Articles - Page 107

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

Acquia continues to challenge the market with the recent launch <a href="https://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform">of its new Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP)</a>. This is another bold step for the company, which continues to innovate on top of the open-source Drupal content management system. In recent years, they have invested in several strategic acquisitions that have fueled their transformation as a full-fledged customer experience platform.
When the company <a href="https://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-announces-majority-investment-vista-equity-partners">received a major investment from Vista Equity Partners</a> last year, there was some uncertainty about the future roadmap. Customers were vocally concerned about Acquia’s commitment to Drupal and the impact to the user experience. The concern was perhaps warranted given Vista's previous acquisition of Marketo for $1.79 billion, which led to led to significant changes across the company and the platform. 
At the time of the transaction, Acquia’s co-founder Dries Buytaert stated that the acquisition of Acquia would be beneficial to Drupal, and their mission to serve open source communities would remain firm. The plan was to grow Acquia’s presence in the blossoming Digital Experience Platform (DXP) category, while staying loyal to the open source Drupal core at the same time. In <a href="https://dri.es/acquia-to-receive-majority-investment-from-vista-equity-partners">a blog post</a>, Buytaert said:
“This investment should be great news for the Drupal and Mautic communities as we'll have the right resources to compete against other solutions, and our deep commitment to Drupal, Mautic and Open Source will be unchanged. In fact, we will continue to increase our current level of investment in Open Source as we grow our business.”
<h3>The New Platform</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia-dxp.png" /></figure>
The Acquia Open DXP endeavors to bring marketers and developers together with an easy-to-use platform. It allows them to collaborate around building and orchestrating multi-user customer journeys across all models of customer interaction, such as touchscreens, chat, voice, and more.
The Acquia Open DXP is composed of both the Acquia Marketing Cloud and Acquia Drupal Cloud, and integrates their acquired technologies – including AgilOne, Mautic and Cohesion – with their existing core. The result is a single, open, easy-to-use platform that can be quickly deployed.
"The digital experience market continues to grow, and the subsequent need to create, manage, and deliver those high-quality digital experiences remains essential," said IDC's Jacob Groshek. "The impact of COVID-19 is only going to heighten that demand moving forward. Acquia's launch of their new Open DXP centers around empowering developers and marketers to collaborate in driving agile digital transformation across an organization. Their new Open DXP is both a timely and comprehensive response to the needs of the market.”
The expansion of marketing automation is key to Acquia's strategy. The category has gained tremendous ground in the recent years, and is expected to <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/443593/global-marketing-software-spending/">grow to $25.1 billion by 2023</a>. While big players like Hubspot and Salesforce dominate the industry, combining the features of a DXP with the enhanced capabilities of a customer data platform (CDP) will help Acquia reposition their value and compete more effectively.
<h3>Features</h3>
As mentioned, the Acquia Open DXP consists of both the Acquia Marketing Cloud and the Acquia Drupal Cloud. The combination provides a complete platform for building more personalized digital experiences that are powered by data. 
The Acquia Marketing Cloud is the essential foundation for collecting and managing customer data and driving personalization strategies. Features include:
•  Customer Data Platform (formerly AgilOne): With a built-in CDP, users can create a 360-degree view of each unique customer by integrating data across back-end and front-end systems. With open, customizable machine learning models, marketers can gain insights into new customer segments based on observed behaviors and product affinity, leverage predictions to understand likelihood to engage and convert, and deliver next-best offers and actions.
•  Personalization (formerly Acquia Lift): Leveraging data from the CDP, users can develop targeted campaigns to deliver the next-best offer across all touchpoints of the customer journey.
•  Campaign Studio (formerly Mautic): With Campaign Studio, users now have access to rich marketing automation features that are powered by Acquia's CDP. Create email campaigns that meet your custom brand requirements while easing the process with drag-and-drop builders and other simplified capabilities. Like the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Campaign Studio offers dynamic content features that allow for greater email personalization – all in one place.  
•  Campaign Factory (formerly Maestro): Campaign Factory gives administrators the power to centrally manage multiple, distributed Campaign Studio instances, helping you scale marketing operations across your lines of business – from brands to regions to localized teams. Campaign Factory provides a layer of critical governance over global digital marketing operations. 
The Drupal Cloud has also evolved, and now offers a more robust set of tools. Developers can build and customize services while marketers can do more with minimal code and drag-and-drop capabilities. Some of the core features include:
•  Site Studio (formerly Cohesion): New for marketers, Site Studio introduces a low-code experience for designing websites for different devices and interaction types – without the need for an advanced developer.
•  Developer Studio: Built with more advanced developers in mind, the Developer Studio introduces Cloud IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) to build, stage, and deploy new Drupal sites and applications.
•  CMS Migrate: Includes newly added tools to accelerate migration to Drupal 9 from older versions of Drupal or any legacy CMS.
•  Site Factory: Newly updated to support Drupal 9, Site Factory enables organizations to centrally manage, deploy, and scale sites and applications.
•  Edge CDN: A global network of over 200 points-of-presence (PoPs), Edge CDN provides dependable delivery of digital experiences by continually optimizing availability and performance, and mitigating risk associated with increasing volatility in traffic due to more online customer engagement.
•  Edge Security: A new security-as-a-service solution, Edge Security mitigates catastrophic security threats in real time by leveraging data-driven insights to dynamically update and protect all sites and experiences from malicious attacks, helping to ensure brand trust.
<h3>About Acquia</h3>
<a href="https://www.acquia.com/">Acquia</a> is an open Digital Experience Platform to give enterprise companies the ability to build, operate, and optimize websites, apps, and other digital experiences. Acquia produces better business outcomes for CX leaders by enabling organizations to build, host, analyze and communicate with their customers at scale through websites and digital applications.

Acquia Launches New Open Digital Experience Platform

paris-tuzun

WordPress is perhaps the best known name in the world of Blogging, CMS' and Open Source and most certainly is a massive entity with over 4 million blogs alone on WordPress.com and countless millions of downloads of their open source cms platform.
All of this in thanks to one young man (and his team of crack developers of course), Matt Mullenweg. We recently had an opportunity to ask Matt a few questions, and here are his replies:
CC: With the recent injection of funding into your company, can you tell us a little about what your plans are and where you plan to take Automattic now that you have some solid funding?
MM: There aren't really plans to change our direction significantly from what it was before. We raised funding because things were working well, not because we wanted to do the opposite of what has worked thus far.
CC: With the recent aquisition of Gravatar and the past formation of Akismet, WordPress, BBPress and your other projects, you've positioned yourself and your company AutoMattic into quite the comfortable niche market. It's obvious that WordPress has become somewhat of the darling of the blog market, if not the CMS market as well. What drove you to make these choices in life and do you have further plans to enhance your offerings with further acquisitions or are you comfortable with where you are in the market today?
<img title="WordPress Content Management System" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mcm_22771-141x150.jpg" alt="Matt Mullenweg" />
MM: Generally the decision to acquire something vs just building it is a matter of time, cost, and how much momentum the existing service has. With Gravatar, for example, it was trivial to replicate technically but already had a great community and was already built in to a million places.
CC: There have been numerous articles touting WordPress as the future of Content Management Systems. What is your view on this? How do you define content management and how it relates to your platform?
MM: I'm not crazy about the term content management. I don't wake up and say “I want to manage some content today!” I want to blog. I want to podcast. To the extent WordPress is a competitor in the CMS space I think it's because we try to re-examine common assumptions that traditional bloated CMSes make.
CC: What do you see as the future of the blog platform?
MM: I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that rich media like slideshows, audio, and video are going to be a big part of it.
CC: What is the future direction of Automattic? Where do you see your company taking you in the next few years?
MM: With Automattic our goals are somewhat modest: to continue to grow our personnel in an organic fashion and keep up with the explosion of usage in our main products like WordPress.com.
CC: What prompted you to write BBPress? I understand it was written over a couple of days back in 2004. Do you foresee any future merging of the two platforms?
MM: Nope, bbPress and WordPress will always be separate, though I think their integration could be better. I wrote bbPress because after a ton of research I couldn't find anything out there that fit my needs. For example as far as I know bbPress was the first forum system to use CSS instead of tables for layout. It was basic stuff like that.
CC: It's no secret that you are a promotor of Open Source software. What prompted you to choose this route?
MM: I've benefited so much from Open Source in my life it just seems fair to give back.
CC: If you could change one thing about your product or it’s offerings what would it be?
MM: At the data layer I'd like if the database names and organization in WordPress were a little more consistent, they sometimes vary in capitalizations and such because of the legacy of b2.
CC: What makes WordPress better than the numerous other open source CMS and Blog platforms on the market today? What differentiates your product?
MM: I don't think it's any one feature or thing, it's the thousands of plugins and themes available for the platform. That community is impossible to duplicate.
CC: Can you give us a sneak peak of upcoming features we can expect?
MM: In 2.7 look for a redesigned dashboard, drag-and-drop reorganization of the dashboard and write pages, and a built-in plugin browser and installer.
CC: In what ways can WordPress/Automattic use our help as users?
MM: First and foremost would be to introduce the people you care about to blogging and help them with the technical management and upgrades of using WP.
Second I would say that our support and documentation teams could always use more help. However little you think you know, there's always someone out there that knows less and could use your help. Plus doing support is the single best way I know of to learn WordPress inside and out.
CC: Thank you very much for your time, Matt. We look forward to speaking with you again soon!
Matt's personal blog is at <a href="http://ma.tt">Ma.tt</a>

