Articles - Page 137

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

One of the stops on the <a href="/cms-critic-is-touring-north-america-and-europe-this-year/" target="_blank">CMS Critic North American Tour</a> was at DNN Software, the company behind <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015" target="_blank">DNN Evoq Content</a>.
DNN Evoq Content is used by over 2,000 businesses worldwide, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. DNN was also the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-small-to-midsize-business-net-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award Winner for Best Small to Midsize Business .NET CMS</a>.
The company recently launched DNN Evoq 8, “A CMS built for marketers to deliver today's modern web experiences.”
<img style="max-width:234px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/evoqcontent.png" />
DNN Evoq 8 was released to bring additional focus to the following four key areas:
<h3>1. Content Personalization</h3>
Evoq 8 enables users to build personalization rules that tailor site content based on visitors’ profiles.
Rules can be based on geography, account registration (i.e. registered versus non-registered users), gender, age, recent visits, referral source, search terms and ad clicks.
<h3>2. Page-Level Content Analytics</h3>
Statistics on page views, referrers, unique visitors, and conversions are presented as an overlay on each web page, via data collected and managed by Evoq.
Making these stats more accessible means that any marketer, regardless of their level of proficiency with analytics, can immediately understand how content is performing, without navigating away from the page in question.
<h3>3. Centralized Access to Cloud-Hosted Content Repositories</h3>
Evoq 8 includes built-in connectors to Box, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and SharePoint, making it easy to access any piece of content or digital asset from a single window.
This capability allows marketers and content producers to use their preferred content storage service or use multiple services, without moving files, duplicating effort, or wasting valuable time.
<h3>4. Advocate Marketing</h3>
Evoq 8 enables marketers to activate the brand advocates already on their webiste by rewarding them for sharing content on their personal social networks.
The advocacy marketing capability is integrated with Evoq’s native gamification engine, and engages customers by issuing challenges, tracking challenge completions, and awarding points, badges, or other designated incentives.
Now, although these four areas have been impressively enhanced, there's a lot more to DNN Evoq 8 that goes beyond just new features and functionality.
<h2>Beyond Standard Enterprise Content Management</h2>
After the recent <a href="/walkthrough-of-dnn-evoq-content-8-with-cms-critic/" target="_blank">DNN Evoq 8 video walkthrough</a>, Mike Johnston made a very interesting observation about the nature of DNNs latest release:
<blockquote>“Let me tell you folks, this is one impressive looking piece of software. They have completely done away with the dashboard (in the manner that there is no longer a back end admin interface to log into) and moved into a more “website builder look”.
The good part being that there was no loss in functionality so I consider Evoq 8 (and you can quote me on this) a website builder for Enterprises.”</blockquote>
A website builder for enterprises? Now that's an angle worth exploring.
Simplicity and ease of use was definitely high on the priorities list for DNN Evoq 8.
It's the removal of the traditional dashboard that has shifted the focus towards front end content editing, which in turn resembles that website builder experience.
Users can log in and immediately begin working on the page they're viewing. The sidebar offers up contextualised administrative functionality, giving the user the tools they need depending on the type of content appearing on the page.
DNN Software's CEO, Navin Nagiah, gave further insight into this newly crafted user experience during his interview with Mike Johnston:
<blockquote>“Our eventual goal is to make it so that, when somebody starts using the software, they [already] know how to use it. No training, no user manuals, no videos to watch, nothing. The software has to speak to the user.
We want to take the same user experience that you have in consumer apps and devices, and apply it to the business world. So Evoq 8 is an important milestone, but we are going to get even better as we go forward for the releases this year and next year.”</blockquote>
Perhaps the most interesting element of the above quote is how Navin Nagiah implies that DNN Evoq 8 is but a stepping stone towards an even simpler user experience, which we will hopefully see manifested in future DNN releases.
For now though, marketers can enjoy DNN Evoq 8 for what it is; an enterprise-grade powerhouse of a website builder.
To find out more about DNN Evoq Content 8, <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015" target="_blank">visit their website</a>. Also, be sure to explore more of <a href="/products/dnn-evoq-content/" target="_blank">DNN Evoq Content through our CMS Directory</a>.

DNN Evoq 8: Beyond Content Management

mike-johnston

<a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-are-keywords-simple-keyword-definition/" target="_blank">Keywords</a> are the lifeblood of SEO. When used properly, they can juice the search performance of any website and drive more traffic. Of course, they've become somewhat of a precious commodity when utilized for Google Ads campaigns, fluctuating like the price of gold based on their volume metrics.
For most website builder platforms, the fundamentals of technical SEO (search engine optimization) are often engineered into the platform on an architectural level. This might be in the form of structured data on a website template that governs the use of an H1, H2, aria-label, and so on. But there hasn't been as much direct integration with rich keyword tools, leaving marketers to run separate reports and seed keywords in their CMS.
That's about to change for <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wix-to-host-first-ever-developers-conference-wix-devcon-2022/">Wix</a>, a leading SaaS website builder for creating, managing, and growing websites. The company just announced a partnership with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/semrush-and-yoast-partner-to-enhance-wordpress-seo-and-digital-marketing/">Semrush</a>, a leading online visibility management platform, that will enable Wix users to access Semrush’s SEO keyword data directly through the Wix Platform. The integration will help users identify the right keywords for their website to help improve their rankings in search results.
<h2>Semrush brings industry-leading SEO keyword optimization to Wix websites</h2>
Powered by Semrush’s global database of more than 21 billion keywords, the new integration enables users to easily find the most relevant and effective keywords for their website without leaving the Wix platform. This includes access to critical metrics like search intent and keyword difficulty generated from Semrush’s rich SEO toolkit. 
The integration is available through <a href="https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-seo-wiz-creating-your-seo-checklist-in-the-wix-seo-wiz" target="_blank">Wix’s SEO Setup Checklist</a>, a tool that guides Wix users on how to optimize their website for SEO and get it indexed on Google – with actionable steps and educational resources.
In addition to performance, reliability, and security improvements, Wix has recently augmented its suite of SEO tools. This includes adding 25 new SEO features and products over the past year, as well as hundreds of SEO-related enhancements. As a result of this focused investment, the SEO community has begun embracing Wix. 
The Semrush integration will live inside the Wix dashboard in the SEO Tools section:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/09/wix-semrush-seo-tools.jpg" alt="Wix SEO Tools screen" />
The keyword insights from Semrush provide useful metrics such as:
<ul>
<li>keyword volume</li>
<li>keyword trends showing how popular the keyword is and how popular the keyword has been over time</li>
<li>keyword difficulty, which shows how competitive that particular keyword is, and search intent (i.e. commercial, informational)</li>
</ul>
You can also select and add your favorite keywords and save them to your SEO setup checklist:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/09/wix-keyword-insights-screenshot.jpg" alt="Wix EMRush SEO Tools dashboard" />
<h2>A partnership aligned around website experience and organic SEO</h2>
The new integration with Semrush is available to all Wix users in English. Users will need to have a Semrush account to leverage the integration; the usage quota available will depend on the account connected to their website, starting at a daily limit of 10 words for free Semrush accounts.
“It’s always been our mission to help businesses and search professionals have one unified platform to grow their site’s visibility in search engines,” said Nati Elimelech, Head of SEO at Wix. “With this integration, we’re taking another notable step in democratizing SEO by enabling our users to conduct better research and choose the right keywords and topics to focus on in their content strategy, right from within their dashboard. We are dedicated to making SEO more accessible to everyone and helping our users to make better decisions that will impact their organic growth.”
Both companies appear bullish about the value of the integration. For Wix, arming its users with advanced SEO marketing features may differentiate the platform in a dense market of competitors like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/squarespace-a-diy-website-builder-1/">Squarespace</a> – and enhancing its portfolio with foundational tools like Semrush will help amplify its perceived value, improve loyalty across its community, and attract new users.
For Semrush, Wix presents a broad channel of access to website owners who might now be thinking about the importance of keywords but now have easy access to an industry-leading toolset. 
“By leveraging Semrush’s keyword databases and metrics, Wix is giving users the necessary tools to find smart opportunities and improve their ranking on Google. As Organic Search traffic is incredibly valuable, the new integration in Wix can help to grow their businesses,” said Marcus Tober, SVP of Enterprise Solutions at Semrush. “Now is the time for business owners to take website and online marketing management into their own hands, and platforms like Wix and Semrush can help them do it.”
Want to learn how to conduct keyword research with Wix's Semrush integration? Visit <a href="https://www.wix.com/seo/learn" target="_blank">Wix's SEO Hub</a> and explore this great <a href="https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/keyword-research-wix-semrush-integration" target="_blank">tutorial.</a>
<h2>About Semrush</h2>
Semrush is a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that enables businesses globally to run search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content, social media and competitive research campaigns and get measurable results from online marketing. Semrush offers insights and solutions for companies to build, manage, and measure campaigns across various marketing channels. Semrush, with over 91,000 paying customers, is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Philadelphia, Trevose, Austin, Dallas, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Limassol, Prague, Warsaw, and Yerevan.
<h2>About Wix</h2>
Wix is a leading platform for creating, managing and growing a digital presence. What began as a website builder in 2006 is now a complete platform providing users with enterprise-grade performance, security and reliable infrastructure. Offering a wide range of commerce and business solutions, and advanced SEO and marketing tools, Wix enables users to have full ownership of their brand, their data, and their relationships with their customers. With a focus on continuous innovation and the delivery of new features and products, anyone can build a powerful digital presence to fulfill their dreams on Wix.

