Articles - Page 109

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Here's Why CMS Is Your 'Unsung Hero' in 2025

janus-boye

<a href="http://www.jahiaone.com/" target="_blank">Jahia One 2015</a> is right around the corner. The three-day event will take place between June 10th and 12th in the heart of beautiful Paris.
Last year, the CMS Critic team (made up of Mike Johnston and myself) attended Jahia One 2014, the company's first ever international conference. <a href="/search/?q=jahiaone" target="_blank">We covered the event in detail here on CMS Critic</a>, and also <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic" target="_blank">live-tweeted</a> all the best parts to keep you all updated.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/logo-1.png" />
Thanks again to the hospitality of Jahia, Mike and I will be in attendance again this year, providing the same level of coverage.
Here's what you can expect to see from Jahia One 2015.
<h2>Six Customer Testimonials, Feedback &amp; Free Certification</h2>
No less than six of Jahia's customers are coming to share their experiences with the platform.
Europcar, Delta Faucet, National Governers Assocciation, Belambra, MAAF and B4Bank will all be presenting their stories and testimonials at allocated times throughout the event. These testimonials typically offer an awesome insight into how the product in question works on the ground, facing real-life obstacles.
<a href="http://www.jahiaone.com/register" target="_blank"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/jahia1079x0.png" /></a>
Attendees will get to know Jahia's Tech Partner Program a little better, too. The program is aimed at offering off-the shelf integration with 3rd party software to enable users to build their own UXP, fully-integrated with popular third-party products. Some of those Tech Partners will be present at the event, so users can get to know them a little better.
Developers can also grab themselves a free certification exam to validate their skills and knowledge on Jahia Digital Factory 7.
And finally, Jahia have welcomed direct feedback and suggestions from users attending Jahia One 2015. They have requested that all ideas be submitted here, as the top three suggestions will be announced at the Jahia One 2015 Gala Dinner, held on June 12th.
To learn more about Jahia One 2015, and to register for the event, <a href="http://www.jahiaone.com/" target="_blank">check out the official website</a>.
And of course, stay tuned for our coverage of the event, and <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic" target="_blank">follow us on Twitter for the live-tweets</a>!

Jahia One 2015 Is Just Days Away!

mike-johnston

There's always space in the market for easy to use tools that small business owners can use to create their websites. Today, the folks responsible for the popular uCoz website builder have announced the release of their new drag and drop website builder designed specifically for small businesses.
<h2>Meet uKit.</h2>
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dpWHlcwkvog?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<a href="https://ukit.com/"> uKit </a> is a drag-and-drop website builder that empowers micro and small sized businesses to create personalized websites in an easy yet effective way.
The user-created websites are designed to adapt seamlessly across all devices including mobile tablets and smartphones. While offering a range of templates and custom design options, the site limits user customizations based on recommendations from design professionals to help customers avoid “development gone wrong” scenarios like mismatched fonts, awkward color combinations, unprofessional headers and other design mishaps.
<blockquote>
“Micro, small businesses and freelancers account for over 95% of the world’s enterprises and with increasing competition, an online presence has become even more vital. In the United States alone, around 50% of the businesses don’t have a website. We want to help business owners save on initial start-up costs with a do-it-yourself solution that is highly flexible and professional, yet affordable,” says Evgeny Kurt, uKit’s CEO and Co-Founder of uCoz.
</blockquote>
Currently available in English and Russian, uKit appears to be a great new option to consider trying before making your decision on which website builder you'll choose for your business.
In addition to the existing functionality, more features are planned for later this year including: A landing page generator; a “magic wand” tool — an automatic AI-assisted conversion from the FB pages and outdated websites to new, redesigned responsive business websites and a white label solution for partners.
<h2>Screenshots</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ukit_admin_interface803x0.jpg" alt="Website Builder for Small Business" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ukit_template_editing803x0.jpg" alt="Website Builder for Small Business" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ukit_mobile_view803x0.jpg" alt="Website Builder for Small Business" />
<a href="https://ukit.com/">Learn more about uKit.</a>

