whom you’ve worked.The type of endorsement validates your product in the eyes of your audience.
<h2>4. Make It Responsive</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/responsive9700x0.jpg" />
<a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet">According to mobile research study</a>, over 60% of smartphone users surf the Internet from their phone, and approximately 34% access the Internet from their phones alone. Is your landing page considering these visitors?
Responsive design means that your landing page adapts to any screen size, from desktops to tablets to smartphones. Instead of asking visitors to pinch-to-zoom, you can page adapts to be functional and readable on every format.
Your responsive landing page should be finger-friendly. Tiny call-to-action buttons won’t work well on a mobile device. Also, you don’t want to make the reader scroll too much on mobile devices.
If you’re using WordPress, <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes.php">a theme that supports responsive design</a> is the necessary way to go.
<h2>5. A/B Testing</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/testing10700x0.jpg" />
How do you know what’s working unless you test? A/B testing lets you study each variable on your landing page to determine what’s more successful.
For example, you can test which call-to-action text is more persuasive. Keep all other elements on the page the same. Route half of the visitors to page A, and the other half to page B. Once you determine which is more persuasive, keep that element, and go on to test another part of your page.
It’s continuous testing, and it’s all worth it. Very small changes can make a world of difference in conversion.
<h2>In Closing</h2>
Those five principles of landing page design will make your landing page into something truly special. 
Don't be afraid of talking to your potential audience. Fall in love with them instead.

5 Steps Towards a More Effective Landing Page

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