WordPress CMS Founder, Matt Mullenweg Interview

mike-johnston

Reid Hoffman, the serial tech entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn, once said: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.”
Of course, in the world of open source software like WordPress, it’s hard to know exactly when anything will launch. And when it does, there’s certain to be a lot of bugs.
That was the case with Gutenberg, the long-awaited upgrade to the WordPress visual editor that was first introduced in late 2017. At the time, the WordPress editing experience had grown stagnant, and content managers were hungry for new page building capabilities. There’s no question that the impetus to develop a more robust editor was a reaction to the rise of authoring platforms like Medium and easy page-building competitors like Wix and Squarespace.
But as is often the case in software, things don’t always go according to plan. And when they don’t, end users are the first ones to let you know.
Time flies, and it’s hard to believe that it’s already been over two years since Gutenberg’s launch. Much like the printing press of its namesake, the first edition was fraught with issues and drew a lot of negative feedback. Nonetheless, it brought the promise of more modular page building capabilities within a modern, React-based UI. This helped circumvent some of the massive tech debt and backward compatibility challenges that exist with WordPress, favoring a more forward-leaning solution over fixes to the core software.
Over time, users have adapted to the good, the bad, and the unpredictable. Now, Gutenberg has graduated to a core role in the WordPress platform. In fact, the WordPress 5.0 release in 2018 <a href="/the-first-release-candidate-for-wordpress-5-0-is-now-available-and-sadly-it-brings-gutenberg-with-it/">featured Gutenberg as the default editor</a>, cementing its place in version history. But fear not: the WordPress Classical Editor is still available and supported, although it should be officially sunset on December 31, 2021.
Change is always scary – especially for long-term users. While some of the early adopters have grown to prefer (or even love) Gutenberg, the general reaction continues to be tacitly negative.  So far, Gutenberg has amassed more than 3,000 reviews with an <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/">average rating of 2/5.00</a>. Considering two years have passed since Gutenberg was released, the reviews indicate the major issues with Gutenberg – specifically the UX – have yet to be resolved.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-reviews.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/gutenberg-reviews.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/gutenberg-reviews.png 626w" /></figure>
When it comes to WordPress reviews, users seldom hold back (just read a few of the posts and you’ll see more rants than raves). While Gutenberg hasn’t garnered a lot of stars, the picture isn’t all bad. The most common reactions are that it’s slow, not intuitive, and requires a lot of extra mouse clicks to get where you’re going. But many users agree that it’s heading in the right direction and addressing persistent issues like accessibility.
After two years of pressure-testing in the real world of web development and CMS, we’ll look at what Gutenberg gets right – and where it misses the mark.
A Brief Overview of Gutenberg
If you’re not at all familiar with Gutenberg for WordPress, it’s a visual editor with a dynamic drag-and-drop interface. It fully replaces the WordPress TinyMCE editor (aka the Classical Editor) as the default editor within the package. Most of this is being spearheaded by <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a>, the open source development company behind WordPress.com
Unlike the Classical Editor, Gutenberg uses “blocks” rather than text fields to manage content. In fact, everything in the experience is represented as a block: the paragraphs, buttons, images, quotes… everything. By using the inherent drag-and-drop functionality in the editor, you can arrange the order of your blocks around your specific content needs.
The block-based model is nothing new. Visual editors such as Wix and Squarespace are similarly designed, helping users create and manage content faster and easier. In addition to these platforms, there are also page builder plugins for WordPress such as Divi, Elementor and Beaver Builder, which use drag-and-drop functionality with a simplified UI. All of these feature embellishments have empowered content editors to be more productive with less coding.
With more than 74.6 million websites using WordPress, including major brands like Disney, TechCrunch, BBC America and more, the platform’s pervasiveness is undeniable. But this level of market penetration is understandable: content managers and editors want to focus on content, not code – and from the beginning, one of the main selling points of WordPress has been its low-code/no-code experience. It abstracted most of the complexity with building and managing websites by relying on libraries of pre-programmed themes and plugins. These widgets, both diverse and abundant, enabled any user to add functionality to their website – from schedulers to lead forms to shopping carts – with just a few clicks.
There was, however, one big exception: the TinyMCE editor. It still required editing HTML for deeper customizations. 
Open source platforms struggle to provide a roadmap that is both complete and reliable, and WordPress is no exception. While the market waited for improvements to the visual editor, other plugins emerged to address the challenges. When assessing the pros and cons of Gutenberg, it’s easier to compare it to these alternatives to see where the opportunities and issues exist.
How does Gutenberg differ from the Classical Editor &amp; How it Compares to Page Builders
So how does Gutenberg stack up against the Classical Editor and other page builder plugins? Well, the rise of these new block-based options has certainly stoked innovation. That said, it’s important to keep in mind that while Gutenberg is quite similar to these other WordPress page builders, it’s currently not a good replacement. In fact, WordPress doesn’t even classify Gutenberg as a “page builder” per se. While it might evolve to one in the future, WordPress more appropriately refers to it as a “block editor.”
Let’s compare just a few of the more notable features between Gutenberg and other page builders:
1.     Drag &amp; Drop Capabilities
Traditionally, to type text, insert content, or write code using the Classical Editor, you would have to manually shift your content around by cutting and pasting. With Gutenberg, you can assign each content component as its own block – such as a paragraph – and re-arrange the order of your blocks by simply dragging them up and down. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-dragging.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/gutenberg-dragging.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/gutenberg-dragging.png 737w" /></figure>
Paragraphs aren’t the only content blocks types. With Gutenberg, you can define headings, rows, columns, images, buttons, symbols, custom boxes, and even templates as blocks – and use the same drag-and-drop features to reorder your content. 
Although Gutenberg offers this slick drag-and-drop block feature, you’ll be compromising on customizations. For example, you can’t adjust the height and width of elements or add custom margins and padding, and elements can only be aligned to the left, right, and center. You can get around some of these limitations with additional CSS classes, but that means more coding and complexity. It all comes down to how much control you want over the details. 
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-image-aligning.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/gutenberg-image-aligning.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/07/gutenberg-image-aligning.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/gutenberg-image-aligning.png 1499w" /></figure>
2.     Front-end Visual Editing
There’s no question that Gutenberg does a better job than the Classical editor of displaying your front-end styling within the visual editor. That said, it doesn’t provide the same level of accuracy as when you’re using a page builder like Elementor or Divi. With other page builders, you can see all of your changes rendered in the back-end – so you know exactly what your page will look like when published. With Gutenberg, you still need to manually click on the “Preview” button to see a draft page, which can be limiting from a content management perspective. For example, here is how a page looks in back-end editor versus in the preview mode:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/preview.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/preview.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/preview.png 650w" /><figcaption>Back-End view of the page</figcaption></figure>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/backend-editor-2.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/07/backend-editor-2.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/07/backend-editor-2.png 885w" /><figcaption>Preview of the page</figcaption></figure>
3.     Design and Styling
While Gutenberg is a big step up from the TinyMCE Classical Editor, it still falls short of page builder plug-ins when it comes to customizing styles. The Gutenberg editor will reflect any specific theme you’re using, which is quite useful – but that’s the extent of it. Page builder plug-ins not only offer complete control over styling from the ground up, but you also have the ability to override your theme’s visual settings.
We’re just scratching the surface on the pros and cons, but does this mean you should ditch Gutenberg for a page builder? Not necessarily. It all depends on what you want to accomplish. If your website has a simple layout and you want your content to fit harmoniously into a theme, going with Gutenberg might be a good idea. But if you crave more control over your page layouts and styles, a page builder is likely your best bet.
To Gutenberg… or not to Gutenberg?
That is the question! The answer? Well, that’s a little more complicated…
The real Gutenberg could never have imagined the evolution of his printing press. If only he could marvel at the invention of four-color digital presses that can instantly print thousands or even millions of impressions – all with a few mouse clicks. Sadly, innovation is sometimes slower than we would like it to be, and mistakes are all part of the process.
Much like these digital presses, the Gutenberg editor is a milestone in the evolution of the WordPress platform. It continues to demonstrate the commitment of the open source ecosystem to serve the needs of millions of web developers and content creators, each with their own set of goals – from managing a basic blog to crafting a custom experience.
Making things more “user friendly” is key to any software’s growth, and that’s where Gutenberg is endeavoring to shine. Unfortunately, it’s still not at a point where page builders like Divi or <a href="/elementor-hits-3-million-sites/">Elementor</a> compete. But that’s the beauty of WordPress and its ecosystem of plug-ins: there’s an incredible amount of choice, and that only seems to be expanding.
Custom is always the costliest commodity, and even the real Gutenberg knew that. That’s why his first books were simple and limited in their scope. But over time, the block components became more elaborate and decorative, and font styles more abundant. Eventually, it all felt “custom.”
The same might happen for the modern digital incarnation. The real question is: when?

Gutenberg, 2 Years Later: Is WordPress Better Off?