Announcing uKit, a Drag and Drop Website Builder for Small Business

LightCMS Developer Program users will be excited to hear about a newly improved pricing feature, making it easier to bill clients according to differing resource needs.
<a href="https://www.websitebuilderscritic.com/website_builders/reviews/lightcms/" target="_blank">As demonstrated on Website Builders Critic</a>, LightCMS, is a website builder suited for building blogs, business websites, and online stores in a matter of minutes. LightCMS is a growing force in the website builder niche thanks to over 275,000 users and a recent <a href="/the-winner-of-the-2014-peoples-choice-cms-award-for-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">People's Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS for SMB</a>.
This latest update focused on a new pricing plan for Developer Program users, as well as featured images for blog posts.
<h2>Price Plans &amp; Featured Images</h2>
Developer Program users can use the newly introduced Price Plan Builder to make up to 5 unique pricing plans for their clients.
The Price Plan Builder lets user set; Plan Names, Maximum number of pages, Maximum GB of storage, Maximum number of products and of course an actual price for the plan(s).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/pricingplans.jpg" />
For the bloggers out there, LightCMS now allows for each blog post to be given a featured image.
A new image can be uploaded, or an existing one can be used.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blogpostwithfeaturedimage1079x0.jpg" />
To find out more about this release, check out the official announcement.
And of course, be sure to explore more of LightCMS via our CMS Directory.

LightCMS Gives Greater Pricing Power to Developer Program Users

It's usually a good sign, when a product emerges from a team which would otherwise be part of the intended target market.
<a href="http://mbsy.co/webydo/cmscritic" target="_blank"> Webydo</a> was unveiled in 2012, crafted by a web design agency who confess that, “we needed Webydo ourselves”. The cloud-hosted solution works on a WYSIWYG basis, giving users a browser based and completely codeless website builder.
<a href="http://mbsy.co/webydo/cmscritic" target="_blank"> <img style="max-width:144px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webydo-logo.png" /> </a>
The platform powers thousands of websites, and boasts a wide range of user-friendly features. Here's an introductory video to get started with.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vFrMO-InkiU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<h2>Drag, Drop, Animate</h2>
Let's now take a look at some of Webydo's core features.
As with most website builders, Webydo is designed from the ground up to be accessible to everybody. That means there's no code to worry about, and features like drag-and-drop page building are deeply rooted in the user experience.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/193-10c737f4-3698-4fd1-95cf-0801294c8d60.jpg" />
Users can drag-and-drop page elements like images, text, flash, forms, galleries, and so forth. Elements can then be resized, relocated and edited accordingly.
Webydo also gives its user base animation options, through its Parallax Scrolling Animator.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/193-0f04f419-2a08-4cd0-84b7-58252cc890e5.gif" />
The Animator enables users to animate any element on a page with unique motion paths, transitions and speed using a simple, codeless visual interface. It's the type of tool which can bring a website to life in ways that many other website builders don't allow.
Further features include eCommerce capabilities, responsive design, custom domains, automatic backups, as well as blogging and article management.
Webydo as a whole portrays itself with a sense of minimalism. Black and white interfaces are everywhere, with pretty much no clutter for the sake of beauty. It's a platform aimed at serious web designers looking for a serious website builder.
<h2>A Community Effort</h2>
As previously mentioned, Webydo sprung from a web design agency in need. Today though, it's a community effort.
Webydo's CMO Yam Regev explains.
<blockquote>“Webydo was founded as an internal solution, but quickly grew into a product after we witnessed a massive demand within the web design agency industry.
We quickly generated huge interest and now we have over 150k users in our community. These days professional designers don't have an independent SaaS solution and Webydo plans to be the solution that empowers designers to take full control of the web publishing space.
Our community is fully involved with the development of the product and will ultimately determine the success of the product.”</blockquote>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weby.png" />
The Webydo forum is where the community congregates.
Users are encouraged to share suggestions and even vote on popular ideas. It's a system rarely embraced by top-tier CMS, and it's nothing less than refreshing to see in action at Webydo.
To find out more about Webydo, <a href="http://mbsy.co/webydo/cmscritic" target="_blank"> visit their website</a>.
Also, be sure to explore more of Webydo via our CMS Directory.