Wix and Semrush Partner to Provide Users with Valuable Keyword Data to Help Grow Online Visibility

cms-critic-staff

Image of Wix and Semrush logos against a purple background

Regular reader will have noticed our DNN Software coverage this week, as part of CMS Critic's first round of Featured Weeks.
But the world of CMS whirled on in the background, and so it's only right that we bring you the highlights from this past week.
<h2>Ghost's Transparency</h2>
This week, Ghost delivered on it promise to be more “transparent” (yes, I know, the irony) by revealing their revenue in full.
The blogging platform has also released a “Revenue Dashboard”, inspired by a similar feature offered by Buffer last year.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/baremetrics1.png" />
Ghost's annual revenue so far is $411k, and the revenue dashboard offers up a whole host of other revenue-related metrics.
<a href="http://blog.ghost.org/april-2015-update/" target="_blank">Read more here</a>.
<h2>US Shopify Users Get Google Wallet</h2>
Shopify, one of the world's leading eCommerce solutions, recently announced the arrival of Google Wallet for its US user base.
The introduction of Google Wallet is another effort from Shopify to simplify their mobile checkout process.
Shoppers who have their Google Wallet already set up will be able to simply click “Buy with Google”, instead of typing in their credit card details, billing, and shipping address on a tiny virtual keyboard.
<a href="https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/accelerated-checkouts/google-pay" target="_blank">Read more here</a>.
<h2>WordPress 4.2 On The Horizon</h2>
For those of you who don't know, WordPress is the most widely used CMS (and yes, it is a CMS) in the world.
Thus, the arrival of its latest version, WordPress 4.2, is being eagerly awaited.
The fourth beta was recently released, meaning that the final release of version 4.2 shouldn't be too far away at all. In fact, it could be a matter of days rather than weeks.
<a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2015/04/wordpress-4-2-beta-4/" target="_blank">Read more here</a>.

Weekly News Roundup: Ghost Revenue, Shopify's Google Wallet & WordPress 4.2

Following the recent release of <a href="/bigcommerce-launch-bigcommerce-next-beauty-brawn-brains/#.Uyl28fl_vvU">Bigcommerce Next</a> – which includes blogging functionality, <a href="/products/bigcommerce">Bigcommerce</a> have this week introduced further blogging improvements to help merchants produce and present content more professionally.Since the launch of <a href="/products/bigcommerce">Bigcommerce</a> Next, users have written more than 18,000 individual blog posts, with almost 500 new blog posts per day. So, these new blogging features will surely be welcomed.Let's take a peak at what's new.<h2>Front End Enhancement</h2>To increase readership, visitors to your Bigcommerce blog will now see the most recent blog post appear in full. Previous posts are listed less dramatically underneath.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blog-main-page.jpg" alt="Bigcommerce blog" />Additionally, thumbnail images have been incorporated to increase click-through rates. Plus, no blog is complete without an image or two.<h2>Tag Filtering &amp; Google Authorship</h2>Bigcommerce has also made finding content easier for blog visitors via the implementation of tags.Now, when a reader clicks on a tag in one of your posts, they’ll be taken to a page that features all posts with that tag. This enables readers to filter posts by topic and helps them better navigate your blog and find posts that interest them, increasing their engagement.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blog-tag-page.jpg" alt="Bigcommerce tags" />Furthermore, having tag pages with the tag in the URL helps Google and other search engines find and categorize your blog posts, which should aid you and your blog in the terms of search engine optimization.Finally, <a target="_blank" href="http://blog.bufferapp.com/why-google-authorship-is-so-important-for-the-content-you-create-and-how-to-set-it-up">Google Authorship</a> is also now supported. Google Authorship lets online authors claim their content and build authority on certain subjects by linking blog posts to their Google+ profile page.It helps increase your click-through rates from Google search results because searchers will see a “rich snippet” that includes a preview of your post and your profile picture.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blog-serp700x0.jpg" alt="Bigcommerce Google Authorship" />Now you can add the URL of your Google+ page to your post and Bigcommerce will automatically link it to your account with a rel=”author” link, a requirement for Google Authorship. You’ll then start seeing your author profile in your blog search results on Google. It's that easy.A 15 day free trial of Bigcommerce Next can be found on the  <a href="/products/bigcommerce">official Bigcommerce website</a>.Additionally, you can explore more of <a href="/products/bigcommerce">Bigcommerce via our CMS Directory</a>.

Bigcommerce Introduce New Blogging Improvements

CMS Critic's very first <a href="/featured-weeks/" target="_blank">featured week</a> is all about DNN Software, and we're now taking a closer look at how <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015" target="_blank">DNN Evoq 8</a> helps to ease platform migration for brands through some stellar integration options.
The .NET platform is trusted by over 2,000 brands worldwide, including a range of Fortune 500 companies. DNN was also the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-small-to-midsize-business-net-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award Winner for Best Small to Midsize Business .NET CMS</a>.
<img style="max-width:234px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/evoqcontent_1.png" />
<h2>The Importance of Integration</h2>
Adopting a new platform for your website (or websites) isn't the easiest task in the world, especially if it means having to leave behind the extra apps and solutions your company already works with.
For example, if your company depends on Microsoft Sharepoint as a digital asset manager, switching to a CMS which doesn't readily support such integration will hit your team hard. The double whammy of having to adapt to a new CMS as well as having to live life without Sharepoint will be a difficult pill swallow, for everyone.
Of course, Sharepoint is but one example, with most companies relying on a range of intranets and marketing suites to keep workflows in check and business in order.
Hence, the heightened importance of solid integration options — because nobody wants to deal with that double whammy.
<h2>All The Essentials, And Then Some</h2>
After already <a href="/how-dnn-evoq-8-charges-advocate-marketing-with-gamification/" target="_blank">discussing DNN Evoq 8 from a advocate marketing standpoint</a>, let's now delve into what it serves up on the integrations front.
<img style="max-width:760px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/integrations-configure.png" />
According to DNN, Evoq 8, “connects easily to popular cloud marketing software and social media networks, so you can use familiar and preferred solutions to extend your website’s functionality.”
Here's what DNN serves up as readily available integrations:
<ul>
<li>Google Analytics integrates just as easily as it always does.</li>
<li>Marketo can be configured even without any technical knowledge.</li>
<li>Storage Solutions including Box, Dropbox, Amazon S3 and Sharepoint can all be accessed simultaneously from a single window.</li>
<li>Extended Microsoft Sharepoint integration, with features that enable you to schedule publications, push documents, share lists, and synchronize files between Evoq Content and SharePoint.</li>
</ul>
But that's not all.
<a href="http://store.dnnsoftware.com/?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015">DNN Evoq 8 also boasts a fully fledged store</a>, which is home to a vast array of modules built to extend website functionality.
Many modules have been developed to add functionality in their own way, while others are there to help integrate with systems like Mailchimp, Google Maps, and so forth.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-33.png" />
And just in case none of that is enough, DNN also allows you to craft custom integrations via Evoq API.
DNN's powerful development libraries are there to help you build interactive web applications, integrate with ERP, CRM, marketing automation systems, and much more.
So, with all of those integration options and tools on offer, it's safe to say that DNN Evoq 8 is equipped to help any brand avoid the aforementioned double whammy during platform migration.
And of course, it's also more than ready to help existing DNN customers expand their website functionality.
To find out more about DNN Evoq Content 8, <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015" target="_blank">visit their website</a>. Also, be sure to explore more of <a href="/products/dnn-evoq-content/" target="_blank">DNN Evoq Content through our CMS Directory</a>.