Webasyst Review

<a href="/products/bigcommerce">BigCommerce</a> is a popular eCommerce platform that helps newer, growing brands take their business to the next level with a free 15-day trial. On average, those stores that use <a href="/products/bigcommerce">BigCommerce</a> grow twice as fast as the industry average!Because BigCommerce is designed for growing brands, the process for using it should be pretty straightforward and intuitive.The platform is updated regularly, and it has been proven to appeal to both new and seasoned businesses. Must be pretty diverse, right?I decided to check it out for myself. Keep reading for my BigCommerce review.<h2>Getting Started</h2>It’s definitely easy to get started with BigCommerce. It’s an easy sign-up and log-in process. Here’s how it went down:First, you enter your login information. This will take you to a screen where you select what you want to do.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-1943x0-is.png" />If you still aren’t entirely sure what to do, you can scroll down and select one of the links. I found that to be particularly helpful.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-2939x0-is.png" />From this Dashboard view, I first started out by customizing my store. I wanted to focus on creating an ecommerce space that followed the same branding as the rest of my business.<h2>Usability</h2>From the dashboard, I chose the ‘Storefront’ tab, presented on the left scrollbar with white text on a dark grey background. Overall, this looks very sleek and user-friendly.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-3935x0-is.png" />There are drop-down menus to give users additional options, something that is especially helpful when you’re still figuring out the best way to go about things.A great number of free themes are available, but you can also choose to purchase a theme. The process is easy and it’s simple to navigate.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-4939x0-is.png" />There are themes available for each industry, better enabling users to offer the best shopping experience possible for their customers and maintain consistent branding.For each theme, there are updates, different style options, and some helpful information.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-5923x0-is.png" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-6676x0-is.png" />It gives you a list of all of the features each theme offers, tells you what each theme is offered for, and then gives links to resources for when you need help and documentation.Once you’ve got your theme chosen, you can move on to the logo portion of the setup.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-7726x0-is.png" />This area’s super easy to navigate, straightforward, and versatile. Upload your logo, or add some text as a placeholder, and you’re good to go.You can also add a Favicon, located at the bottom there, which adds a little icon to the tab on the user’s browser. This is a great way to further maintain consistent branding, and lets users know which page they’re looking at just by glancing at the tabs.From there, you can start setting up the carousel of your homepage.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-8935x0-is.png" />This is SUPER easy to use, with text boxes that are easy to type in and edit. In the screenshot above, I’ve swapped out the default text for some of my own, giving you a better example of how this section is done.Moving on down the left menu, let’s go to ‘Web Pages’, which is where you piece together your actual store.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-9933x0-is.png" />Click on a page to get started. In this case, I started with ‘Shipping &amp; Returns’, because it was first.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-10931x0-is.png" />Once you click on it, you’re taken to the above page. There are several options, but it’s easy to understand and not the least bit overwhelming.There’s an easy-to-use text box, so you can edit your content directly. Once you’re done with the content of your page, you can scroll down for the remaining options.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-11855x0-is.png" /><h2>Design</h2><h3>Responsiveness</h3>BigCommerce has definitely taken great strides to make sure their store templates are as responsive as possible, complete with mobile optimization. As demonstrated in the above screenshots, this platform makes it possible for users to customize a lot of the template elements, making it more unique to their business and brand.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-12.png" />This screenshot is an example of that. As you can see, the template fits neatly within the borders of the screen, and the design is sleek and user-friendly.It’s easy to navigate, and doesn’t look cluttered or misaligned like many other ecommerce platforms do when viewed from a mobile device.<h3>Store Templates</h3>BigCommerce offers a huge range of ready-to-use templates in various styles, allowing users to meet the branding requirements that best align with their business.Even better is the fact this platform takes things one step further and arranges the templates by industry, making it easier for users to select the most effective theme possible.<h2>Features</h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-13181x0-is.png" /><h3>Marketing</h3>BigCommerce has tons of marketing options for your store, all of which are pretty easy to use and allows you to track them with various types of analytics.From there, you can streamline your channels to better allow you to serve customers across your various social media platforms.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-14.png" />It works really well, but it would be helpful to have a few more channel options available, such as Twitter and Google+.<h3>Apps</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigcommerce-review-15931x0-is.png" />A wide range of useful apps are available, including both paid and free apps. They are broken up into categories, so users can best determine which apps will accelerate the growth of their business.The apps all seem to be very reasonably priced for everything they offer.<h2>Extras</h2>With BigCommerce, there are several extras available to users. This includes additional social media links, email templates, and even gift certificate templates.<h3>Blogging</h3>There is a blogging option available through BigCommerce, which has a very basic blogging platform that resembles WordPress.It’s easy to use, straightforward, and even has SEO options available to help boost the visibility of the user’s content.<h2>Pricing</h2>BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial period, which gives you plenty of time to decide if this platform is the right one for you and your business. After that, you have a range of price options, all with their own features. All options include a 10% savings if you pay annually, rather than monthly.The most basic price option is a full-featured online store for $29.95 per month, which comes with a whole host of features and everything you need to run a successful eCommerce store.The next option offers optimized lead conversion and customer group management, with a price of $79.95 per month. The next, and final, option starts at $249.95 per month and offers everything plus high-volume security and faceted search.The pricing page clearly showcases which features each package comes with, both with text and visuals – making it very easy to determine which package is right for you.<h2>Conclusion</h2>BigCommerce is an easy-to-use, highly efficient option for ecommerce owners. It’s got plenty of features, including marketing and offering the ability to streamline consumer shopping across multiple channels.The template options are customizable and versatile, and the high level of security on the Pro package is definitely worth the price.Blogging for your business is a great way to reach new audiences, interact with current customers, and keep your sales funnel alive and thriving. The blogging feature built into this platform makes it easy to regularly publish (and schedule) content for your customers.For more information, visit the BigCommerce site <a target="_blank" href="http://bigcommerce.evyy.net/c/12549/185949/2941">here.</a>Have you used BigCommerce, or are you interested in giving it a try? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

BigCommerce Review - An Easy to Use Choice for eCommerce Shops

While redesigning their websites, many businesses expect modern UIs and cool features alone to generate big leads. But they won’t. Unless backed by a consistent content marketing strategy that talks big clients.
Let me explain what I mean.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/how_to_win_big_customers_with_your_website-02603x0-is.png" />
<h2>Understand Big Customers</h2>
Big attracts big. You don’t need to be as big in size as they are, but be big in your approach, look big, sound big. Embrace enterprise thinking in your message. Speak their language.
Because of the strict vendor selection policies, large companies tend to cautiously assess candidates’ competencies and processes. Don’t make them guess about your authority, state it right away on your pages. No gambling. They don’t want you to be the best, they want you to be reliable in delivering what they expect from you. They want you to solve problems.
<h2>Create Problem-oriented Content</h2>
Talking about problems on your website builds credibility. It means you probably know how to solve them. These guys seem to be experts, they’ll think. You will have to prove it, though, but for now it’s all about the first impression. So take your chance.
Use your blog to create problem-oriented yet engaging insights. To make your content more effective, follow these key steps:
<ul>
<li>
Build content around clients’ problems and needs, not your products/services. No salesy, screaming copy
</li>
<li>
Insert cross-references between posts and pages to engage visitors to read more
</li>
<li>
Link articles with product/service pages
</li>
<li>
Include confident CTAs
</li>
</ul>
However, don’t try to cover every area of your expertise. Narrow down the focus to emphasize your strongest competences.
<h2>Increase Promotion of Key Expertise</h2>
Make your key products/services disproportionately visible for search engines and people (but don’t abandon other business directions). You will need to publish over 100 webpages to promote the focus area.
Should you start looking for copywriters? Yes, you should. Sounds heavy on your marketing budget? Yes, it does. But we are talking big customers, remember?
<h2>Provide Deep Insights</h2>
Large enterprises don’t make spontaneous moves. They take the time to think. So give them food for thought by offering detailed case studies and white papers (executives love white papers) available through registration. White papers are still the most influential lead generation tools.
For example, according to Eccolo Media 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey Report, 49% of respondents (US companies) rely on white papers (among other content items) while making technology purchases. But don’t disappoint potential clients by talking too much about your company and products/services.
Leave out that marketing hype and biased or too general information.
Personalize Content
Don’t be surprised if a potential client returns to your website in 2 months or more after downloading a white paper. You want to be prepared for that by showing relevant content based on the interaction tracked down during their previous visits. Collecting and analyzing data such as the time spent and the buttons clicked on particular pages, you can build each visitor’s up-to-date profile to help you personalize the content for further interactions.
In other words, you will increase your chances for conversion by giving visitors what they want on the go. If, say, last time they were looking for translation services at your agency, it makes no sense bombarding them with proofreading options now.
Have you ever noticed how accurate personalized product recommendations can be? You’d probably go ‘No way! How do they know?’ That’s exactly how you want to surprise your leads during the next visits.
So, when looking for a <a href="https://www.scnsoft.com/web-portal-development">web portal development vendor</a> to redesign your website, make sure to state your need for personalization features in an RFP to filter out those who can’t do it.
<h2>Ready for the Big Hunt</h2>
Generating big leads with a website requires a consistent content marketing strategy based on a complex portal development technology beyond just a cool design. But it is possible.
At <a href="https://www.scnsoft.com" target="_blank">ScienceSoft</a>, we delivered websites that attracted, and converted into customers, Royal Bank of Canada, Robert Half, Siemens, Philips and other large companies. Now, it’s your turn to win big leads.
* * *
This post is sponsored by ScienceSoft. Find out more at <a href="https://www.scnsoft.com" target="_blank">ScnSoft.com</a>.