Webydo: SaaS Design Canvas for Web Design Professionals

<a href="https://ghost.org/" target="_blank">Ghost</a> users can now preview their posts within their chosen theme before publication.
The free and cloud-hosted blogging solution was crowned winner of the <a href="/2014-most-promising-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Most Promising CMS</a>.
As one of the most exciting blogging platforms on the market, Ghost already does a lot of things right. But post previewing was certainly a missing feature, and will no doubt be welcomed by Ghost users.
<h2>See It &amp; Share It</h2>
Now, Ghost users can open the post settings menu and hit the post preview link to see exactly what the post is going to look like before it goes live. Users will see the post in the context of their active theme — exactly as any visitor would see it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/preview-ui.jpg" />
Interestingly, users can also send a preview link to others for proof-reading or feedback purposes.
Ghost Pro users already have access to this new feature. Self-hosted Ghost users will need to upgrade to <a href="https://ghost.org/download/">Ghost 0.6.3</a> in order to benefit.
You can see the <a href="http://blog.ghost.org/post-previews/" target="_blank">official announcement right here</a>.
Otherwise, be sure to explore more of <a href="/products/ghost/" target="_blank">Ghost via our CMS Directory</a>.

Ghost Introduces Post Previews

<a href="http://www.clarabridge.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Clarabridge, Inc.</a> today announced the acquisition of <a href="https://engagor.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Engagor,</a> the most comprehensive platform for real-time social customer service and engagement. The combined offering provides a complete, end-to-end technology solution for marketers, customer care organizations and operations teams to create more profitable customer relationships.
Founded by Folke Lemaitre in 2011, Belgium-based Engagor offers a robust social listening and engagement platform for marketers and customer care organizations at Fortune 1000 businesses. With the acquisition of Engagor, Clarabridge now offers more extensive customer experience management capabilities. The Clarabridge platform, which collects, analyzes, and activates customer feedback data from all channels, gains the additional functionality of advanced social listening, publishing, governance, along with real-time social customer service and engagement.
<blockquote>
“As the market has expanded, leading enterprises are looking for solutions that can bring together customer feedback from all channels into one intelligence hub, and a robust mechanism for intelligently engaging with customers,” said Sid Banerjee, CEO of Clarabridge. “This acquisition is a tremendous opportunity for us to solidify our position in the marketplace as the most comprehensive CEM technology provider, with a platform that operationalizes customer experience insights. Our vision is shaped by our clients, and we’re focused on operationalizing the customer voice through the wide distribution and adoption of intelligence tools.”
</blockquote>
Clarabridge continues to gain and keep the momentum that started with <a href="http://www.clarabridge.com/press/clarabridge-secures-80m-in-new-funding-to-drive-customer-experience-management/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$80 million in growth funding</a> in late 2013, followed by the 2014 <a href="http://www.clarabridge.com/press/clarabridge-acquires-market-metrix/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">acquisition of survey software provider MarketMetrix</a>. The addition of Engagor’s 360 clients in the enterprise space, including Volvo, Ikea, Pepsi and Nintendo, brings Clarabridge’s base up to more than 800 clients worldwide.
Direct engagement with customers on social channels boosts sales and leads to increased customer loyalty. The Engagor solution acquires and analyzes social data, and provides customer service and marketing staff the ability to interact directly with the customer. The platform also enables customer service teams to manage and monitor individual and team performance. Using the platform, businesses resolve customer complaints and process customer requests.  
<blockquote>
“We strongly believe that you have to put the data into the hands of people that can do something with it to truly impact business performance,” said Folke Lemaitre, founder and CEO of Engagor. “I’m excited that we are joining Clarabridge with a shared mission of helping businesses fully understand their customers in order to better serve their needs—creating long-term loyalty and increasing profitability.”
</blockquote>
Clarabridge plans to sell the Engagor solution as a standalone product, as well as part of the Clarabridge suite. The Engagor product is already integrated with the Clarabridge Intelligence Platform. The Engagor team will join Clarabridge with offices in Ghent, Belgium and San Francisco, California.
<a href="http://www.clarabridge.com/clarabridge-engagor" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Find more details here.</a>