A Closer Look at DNN Evoq 8's Integration Options

Continuing with our featured coverage of DNN Software, it's time to take a look at how <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015" target="_blank">DNN Evoq 8</a> helps brands to engage with existing users and customers.
DNN Evoq Content is trusted by over 2,000 brands worldwide, including a range of Fortune 500 companies. DNN was also the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-small-to-midsize-business-net-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award Winner for Best Small to Midsize Business .NET CMS</a>.
DNN Evoq 8 combines advocate marketing and gamification features to give brands the tools they need to first engage with their users and customers, before using them as standalone marketers.
<h2>What is Advocate Marketing &amp; Gamification?</h2>
Not sure what on earth do these two terms mean? Don't worry, because as per usual, they sound more complicated than they are.
<h3>Advocate Marketing</h3>
Advocate marketing is the process of turning your customers and users into marketers.
Ideally, advocate marketing is carried out by a brands most regular and most passionate customers, who are therefore happy to preach positive news and views about the brand in question.
<h3>Gamification</h3>
Gamification simply means using game mechanics to engage users in solving problems. This could include a leveling system, where users or community members get rewarded with different levels of titles once they complete certain tasks.
For exmaple, giving a forum member a special title once they reach 100 forum posts, is a type of gamification.
The purpose of gamification is to improve user engagement, return on investment, data quality, timeliness, and learning.”
<h2>How DNN Expertly Blends The Two</h2>
The release of DNN Evoq Content 8 has brought advocate marketing and gamification together.
Their gamification engine was already in place beforehand, giving brands the opportunity to reward their audience for participating in the community, be in via discussion, task completion or otherwise.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-321079x0.png" />
DNN's gamification features come in the form of badges, reputation points, leaderboards and more.
Now though, with a newly introduced advocate marketing feature, DNN Evoq's gamification engine has a counterpart to work in tandem with.
Evoq 8 enables Marketers to activate the brand advocates already on their website by rewarding them for sharing content on their personal social networks.
The advocacy marketing capability is integrated with Evoq’s native gamification engine, and engages customers by issuing challenges, tracking challenge completions, and awarding points, badges, or other designated incentives.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/advocate-create-challenge1.png" />
By creating challenges for users to meet, brands can incentivize sharing content on social media. For instance, the example above shows a social sharing challenge, which rewards the user with 25 points for sharing news of an upcoming webinar.
As you can see, the challenge setup process is supremely straightforward, with URLs, titles, instructions, and points all easy to configure.
Each challenge can be set to be either locked or open for public editing. Challenges can also have expiration dates and times for completion.
A simple, yet effective idea which slots in very well alongside (and complements) DNN's existing gamification options.
To find out more about DNN Evoq Content 8, <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/products/evoq-content?utm_source=cmscritic-article-april-2015&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic-april-2015" target="_blank">visit their website</a>. Also, be sure to explore more of <a href="/products/dnn-evoq-content/" target="_blank">DNN Evoq Content through our CMS Directory</a>.

How DNN Evoq 8 Charges Advocate Marketing With Gamification

Landing pages serve as an entry point for a website, and they usually have one goal:To convert visitors.Converting visitors may include selling a product, gaining email addresses, sending traffic to a different page, and so forth. But no matter what the end goal is, marketers across the web use landing pages to achieve it.Without a well placed landing page or two on your website, you'll have to rely on your website's design to funnel your visitors towards your website's end goal. Now, although that's not impossible, the standard website will never match the conversion efficiency of <a target="_blank" href="https://blog.kissmetrics.com/c-o-n-v-e-r-t-s/">a strong landing page</a>.<h2>What Does a Landing Page Look Like?</h2>Landing pages come in many different forms, and brand typically design them to reflect the rest of their brand and website.But even the biggest brands in the world use landing pages. Here's one from CodeAcademy:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-11.png" alt="sshot-11" />As you can see, their landing page (which also happens to be their homepage) is sleek, simple, and guides the visitor towards signing up. Classic landing page design.Now that we've established what a landing page is, here are twelve of the very best landing page builders that you can use today:<h2>1. <a target="_blank" href="https://instapage.com">Instapage</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/instapage.png" alt="instapage landing page builder" />Instapage is one of the most popular landing page builders on the list. It boasts responsive templates, drag-and-drop editing, over 5,000 fonts and 33,000,000 images to freely work with.  It also allows you to use widgets, parallax scrolling, and custom code.Instapage can also build forms, carry out A/B testing, and display visitor statistics.Prices From: $29 p/m<h2>2. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wishpond.com/">Wishpond</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wishpond.png" alt="Wishpond landing page builder" />Wishpond is another big player in the landing page builder market. It offers some nicely crafted templates, custom code customization, analytics, Facebook publishing, A/B testing, forms, and social promotion features.I recently published a <a href="/wishpond-review/">Wishpond Review</a> which goes into further detail on the popular platform.Prices From: $44 p/m<h2>3. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.leadsquared.com/">Leadsquared</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/leadsquared.png" alt="leadsquared landing page builder" />Leadsquared is a lead generation platform that offers a whole range of features, all aimed at converting website visitors.Landing page building is on the feature list alongside website widgets, marketing automation, analytics, email campaigns, SMS campaigns, mobile customer relationship management, and much more. It's one of the most feature-rich products on this list, and yet, the price is the most reasonable.Prices From: $15 p/m<h2>4. <a target="_blank" href="http://unbounce.com/">Unbounce</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/unbounce.png" alt="Unbounce landing page builder" />Unbounce offers some beautiful landing page templates, and integrates well with many popular marketing and CRM platforms, including Hubspot, WordPress, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.zoho.com/crm/">Zoho CRM</a>.You can publish an unlimited amount of pages on Unbounce's lowest plan, make use its drag-and-drop interface, use full-screen backgrounds, embed videos, and more.Prices From: $49 p/m<h2>5. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pagewiz.com/">Pagewiz</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/pagewiz.png" alt="Pagewiz landing page builder" />Pagewiz is a solid landing page builder that lets you send captured emails to multiple places; so you can automatically add new emails to your email campaign system as well as your CRM.Pagewiz also boasts widgets, real-time analytics, A/B testing, and the ability to manage multiple accounts from the same interface – making it ideal for marketing agencies.Prices From: $29 p/m<h2>6. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.megaphoneapp.com/">Megaphone</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/megaphone.png" alt="Megaphone landing page builder" />Megaphone is a good old fashioned landing page builder that focuses on one thing: creating stunning landing pages.Their templates are pretty darn good, catering for things like events, webinars, thank you messages, sales, and so forth. It integrates with a range of email campaign platforms, gives real-time stats, and lets you deploy your landing page as pop-ups, too.Prices From: $49 p/m<h2>7. <a target="_blank" href="https://landerapp.com/">Lander</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/lander.png" alt="Lander landing page builder" />Lander is a reasonably priced landing page builder with drag-and-drop page management, Facebook publishing, A/B testing, mobile landing pages, and PayPal integration.Like Unbounce, Lander lets you create unlimited pages, even on its cheapest plan (which is relatively cheap indeed).Prices From: $22 p/m<h2>8. <a target="_blank" href="http://instabuilder.com/v2.0/launch/">Instabuilder</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/instabuilder.png" alt="Instabuilder landing page builder" />Not looking to commit to a monthly subscription fee? Instabuilder 2.0 may be for you.For a one off fee, you can use the web app to build landing pages with its drag-and-drop interface and widgets. It's not as well polished as some of the other products on this list, but it's a lot cheaper in the long run.Prices From: $77<h2>9. <a target="_blank" href="https://app.kickofflabs.com">Kickoff Labs</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/kickofflabs.png" alt="KickoffLabs landing page builder" />Kickoff Labs is another tools that is – once again – more than just a landing page builder.Their templates are sound, and they offer features such as contest management, pop-ups, A/B testing, and automatic email responses. Interestingly, you can even import your own HTML landing pages into Kickoff Labs and integrate it with the rest of their platform.Prices From: $39 p/m<h2>10. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.leadpages.net">Leadpages</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/leadpages.png" alt="Leadpages landing page builder" />Much like the other products on this list, Leadpages offers mobile friendly landing page templates that can be customized without coding. The difference? Leadpages is able to complete visitor signups via SMS – which helps you expand your reach beyond just email.Facebook publishing, exit pop-ups, video backgrounds, and HTML editing make up some of Leadpages' other features. Also, like Unbounce and Lander, there's no limit to the amount of landing pages you can publish.Prices From: $25 p/m<h2>11. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.1minutesites.com/">1MinuteSites</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1minutesites.png" alt="1minutesites landing page builder" />As the name suggests, 1MinuteSites focuses on getting your landing page out into the world as quickly as possible.You can use it publish landing pages on Facebook, on your own site, or on their domain. You can also use it to create pop-ups and notification bars, or hide content from a visitor until they share it on social media. However, it doesn't have the prettiest templates, nor is it the cheapest option.Prices From: $39.95 p/m<h2>12. <a target="_blank" href="http://landingi.com/">Landingi</a></h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/landingi.png" alt="Landingi landing page builder" />Last but not least is Landingi. This platform offers up a seriously detailed customization interface that some may even find overwhelming. But if you're looking to finely tune your landing page, look no further.Their templates are bright and airy, and it also lets you A/B test, build forms, and view statistics. Landingi also boasts a lead inbox that lets you manage all the leads you gather.Prices From: $29 p/m<h2>Start Profiting From Your Traffic</h2>Your traffic may be flowing nicely, but a landing page will help funnel those visitors towards your product, your newsletter signup page, or any other place that you can profit from.Do you use any other landing page builders? Tell us about them in the comments section below!

