Articles - Page 150

What I Mean to Say: A Practitioner Perspective on AI, Semantics, and Content Evolution

msalvatierra

Lights, Camera, Action! Jahia's first ever conference being held in the City of Lights, Paris is getting ready to begin. With double the expected attendees, this is sure to be an event to please.
This first ever conference is being held at the beautiful  <a href="http://www.pan-piper.com/"> Pan Piper conference center </a> in downtown Paris.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/banner.jpg" />
The event opens with an introductory keynote from Elie Auvray (CEO of Jahia) and Mick MacComascaigh,  Research VP with Gartner and the Lead Analyst for Web content management, this event is sure to bring the latest knowledge about the goings on at Jahia and the future of their position within the content management industry.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/img_0084930x0.jpg" alt="Eli Auvray, CEO of Jahia" />
Elie Auvray, CEO of Jahia
The program for the event can be found here: <a href="http://www.jahiaone.com/program">JahiaOne Schedule.</a>
Stay tuned for more from the conference throughout the day by <a href="http://twitter.com/cmscritic">following us on Twitter</a> or following the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jahiaone&amp;src=typd">#JahiaOne</a> hashtag on Twitter. Of course, we'll be offering up many posts throughout the event on the site as well.

JahiaOne Paris - Jahia Shines in the City of Light

mike-johnston

<a name="_GoBack"></a>You’re not the little guy, anymore. Or maybe you never were to begin with. You have a huge cast of employees, spread out across a dozen offices across the country (or the globe). You’ve got a deep product or services offering and customers engaging an array of properties with little or no direct connection to each other. 
You’re a national organization, you’re a franchise-model business, you’re a big deal. There are hundreds of moving pieces in your marketing effort and you’re the one who has to keep it all together. 
Is your CMS helping or hindering you in this herculean task?
<h2>Holding the Centre: the Human Element</h2>
The most basic element of any marketing effort, big or small, is the human component; the living, breathing operators of your content machine. Organizing a large, diverse group of content creators, moderators and publishers of that content and strategic overseers can be a task too big to handle without the tools you’re using lending a helping hand. Workflow and permission tools are the first line of defence against the collapse of a complicated multi-site marketing effort. A solid workflow and permissions tool should allow you to manage the users of your CMS to function to the utmost of their skill, bound by the authority that you (and their immediate overseers) grant them. It should be granular – customizable on as many fronts as possible; give your users the ability to create, modify and delete entire pages but also give them a custom toolset to work with on any given page. 
What you want to aim for is a system that allows the highest and lowest skilled users to flourish. Have an employee with CSS and HTML knowledge? They should be allowed to directly edit the code of any given page. Have an employee who struggles with Microsoft Word? They need an interface on that exact same page that’s tailored to their level of expertise.
Seamlessness is crucial – the more work that your team can accomplish directly within your CMS, the better results you’ll have. An integrated CMS incorporating as many content tools as possible (text creation and management, image creation and editing, web and email campaigning tools, forms, landing pages, analytics, etc.) will boost your users ability to dedicate their attention on the task at hand. 
Every time a window closes and a program has to load is an opportunity for a focus breakdown. A system with fully-integrated marketing tools will allow you to reduce training time, add new members to your growing team with a minimum of fuss and allow you a single point of escalation should anything go wrong. Think big and look for a CMS that does, too.
Above the content layer itself, a nuanced workflow tool should empower you to customize the process of content creation. It should allow you to tweak the flow from ideation to collaboration to publication. At the most basic level, you should be able to assign publishers to any workgroup (product teams, faculties, offices) who can approve or reject content. 
Beyond that, a good CMS will incorporate lateral workflow elements – the ability for users to comment on and task content to each other along the same lines. If you’re working on a multi-locational campaign, for example, each office should be able to access that content, pass it back and forth and then submit it to head office for approval. This process should feel like playing ping-pong, not pulling teeth. Make sure your CMS encourages momentum instead of slowing you down.