How to Win Big Customers with Your Website

If you’re a child of the 1980s – or just a fan of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80057281">Stranger Things</a> – you might remember the directory sign at your local mall. It was the one place you could find exactly what you were looking for in a sea of stores, and they’re still a fixture to this day.Unfortunately, most site searches can’t even get you to the food court. In many cases, you’re left sifting through a morass of results, wondering if you’ll ever find your way to that rad new pair of acid-washed jeans.Like malls, site search has been around for a long time. But now, it’s becoming an even more vital part of the digital experience. After all, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-and-you-may-find/">more than half of people are now “search dominant</a>”, meaning they will use a website’s search over the navigation to find what they’re looking for.From an SEO perspective, navigation is key. But modern search tools can add a complementary layer of insights and analytics. These cutting-edge, AI-driven technologies can energize your marketing by understanding how your customers are searching – not just what they’re searching for.One of the best site search tools we’ve seen is Swiftype, which was <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/09/elastic-acquires-swiftype/">purchased by Elastic in 2017</a>. This powerful SaaS platform has positioned itself as a clear leader in the site search landscape and has evolved to include app search and a host of other features.In this article, we’ll take a close look at Swiftype’s features and explore how you can customize your search results, leverage analytics, and even build marketing strategies within the platform. It’s like a mall for best-of-breed site search capabilities – and we’ll show you exactly where to shop.<h3>Goodbye, Google Search</h3>Back in the day, Google Site Search was the defacto standard. Not only was it easy to implement, but it brought the world's leading search technology down to the website level. Unfortunately, Google deprecated the service in 2018, forcing thousands of websites to scramble for a new solution.Quite a few niche players answered the call, including <a target="_blank" href="https://www.algolia.com/">Algolia</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cludo.com/">Cludo</a>, and others. Enterprise brands also muscled their way into the game, with <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/">Amazon CloudSearch</a> and Google Search Console offering alternatives.What was missing was the best of both worlds – a cost-effective, cloud-based service that offered core site search with scalable enterprise features. That’s where Swiftype comes in.<h3>What is Swiftype?</h3>Swiftype is a cloud-based SaaS platform that enables organizations of all sizes to create and manage a tailored search experience with real-time feedback, user insight, and search trend analytics. Users are able to monitor which content visitors are searching for and which results they’re engaging with as they browse your website.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-analytics-dashboard.png" />Swiftype is incredibly easy to install and customize. Once you sign up and enter your website’s address, Swiftype automatically indexes your site and renders your custom search engine in real-time. In addition to providing a “marketer friendly” no-code experience, Swiftype also gives advanced developers access to resources including their API.Swiftype offers two main products – Site Search and App Search – which can be added to websites and CMS platforms. We’ve explored both in more detail below.<h3>Swiftype Site Search</h3>Swiftype Site Search provides all the tools you need to deliver more relevant search results for your website users. It's simple to set up and use, and has some dynamite out-of-the-box features, including:<ul><li>Autocomplete: Guide users to the content, answers, or products that matter most with real-time results – right as they type.</li><li>Search Refinements: Dynamically expand on simple search, allowing your users to refine results by attributes such as date, price, author, location, or content type.</li><li>Comprehensive Documentation: Swiftype has clear and simple guides that can help you build the perfect search experience. You'll have all the materials you need to become a master of high value search experiences.</li><li>Advanced Search Algorithm: Powered by AI/ML, Swiftype Site Search is built on an advanced search algorithm that delivers relevant results for even the most complicated queries.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-site-search-features.png" /><ul><li>Search Controls and Analytics: Site Search surfaces the most important data points and performance indicators for your search. It also gives you the tools to take action and improve performance, including patented technologies that allow you to tweak your search engine’s output globally or on a per-query basis.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/search-controls-and-swiftype-analytics.png" /><ul><li>Developer Tools: One of Swiftype’s strengths is its ability to appeal to marketers with a no-code experience. But it also provides a robust, developer-friendly API for creating custom record schemas, indexing data in real-time, embedding search into any user interface (such as a website or CMS), and programmatically tracking events. You can view the API documentation <a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/documentation/site-search/overview">here</a>.</li><li>Real-time Search Analytics: Swiftype allows you to see what your users are searching for, clicking on, and engaging with as it happens – so you have more actionable insight about their behaviors. With its powerful real-time search analytics, you can track the highest performing content on your website or app, assess which autocomplete queries are most popular, and learn what content was most commonly chosen from autocomplete suggestions.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/real-time-search-analytics.png" /><ul><li>Tracking conversions and autocompletes: Search conversions tell you where your users go after performing a search.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tracking-conversions-and-autocompletes.png" /><ul><li>Find out What Users Aren’t Finding: Swiftype shows you common searches that return no results – so you can optimize your content strategy. Swiftype’s custom result ranking feature lets you add results to these search terms to help visitors find more of what they’re looking for.</li></ul><h3>Swiftype App Search</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-app-search.jpg" />While Site Search provides a powerful solution without a steep learning curve, Swiftype App Search goes deep with developers. You get access to a robust set of APIs that allow you to customize your search experience – all backed by the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.elastic.co/elastic-stack">Elastic Stack</a>.Swiftype App Search harnesses the power of Elasticsearch, built on the constantly improving foundation that Elastic provides. It includes features like typo-tolerance, stemming, bigram and phrase matching – as well as search customization capabilities like Curations, Weights, Boosts and Synonyms.Together, these tools help you fine-tune relevance based on your business objectives in conjunction with data from App Search’s Analytics platform.Other key features include:<ul><li>Real-time Analytics: Measure how users interact with your search engine and track everything in real-time, revealing unique insights into user behavior.</li><li>Relevance Tuning: The App Search Dashboard makes relevance tuning as simple as point-and-click. Make customizations in the web-based interface and preview their impact in real-time – all with no code.</li><li>Schemaless Indexing: App Search supports dynamic schemas and real-time reindexing. Simply send JSON to the API and Swiftype analyzes it for whatever search application you build.</li></ul>You can see the full list of App Search features <a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/app-search/features">here</a>.<h3>How to Add Swiftype Site Search to Your Website</h3>One of Swiftype’s main selling points is its ease of installation – and based on our experience, it delivers as billed.Swiftype’s website claims it takes as little as five minutes, and for the essentials, that was pretty much spot on. The tools were a quick study, and the interface is clean and lightweight, making it pleasant to work in.To set up Swiftype on your website, you first need to <a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/users/sign_up">create your account</a>, then an Engine (short for “Search Engine”). After beginning your Site Search trial, enter your website's URL when prompted.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-create-engine.png" />Once the scan is successful, provide your Engine with a name and select its default language. You can choose from over 13 different languages, including English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and German. For the full list, see Swiftype’s documents on <a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/documentation/site-search/crawler-configuration/language-optimization">language support</a>.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-choose-engine-language.png" />The final step is adding the search experience to your website. Once you click on the Installation button, you’ll need to configure the design of your Search Field and Result Container. From there, you can choose how to style your results, configure autocomplete, and tune an array of options.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-style-your-results-and-other-configurations.png" />Once you have the basic configuration in place, you’ll receive an embeddable JavaScript snippet. Place that snippet on each webpage to enable the search. The snippet will look like this:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-javascript-snippet.png" />And that’s it. If you’re savvy and committed, it can take just a few minutes – and that’s pretty slick.<h3>How to Add Swiftype Site Search to Your CMS</h3>Content management systems often miss the mark on their own search capabilities. By adding Swiftype, you can instantly improve a CMS experience and add your CMS content automatically using Swiftype’s <a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/documentation/site-search/tutorials/add_search_to_any_cms">Site Crawler</a>.On the more advanced end, you can even set up callbacks that can be used to hook into content, alerting Swiftype that new content is available to index.While the installation process is relatively straight-forward – and works well for most CMS platforms based on their documentation – there are a few more steps involved. But Swiftype offers some great <a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/documentation/site-search/tutorials/add_search_to_any_cms">step-by-step guidance</a> to build out the experience.<h3>Customer Support</h3>Swiftype offers broad customer support, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.g2.com/products/swiftype/reviews">according to the reviews</a>, it offers one of the best experiences around.Swiftype Standard and Pro support is focused on making sure your Swiftype Engine is working as expected – and is fully available. To that end, they offer:<ul><li>Analysis of the state of your engine</li><li>Actions you can perform to stabilize or tune your engine</li><li>Pointers to Swiftype documentation or forums if your question is outside the scope of the platform itself</li></ul>Elastic reported their response time and hours below:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-customer-support-plans.png" />In addition, they provide a lively community of support for Swiftype users. With the community forums, you can get your more in-depth questions answered.<h3>Pricing</h3>Swiftype has two separate plans for Site Search and App Search. The Site Search plan starts at $79/month and App Search starts at $49/month.Site Search:There are three plans for site search: Standard, Pro, and Premium.The standard plan gives you all the core search features and analytics, as well as multilingual support.With the Pro plan, your website gets crawled twice a day instead of once per week. Additionally, you get cross-domain search and PDF/document indexing.The Premium plan is their enterprise-level search and security.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-site-search-plans.png" />App Search:Just like the Site Search plans, Swiftype’s App Search plans offer Standard, Pro, and Premium Packages.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/swiftype-app-search-plans.png" /><h3>Conclusion</h3>While good navigation is important, people always seek the path of least resistance. That’s why site search is so essential: it enables more control over intent, allowing a user to search for specific content quickly and easily – and even discovering new stuff along the way. In that sense, it’s another layer in your personalization strategy.While Swiftype is easy to set up, marketer- and developer-friendly, and offers a broad range of tools, it’s not the cheapest solution on the market. But if you’re looking for a platform that makes search a more strategic part of your experience, Swiftype is at the top of the list. It offers unmatched control and scalability, and brings more power and presence to site search as a strategic asset. With world-class customer support to boot, it’s really a solid platform on every level.You can start a <a target="_blank" href="https://app.swiftype.com/signup?product=ss">free</a> trial today. Acid-washed jeans not included.<h3>About Swiftype</h3><a target="_blank" href="https://swiftype.com/">Swiftype</a> is a search and index company based in San Francisco, California, that provides search software for organizations, websites, and computer programs. Notable customers include AT&amp;T, Dr. Pepper, Hubspot and TechCrunch. Swiftype's site search can be used for faceted search, full text search, real-time search, and concept search queries. The company's plans offer on-demand and live recrawls and indexing of websites. Other features include drag-and-drop result customization, real-time analytics and adjustable weights. In an effort to further grow outside of site search, Swiftype introduced an enterprise search service in February 2017.<h3>About Elastic</h3><a target="_blank" href="https://www.elastic.co/">Elastic</a> builds software to make data usable in real time and at scale for search, logging, security, and analytics use cases. Founded in 2012, the company develops the open source Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash), X-Pack (commercial features), and Elastic Cloud (a SaaS offering). Elastic is used by organizations including Cisco, eBay, Goldman Sachs, NASA, Microsoft, Mayo Clinic, The New York Times, Wikipedia, and Verizon to power mission-critical systems.