12 Epic Landing Page Builders to Boost Conversions

CMS Summit 26

Find out at CMS Summit 26, May 12 - 13 in Frankfurt, Germany

What's ahead for CMS in the agentic era?

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Occasionally, a number of WordPress users may well have the urge to renew their websites and make them look different. If you are one of them, perhaps you have become bored with the way your home page looks, or you want to get rid of that annoying calendar widget.
You start by removing unnecessary layout elements, or maybe picking another color scheme or font family. But after a couple of such attempts, you realize that you need something more than just playing with your old WordPress theme. You need a new one.
Of course, you can always buy a new theme. There are <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes.php" target="_blank"> a wide variety of premium WP themes available out there </a> , and you just have to spend some time on finding the right one. But what if you’re not sure that buying a new theme is exactly what you need right now?
What if you just want to try out a couple of different themes, perhaps on different frameworks, and dive more into WordPress itself?
In this case, there’s no real need to buy anything new. You can easily find a great selection of awesome and yet free WordPress themes and try them out. Many of them vary in style and functionality, some of them are mainly blogging themes, and some are more suited for a business website. But what’s more important is that all of them are developed by professionals and each theme may become a suitable choice for your website.
We’ve prepared this list of free WordPress themes for you and hope you’ll be able to find here some good options for your WordPress website.
<h3>Melissa</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/melissa.jpeg" />
Melissa can be a great solution for a photographer’s portfolio, or any other website that has to make a special emphasis on its imagery and visuals. Our attention is drawn by the image slider on the home page, which can be a good place to showcase your best works. Original typography combined with a dark background creates a great aesthetic appeal.
<a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/52153.html" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/free-wordpress-photography-theme.html" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Mynd</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mynd.jpeg" />
Although Mynd positions itself as a theme for a creative portfolio, it is much more than that. This theme can become a wonderful solution for different kinds of portfolio and business websites. It has a lot of awesome features, such as one-click demo install, parallax scrolling effect, Font Awesome icons, a large number of blog and portfolio pages, shortcodes, different header variations and many more.
<a href="http://mynd.premiumcoding.com/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="http://premiumcoding.com/free-wordpress-theme-mynd-creative-portfolio-theme/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Globaly</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/globaly.jpeg" />
The theme fits nicely into any business related website. It is built with Cherry Framework that considerably extends its functionality and makes it easy to customize. You can experiment with the color-scheme, change the layout of elements, choose another logo, etc. More than 80 useful shortcodes are available for you to upload the content easily.
<a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/52382.html" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="//www.templatemonster.com/free-wordpress-business-theme.html" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Zerif</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zerif.jpeg" />
Zerif is a lightweight one-page WordPress theme that is nicely suited for a business website. It has a parallax scrolling effect and large hero images. Zerif has an easy-to-use contact form and is compatible with the latest versions of WordPress. The code is clean and well-written.
<a href="http://demo.themeisle.com/zerif-lite/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://themeisle.com/themes/zerif-lite/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Lawyeria</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/lawyeria.jpeg" />
Lawyeria is a fully responsive WordPress theme, designed specifically for lawyers, but it can also be successfully applied to a business website. The distinctive contact form on the home page makes it very easy for prospective clients to get in touch with you.
<a href="http://themeisle.com/demo/?theme=Lawyeria" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://themeisle.com/themes/lawyeria-lite/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>.Multi</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/multi.jpeg" />
Implemented with elements of flat design, Multi is a nice combination of style and aesthetics. It has a responsive design, different types of custom pages, including testimonials, archives, FAQs, contacts, etc. The theme is easy to customize and adjust to your needs.
<a href="http://demo.crocoblock.com/wp-themes/free_multi_wordpress" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="http://www.crocoblock.com/themes/free_multi_wordpress/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Editor</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/editor.jpeg" />
Considering that the above mentioned themes were primarily for business websites, this one is made exclusively for blogging purposes. Editor has a carefully implemented design with attention to minute details. If you’re looking for a good blogging theme, you should definitely try it out.
 Demo <a href="https://array.is/themes/editor-wordpress-theme/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Harmonic</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/harmonic.jpeg" />
Harmonic is a minimalistic theme with a big focus on quality imagery, which uses a parallax scrolling effect. The theme also has a good-looking blog, and media library, where you can showcase your images.
<a href="https://harmonicdemo.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/harmonic" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Jewelry</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/jewelry.jpeg" />
This Jewelry theme uses Jigoshop eCommerce plugin, which turns it into a perfect solution for any eCommerce business. Apart from the ordinary WordPress features, this theme has a full pack of useful additions that are important for any eCommerce website.
<a href="http://demo.crocoblock.com/wp-themes/jewelry-jigoshop" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="http://www.crocoblock.com/themes/jewelry-jigoshop/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Convac Lite</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/convac_lite.jpeg" />
Convac is a good solution for a personal website. The theme has different variations (for photographers, fashion models, fitness trainers, etc.) and you can decide which one suits you best. The intuitive layout displays all the necessary information about you and your services.
<a href="http://sketchthemes.com/preview/convac/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/convac-lite" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Constructzine</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/constructzine.jpeg" />
Constructzine is a simple theme that can be used as a calling card for your business. It has a standard set of pages (contact us, about us, etc.) and a blog. The theme will not bore you with an excessive amount of animations, which makes it load faster.
<a href="http://demo.themeisle.com/constructzine-lite/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://themeisle.com/themes/constructzine-lite/" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Aventurine</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/aventurine.jpeg" />
Aventurine is mainly a blogging theme that has a special emphasis on a distinctive color-scheme. The turquoise background color and red fonts are definitely an eye-catcher, but you can always change them to something more neutral.
<a href="https://themes.redradar.net/aventurine/documentation/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/aventurine" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Influence</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/influence.jpeg" />
The front page of Influence has some nice-looking elements of a typography poster. The theme is mostly content oriented and is suitable for a blogging website. There are different types of posts, including posts with embedded videos and images.
<a href="http://demo.siteorigin.com/influence/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/influence" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Griffin</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/griffin.jpeg" />
Griffin provides your website with an aesthetically pleasing design. It has a set of standard features that are more than enough for a simple blogging website. The code is clean and well-written which makes it a pleasure to customize the theme.
<a href="http://demo.wpmultiverse.com/griffin/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/griffin" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Ascent</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ascent.jpeg" />
Ascent is a clean and good-looking theme that is a perfect fit for blogging. It has an image slider at the top with big hero images and ghost buttons. The layout of blog articles looks stylish and effective, the only feature that may seem a little excessive is the hover effect on images.
<a href="http://testbase.info/c/theme/wp/ascent/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/ascent" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Business</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/business.jpeg" />
The name here is self-explanatory. Being a great fit for any business website, this theme has a set of useful features such as various types of pages, shortcodes, responsive design, etc. The theme can serve as a great platform for your business.
 Demo Download 
<h3>Medics</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/medics.jpeg" />
It can be difficult to find a free WordPress theme dedicated to the medical field, but this theme could become your perfect solution. It is clean and has a well-built structure of pages, so that your clients can find all the necessary information quickly.
<a href="http://medics.fasterthemes.com/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/medics" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Flat On</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/flat_on.jpeg" />
Flat On is a multipurpose WordPress theme that can be used both for blogging and business purposes. It has two types of image sliders, different page layouts, a collection of shortcodes and other helpful features. You can choose from over 8 different color-schemes.
<a href="http://demo.webulous.in/flaton/" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/flaton" target="_blank"> Download </a>
<h3>Simplicity</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/simplicity.jpeg" />
Simplicity is a one-page theme that is built mainly for high speed and effectiveness. It uses flat design and two types of layout – default and full-width. It has a set of shortcodes and an image slider that is probably the most dominant element on the web page.
 Demo Download 
<h3>Mia Ittalonni</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mia_ittalonni.jpeg" />
Mia Ittalonni is a restaurant theme that features a nice, elegant design. It has a lot of helpful features, including image galleries, sliders, custom post types, shortcodes, etc. The theme is fully responsive and all the main layout elements can be easily adjusted according to your preference. 
<a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/demo/52056.html" target="_blank"> Demo </a> <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/free-wordpress-restaurant-theme.html" target="_blank"> Download </a>
We hope you have found this round-up of free WordPress themes useful and were able to find some great solutions for your WordPress website.
So what is your favorite free WordPress theme? Or maybe we haven't included it in our round-up? Please, share your thoughts in the comment section.