Clarabridge Acquires Engagor CEM

<a href="http://liferay.com/" target="_blank">Liferay, Inc.</a>, has rolled out its latest project – Liferay Screens – in order to aid companies develop native apps for iOS and Android platforms.
Liferay is a vendor for <a href="http://liferay.com/">open source portals</a> designed for enterprising companies and organizations. Their clients include Fortune 500 companies such as Allianz, Siemens, Toyota and the United Nations to name but a few.
According to Liferay, Liferay Screens is a, “collection of fully native mobile components, using all the power of your Liferay Portal as an enterprise grade mobile back-end.”
<h2>Responding to the Mobile Explosion</h2>
In case you haven't heard, mobile is pretty darn big nowadays.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/liferay.png" />
This release is part of Liferay’s larger push to provide a mobile platform for companies developing several native apps across business units. Through Liferay Screens, the company hopes to save its customers time and money by making it easier for mobile apps to reuse core data and services.
Here are some of the benefits that Liferay Screens brings to the table.
<ul>
<li>Liferay Screens comes fully compatible with standard development tools for iOS and Android</li>
<li>Lowers learning curve for developing apps backed by reusable back end services</li>
<li>Helps developers comply with UX and Brand requirements using Screens Themes, which follow Apple and Google’s design languages and allow for custom colors</li>
<li>Adaptive layouts automatically ensure apps function and appear correctly on phones and tablets of any form factor</li>
<li>Reusable services like registration, user management, localization, and authentication help developers focus on more important business logic</li>
</ul>
Juan Fernandez, Liferay's Product Manager, had this to say upon the release of Liferay Screens:
<blockquote>“The problem we’re trying to solve for companies is, ‘how do we quickly build great mobile apps that integrate with the overall customer experience, while keeping development costs to a minimum?
Companies have to respond to the mobile explosion, but they need to do so with a strategy. With Liferay Screens, you can develop high-quality, elegant mobile apps quickly without compromising on these long-term considerations.”</blockquote>
Find out more about Liferay Screens.
Also, be sure to check out <a href="/products/liferay/" target="_blank">Liferay through our CMS Directory</a>.

Liferay Speeds Up Mobile App Development With Liferay Screens Release

Semrush - Be an SEO hero

Be an SEO hero with Semrush

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Hippo 10 has been released, and it brings a new focus on content performance along with it.
Last year's CMS Awards saw Hippo CMS win in two categories; the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-free-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Best Free Java CMS</a> and the <a href="/2014-best-enterprise-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 People's Choice CMS Award for Best Enterprise Java CMS</a>. Those victories were no mean feat, considering the competition in the two respective niches.
Touted now as a Content Performance Platform, Hippo 10 enables a data-driven omni-channel content strategy which aims to bring a more personable digital experience for every visitor. It is designed to help businesses understand their visitors – both known and anonymous – before helping them to deliver their content in any context and on any device.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/login.png" />
<h2>A Change in Direction</h2>
Content has always been the priority, and it probably always will be. Hippo 10 in changing the direction of the platform's focus to reflect the personalization-centric times.
Here's how.
A Move Towards Being A Content Performance Platform
Whereas traditional web analytics have focused on the majority and average visitor, Content Performance metrics tailor content delivery to the individual, based on that individual’s real time engagement with content.
Built on the power of the existing Hippo’s relevance engine, the Content Performance Platform adds further precision to real-time personalized content delivery. By providing a continuous feedback loop, Hippo CMS 10 offers actionable insights on content's success in supporting business goals.
A Refreshed User Interface
What good is a software update without a facelift?
Hippo 10 users will benefit from a revamped user interface, offering a new visual style alongside improvements to user interaction, making it more efficient and intuitive for end users.
Personalization, Testing and Continuous Optimization Combined
Given the dynamic nature of personalized onsite content, traditional A/B testing isn't as effective as it once was. During the period that an A/B test reaches statistical significance, the enterprise risks repeatedly delivering the wrong content to the wrong audience. By testing of content (rather than pages) per persona, and dynamically optimizing that content, Hippo CMS 10 avoids the pitfalls of standard A/B testing and drives better user experience for more visitors.
Hippo's multi-pronged bandit algorithm optimises while testing is going on. The algorithm initially tests content versions delivered in equal proportion— adjusting the proportion of content delivered in favour of the well performing content, wasting no time to continuously optimise the digital experience. This approach makes content performance metrics actionable even with a limited number of users in a test group.
Developer Agility
Hippo 10 also offers a major step towards the company’s SaaS and PaaS product vision, enabling developers to truly focus on what’s important: rapid development and continuous deployments.
Thanks to Live Reload functionality, developers utilize their preferred IDE to create code, templates, CSS and JavaScript, which then automatically synchronizes with the Hippo CMS repository. Changes are instantly visible without the need for publication or refresh. All this makes for a tight and optimized loop between code development and deployment.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/running_experiments.png" />
Upon the release of Hippo 10, the company's CEO Jeroen Verberg made the following comments.
“By learning about and responding to the individual visitor’s preferences, interests and intent in- real time, Hippo CMS 10 takes the guesswork out of content strategy.
This release transforms the CMS into a data-driven intelligent marketing technology that measures real-time content performance against the online goals of the enterprise – attracting visitors, improving engagement and increasing conversion.”
For more information on Hippo 10, check out the <a href="http://www.onehippo.org/" target="_blank">Hippo Community Website</a>.
Additionally, be sure to explore more of Hippo via our CMS Directory.