Swiftype Review: Add Powerful Elastic Search to Websites, Apps and CMS Platforms

Graphic design has always been one of the more elusive layers of the digital stack. While websites have become increasingly more dynamic (think FontAwesome for iconography), custom graphics – at least the really good ones – continue to rely on third-party apps like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.
For CMS users, that means generating graphics outside the system and bringing them in separately. And for many content creators, it means relying on a graphic designer to do the job – someone who knows their way around Bezier Curves, or if a font is serif or sans serif.
For many design professionals, the more advanced tools of the Adobe suite will likely stay the course (although Sketch and UXPin have become great alternatives for prototyping). But they’re also not the domain of the layperson or laydesigner who simply wants to jazz up their blog or social post with a cool graphic.
Now, thanks to Canva, almost anyone can produce beautiful, custom graphics that feel like they were created by a professional agency – and start for free.
While Canva’s paid subscriptions offer more robust features and access to enhanced imagery, even their basic account lets you create some pretty awesome stuff. In just a few minutes, you can watch a design tutorial, master their intuitive tools, and drag your way to a gorgeous social media graphic or poster art.
Canva isn’t new to the graphic design scene, but they’re now integrating with CMS platforms to streamline content creation. We did a fresh review of the platform and its features, and checked out their Canva “Button,” which makes it even easier to launch Canva within your app or page, make a dynamite graphic, and publish it to your website without leaving your platform.
<h3>What is Canva?</h3>
Canva is a SaaS-based graphic design platform that lets users create beautiful graphics and visual content. That can be almost anything: presentation elements, posters, templates, background patterns, photographic imagery, and more. It’s available for both desktop and mobile, and features millions of graphics, images, fonts, templates, audio, video and other assets that are “off the shelf” and available to use in your own designs.
Founded in 2012, Canva has been something of a startup wunderkind. Last year alone, their valuation doubled from just over $3 billion to $6 billion – and they now boast an active global user base of 15 million subscribers across their free, Pro, and Enterprise offerings.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/canva-sample-image.png" /><figcaption>Sample Facebook Cover Template</figcaption></figure>
How was Canva able to grow so rapidly? Well, it’s more than just having a great product and word-of-mouth social exposure. 
Simply put, Canva solved a problem that no one had managed to crack: making good design accessible to everyone.
There’s no questioning the value that design brings to a brand’s communication and its impact on customer experience. It’s like an unspoken language that can either help – or hurt – your brand’s perception and reputation. While every business relies on design to reach and influence their audiences, it’s not always attainable or cost effective for basic, everyday applications.
The other problem has been the complexity of graphic design programs. Photoshop can takes weeks (or more) of training to perform even the most foundational tasks, and may be overkill for most content creators. Vector graphics are on a whole other level of complexity, and really necessitate a skilled designer to create custom logos, iconography, and other assets.
This is where Canva is changing the game by offering a platform for novice or even non-designers. It simplifies the process by offering libraries of beautiful, modern design elements that are easy to access. Users can select from stock photos, background patterns, fonts, templates, and even music and videos inside an intuitive drag-and-drop interface – and customize them into their own graphic design creations.
Guy Kawasaki, who joined Canva in 2014 as Chief Evangelist, <a href="https://www.canva.com/learn/guy-kawasaki-chief-evangelist/">describes it as “a platform for democratizing design</a>” – just like how Macintosh democratized computers and eBay democratized commerce.
<h3>Create all kinds of visual content</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/canva-templates.png" /></figure>
Canva offers a sandbox of design tools and learning resources which are all available through its online SaaS portal. You can sign up for free in just a few seconds and even connect with your preferred social media account.
The first thing you’ll notice on the Canva website is the Template categories. This makes it easier for casual users to find what they need quickly and not fumble through expansive libraries like the major stock houses provide.
What’s great is that all of the template elements are ready-to-use. That means they work seamlessly on your "canvas," allowing you to drag and reposition in exactly the way you want. You can also import your own logos, images and graphics and instantly remove solid backgrounds to isolate elements (think of a headshot getting cut away from a background to use in a new layout). 
Once you settle on your graphics and images, it’s simple to add custom text to promote sales offers, event details, and more.
The main design sections include:
<ul>
<li>Social Media: Create graphics for channels like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.</li>
<li>Personal: Design custom invitations, postcards, planners, t-shirts, and even resumes to promote your personal brand. </li>
<li>Business: Build presentation templates, website graphics, logos, business cards, and tools like invoice and proposal templates. </li>
<li>Marketing: Make posters, flyers, infographics, brochures, newsletters, menus and more.</li>
<li>Education: Create lesson plans, worksheets, certificates, storyboards, bookmarks, class schedules and other educational resources.</li>
</ul>
There is also a “Trending” section where the most popular templates are displayed. These can include seasonal specific elements for major holidays or events. Need to make a Christmas graphic for your homepage hero? You can quickly create a custom holiday theme with beautiful images, iconography, background patterns and more.
<h3>Canva Features</h3>
It’s true that Canva has a lot of off-the-shelf components, and some users might worry that they’ll be using the same graphics as other brands. But Canva allows you to be free with your own designs, giving you the ability to edit graphics and templates, compose unique layouts, import your own logos and elements, and truly make any design your own.
Canva’s user-friendly editor makes it all possible. The sidebar menu includes:
<ul>
<li>Templates: Search thousands of templates by keywords to find exactly what you're looking for. </li>
<li>Uploads: Import a custom image, logo, or video from your computer and place it in your design template.</li>
<li>Custom graphic control: Group and position elements on a page and hyperlink graphics.</li>
<li>Edit imagery: Adjust the transparency and settings on photos, add artistic filters, and crop to custom sizes.</li>
<li>Elements: Select from a huge cache of free illustrations such as geometric shapes, stickers, charts, gradients, lines, connectors, and icons.</li>
<li>Text: Add and edit text within your composition. You can add a heading, subheading, or body text to your template, and also add links.</li>
<li>Videos: Browse a wide variety of free videos to add to your webpage or post. You can choose from one of the main categories or search for specific content.</li>
<li>Backgrounds: Add colors, patterns, or create your own custom backdrop.</li>
<li>Folders: With a paid Pro or Enterprise subscription, any images you purchase with a license will be displayed in a “Purchased” folder – and the photos and elements you like will be displayed in a “Likes” folder. Additionally, you can create your own custom folders.</li>
</ul>
These are just some of the core features that Canva provides, but what’s really amazing is how simple it is to start using the entire suite of tools. Unlike Photoshop, there’s no complexity around layer controls or color settings. In minutes, the most novice technical user can get a sense of the navigation and start creating custom graphics.
<h3>Learning, Training, and Tutorials</h3>
Canva’s learning resources are a huge part of their value offering. From the “Learn” tab on their homepage, you can access a library of resources, from design basics to business branding. You can also browse ideas and inspiration from articles that show you how to edit photos or design for print applications.
Canva offers its tutorials through their "Design School," which features classes like “Personal Branding with Dr. Talaya Waller.” Each course provides a wealth of insights and actionable instructions for creating your own successful projects.
As if the software wasn’t awesome enough, the learning resources make Canva nearly indispensable – which explains their explosive growth.
<h3>Canva Integration</h3>
Canva’s API has everything developers need to integrate Canva with their apps, enabling access to photos, images, and online media inside the editor. Currently, Canva has integrations with major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Dropbox, Giphy, and Mailchimp.
The newest and most popular integration is called the Canva "Button," which allows users to design with Canva without leaving the webpage they’re working on. Imagine writing a new blog and suddenly needing a custom graphic. By clicking the Canva Button, you can automatically launch the Canva editor and design a graphic or select an image. Once completed, you simply click "Publish" and your creations are pushed to the appropriate part of your page or experience.
It only takes a few of lines of code to add the Canva Button, but it does require a Canva account for a user to make the activation. To learn more about the Canva Button and how to integrate it with your website, click <a href="https://www.canva.com/button/">here</a>.
<h3>Canva and Content Management Systems (CMS)</h3>
Canva is steadily broadening its integrations with CMS platforms. For content creators, this eliminates the extra steps of uploading designs manually from Canva and switching back and forth between apps. It also gives the non-designers on any team the ability to add beautiful images and graphics to their pages within the CMS, making their content more compelling. 
While several platforms already offer a native integration, <a href="https://about.canva.com/wordpress/">WordPress provides a plugin</a> for designing custom graphics for your blog or website. Browse millions of graphics, images, and layouts in Canva – and once you're finished designing, your creation is automatically inserted into your WordPress post for publishing.
<h3>Pricing</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/canva-pricing.png" /><figcaption>Canva Pricing Plans</figcaption></figure>
Canva offers three plans: Free, Pro and Enterprise. Anyone can <a href="https://www.canva.com/signup">sign up for a free account</a> and start creating right away. But like any "freemium" software model, it does have its limitations. For example, you can't resize your designs for different form factors, and there are only a few hundred graphics and images to choose from. But with 8,000 templates to peruse, you can create some pretty cool designs – and it's all free. 
The Pro subscription, which is considered the "best value," is $9.95 per user per month (if paid annually). It's really an incredible deal when consider what you get: access to an expanded library with millions of images and graphics, over 60,000 templates, and the ability to create your own custom "Brand Kit." This is one of the most powerful features in the Pro, as it gives you control over your visual identity by collecting reusable assets like logos, fonts, colors and more – so you can maintain your brand standards.  
The Enterprise plan is built for teams, enabling you to manage Brand Kits for multiple properties or customers. You also get access to permissions that lock down template elements and limit access to specific team members, so you can protect your brand ecosystem. There's also 24/7 support, which is more apropos for an enterprise engagement with lots of customers and users. 
Licensing for graphics and images can always be tricky, particularly with stock libraries. With Canva, there's an upside and a downside: if you cancel your subscription, you won't be able to access or use any of the elements that were stored in your account. However, you can continue using the elements you created during your subscription period (for example, a blog image on a specific post). 
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
Canva is making good design more accessible, and it's worth checking out – particularly if you're a content manager or digital marketer. It's a natural addition to your CMS stack, but also brings significant value to gig-minded solopreneurs and enterprises alike. 
Like the name suggests, it's your "canvas." But you don't have to be Picasso to make it beautiful. 
To get started with a Canva account, click <a href="https://www.canva.com/">here</a>.
<h3>About Canva</h3>
<a href="https://www.canva.com/">Canva</a> empowers users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. Featuring a simple drag-and-drop user interface and a vast library of templates and design ingredients such as fonts, illustrations, stock photography, video and audio content, and the power to include content from the web such as Giphy and Google Maps, anyone can take an idea and create something beautiful. Canva  is available on the web, iOS and Android.

Canva “Button” Gives CMS Users Integrated Graphic Design Tools for Visual Content