Top 20 Free WordPress Themes of 2015

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-2.png" alt="squarespace" />
<a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">Squarespace</a> has rolled out some professionally designed page templates to speed up the time it takes to create common website pages, like the contact and about page.
Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders on the market, offering awesomely designed templates that are typically image-heavy; making it ideal for photographers, architects, food bloggers, and other professionals that rely upon visuals to convey messages.
<h2>Faster Website Building</h2>
By using a starter layout, you can build a page using a structure designed for a specific purpose, without spending too much time rearranging page elements. Starter layouts are independent of your template.
Each Starter Layout is made up of <a href="https://support.squarespace.com/hc/articles/206543757">blocks</a>. You can add your own content to the blocks, delete them, and add more blocks to align the pages with your website's look and feel.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-8.png" alt="sshot-8" />
Squarespace serves up the following range of page layouts for different purposes:
<ul>
<li>About: All-purpose, with a mix of body text, headers, and images</li>
<li>Contact: Different combinations of forms, maps, addresses, phone numbers</li>
<li>Details: All-purpose, with a mix of text and images arranged in different columns and rows</li>
<li>Features: Detailed layouts for features, services, or products</li>
<li>Photo Wall: Different layouts of Images Blocks that create varying gallery styles. These layouts are great for <a href="https://support.squarespace.com/hc/articles/220894547">creating thumbnail navigation</a>.</li>
<li>Team: Common layouts for team pages, featuring different combinations of headshots, names, and bios.</li>
<li>Misc.: Options for displaying a menu or a stocklist/multiple store locations on a page</li>
</ul>
This update plays into the hands of inexperienced website owners (otherwise known as the target market for website builder vendors). Not only does it prompt them to build pages that their visitor will expect to see, but it will give them a design that their visitors will be familiar with, too.
<h2>The Squarespace Engineering Blog</h2>
Squarespace also announced its new <a href="https://engineering.squarespace.com/">Engineering Blog</a>, which will give technical insights to those users who wish to peer behind the platform's elegant outer curtain.
Their <a href="http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/introducing-the-squarespace-engineering-blog">announcement</a> gave more insight into what the new blog will produce:
<blockquote>
“While Squarespace is widely recognized as a leader in the design space, many tend to overlook the incredibly strong engineering culture that supports our sophisticated platform. With more than one million paying customers, Squarespace sites get more than one billion page views every month. Serving such a high amount of traffic comes with unique challenges.
The Engineering Blog will cover everything from the daily life of our engineers to the technical challenges of scaling a Mongo database across multiple data centers.”</blockquote>
Considering Squarespace is a proprietary software designed mainly for newbie webmasters, I can't image too many of their users being interested in the technical goings-on over at Squarespace HQ. But hey, I'm all for transparency – in all its forms.
To find out more about Squarespace Starter Layouts, check out the <a href="https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206543687">Squarespace blog</a>.

Squarespace Unveils Starter Layouts to Speed Up Website Building

It's July, and the world feels like it's melting. Literally. 
As entire continents experience <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/21/heat-wave-records-europe-north-america-summer" target="_blank">record-breaking summer temperatures</a> in the Northern Hemisphere, we're doing what we can to stay cool – and bring you cooler stories from across the CMS and DXP landscape.
This month was hot for a lot of reasons, including <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wix-to-host-first-ever-developers-conference-wix-devcon-2022/">Wix's DevCon 2022</a> – the company's first-ever developer's conference – and of course, the annual epic that is <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/reflections-on-wordcamp-europe-2022/">WordPress WordCamp Europe</a>. Cool stuff indeed.
On the ever-present investment side of the ledger, we covered <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kontent-ai-raises-40-million-to-bring-the-power-of-ai-to-content-management/">Kentico's spinoff of Kontent.ai</a> – and the new company's stellar raise of $40 million. Kontent plans to use the funds to further juice its platform with AI innovation, which has been a key focus area since its inception. We also covered <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/storyblok-launches-1-5m-partner-fund-to-help-agencies-shape-the-future-of-digital-storytelling/">Storyblok's launch</a> of a $1.5 million partner fund to help agencies shape the future of digital storytelling and GraphCMS' announcement that it is <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/graphcms-rebrands-to-hygraph-launches-new-federated-content-platform/">rebranding to Hygraph</a> and what this means for its future growth. 
Just under the wire for July, Magnolia sent a thunderous boom across the CMS market with news that <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/genui-acquires-majority-stake-in-magnolia-and-invests-in-future-growth/">GENUI is acquiring a majority stake</a> in its company, with plans to inject significant growth capital. While details were thin, GENUI has forged quite a reputation over the years as a growth engine for technologies, so we'll be watching as things unfold. 
There are a few other stories from July that you might have missed – so turn down the air conditioning and settle in more for more cool stuff. 
<h2>dotCMS Launches Enterprise Cloud Hosting for Single Page Applications</h2>
<img style="max-width:1000px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/07/dotcms-interface.webp" alt="dotCMS interface" />
<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/?s=dotcms" target="_blank">dotCMS</a>, an enterprise <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/blog/post/migrating-headless-cms-hybrid-headless-cms" target="_blank">hybrid-headless CMS</a>, has <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/company/news/dotcms-launches-enterprise-cloud-hosting-for-single-page-applications" target="_blank">announced</a> that <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/videos/enterprise-spa-hosting" target="_blank">the enterprise cloud SPA hosting</a> feature will be available as part of its standard <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/product/dotcms-cloud" target="_blank">dotCMS Cloud</a> offering.
For businesses running multi-channel content-driven sites, one challenge when spinning up a new single-page application (SPA) is where to host it. By leveraging dotCMS' Enterprise SPA hosting, based on AWS Amplify and backed by the global <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/company/news/dotcms-announces-dotcdn" target="_blank">dotCDN</a>, enterprises can speed up development and content delivery for global marketing campaigns without being forced to contract with a third-party vendor.
dotCMS' cloud offering includes features such as:
<ul>
<li>24/7 critical care</li>
<li>Annual core dotCMS upgrades</li>
<li>Up to 99.98% uptime</li>
<li>No API-rate limiting or throttling</li>
<li>Automated security fixes</li>
<li>Native Web Application Firewall (WAF)</li>
<li>Native dotCDN Content Delivery Network to mitigate DDoS attacks</li>
<li>Secure access with Oauth or SAML-based authentication and with IP Whitelisting</li>
</ul>
"We are providing organizations with a way to quickly deliver their content applications to customers around the world," said CTO of dotCMS, Will Ezell. "This latest offering exemplifies our commitment to security and scalability."
With enterprise SPA hosting, development teams can focus on innovation and building engaging applications to support the business outcomes instead of managing the underlying infrastructure. Enterprises can leverage the new service to save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually that they would otherwise spend on administrative and hosting costs.
<h2>Acquia Partners with Workato to Power Enterprise Connectivity to Acquia CDP, Adds Data Subject Deletion Request Features</h2>
<a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">Acquia</a>, a leading digital experience company, has made several important updates to its CDP this month. 
First, they <a href="https://www.acquia.com/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-partners-workato-power-enterprise-connectivity-acquia-cdp" target="_blank">announced</a> a partnership with the integration and workflow automation platform <a href="https://www.workato.com/" target="_blank">Workato</a> to power enterprise connectivity to Acquia Customer Data Platform (CDP). They also added new data subject deletion request features that will help their customers comply with the GDPR regulations and privacy laws. Using a new self-service interface, organizations can rapidly process "Right to Erasure" (otherwise known as "Right to be Forgotten") requests associated with regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and more from their customers. 