Hippo 10 Release "Transforms" Hippo Into Content Performance Platform

Every day I get several emails from people and companies looking to find the perfect platform for their needs. While I try to answer as many as I can, sometimes emails get missed or I run out of time to answer them or they get buried in the mass of incoming emails. For this reason, we launched the CMS Critic Forums.
On our forums, you can post your question and either myself, Kaya or one of our readers can provide you with suggestions as to which product you might want to explore further. Obviously for complicated questions, some of these may require a separate consulting engagement but we'll certainly do our best to point you in the right direction or, at the very least, offer some methods to help you get there.
The forums are a great place for you to:
<ul>
<li>Ask questions</li>
<li>Request information on a specific product (How would WordPress work as a realty website?, etc)</li>
<li>Share your successes or failure stories (I tried this CMS and it was great or I tried something and hated it and here's my experience).</li>
</ul>
The benefits to you sharing your experiences with our readers are twofold; if you share a horror story, we might be able to connect you with the right people to resolve your issue or if your story is a successful one, you may inspire someone else with your success.
Either way, please participate and help us grow this community to the best it can be.

Free advice for those who are having a tough time finding a CMS

To wrap up our featured week with <a href="https://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">dotCMS</a>, I’m taking a look at how the platform opens doors for developers.
The enterprise-grade Java, open source CMS recently beat off stiff competition to win the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS for SMB</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dotcms-250h.jpg" />
Previously, we <a href="/cms-critic-interviews-dotcms-ceo-tim-brigham/" target="_blank">interviewed dotCMS CEO Tim Brigham</a>, caught a <a href="/a-walkthrough-of-dotcms-3.2-with-cms-critic/" target="_blank">product walkthrough from CTO Will Ezell</a>, discussed the <a href="/whats-new-with-dotcms-3.2-and-the-3.x-series/" target="_blank">dotCMS 3.x series</a>, and caught up with dotCMS both <a href="/dotcms-at-home-or-on-the-cloud-fast-and-flexible/" target="_blank">on the cloud and at home</a>.
Now though, here’s what the award-winning platform is doing for developers.
<h2>DotCMS as an xCMS</h2>
DotCMS is many, many things, and according to Will Ezell, the platform’s CTO, one of those things is an xCMS.
Otherwise known as a User Experience Platform, dotCMS defines xCMS in the following way:
<blockquote>
“An xCMS is a system that provides native content management, search, APIs, rapid development tools and personalization [features] that allow an organisation to centralise presentation and/or management of disparate content and UX systems.”
</blockquote>
Will Ezell goes on to explain in more detail in the video below.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gMTdG4A_fLM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Essentially, what Will Ezell has done, is successfully make the case that dotCMS is more than just a CMS for websites. It’s a “hub” which can push content through all sorts of different channels. It’s a product ready for the generation of Internet-of-things.
DotCMS provides easy and open APIs to query, retrieve (xml &amp; json) and write content, binary assets and even remote widgets. These API calls have been built specifically so that content can be retrieved in real-time and used by external systems.
<h2>Hyper-friendly to Developers: Geolocation, Frameworks &amp; More</h2>
To take a closer look at how dotCMS makes the leap beyond standard websites, here are some of its key features used on the ground.
First up, dotCMS is extremely framework friendly. It can be used with any responsive framework, including Bootstrap, Foundation, Gumby and Skeleton.
Due to being able to use their preferred tools and frameworks, developers can decide between working with a fully customized site, or a completely template and theme controlled presentation or frankly, anywhere in between
Just take a look at dotCMS’ pre-designed themes and templating documentation for a better idea of how this entire process can be streamlined.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-49.png" />
Furthermore, no proprietary tools are needed for web or Java development either, making life even easier and more familiar for development teams.
Elasticsearch driven Geolocation is another feature worth noting. As long as there is a content type with a field supplying latitude and longitude coordinates, content can be dynamically displayed or hidden using Elasticsearch Geolocation queries.
Developers can also have a bit of fun with dotCMS’ remote widget API. Widgets (essentially little apps) can be delivered, fully rendered, as snippets of code to remote systems by calling a RESTful url. All it takes is javascript to pull and display content rich widgets into any webpage or external system.
Support for Spring &amp; OSGi -dynamic plugins as well as CMIS support provide even more room for creativity and options for integration.
DotCMS touts themselves as the developer friendly CMS. No doubt, they might just be your new CMS BFF.
To find out more about dotCMS, <a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">visit their website</a>, or explore more <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">via our CMS Directory</a>.