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

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Percussion is a company that has been steadily growing in the CMS space and we decided to take some time to get to know the company and their products a bit further. We had a chance to connect with Joseph Wykes, President of Percussion and here are the results of that interview.
CC: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be with Percussion?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wordpress-v-logo_nxe2ba.png" alt="Joseph Wykes - Percussion" />
JW: I had been practicing law in the UK and realized how much I enjoyed the business development side of the law firm. I found myself energized by the opportunity to build a business, build relationships, and grow my career, and jumped at the chance to be part of the early stages of forming the Percussion business. In a bit of an unusual move, I left London to help launch Percussion’s content management product—then called Rhythmyx—in Santa Monica. When it came time to expand the business overseas in Europe, it was natural for me to “come home” to London and establish our UK office. Once the UK Operations was ramped up, I came back to the States; first to San Francisco, and then to Boston. It has been an exciting journey and I am very glad I made the leap from Law to software.
CC: How did Percussion come to exist? What is the back story behind the CMS?
JW: Percussion was originally incubated as a set of tools that focused on content transformation, database integration, and security services. As these tools grew into products, addressing hot spots in the technology market, sister companies were spun off. Rapid7 was first spun out in 2000 to focus on a security and threat management opportunity. Later, Axceler initially spun off from Percussion to focus on an integration with Lotus Notes (as a relational database opportunity), and then more recently to focus on a SharePoint data migration opportunity. Percussion launched its web content management offering in 2000, and since 2006 has stayed exclusively focused on the web content management market.
In 2000, we recognized that as web sites became more sophisticated, managing content was going to be a major challenge. At first, this meant building tools to manage the Create, Approve and Publish processes that we are familiar with today. As we move forward, we are focused on returning web content management to its true product roots, rather than abide by the complex, custom built services frameworks the market has become. This is our core focus for the company today.
CC: Can you tell us about the differences between CM1 and CM System?
JW: Sure. We think that the market for web content management has gone through a number of fundamental shifts over the last 10 years as web sites have evolved, and consumer behavior have shifted in how they interact with the web. As sites have become more complex, content has taken a back seat to other dynamic site features creating even more complex technology solutions. In turn, this makes attempting to deploy an “all in one suite” incredibly difficult, leading to services-to-licenses ratios of 6, 7, and even 8:1. Percussion’s CM1 and CM System attack this over-customization head-on, and provide an alternative product strategy for both the business and IT departments.
At their core, both CM1 and CM System are based on the same dynamic code structure, and are both fundamentally de-coupled architectures; meaning that Percussion’s products do not require clients to add any technology on the delivery tier. This is important particularly for companies with higher-end websites, who have invested substantial amounts of time and money into a complex delivery architecture. These companies appreciate the fact that Percussion can publish content to the site without requiring changes to that architecture. For sites like AutoTrader.com and Weather.com, this is their number one requirement. Furthermore, since higher end sites like Healthcare.gov and Vegas.com often have other complex applications running in their delivery tier, CM System has a number of integration points to ensure that the WCM technology can be configured to fit their environment.
The WCM products’ roles in the market diverge from here. CM1 was designed and developed to address this critical issue noted earlier: systems are just too complex to deploy and use and are getting more complex every day. This results in companies paying relatively little for the software license, but then spending a massive amount in services to deploy the software and get it working.
Unfortunately, once deployed, user adoption is often low because these more complex WCM systems are not easy for the content owner to use and still require ongoing support from the web development team. For a company with a relatively small web marketing team, this appears to be an extremely daunting task which is why a large number of companies still use custom developed Dreamweaver-type applications to run their sites.
Through its “drag and drop” style user interface, CM1 returns control to the marketing/business owner. Marketers are now able to make the vast majority of changes they require; from content updates, to new template creation, to navigation changes, forms, etc., without having to go back to their IT teams for assistance.
Also noteworthy; CM1 uses a widget-based approach to new functionality. New features are made available as a widget that can be plugged directly into the existing installation. This gives marketers the flexibility to take advantage of new features when the need arises, rather than trying to guess at what their needs might be in the coming years.
In short, CM System is most appropriate for high-volume, highly complex web sites with thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of pages. Whereas CM1 is the perfect solution for the smaller organizations that do not have a large web support team, but recognize the value of a true content managed website.
CC: What success stories has Percussion had over the last few years? Have there been any significant implementations that you are especially proud of?
JW: The last several years have been quite good for Percussion and we are pleased with our results so far. On the product side, we’ve made some significant enhancements to CM System as it reached its 7th major version. And we are particularly proud of the effort to launch our CM1 offering as an alternative for companies in search of a WCM solution with features similar to more complex products, but more streamlined for non-technical teams.
With CM1 we set out to fundamentally re-think how web content could be managed. We looked at the key problems that were still unresolved in the market, and determined that giving the power of controlling content creation and delivery back to the Marketer was a critically important need not being addressed. In general, Marketers were continually making trade-offs between the promise of the web; and what was possible with their systems, and between what was required; and how much bandwidth IT had to develop against those requirements.
Starting with that basic buyer pain, we examined every aspect of managing content to identify ways to apply innovation and “change the game”. We started with the user experience. The dynamic approach that we took to the UI in CM1 is fundamentally different than anything we have seen in the commercial WCM market to date. We developed the user experience with the business user in mind, adopting their language for activities, and designed things such as; the ability to create new templates with a “drag and drop” style to empower the business user to do more on their own. We were recently named a MITX Award finalist for Best UX which was an extremely gratifying testament to what we have achieved.
The second area we applied innovation is around “how to get started using web content management”. Most commercial systems require a substantial investment in services to customize and integrate the technology framework that the vendor provides. We wanted to deliver a system that the organization could deploy on their own, with little intervention from the web development team, and most importantly, no involvement at all from a services organization. Our support team assists when needed, but our clients appreciate that they can cut out the services investment and just focus on buying a software product.
As CM1 approaches Version 2.0 we have made significant inroads into the market. Right at the end of June, two new customers—Saba Software and MacPhail Center for Music—went live on CM1 and the momentum continues to build.
We have had a number of other very exciting developments on the customer front, including a new win with The Weather Channel’s weather.com. And long-time customer AutoTrader.com continues to transform their publishing model to ramp up the volume of content. They are going from a pace of under 100 new articles in a full year, to one where they publish over 10 new articles a day — a pretty dramatic transformation for sure.
Our work with the US Department of Health and Human Services continues to ramp up as well. Our success here has created a number of different partner ecosystems around Percussion, both in the technology and integration communities. Embracing these new channels is leading to some new and interesting opportunities in the near term.
Perhaps one of the most interesting stories came from our work at HHS (US Department of Health and Human Services). We were recently asked to deploy a new site www.stopbullying.gov in just six days! The President and First Lady were planning to announce a major anti-bullying initiative through Facebook this past March, and the main website needed to be live to support the scheduled launch date of March 10, 2011. Therefore the new site had to be developed and deployed in an extremely tight timeframe. Needless to say the President’s deadline was not arbitrary, and we made it easily.
CC: What do you think differentiates Percussion's CMS product line from the numerous other products on the market?
JW: We have our opinions on what differentiates us for sure. These are generally on our bias towards product rather than frameworks, our decoupled architecture, and our relentless focus on control over web content for the end user (Marketers). But we prefer to let the work we are doing with our customers define that point of differentiation.
I talked a moment ago about Weather.com. We have a great video on our site offering a testimonial on why they chose us. Interestingly, they had already evaluated other vendors in the market and had resigned themselves to building a content management tool internally. When they saw that they could get a fully functioning web content management system, and not have to make ANY changes to their newly launched website, they saw tremendous value in Percussion’s decoupled architecture.
From the perspective of CM1, we are providing our customers with an un-matched level of control. We have a few customers who have taken on the deployment process themselves, with only “check-in” help from us. And now that they are live, will have greater flexibility than ever before, as we discussed earlier.
There are many features along the way that are truly different, but the value we provide our customers — to help solve their most pressing challenges — is the true meaning of our differentiation.
CC: There is a strong call for social enablement and integration within websites and intranets nowadays, how does Percussion handle these requirements?
JW: I would have joked that “Social is the new black” but it has become clear that actually “Mobile is the new black”, and Social is the black shoes that you just have to have in your wardrobe—you are never sure when you are going to wear them, but you know you have to have them.
Knowing that most companies are still testing “how they will drive social engagement”, we handle this in two distinct ways:
The first pivots on our integration capability with other systems. If you already have a social CRM or personalization process in place, we simply plug into that rather than requiring that you rip it out and start over with ours. That approach substantially lowers the risk to the organization in rolling out our web content management products.
The second approach for companies embarking on this journey, is through our community marketing modules. This is an add-on module that allows companies to get started with delivering personalized content, manage things like favorites, comments and ratings, and user generated content. And of course our blog platform provides a strong content managed blog that integrates with the overall structure of the site, and enables content re-use across the blog, the site, and micro sites.
In addition, as part of our ongoing quest to give greater control and flexibility to our customers, we are working to make this even easier to install down the road. We hear often from prospects that they are “thinking that they want to do personalization but just not yet….” In short, they want to know that they can embark on the social enablement journey when they are ready, rather than being forced to take it on when they first deploy the WCM.
CC: What do you consider the most important / powerful feature of your software?
JW: As noted earlier, the ability to return control over content to the business user, while giving the technology team the flexibility to easily deploy a web content management product is Percussion’s most important development.
CC: What can we expect to see from the next release?
JW: Everything we are focused on is to make the experience of managing content easier for our customers. With that in mind, we aim to make each release even more about product, and less about services. We work to provide greater control and flexibility for our customers to do what they want to do on the web today, and prepare better for whatever is coming next on the web.
CC: We often ask each of our intervieweeʼs to share their personal definitions of the word CMS? These are shared on our <a href="/what-is-a-cms">What is a CMS?</a> page.
JW: Over the last few years there have been many shifts in how people use this term. We have WCM for web, WEM for experience or engagement management “suites” etc. Most of it is driven by vendors trying to carve out a space for themselves in the market.
We are pretty comfortable with sticking to the term web content management as a definition that supports publishing content out on to the web. However, clearly the concept of “the web” has morphed from your static company site, to reflect new channels and communities like Facebook and mobile.
So today we think much more broadly about where that content winds up then the old year 2000 view of the web. But at the end of the day, companies need to push content (and much more than ever before), in many forms, out into many more digital channels. For now, and the foreseeable future, a web content management system is your best platform to achieve that goal.
CC: Thank you sir, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
You can learn more about Percussion from their website: <a href="http://www.percussion.com">Percussion CMS</a>