Partnership with Workato 
Acquia's partnership with Workato will allow organizations to integrate Acquia CDP with hundreds of external cloud services via secure, enterprise-grade APIs through out-of-box connectors. As the company noted: "The connectivity powered by Workato will help customers achieve even faster time-to-value by reducing the time it takes to get their data from their preferred cloud services into and out of Acquia CDP."
Workato is a leading enterprise automation platform that enables businesses, and IT teams to integrate their apps and automate their business workflows. It has been <a href="https://discover.workato.com/gartner-ipaas-mq/p/1" target="_blank">selected as a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service</a> for 4th year in a row.
"We're pleased to partner with Workato to add hundreds of integrations between Acquia CDP and marketing, analytics, and commerce applications," said Mark Picone, SVP and General Manager, Marketing Cloud, at Acquia. "The connectivity powered by Workato will help customers achieve even faster time-to-value by reducing the time it takes to get their data from their preferred cloud services into and out of Acquia CDP."
As a part of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/" target="_blank">Acquia Marketing Cloud platform</a>, Acquia CDP enables marketers to aggregate and activate data from technologies of their choice into a unified, 360-degree customer profile. From there, marketers can use Acquia CDP to orchestrate personalized, AI-powered campaigns across the entire omnichannel customer journey.
"We're seeing a continued trend around the growing needs for SaaS connectivity, and our partnership with Acquia will allow their communities of partners and customers to keep up with the accelerated demand," said Bhaskar Roy, CMO at Workato. "Not only will they be able to build and leverage robust connectors to their preferred applications, but they will also be able to connect to these applications and automate workflows across them. We're excited to be partnering with Acquia, who has become a leading force in the future of digital experiences by embracing the power of automation."
David Wallace, Research Director, Customer Intelligence and Analytics at IDC, commented: "Digital-first brands must focus on quality, speed-to-value, and agility to deliver the personalized experiences expected by their customers. Customer data platforms help brands achieve their goals not only with productized integrations and APIs but also enterprise-grade, pre-built connectors across an array of digital channels for the flexibility for multiple use cases. Acquia, through its partnership with Workato and inherent low-code tooling enables this increased flexibility."
New Regulatory Compliance Features
Soon after the partnership with Workato, Acquia also <a href="https://www.acquia.com/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-adds-data-subject-deletion-request-features-acquia-cdp" target="_blank">announced</a> they added new regulatory compliance features that help organizations using <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud/customer-data-platform" target="_blank">Acquia Customer Data Platform (CDP)</a> to comply with data subject requests and privacy laws in general. 
"This feature for legal and compliance workflows is the latest in a series of self-service updates we're making to Acquia CDP," said Janessa Worrell, Director of Product Management at Acquia. "Our goal is to make it simple for organizations using Acquia CDP to process deletion requests from their own customers, ensuring that these requests are handled quickly. Customers can expect more self-service features in the coming months, removing friction and making common Acquia CDP workflows simpler to execute."
Other recent self-service updates include secure credentials management for Acquia CDP out-of-the-box connectors. Organizations can now generate and manage their own credentials for pre-built connectors to external services such as Facebook or Google.
<h2>WordCamp US 2022 Tickets Sold Out, All Sessions to be Livestreamed</h2>
Two months after the most popular WordPress event, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/reflections-on-wordcamp-europe-2022/" target="_blank">WordCamp Europe</a>, has ended, WordCamp US will be hosting its two-day event in San Diego, California, from September 9 through September 11. Like WordCamp Europe, this will be the first in-person event since 2019. 
With the COVID-19 still looming and to allow for adequate social distancing, this year's WordCamp US event is designed as a smaller event - limited to 650 attendees - compared to the previous years. Since it is the first in-person event in two years, the demand was extremely high, and the <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/tickets/" target="_blank">tickets</a> are already sold out but don't worry. You can watch all the WCUS 2022 sessions <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/livestream/" target="_blank">online </a>without having to purchase any tickets.
WCUS has also begun<a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/speakers/" target="_blank"> announcing its speakers</a>. This year they are making an increased effort to give more opportunities to underrepresented speakers. 
The opening remarks will begin at 9:00 am on Friday and Saturday, and the sessions will run from 9:15 am to 5:30 pm. The last day of the event will be the "Contributor Day" on Sunday.
You can follow the updates via the <a href="https://paper.dropbox.com/?q=%23WCUS" target="_blank">#WCUS</a> hashtag on Twitter.
<h2>Sitecore Experience Manager Cloud (XM Cloud) Now Available</h2>
<img style="max-width:1000px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/07/xmcloud-ui.jpg" alt="SiteCore XM Cloud user interface " />
<a href="https://www.sitecore.com/" target="_blank">Sitecore</a>, a global leader in end-to-end digital experience software, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2022/07/sitecore-experience-manager-cloud-now-available" target="_blank">announced</a> that it has released its <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products/xm-cloud" target="_blank">Sitecore Experience Manager (XM) Cloud</a>. This latest product release will provide brands with unrivaled speed to market in implementing customer experiences, simplifying design and deployment, eliminating upgrades, and dramatically decreasing ownership costs. With XM Cloud, marketers can instantly create, manage and deliver engaging omnichannel experiences with an industry-leading enterprise-ready CMS.
According to a <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2022/05/us-brand-authenticity-report" target="_blank">recent survey by Sitecore</a>, online interactions play an outsized role in driving engagement between brands and customers. The digital experience, while valued by consumers, creates a scalability issue for marketers to meet demand. <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products/xm-cloud" target="_blank">Sitecore XM Cloud</a> provides a comprehensive SaaS CMS for the Enterprise solution for brands by overcoming global scaling problems, including variable traffic, supporting multi-brand architectures, and site security.
For business users, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products/xm-cloud" target="_blank">XM Cloud</a> offers the ability to build pixel-perfect digital experiences via a WYSIWYG authoring experience that can access content anywhere, with embedded testing, personalization, and integrated visitor analytics. For developers, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products/xm-cloud" target="_blank">XM Cloud</a> can be used with headless development techniques, working with modern frontend frameworks and supporting all deployment scenarios.
"Consumer behavior has changed rapidly over the past two years. Audiences have become very digitally savvy and have an expectation from brands to deliver highly personalized customer experiences," said Dave O'Flanagan, chief product officer, Sitecore. "This puts marketers in the unenviable position of trying to meet this expectation, but with tools and solutions that don't deliver, and in some cases hamstring, the needed agility to meet demand. Sitecore XM Cloud provides marketers with a truly end-to-end, SaaS-based solution that not only helps brands meet consumer expectations but also delivers a best-of-class omnichannel customer experience."
Through <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products/xm-cloud" target="_blank">Sitecore XM Cloud</a>, the company's entire <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products/sitecore-experience-platform" target="_blank">Digital Experience Platform</a> can now be delivered through a modern cloud architecture, providing brands and marketers with:
<ul>
<li>Continued innovation – new features and capabilities will be automatically delivered and integrated</li>
<li>Elastic scaling – "set-and-forget" traffic volume demands</li>
<li>Composability – all of Sitecore's platform solutions can now be purchased independently and will fit in a best-of-breed marketing technology stack</li>
<li>On-the-Fly Engagement – rapidly create experiences to meet constantly evolving market needs</li>
<li>Multi-channel content management - create content once and reuse across any channel and experience</li>
<li>Simplicity for marketers – business-focused tools and intuitive content authoring workflows</li>
<li>Agility for developers – customized builds with modern frameworks</li>
</ul>