DotCMS: Breaking Down Barriers for Developers in Content Management

After getting to know the DotCMS 3.x Series, it’s time to take a look at the platform’s flexible cloud offering. For those unaware, <a href="https://dotcms.com" target="_blank">DotCMS</a> is available as an on premise solution, as well as a cloud-based solution.
As one of the leading products in the Java, open source CMS niche, DotCMS recently won the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS for SMB</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dotcms-250h.jpg" />
Previously this featured week, we’ve also had the pleasure of <a href="/cms-critic-interviews-dotcms-platinum-partner-architech/" target="_blank">interviewing DotCMS CEO Tim Brigham</a>. CMS Critic also had the chance to sit through a detailed <a href="/a-walkthrough-of-dotcms-3.2-with-cms-critic/" target="_blank">product walkthrough</a>.
For now though, it’s back to DotCMS as a cloud solution.
<h2>To Cloud Or Not To Cloud: On Premise vs dotCMS Managed Hosting</h2>
The awesome thing about dotCMS is its flexibility when it comes to being cloud based.
dotCMS can be used on premise just as simply as it can be used from the cloud. In fact, clients can even opt for a hybrid of both.
As far as on premise goes, the client will be largely responsible for the maintenance of the entire setup, although companies with experienced technical teams may prefer this option due to the hands-on freedom, there’s no denying the comfort of the cloud.
DotCMS Managed Hosting is easier to scale with, as it enables development teams and IT resources to be focused on building solutions, not administering servers. Thus, overall costs as well as time to market are minimized.
Further flexibility is found with dotCMS Managed Hosting as the cloud solution is available for smaller, single server implementations to mega set-ups using multi-tiered development, staging and production clusters. All configs are scalable and as dotCMS is an Amazon Web Services Technology Partner, solutions can be hosted in one or more of the Amazon geographical region data centers. From a web operations perspective, all this flexibility means it’s likely that dotCMS can be configured to meet the budget and business requirements of most businesses.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-47.png" />
Plus, with dotCMS Managed Hosting, upgrading or moving to bigger (or smaller) instances, or adding more storage is only a support ticket away.
Speaking of support, opting for dotCMS Managed Hosting brings the help and support of the dotCMS team closer. otCMS engineers will keep your servers up to date with the latest dotCMS patches, security updates versions, including major version updates. Plus, all cloud customers enjoy the added security of full nightly, weekly and monthly backups.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-48.png" />
Further to this. Virtual Private Clouds (VPC) are employed to achieve complete separation of your dotCMS cloud instances from all other clients. Either way though, dotCMS clients are never not locked in. They can easily transition from on premise to cloud, and back again should they wish.
<h2>More Cloud Options</h2>
DotCMS also offers a little publicised option that is geared to Proof of Concepts (POC), digital agencies, and start-ups or wherever a single dotCMS server fits the bill. Called dotCMS Cloud – this option provides a single server dotCMS set up that you can order online. Billed as the fastest and easiest way to get started with dotCMS, dotCMS Cloud is another example of the fast and flexible cloud solutions dotCMS is bringing to market.
Reliability, flexibility, support, and scalability all in one solution. Not to mention the shrunken IT and maintenance footprint. That’s why companies are moving to the cloud. It looks like dotCMS is one such CMS that can get you there too.
Learn more about <a href="http://dotcms.com/products/java-cms/managed-hosting" target="_blank">dotCMS Managed Hosting</a>. 
To find out more about dotCMS, <a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">visit their website</a>, or explore more <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">via our CMS Directory</a>.