Interview with Joseph Wykes, President of Percussion

We were very pleased to have a chance to interview Dries Buytaert, founder of the legendary <a href="http://drupal.org/" target="_blank">Drupal</a> content management system. He shares his thoughts on its success, future and how it came to be in this intriguing and indepth discussion. We had so many questions, that we are only publishing part one while he works on the second half.
Here you go.
CC: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, Dries. We'd like to cover a few areas during this interview.. specifically Drupal and your latest venture, Acquia.
Can you tell us a little about your background and how you became involved in the world of Content Management Systems?
DB: I was a student at the University of Antwerp in Belgium around 1999. I was doing web development with CGI and server-side includes, but I wanted to learn more about technologies like PHP and MySQL. Also, at the same time, we had the need for an internal messaging system at our student dorm. So, I wrote a simple message board. Then when I graduated, I decided to move my internal message board onto the internet.
CC: Our understanding is that Drupal originally started as a BBS system, having been very involved in the BBS realm ourselves, we find this very interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about how it came to be and was it as popular as a BBS as it is today?
DB: Drupal began as an internal message board that I used to manage my student activities. We just used it in my student dorm to communicate about dinner times, etc. Once I graduated, I began transforming it into a news and discussion website: <a href="http://www.drop.org/">www.drop.org</a>.
After a year or so, I released the software behind drop.org as Drupal 1.0.0, and Drupal officially came to be on January 15, 2001. Contributors still celebrate this as Drupal’s birthday every year.
CC: According to sources, Drupal’s name came about by accident. Is this true? Can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the name?
<img title="Drupal Content Management System" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/drupal-141x150.jpg" alt="Dries Buytaert" />
DB: Yes. Initially, I wanted to register the site under the Dutch word “dorp” which in English means “village” or “small town”. While registering the domain, I made an error and typed “Drop” instead of “Dorp”. I was shocked to see that Drop.org was still available, so I decided to keep the domain. As such, the first Internet website powered by an online version of Drupal was Drop.org. Drupal did not get its name until I released it as open source software in early 2001.
CC: Did you ever expect Drupal to get to the level of popularity it is at today?
DB: Not at all, I started all this as a hobby and quickly got out of hand. After I moved it to the public internet, I continued to build on it for over a year and added a lot of features. But, it continued to be an experimental platform to learn from and apply new web technologies such as RSS feeds and content and user rating.
I increased my experiments and development and drew the attention of an audience that was also interested in the future of the internet. This audience provided suggestions and was also active with state of the art web technologies and they increasingly began providing me with feedback. At a certain time the feedback took on such a level that I thought I should provide the engine to them so they could start there own experimenting and applying there own suggestions to it. This is how it got moved to Open Source, and also how the community started.
I must say though that I felt good making it available to the Open Source community. I had looked at other similar systems such as phpnuke but with my background in computer science I could really say that the architecture and design were much better. People were asking for modifications but I thought it was really well and worth of being seen, especially compared to other state of the art Content Management Systems written in PHP. So made available without too much expectations but it got the reputation after all. I of course continued to work hard on it.
CC: What do you feel are the core strengths of Drupal and why?
DB: The core strength of Drupal is definitely the open source community that is behind the project. I am constantly amazed by the innovation that comes out of the thousands of dedicated Drupal contributors. There are thousands of add-on modules that can be used to successfully power online communities, blogs, and collaboration environments. Furthermore, Drupal’s modularity makes it much easier to use and extend than traditional content management systems.
CC: With the numerous other open source projects on the market today, what separates Drupal and helps it stand out from the pack?
DB: Drupal has been a pioneer from the start by embracing new technologies and being on the front lines when it comes to web development. But what separates Drupal is its modularity – the combination of a core package and then task-specific modules that can be added as needed.
This modularity was part of Drupal’s initial design. I was sort of shocked that most of the other systems didn’t have a modular design — to me, with my background as a computer science student, that felt like a very natural thing to do. I was also involved in the Linux project back then, working on wireless network drivers. That’s also obviously a modular system, so I may have gotten some inspiration from there as well.
Drupal’s modular design makes it attractive to both technical and non-technical users. If you look at Content Management Systems, they have eliminated the traditional role of the webmaster. This role has evolved more into a role of content editor.
My vision for Drupal is to do the same for the developers (role). I think there is a lot of room to eliminate the traditional web developer, eliminating might be a bit too strong, but re-define the role of the web developer at least. The way we try to accomplish this in Drupal is with a modular approach so users can build web sites quickly without having to do any programming, in other words one does not have to be a true developer to build a feature rich and interactive web site. I hope we can make a big step forward with this in the next five years.
CC: There are some who say that Drupal is trying to do too much too quickly… and its hard to keep up. Specifically, if you visit the Drupal site today there are 4 versions that modules are being created for. What is your response to this?
DB: A huge community has grown up around Drupal, with thousands of active contributors to the open source project, including nearly 2,000 community-developed modules for extending Drupal functionality. Drupal’s thriving, vibrant ecosystem is the very reason that Drupal is so successful – it is its greatest strength. However, it’s true that Drupal can be overwhelming to those that don’t have the time or resources to invest in staying on top of Drupal’s latest offerings, updates, etc., which is why I founded Acquia. Acquia addresses these challenges by packaging some of the best software from the project and by providing continuously available support.
CC: What are the largest sites you are aware of that run on the Drupal platform and why do you think they chose it?
DB: A diverse list of organizations are using Drupal including Lifetime Television, MTV UK, Universal Music, SonyBMG, Warner Brothers Records, New York Observer, Forbes, The Onion, Harvard University, Amnesty International and tens of thousands more. I believe there are 2 primary reasons people have chosen Drupal. The first is the Drupal community – it consists of thousands of passionate, talented people who believe in the future of the Web and invest their time and energy to contribute to the project. Second, Drupal’s modular architecture makes it a flexible platform to build great websites.
CC: How does someone decide whether to install Drupal 5 or 6? It seems that in order to use the majority of available modules, one must use the 5.x edition? What do you say to this?
DB: As with any software package, someone building a website in Drupal must map their requirements to the modules and capabilities available. From the beginning, I chose not to preserve backward compatibility because doing so requires that you drag historical baggage along, and in interpreted languages like PHP, this comes at a significant performance cost.
Our mission has always been to make Drupal fast, small, clean and on the bleeding-edge of technology. In the early days I focused completely on the aesthetics of Drupal's code. I spent days trying to do something better, with fewer lines of code and more elegant than elsewhere. And with me, many others. It was the right thing to do. Over the years, we've seen a lot of innovations happen that would not likely have happened while preserving backward compatibility – the node system being one of the most prominent examples.
Developers always had free reign to implement their ideas in the best possible way. It is something that Drupal has in its favor compared to many other content management systems. It's been interesting to see how Drupal has spread and how it has grown to be more flexible and cover more niches than many other systems. If anything, this needs to be attributed to the fact that we haven't cared much about backward compatibility, and our single-mindedness to get the technology right.
Over time, the vast library of Drupal modules is upgraded to support each major release – given the number of modules, this, admittedly, takes time. As part of this process, we seek to bring popular modules into Drupal core to ensure that capabilities that everyone uses are brought into the core upgrade process.
CC: Can you provide us some details on future development initiatives? Any new changes coming down the pipeline?
DB: We are currently working on Drupal 7 and I named Angie Byron, aka webchick, as my Drupal 7 co-maintainer at Drupalcon Szeged in August of this year. We are focused on improving Drupal in a number of ways – adding features in core, improving usability and performance, creating a test framework and adding lots of tests and simplifying the upgrade process.
Longer term, I see tremendous opportunities for the semantic web and search. For Drupal, this means making Drupal emit structured information. Hundreds of thousands of Drupal sites contain vast amounts of structured data, covering an enormous range of topics, including product information. Unfortunately, that structure is hidden deep in Drupal's database and doesn't surface to the HTML code generated by Drupal. As such, search engines can't pick it up as a product, and they'd fail to include it in their world-wide product database.
Technologies like this disintermediate so many existing websites and organizations that it makes my head spin. It is too great an opportunity for us to pass up on. By adding semantic technology to Drupal core, I think we can make a notable contribution to the future of the web.
CC: Tell us a little about Acquia and why you formed this company.
DB: Acquia helps accelerate Drupal usage by contributing to the advancement of the core technology and offering products, services, and technical support to simplify the deployment and management of Drupal websites.
As a thriving open source project, Drupal changes at such a rapid rate that it can be challenging to find the most useful and relevant modules, keep systems secure and up to date, and find real-time expertise and support to quickly resolve issues. By reducing or eliminating these issues, Acquia improves the effectiveness of organizations already using Drupal and brings the power of Drupal within reach of more organizations who are exploring Drupal for the first time.
CC: How successful have you been so far with this initiative? Who are your biggest customers?
DB: Acquia just launched the general availability of Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network on September 30, 2008. We’ve had more than 4,000 downloads of Acquia Drupal since we launched. We’ve received significant interest in subscriptions to the Acquia Network and have a handful of beta customers already leveraging the Acquia Network including Adobe, which is using Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network to power Flex.org.
The feedback we’ve received so far has been extremely positive supporting my initial suspicion that commercial grade support will lead to increased adoption of Drupal – especially in the enterprise.
CC: What makes the Acquia version of Drupal different from the readily available version we all know and love?
DB: There are thousands of modules available for Drupal. Acquia Drupal is simply a packaged collection of some of the best software from the Drupal project to simplify the process of getting started with Drupal. For experienced Drupal developers and users, it speeds the process of assembling the pieces to start building a website, and it provides a supported foundation should the developer, or in many cases, their clients decide they want to purchase commercial technical support.
The code – Drupal core and all the community modules – in Acquia Drupal is the same code that is available on Drupal.org. Its GPL-licensed and available for free to anyone who wants to use it. Our engineering team works closely with the community module maintainers to contribute back any and all patches we write, making them available to the entire Drupal community whether they choose to use Acquia Drupal or not.
CC: Is your goal to move Drupal away from Open Source and more into a Commercial product offering?
DB: No. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Drupal open source community members have made Drupal the innovative and widely popular social publishing system that it is today. The Drupal community is the foundation for the company and is dependent on the continued development by Drupal community members.
Acquia does not want to take Drupal away from the open source community. Rather, Acquia is stepping up as a community member to collaborate in Drupal code development, increase the industry profile for Drupal, and introduce convenient packaging, support, and remote network services that will make Drupal even easier to adopt and use. Additionally, Acquia Drupal is offered as a free download and all software included in the distribution is licensed under the GNU Public License and contributed back to the Drupal open source project.
CC: Can you tell us a little bit about each of your offerings: Carbon, Spokes, Caliper and Yellow Jersey?
DB: Acquia Drupal (previously code named Carbon) is our commercially supported distribution of the Drupal social publishing system. It is a packaged collection of some of the best software from the Drupal project offering an advanced starting point to quickly begin building social publishing Web sites that blend static pages, blogs, wikis, discussion forums, mashups, and custom content types.
The Acquia Network (previously code named Spokes) provides the essential support and remote network services to efficiently operate sites with Acquia Drupal sites. All subscribers to the Acquia Network gain access to the Acquia Network’s subscriber forums, remote network services such as software update notifications, uptime monitoring, Mollom spam blocking, and Acquia Drupal documentation. Caliper was the code name for the Mollom spam blocking service we are offering through the Acquia Network. Additionally, premium subscriptions provide Web-based ticket management, as well as email and telephone support. The Acquia Network functions as an operations portal for managing Acquia Drupal sites and connecting to Acquia support channels.
Finally, Yellow Jersey is the code name for the training and certification program we are developing. For more information on Yellow Jersey, as well as the future roadmaps for Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network, check out the community section of our website, <a href="http://acquia.com/community" target="_blank">http://acquia.com/community</a> and share your thoughts about where we are headed.

Drupal founder, Dries Buytaert Interview

When it comes to sharing your images on your website in the form of a web gallery, the CMS options for managing the same are many. Whether you wish to create an online portfolio, or simply want to share some photos, choosing the ideal CMS for your web gallery goes a long way in effectively managing the gallery! In this article, we bring to you some of the best known CMS options for web gallery management.
<h2>Zenfolio</h2>
Zenfolio allows you to create beautiful galleries for your photographs with an easy to use and incredibly powerful platform. Features include a portfolio style home page, customizable slideshows with music, custom page elements, photo blogging, scores of themes, pre-built pages that you can choose from, mobile optimization (for tablets and phones, multiple user accounts and much more. There's even an e-Commerce component should you choose to sell your photos for a fee.
http://youtu.be/FWvI-liiXec
Website: <a href="https://en.zenfolio.com/">Zenfolio</a>
<h2>Wix</h2>
Wix is a website builder but it has some amazing functionality for managing picture galleries as well. From sliders to full galleries for your photos, you are sure to find a way to showcase your pictures. The advantage to using a hosted solution such as the one that Wix offers is the speed at which the site loads. With a hosted solution like Wix, your site will not be bogged down with media.
Here's an example of one of their templates:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/f772689190b08068bff2c0c6dd8db184_wix_mp.png" alt="wix" />
Website: <a href="http://www.wix.com/" target="_blank">Wix</a>
<h2>WordPress</h2>
There are numerous themes available for creating amazing galleries with WordPress. Here is a list of direct links to places where you can find some amazing gallery / photo based WordPress themes and Plugins:
<ol>
<li>Photocrati is one of the most advanced gallery centric setups for WordPress you can find – <a href="https://www.photocrati.com/demos/" target="_blank">Try the demo</a></li>
<li>Themeforest has a wide selection of gallery / photo based WordPress themes – <a href="https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress#content" target="_blank">Visit Themeforest</a></li>
<li>Enigma by RocketTheme has an amazing gallery plugin – <a href="https://demo.rockettheme.com/joomla-templates/enigma/" target="_blank">Check it out</a></li>
<li>ElegantThemes has a ton of amazing themes and you get every theme they have for one price (less than $50) – <a href="/elegantthemes" target="_blank">Check them out</a></li>
</ol>
<h2>Coppermine 
</h2>
Coppermine is one of the most popular web gallery CMS based on PHP scripts. It employs a MySQL back end. It is highly customizable by means of plugins and seems to be a perfect choice for creating a photo blog or image gallery online.
Website: <a href="http://coppermine-gallery.net/" target="_blank">Coppermine</a>
<h2>Zenphoto 
</h2>
Zenphoto is arguably the most popular CMS when it comes to sharing images. The goal behind Zenphoto is simple: web gallery management! The interface is sleek and wonderful, with separate tabs for configuring the different components of your gallery. Further more, Zenphoto is supplemented by numerous templates and plugins (including some that feature integration with a WordPress blog).
Website: <a href="http://www.zenphoto.org" target="_blank">Zenphoto</a>
<h2>Piwigo</h2>
If you prefer having a gorgeous theme or template for your gallery (who doesn't, by the way?), Piwigo might just be the right CMS for you. With numerous themes and plugins in its arsenal, Piwigo is a popular open source CMS for web gallery management. It is packed with features, and just in case you are still looking for a web host, Piwigo.com also provides web hosting!
Website: <a href="http://www.piwigo.org" target="_blank">Piwig</a>o
<h2>Gallery</h2>
Gallery is an open source web based photo album organizer. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you're running a small personal site or a large community site.
Website: <a href="http://gallery.menalto.com/" target="_blank">Gallery</a>