CMS Monthly Recap: dotCMS Launches Enterprise Cloud Hosting, Acquia Partners with Workato, Sitecore Releases Experience Manager Cloud, and More

Image of beach with CMS Critic Monthly Recap logo over water

“To code, or not to code, that is the question…”Indeed. And Shakespeare would have loved the drama that followed. This fiery debate around code versus no-code web design has led to some pretty heated arguments. Here’s a snarky Tweet from Jeffery Zeldman, a heavyweight design influencer, from way back in 2009:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/jeffrey-zeldman-tweet-1024x404.png" />And another scathing transmission from Elliot Jay Stocks:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elliott-jay-stocks-tweet-1024x457.png" />That one poked one too many bears, spurring Stocks to pen a looong blog post explaining his opinion. If you’re curious, you can read it <a target="_blank" href="https://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/web-designers-who-cant-code/">here</a> – but the gist of it is this: to understand design, you need to understand the medium. That makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t negate the fact that many great web designers barely touch code.Even at the tail end of 2020, this philosophical disagreement continues. But as UI continues to abstract the complexities of code (think simple consoles in front of command line interfaces) the battle between coders and designers – and what constitutes a “web designer” – has grown a little less contentious. Or has it?<h3>A Brief History of Web Designers</h3>Before the dawn of the modern web, software interfaces were stark and cumbersome, lacking the visual elegance and intuitiveness that came later. Engineers ran the show, and front-end experience was often an afterthought.Print and visual designers helped mend the fence, bringing the tenants of their trade from pages to screens – evolving the medium to what might be called “high art.” Developers learned to value UI design, adapting to the principles of the process. Many designers also learned HTML to gain greater control over the experience.Coders learned design. Designers learned to code. And all was right in the universe.Well, not really…With traditional designers wanting to (you guessed it) focus on design, applications began to answer the call. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html">Dreamweaver</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage">Frontpage</a> started as clunky editors with development tools and preview capabilities, but eventually became drag-and-drop builders. And as code started disappearing, designers started relying more on pre-built templates and off-the-shelf libraries.Fast-forward to 2020, and ultra-slim SaaS platforms like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.squarespace.com/">Squarespace</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a> can turn almost anyone into a “web designer.” The problem: they lack the ability to truly customize with code. And the code they produce is always messy – resulting in slow, low-ranking websites that aren’t always responsive.But what if you could have the best of all worlds: a sleek, drag-and-drop website builder that’s perfect for no-code designers, but a platform that still gives developers access to code, so they can customize at will?In this review, we’ll take a look at Webflow: a platform that claims to do just that – and more.<h3>Enter Webflow</h3>Webflow has become one of the most popular website builders on the market. It provides a drag-and-drop user experience that puts out clean code, creates responsive websites that work well on every device, and doesn’t take a side in the design versus code debate. In essence, it caters to everyone that considers themselves a “web designer” and bridges the design/code chasm.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-interface.png" />What makes Webflow unique is that it’s a hybrid of a cutting-edge website builder and a sleek content management system (CMS). It brings together a complete site designer, e-Commerce solutions, and even hosting – all with the ability to choose what you need, and customize with code at almost every turn.Let’s explore some of the noteworthy features of Webflow.<h3>Webflow Designer</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-designer.jpg" /><img />As Webflow’s flagship product, Designer is where you create websites and visually manipulate HTML, CSS, and other interactions. When you create any elements in Webflow, the code is automatically generated behind the UI.On the left side, there’s the Elements panel where you create elements, the pages panel where you can organize and manage page settings, the Webflow CMS for accessing your collections and dynamic content, and the asset manager where you can upload and organize your stuff. At the bottom of the toolbar, you have more granular controls for working with elements – as well as links to video lessons, help, and keyboard shortcuts.In the middle, there’s the “canvas” where you can interact with your page in real-time. You can select elements, move them at will, and edit the content right on the page.<img /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-ui-editor.png" />Now, we’ve already mentioned Webflow’s capacity to produce clean code – and it’s true. The platform adheres to modern web conventions, using real HTML elements like divs. When you create a navigation bar, for example, you don’t draw a rectangle; you select a div element and then adjust its height, width, and other properties.Like some other web builders, Webflow uses a box model. All elements are boxes, and they naturally sit next to each other or stack on top of one other depending on their properties. Like Photoshop, Webflow allows you to position boxes anywhere on a given layout while providing responsive actions with clean, production-ready code.At any time, you can export your code or publish your changes instantly without having to worry about FTP or file versions. One immensely useful feature is the preview, which allows you to see and interact with your project as if it was already published.Finally, on the right, there’s the style panel, which is very similar to Photoshop (in fact, it looks eerily close). Here, you can access granular control over your elements. If the left panel is where you organize the structure of your pages with HTML, the right panel is where you control CSS for styling your elements.You can also create custom interactions with the Javascript control panel. Webflow's animation tools bring all the power of CSS and JavaScript into a completely visual tool, empowering designers to build complex, rich animations. You can easily create scroll-based parallax animations, progress bars, or whatever else you dream up – all without touching code.<h3>Webflow CMS</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-cms.png" />Most websites rely on some kind of a CMS. Webflow takes their design capabilities a step further by integrating a rock-solid CMS into their platform. This enables web designers to build and dynamically manage their websites in one place.With Webflow CMS, you can create the content structures you need, add content (by hand, from a CSV, or via Webflow API), and then design it all visually. This makes the Webflow CMS work for editors, designers, and developers alike. In many ways, they’ve simplified the experience of other all-in-one platforms, even the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">WordPress Gutenberg</a> editor.Webflow CMS also allows you to create custom content types with their “CMS Collections.” For example, you can have a collection of blog posts, authors, clients, projects, and so on. For eCommerce projects, that can include products and categories.<h3>Webflow eCommerce</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-ecommerce-scaled.jpg" />The latest addition to the Webflow’s feature set is their eCommerce suite, putting them squarely in the ring with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/shopify-review-ecommerce-only-simpler/">Shopify</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/10-reasons-why-woocommerce-is-perfect-for-ecommerce-startups/">WooCommerce</a>. The strength of Webflow’s eCommerce is that you can fully customize the online shopping experience without being constrained by built-in templates. You can customize everything from product pages to shopping carts to checkout.eCommerce also comes with its own set of pricing plans, which we’ve outlined later in this article.<h3>Webflow Hosting</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-hosting.png" />We all know that hosting can be a hassle. You have to find the right platform that works with your website and CMS, then deal with endless technical considerations such as domain setup, FTP, cPanel... the list goes on.Webflow makes it easy by hosting directly through their platform. It’s all powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Fastly – a content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates the performance, security, and redundancy of your website. You get fast-loading pages and you never have to pull your hair out updating PHP on your server.Webflow’s hosting also comes with these features:<ul><li>Backups and versioning: Preview and restore your site from ongoing, automatic backups, or create save points to mark progress and track changes.</li><li>Password protection: Gate individual pages or your entire website to protect in-progress work or restrict access.</li><li>Custom forms: Create unique forms to collect data from customers and connect them with marketing automation platforms as needed.</li><li>SEO management: Keep your SEO in check with 301 redirects and a customizable XML sitemap.</li><li>Integrations: Easily add Google Analytics, Google Optimize, and other marketing tools by dropping custom code snippets in your site template.</li><li>Site search: Create a custom search engine for your site with full control over the look and feel of your search results page.</li><li>Zero maintenance: No updates to run or packages to install. Just publish your site and Webflow will take care of the rest.</li></ul><h3>Pricing</h3>So far, Webflow offers a lot of value as a website builder, CMS, eCommerce, and hosting platform for almost any kind of web designer. But from a pricing perspective, things can get a little tricky.There are basically two types of plans on Webflow: Account Plans, which allow you to design and publish websites using a Webflow domain (like “yourwebsite.webflow.io “) – and Site Plans, which let you connect a custom domain.Sure, you can build a killer website with just an Account Plan. But if you want to publish a website on your own domain, you’ll need a Site plan for every website – and that requires hosting as well. Each tier places a cap on the number of pages you can build and form submissions you can receive – unless you go full enterprise, where everything’s included.Account PlansFor all intents and purposes, everyone starts out with an Account Plan. But now, there are two types of Account Plans to choose from.Individual plans are great for solo designers like freelancers and gig workers. You can start for free and upgrade for additional features.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-account-plans-individual-plans.png" />Team plans are designed for orgs that want to work collaboratively.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-account-plans-team-plans.png" />All account plans include:<ul><li>Unlimited hosted projects: With Webflow, your hosted projects don’t count against your plan limits, so you can build as many websites as you want.</li><li>Client billing: Charge your client for your bill instead of paying out of pocket – or charge any amount and make a profit.</li><li>Interactions &amp; animations: Create custom interactions and animations to make your site stand out, all without coding Javascript.</li><li>100+ responsive templates: Don’t want to start from scratch? Select from hundreds of pre-built templates.</li><li>3D transformations: Change positioning, add skews, and rotate objects in 3D space.</li><li>Global swatches: Define key colors as variables, so every instance of that color updates whenever you change it.</li><li>Custom fonts: Upload your own fonts or add free Google Fonts.</li><li>Flexbox: Build flexible, responsive layouts with the power of flexbox in a visual interface.</li><li>Reusable symbols: Turn any recurring element into a reusable symbol that you can update across your site in one edit.</li></ul><h3>Site Plans</h3>With site plans, you can choose from the standard package for personal, blog, and business websites, or the eCommerce plan that enables advanced shopping cart capabilities.Here’s a rundown of what Webflow Site Plans offer:<ul><li>Basic – At $12/month, it’s a solid solution for simple websites that don’t require a CMS. You also get CDN availability, 500 form submissions, free SSL certificate connection, domain connection, and more.</li><li>CMS – For $16/month, you can uplevel your blogs and other content-driven projects with the Webflow CMS. Includes 2000 CMS items, site search, 1000 form submissions, limited CMS API, and up to 3 content editors.</li><li>Business – Coming in at $36/month, this is a great pick for high traffic marketing projects or full-featured blogs. Includes unlimited form submissions, full CMS API, advanced global CDN, up to 10 content editors and more.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-site-plans.png" />All Site Plans include:<ul><li>Backups &amp; versioning: Automatically save and create restore points – so you never lose your work.</li><li>Password protection: As noted before, you can gate your whole site or individual pages.</li><li>Advanced SEO controls: Generate automatic sitemaps and customizable 301 redirects for complete SEO control.</li><li>Fast page loads: Accelerate your performance with Webflow’s Tier 1 Content Delivery Network solutions.</li><li>SSL and security: Get 24/7 hosting, monitoring, and SSL certificates to keep your site secure.</li><li>Immediate scaling: Webflow provides scaling and bursting regardless of how many concurrent users you have on your website.</li></ul>As we said earlier, Webflow’s eCommerce are add-ons to their Site Plans:<ul><li>Standard – At $29/month, this is a perfect starting place for new businesses. You get all the features of the CMS plan plus custom checkout and shopping cart, email customization, a 2% transaction fee, integrated CMS for blogs, and more.</li><li>Plus – For $74, Plus provides a solid solution for higher volume businesses that need more features and capacity. Includes everything in the Business plan plus unbranded emails, 10 staff accounts, and zero transaction fee.</li><li>Advanced – If you’re serious about eCommerce, then $212/month will get you all of the most advanced features on top of the Business plan. Also includes 15 staff accounts, unlimited yearly sales volumes, and more.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/webflow-ecommerce-plans.png" />Finally, if you want to go full Enterprise, Webflow has some custom options that require a phone call. That can include specialized dashboards, enterprise-grade scalability and support, and more.If you’re ready to kick the tires, you can <a target="_blank" href="https://webflow.com/dashboard/signup">sign up for a free version</a> without giving your credit card – and Webflow will let you build 2 projects (meaning 2 websites) for free. These unhosted projects will have a two-page limit, but you can purchase a site plan on a per-project basis to unlock up to 100 static pages and additional CMS pages.<h3>Conclusion</h3>Whether you prefer drag-and-drop over code or vice versa, web designers of any kind can get a lot out of Webflow. It’s a really impressive platform – and does more to unite the ideals of pure web design with coding than ever before. It also manages to bring the power of CMS, eCommerce, and hosting into a single, integrated platform. That simplifies things for a lot of users but might prove too monolithic for others who want to build a custom stack.Webflow offers almost everything you need to launch beautiful, responsive, fast, and secure websites. The only downside is its steep learning curve. In a sense, it almost has its own proprietary or tribal knowledge for cracking the usability. It’s not as simplistic as say Squarespace, and it can take a while for the unindoctrinated user to fully understand.  Thankfully, they do offer a lot of tutorials – another aspect of their product that reminded us of Adobe.If you’re a developer, some users have found Webflow to be a bit confusing – but it still manages to provide a solid platform for building custom apps. With a JSON API for the CMS, it also delivers the hub for connecting and integrating with external data sources.Maybe the loudest complaint across the feedback channels is with pricing. Many users find it too difficult to understand, and more than few suggest that it’s on the expensive side. All things being equal, Webflow provides a lot of flexibility and choice for any web designer (whatever that means) to find the right plan – and start building.<h3>About Webflow</h3><a target="_blank" href="https://webflow.com/">Webflow</a> is a web design tool, CMS, and hosting platform in one. Webflow allows users to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually, while writing clean, semantic code.