DotCMS At Home or On the Cloud: Fast and Flexible

<a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">DotCMS 3.2</a> is the latest and greatest version of DotCMS. It boasts plenty of new and useful features, building on the foundations set by versions 3.0 and 3.1.
The Java-based, open source content management system recently won the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS for SMB</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dotcms-250h.jpg" /> Mike Johnston kicked off this featured week with an <a href="/cms-critic-interviews-dotcms-ceo-tim-brigham/" target="_blank">interview with DotCMS CEO Tim Brigham</a>, followed by a <a href="/a-walkthrough-of-dotcms-3.2-with-cms-critic/" target="_blank">product walkthrough with CTO Will Ezell</a>.
Now though, it’s time to look at the forward steps DotCMS with its 3.x series.
<h2>Looking Back at DotCMS 3.0 and 3.1</h2>
The release of DotCMS 3.0 back in November 2014 saw a number of major changes being made both to the user experience, as well as under the platform’s digital hood.
On top of a new enterprise licensing scheme and support portal, DotCMS became the first Java open source CMS to let users build with the power of CSS preprocessors directly into the platform, with the help of Sass and LESS auto-compiling.
Multi-type containers became available to DotCMS users for the first time too, providing huge flexibility to what content a template can render.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/multi-container_700x0.png" />
This also allowed users to greatly reduce the number of templates maintained, thanks to the ability to re-use container code.
A native DotCMS mobile app demo was released on Android and iOS too, giving new users a taste of DotCMS from a mobile device.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dotcms-starter-mobile-app.png" />
The DotCMS team also brought in modern code management tools including Github, Artifactory, Maven, and Gradle.
As for DotCMs 3.1, which was released in March 2015, users were treated to more creative features.
This included, “Pages-as-Content” feature allows you to extend DotCMS content concepts to pages, including; custom Page types, different versions for different language and the ability to create custom attributes per HTML page.
In turn, this allowed for custom workflows to be managed, including the use of “whole pages” in a workflow. This capability helped user experience designers use dotCMS custom workflows more effectively and efficiently, with less code.
<h2>DotCMS 3.2: What’s New</h2>
As previously mentioned, Mike Johnston recently sat down with Will Ezell, DotCMS’ CTO, for a <a href="/a-walkthrough-of-dotcms-3.2-with-cms-critic/" target="_blank">product walkthrough of DotCMS 3.2</a>.
During that walkthrough, Will Ezell said that:
<blockquote>
“[DotCMS is] very easy to develop for, very easy to extend and very easy to engage with. [That’s from] a business user’s perspective, as well as from a web developer’s perspective and a Java developer’s perspective.”
</blockquote>
The walkthrough showcased DotCMS’ inline content editing features, elastic search for geolocation functions, and personalization features.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-43.png" />
Version 3.2 supports 13 CSS frameworks, as well as theme based templates that automatically adapt and optimize content, images and videos to fit mobile devices. This accompanies multi-level caching and clustering abilities, allowing DotCMS to handle huge levels of traffic, and scale accordingly.
DotCMS 3.2 also boasts customizable pages, UTF-8 urls, facets, and also ships with Tomcat 8.0.18. the platform also now supports Java 8 as well as Java 7.
It’s clear that from a product perspective, that dotCMS‘s focus is to empower business users, developers and IT. As CTO Will Ezell mentioned:
<blockquote>
“We’re balancing the needs and dependencies of each stakeholder in a way that removes barriers, not adding unnecessary tooling and layers to get something done. Working with dotCMS should be fast and familiar, no proprietary tools or environments are needed. We had one customer say, “It’s like Christmas for developers.”
</blockquote>
To find out more about dotCMS, <a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank">visit their website</a>, or explore more <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank">via our CMS Directory</a>.

What's New with DotCMS 3.2 (And the 3.x Series)

So far this featured week, we've seen <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-critic-interviews-dotcms-ceo-tim-brigham/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mike Johnston interview DotCMS' CEO Tim Brigham</a> before sitting down with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/a-walkthrough-of-dotcms-3.2-with-cms-critic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CTO Will Ezell for an insightful product walkthrough</a>. I then took a peek at what <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/free-open-source-feature-rich-an-overview-of-dotcms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">DotCMS 3.2 has on offer</a>. 
To get an even better feel for DotCMS as an enterprise CMS solution, Mike Johnston also managed to grab a few moments with Tyler Davey, the VP of Sales at Architech — <a href="http://dotcms.com/company/news/dotcms-and-architech-partner-to-deliver-innovative-digital-experiences" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a DotCMS Platinum Partner</a>. 
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LrtyBkxmLWk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
To find out more about dotCMS, <a href="http://dotcms.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">visit their website</a>, or explore more <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-cloud-cms-for-smb/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">via our CMS Directory</a>.

CMS Critic Interviews DotCMS Platinum Partner Architech

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