Ten Content Management Systems for Photo Galleries

<a href="/products/motocms">MotoCMS</a> is a popular website builder that’s been around since 2009. The site takes a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) approach to website building, and allows users to design, edit, and publish their own website.The WYSIWYG setup means that this process should be pretty simple and intuitive.The software is updated on a regular basis and is designed to appeal to beginners and professionals alike. But does it?I decided to check it out for myself. Read on for my MotoCMS review.<h2>Getting Started</h2>They don’t make this easy. To get setup with MotoCMS, you have to go on a bit of a field trip. Here’s how the process went down:First, you click on the button to get started. This will take you to a screen where you select your chosen industry design.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-05_at_12_40_29636x0-is.png" />After you’ve done this, you can select a template.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-05_at_12_40_53725x0-is.png" />Then, a box pops up to insert your email address and your name.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-05_at_13_46_53490x0-is.png" />And when you’ve done all of this, you receive an email confirmation. Once you click on that, you’re all set.It all felt a bit time-consuming for my liking and it tainted my first impression of the site. There’s an optimal phone verification feature built into this process also, but I felt it just got in the way at this early stage – especially since it doesn’t replace mail verification.Whilst the setup is generally pretty simple, I’ve reviewed a few of these sites now and I’ve come to expect a speedier signup process.<h2>Usability</h2>Once you get to the main site, users are greeted by a ‘Welcome To The Future’ slogan with the MotoCMS logo presented on a plain background. This is bordered by the admin panel, and the overall look is pretty sleek and sophisticated.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-05_at_12_47_14902x0-is.png" />The admin panel utilizes the WYSIWYG system and drag-and-drop functionality, which means that you can see each change as it's implemented. This is especially useful for novice users.A number of step-by-step tutorials are available via popups and this makes the process pretty easy to navigate – especially when it comes to adding pages.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-05_at_14_12_41710x0-is.png" />To add a new page to the site, you simply click on ‘add page’ and a popup will come up asking for the page name and URL. You can then edit the page properties using the options in the right-hand column, such as assigning a URL name and assigning parent pages.If you head over to the ‘Design’ section, you can also edit page specific options such as hiding certain page sections – e.g. the header and footer. By clicking on the viewing tool, you can preview the page to see the exact results.I found the editor to be perfectly fine – the interface was quite quick and lag-free on all the contemporary browser platforms. The UI seemed to lag on the older versions of Firefox, which might be a concern to potential clients on older machines.<h2>Design</h2><h3>Responsiveness</h3>MotoCMS have made great efforts to make their templates as responsive as possible and there are a wide variety of mobile screens to test your designs on. The platform also allows users to hand edit certain elements of the templates. This is a pretty useful feature, as some of the native content can look a little disjointed.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-06_at_22_54_05.png" />This screenshot is a random example. As you can see, the picture box is slightly misaligned. Whilst this won't be a massive issue for everyone, it may irritate the design perfectionists out there.<h3>Templates</h3>MotoCMS offer a wide range of premade templates in various styles and tones. There’s enough variety to meet the design requirements of most businesses, and the templates are arranged by industry type to ensure an easy selection process.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen_shot_2016-03-06_at_22_57_59476x0-is.png" />However, as I mentioned earlier, some of this design excellence is lost in the transition to mobile.<h2>Features</h2><h3>Social Media</h3>MotoCMS have a social media widget that is quite easy to use and allows you to integrate <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/?lang=en">Twitter</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pinterest.com/">Pinterest</a>. It does this quite well, but it would be great to see a few more integration options available.<h3>Extras</h3>In MotoCMS, each template has an option for a few extra paid plug-ins like an SEO Audit and in-Depth Preloader Customization. These vary according to template.MotoCMS do have some basic features like Google Analytics available for free, but that’s a bare minimum for most CMS these days.<h3>Widgets</h3>A wide range of useful and functional widgets are available as drag-and-drop items on the page editor. This selection includes galleries/portfolios, contact forms, text boxes, videos, and google maps.The eCommerce widget is a premium extra and it’s quite expensive (up to $159), but there’s no other option if you want eCommerce functionality on your MotoCMS site.<h3>Blogging</h3>Only some of MotoCMS’s templates feature a blogging section, which will create a bit of a roadblock for many potential users. They have a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.motocms.com/blog/en/motocms-templates-with-blog-functionality/">few</a> templates with blogging options as standard, but the selection is extremely limited.<h3>Pricing</h3>MotoCMS offers a 14 day free trial period. After this, you're provided with a range of price options that are arranged in pack sizes. This applies to your own drag-and-drop creations.Their basic price option includes a MotoCMS 3 website template for $199 and a HTML template for $139. There are optional extras available such website installation, an eCommerce plugin, an Advanced eCommerce plugin, or a ready-made website.All of their plans and templates come with 24/7 customer support which doesn't discriminate by price. The pricing is very straightforward and transparent.<h2>Pros:</h2>The full hosting package gives users a comprehensive website including hosting.The site has a nice range of contemporary templates that are perfectly suited to their ‘genre’.The WYSIWYG interface is straightforward enough.Sleek UI and UX design means that navigating is a breeze.<h2>Cons:</h2>The interface is a little clogged with sales pitches, offers of customer support help and calls to action. Distracts a little from the experience.Signup feature is a little clunky and time consuming. Too much market research crammed in.The responsive versions of the main templates look very disjointed.Only some templates have blogging features as standard.<h2>Conclusion</h2>MotoCMS is a decent CMS option for small businesses. It’s a bit lacking in the features department, and the page editor is just about average, but it does provide good value and excellent hosting capabilities.The template selection is decent and their template + hosting package is definitely good value.The problem with MotoCMS is that it isn’t really the obvious choice for either the beginner or the professional. It sits on the fence a bit in this regard.The design professional may not be overly impressed with the features available, and the less experienced site builder may find it a little too complex. Not a massive issue, but it’s worth noting.Overall, MotoCMS provide a decent service at a reasonable price, and you can mix and match the plugins as you need. The lack of a blogging platforms available will be an issue for some, but this is still a site builder that’s worth checking out.For more information, visit the MotoCMS site <a href="/products/motocms">here.</a>Have you used MotoCMS or are you interested in trying it out? We'd love to hear from you in the comments section below.

MotoCMS Review 2016

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<a href="https://buttercms.com/">ButterCMS</a> is an API-based or “headless” CMS enabling developers to query the Butter API to pull content into the app, using any tech stack of choice such as <a href="https://buttercms.com/angular-cms/">Angular</a> or <a href="https://buttercms.com/react-cms/">React</a>.
ButterCMS eliminates the need for setup and configuration and has a pre-defined data structure optimized to handle a variety of content. Developers can use their preferred tools and frameworks to build interfaces for marketing teams. Creating different content delivery channels is achieved with minimal effort.  Marketers and non technical users can easily create and edit content without concern for different channels, administration issues and technical aspects.
Users experience a faster and more responsive application while consuming high quality content on any delivery channel. In continuing to simplify content management and provide high performance, here are some product updates since our last post.
<h2>New Knowledge Base</h2>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/buttercms_knowledgebase.png" alt="Butter CMS Knowledge Base" /><figcaption>Butter CMS Knowledge Base</figcaption></figure>
ButterCMS launched a brand new knowledge base, a repository for How to’s, FAQ’s, different uses cases and examples on Write API.  The objective is to gain the most value from Butter by 
investigating all the different features, capabilities and discovering new Butter use cases. This knowledge base highlights other ideas for  maximum value with Butter beyond blogging.
<h3>New RegEx Validation Field Validations</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/specific-patterns_v1.png" alt="Butter CMS RegEx Validation Field" /><figcaption>Butter CMS RegEx Validation Field Validations</figcaption></figure>
With our recent additions to set the minimum/maximum length for a short text field in a long text field, we have now enhanced the fields to use specific patterns (technically regular expressions). This means the content editor can set the format for how the specific short text should be formulated.  So for example, if an email address is needed in the short field, you can specify that pattern to be the pattern of an email address.  Users are required to put in the correct text answer of the needed information.
In addition to the default patterns to choose from (E-mail, URL, US Phone number, US Zip Code), users can also select, ‘Custom’ and designate your own pattern. This is a very powerful feature as one can customize and require the answers to be the exact data needed while reducing time and error.
<h3>Previewing Blog Posts</h3>
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blog_post_preview_v1-1.png" alt="Butter CMS Blog Post Preview URL" /><figcaption>Butter CMS Blog Post Preview URL</figcaption></figure>
ButterCMS has improved the blog post tool by adding the preview draft post functionality.  Content editors can easily view draft blog posts, after pressing the preview button and make changes before the post goes live.
Butter CMS is an API-driven CMS enabling developers to use modern technologies to build websites and applications. The goal is to launch the CMS capability faster so users can focus more on the business.
<h3>Wrap up</h3>
A headless CMS presents itself as a developer friendly alternative to traditional CMS's like WordPress.  ButterCMS has a pre-defined data structure optimized to handle a variety of content while also eliminating the need for set up and configurations. Providing localization, multi-site support and search engine optimization, developers can use their preferred tech stacks to build interfaces. Marketers can easily create and edit content without having technical skills. If you’re wondering if a headless CMS is a right fit for your project, ButterCMS offers a 30-day free trial for you to try out and provide content migration support if you’re moving from an existing CMS.

ButterCMS launches New Knowledge base with enhancements

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