Webflow Review: Hybrid Website Builder and CMS Bridges the Design/Code Chasm

paris-tuzun

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-7-1.png" alt="sshot-7" />
Last year, when I first started development on rewriting <a href="https://mithra62.com/projects/view/backup-pro">Backup Pro</a> to be CMS agnostic, I knew I'd have to write a ton of code to do what I needed.
Not all of it though; as thanks to Composer and Packagist I'd be able stand on the shoulders of quite a few giants, but the CMS agnostic stuff didn't exist. So creating that was a huge part of the job. But I did it, and I was able to release Backup Pro 3 for Craft and EE 2&amp;3 last July (a year ago exactly it turns out).
And then my world exploded.
It quickly became apparent I was onto something interesting with the CMS agnostic library. Nearly every programmer I knew was curious about it and had questions. So I thought I'd put a <a href="https://mithra62.com/blog/view/going-platform-agnostic-or-beer-tastes-yummy">post together</a> and lay it all out; the flow, the logic, a few examples, and then get back to work on the WordPress version. But then I did something really stupid; I started thinking about the possibilities, and, even worse, I started thinking about responsibility.
<h3>The Possibilities</h3>
I'd spent the last 5 years working with ExpressionEngine almost exclusively. I was still doing some custom, framework based, projects but for the most part nearly everything I did was ExpressionEngine based. Oh. And the odd Craft site. And a few WordPress projects actually. And then there were those Magento and Zencart ones… Oh. Shit. And a Drupal site came up once I couldn't get out of too, now that I think about it. So I use quite a few CMSs professionally.
And that's actually not uncommon, at least for a specific subset of programmers (agency and freelancer programmers to be precise). For me though, I was working on all these systems for years, learning all their libraries and peccadilloes, and constantly reinventing the wheel(s) I invented last week. For example, ExpressionEngine 2 is CodeIgniter based, Craft is built on Yii, Magento is coded with evil in its heart, and WordPress is a time warp to a scarier, but oddly more comforting, time, so nothing's organically portable between them. Developers can't take most EE/Wp/Mag/etc code and use it in another CMS without a LOT of pain and overhead. And that's true across the entire CMS spectrum.
But, what if you could? What if there was a way to create CMS agnostic add-ons?
Agnostic development isn't exactly an unheard of idea; the video game industry does it, to mixed results in the past admittedly (but they've gotten better), so it is doable. It's also a job though, certainly, but with a bit of elbow grease, theoretically possible.
Not exactly a universal paradigm though, is it? For tools like Backup Pro, it makes sense, but abstract concepts like data models and front end architecture pretty much preclude even attempting most content based add-ons. As an example, <a href="https://mithra62.com/projects/view/export-it">Export It</a>, my data export module for ExpressionEngine, would be painful to make CMS agnostic since it relies on the individual CMS data model(s).
So I went to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/43go84/any_interest_in_a_cms_agnostic_moduleplugin/">Reddit and asked r/PHP</a> what the PHP developers there thought of the idea. And… got a resounding meh… Some liked the idea, others didn't, but I didn't leave thinking it'd be stupid to do, so chalked that up to a win. In the “ask your mother” sort of way, but still, a win nonetheless.
<h3>Our Responsibility As Programmers (Time to Get Preachy For a Minute)</h3>
Now, up to this point, all the above was a nagging itch on my brain. I had an idea others would find a CMS PHP framework useful, but being so busy with Backup Pro, the product, my time's finite. Do I even have time for something like this? And, seriously now, what benefit is there, to me, for doing it? Taking all the time to not only build a PHP framework, but also release it, document it, maintain it, nurture it, and promote it? And, worse, I have a long standing policy that I get paid for my time spent working. All my time spent working. Dammit.
So, what benefit would there be for me to put this together? Some people may say it's marketing. “You'll sell more copies of Backup Pro through simple association”, is a common refrain. And that's probably true, but only up to a point. I don't have numbers, obviously, but it's tough to imagine <a href="https://www.helpspot.com/">HelpSpot</a> flew off the shelf because of Laravel, or ExpressionEngine's success was due to CodeIgniter (in fact, did you even know HelpSpot was the benefactor of Laravel?). The people who care about such things aren't traditionally known as the same ones who have purchasing authority is my point. So I don't really buy that.
But then I recall, once again, that my career is built on open source. I write code in PHP, to deploy on Apache web servers, that use the MySQL database, rendered using HTML, CSS, &amp; JavaScript, abstracted with jQuery and Less/Sass, and viewed primarily on Webkit, Blink, and Gecko based web browsers (we're still pretending IE doesn't exist, right?).
Put another way, my career is built on open source (and the developers who put their lives into it) so it's selfish as fuck for me NOT to give back.
<h3>Dipping a Toe (Again)</h3>
So… I did it… Jaeger, officially, exists.
I'm not sure how successful I was, but a bare bones 0.1.X version exists up on GitHub now as <a href="https://github.com/jaeger-app/jaeger">jaeger-app</a>. It's also on <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/jaeger-app/bootstrap">Packagist</a> (and Travis and Scrutinizer…) as well, so it's ready for Composer use. And, to make matters worse, and throw a little more skin in the game, starting from Backup Pro 3.4 (which is in developer preview right now), <a href="/backup-pro-cms-agnostic-backups/">Backup Pro</a> will be Jaeger based. So I'm going all in at least insofar as Backup Pro is concerned.
I'll put together some detailed examples later, but for now, I just wanted to put it out there that Jaeger exists and is ready to start poking at. You can get Jaeger from <a href="https://github.com/jaeger-app/jaeger">GitHub</a> and <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/jaeger-app/">Packagist</a>.
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This post is <a href="/advertising/">sponsored</a> by Backup Pro. Find out more on <a href="https://mithra62.com/projects/view/backup-pro">their website</a>.

A Tale About The Jaeger PHP Framework

<a href="https://microweber.com/" target="_blank">Microweber</a>, the open source CMS fresh out of beta, has unveiled Microweber Version 1, which hosts a wide range of new features. 
In 2014, <a href="/microweber-a-cms-stripped-of-complexity/" target="_blank">I delved into the background and inner-workings of Microweber</a>. But a lot has changed since then, particularly since the introduction of Version 1. 
Let's take a look at what's new.
<h2>Lavarel 5 &amp; A Revamped Design</h2>
Microweber has taken the plunge with a brand new framework; Lavarel 5. 
According to the Microweber team, “Laravel is a great framework and it is one of the most stable PHP frameworks of our time…using Laravel 5, to develop modules is real pleasure.”
Alongside this framework shift, Microweber have also been hard at work on the front end of their platform by re-designing their admin panel and live edit mode interface.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image08_1.jpg" />
We have make some changes on the live edit design. Now we have a buttons for Modules and Layouts and you can easily use which you like by drag and drop it to the page.
<h2>A New Website &amp; Marketplace</h2>
To go with all these major enhancements, Microweber has also reinvented their website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image061079x0.jpg" />
Furthermore, the new Microweber Marketplace is now available from within the admin panel, and on the main website. From here on out, the entire Microweber community now can sell and buy modules, templates and licenses from either of the two interfaces. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image071079x0.jpg" />
Microweber have also announced a new affiliate program open to its users, which is available via the admin panel. 
All the finer details of Microweber Version 1 can be found via the official announcement. 
For more information on Microweber CMS, visit their <a href="http://microweber.com/" target="_blank">official website</a>, or better yet, <a href="http://demo.microweber.org/" target="_blank">test out a demo</a>.

Microweber Version 1 Released

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