<h2>Content Control from the Top Down</h2>
Whether you’re implementing a single site with many sub-sites or operating multiple sites within the same organization, you’ve got content fragmentation to worry about. There are elements of every multi-site layout that need to be the same; mandated from the top and integrated downward. Privacy policies, header and footer content, brand-guideline styles are all elements for which central control is required, among others. 
Your CMS should allow you to manage and deliver this content to your sub-sites with as little fuss as possible.
Generally, for centrally-controlled content, the bare minimum should be the ability to easily recognize what content is aggregated from elsewhere. Users of any operational authority level should be able to look at a page or email and know where the content comes from. This way, even if they aren’t enabled to edit that content themselves, you’re saving time answering questions when someone in the Montreal office thinks they need a different header graphic than the one the New York office uses. Users who have a solid grasp on what their responsibilities will be more inclined to focus on the content they do have ownership over. 
Beyond that, when changes are necessary, they should be easily performed by the users who have the mandate to make top-level edits and should populate down to all the sub-sites and accounts with the same instant speed you’d expect in publishing any individual piece of content. This should be instantaneous for all accounts necessary, whether part of a larger whole or an individual sub-account. If your CMS requires you to manually edit each and every time you need to update this kind of content, it may be time to rethink your CMS.
<h2>Ease of Aggregation </h2>
As websites grow, the library of press releases, news items, event listings and other general content tends to pile up. As new items are added, deciding what gets pushed to sub-sites and regional offices can be an organizational nightmare. Does the Product team page contain news releases from the home page? Does the Los Angeles office get news releases from the San Francisco office? 
If you have to deal with these kinds of questions on a post-by-post basis, you’re wasting time and energy that could be better served with bigger tasks. Look to your CMS for answers.
Content aggregation tools will allow you to tag and organize posts at the content-release level. So when you create a news article about acquiring that new San Diego property, you can tag it as “California” and “acquisition”. Once that’s done, an automatic listing of that content will appear wherever it is appropriate. This will allow you to create custom objects that can be placed on any given page and updated automatically whenever a new item is created. 
Imagine, then, that this California acquisition post will appear on the LA site, the San Francisco site, the head office news feed and the board-only site that displays all upcoming business news. All because your CMS enabled your user to tag that content. A little work setting up aggregation in the early stages will lead to a massive time savings later down the line.
This kind of aggregation should work multi-directionally; your head office should be able to create items that cascade down to individual sub-sites and your sub-sites should be able to populate back up to your main site. This kind of content sharing, controlled by automatic listing aggregation, provides a plethora of benefits – it’s a known fact that fresh content provides a massive SEO boost. Doubtless that there is content being created by your various teams that could be implemented elsewhere to keep pages full with fresh content and draw in Google and Yahoo crawlers like ants to a picnic.
<h2>A CMS to Make You, Not Break You</h2>
When choosing a CMS for your multi-site setup, keep in mind that there are two major elements to consider. The first is the human aspect of your business. You have a team or several teams of varying skill levels and discipline all working together to create your marketing effort on the web. You need a CMS that can be customized to wring the absolute best out of that team. You push them for perfection; give them a tool that will help them reach that high goal. 
The other side of the coin is the content itself, once it’s been created is it being implemented and managed in a way that supports your site setup? Aggregation, workflow and permission control that is granular and powerful can save time and effort and help you focus on the tasks that really matter. Coordination and compliance is the key to success in a complicated environment. Choose a CMS that empowers, not disables you.

In the Widening Gyre: Keeping Control of a Multi-Site Marketing Environment

Purchasing a content management system is a big investment. There are a lot of people who will be affected by the purchase, there’s a lot of research to do, and you’ll need to plan for the implementation, not to mention the actual cost of whatever system you choose. You may also want to audit your existing site content before migrating to the new system. Needless to say, there’s a lot to think about. The last thing you want to slow you down is colleagues or bosses standing in the way of a more efficient, more powerful content management system because they aren’t on the same page as you.
Based on our extensive experience with organizations buying content management systems, the best way to address the issue of organizational buy-in is to consider all your stakeholders from the beginning.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/url930x0.jpg" alt="company buy in" />
Make a list of each person (or department) at your organization who will be impacted by your selection, and consider their needs and desires. Depending on your role, this may include any or all of the following:
 MarComm 
As marketers become increasingly tech-savvy and analytics-driven, they are making more and more of the tech decisions at companies. Regardless of who the final decision-maker is at your company, the marketing and communications folks will be heavily invested in the final outcome. We recommend speaking with them before you get too far in your search in order to find out their needs. Are they concerned with in-context analytics, branding consistency, fresh and SEO-friendly content, converting visitors to leads, sharing content across pages and sites, and/or having a mobile-friendly or responsive site design? What are their top priorities and biggest pain points?
 Information Technology (IT) 
Even if you choose a CMS-provider that can handle your content migration, CMS implementation and hosting of your CMS server, your IT department will still need to be involved to an extent in getting the CMS up and running for your organization. Additionally, you’ll probably need to have at least one or two people responsible for maintaining users in the system, adjusting permissions and access levels, and serving as the first level of support. If you choose to do the content migration, CMS hosting, backups and software upgrades in-house, then they’ll be even more involved. Speak with this team early on, and be sure to consider their technical abilities and existing time commitments, as this will help determine what types of services you’ll need to look for in conjunction with your software purchase.
 Content Contributors 
These are any social media marketers, bloggers, journalists, writers, photographers, interns, administrative assistants or others who will be updating content on your site. Some of them will be using the system daily while others may only use it every six months. Technical abilities may vary greatly from company to company and within a single company. In order to get buy-in from this group, we recommend asking them about their current pain points during your research phase and having them test your top 2-3 systems. Another crucial step to getting buy-in and participation from this group is to provide training and on-going internal support to these users post-purchase. Some end user-focused features you may want to look for are in-context editing, spell-checking, non-HTML content editing, hidden links on the live site to jump into the system for editing, image and link management, and drag and drop functionality.
 Web Developers and Designers 
If you’re redesigning your site along with upgrading to a new CMS, you may choose to outsource the design to an agency. However, once the initial design has been implemented, you will probably still have an ongoing need for web development and design work. If you’ve got in-house developers, make sure you discuss their needs and let them demo your top finalist systems. Content management systems come with a wide array of different developer tools, and a single feature, such as a code editor, could make a big difference in how easy or difficult it is to get your developers on board. Ask your developers how much weight they place on having an advanced code editor, the ability to use unlimited templates, support for mobile and responsive technologies, an active community of other users, and sample templates that can be customized for your company.
 The Higher-ups 
Your CIO, CTO and/or CMO may never spend a single minute working directly with your new content management system, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t have opinions on the technology they want you to use or what results they’d like to see from the implementation of a new system. This group may hold the purse strings as well, so it’s important to seek out their opinions early. Talk to them about your overall web content strategy and your goals, so you can be sure the product you select can help you achieve those goals. If your opinions regarding technology differ, the conversation doesn’t have to end there; however, it’s good to know where they stand ahead of time, so you can be prepared to make the case for your favorite CMS later down the road.
This is not an exclusive list of potential stakeholders, so make sure you consider all angles at your organization and write down their different (and potentially conflicting) goals and pain points early on. The best way to get buy-in is to let your stakeholders be part of your team and by making sure their needs are represented in your search. Does this mean everyone is going to be happy with your final decision? Maybe not at first. But by working together, providing on-going training, and informing all your stakeholders of the most influential factors in your decision, you can minimize the grumbling and have a smooth transition to your new CMS.
Like this article? Read more in this free Intro to Content Management Whitepaper. 
[[hannon2]]

How to Get Company-wide Buy-in for a New CMS

It looks as though there have been some serious updates and improvements over the last couple of years since I mentioned Surreal CMS in our <a href="/top-10-simple-cms/">Top 10 Simple CMS</a> post. Updates that have really become major game changers for this slick and attractive CMS.
Let's explore what's change with their latest release, labeled Surreal CMS V5.
<h2>Inline Editing</h2>
One of the most significant changes in this version is the introduction of some rather excellent inline editing capabilities. Check out this quick 30 second demo video showcasing how it works.
http://youtu.be/bQqFR3jCxDg
It's not your typical inline editor either, you simply click, type, click outside the box and it's saved. It's incredibly easy to use and I must admit that I found myself wishing it was present in all of the CMS' I test out on a day to day basis. Good work guys!
<h2>Amazon S3 Support</h2>
I bet you thought this meant that you can just host your images on Amazon S3 didn't you? No sir. You can host the entire CMS on Amazon's powerful cloud and still maintain all of the excellent additional functionality you have come to love with this new update.
This means your website can maintain amazing availability for a low cost as Amazon S3 services eliminate the need for expensive hosting!
<h2>Responsive and Touch Friendly</h2>
Your whole website is now responsive and touch friendly! This means you can even use the slick inline editor with your smart phone or tablet! (Trust me, I just tested it with my LG G-Pad tablet as I wrote this and it works exactly the same).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/responsive.png" />
<h2>New Photo Gallery Editor</h2>
Surreal CMS V5 also comes with a new photo gallery editor that can integrate with many lightbox-style galleries and sliders as well!
—
That's not all, however. There is a lengthy list of features that you can read more about on their website here: <a href="http://www.surrealcms.com/features">Surreal CMS Features. </a>
I'd strongly recommend you go try it out. The devs have done an amazing job with this one and I'd be surprised if it didn't give them a serious leg up on their competition.

Surreal CMS launches V5 with huge improvements

With well over 12 million users, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Weebly</a> is a hugely popular website builder, bursting with user-friendly features. Just check out our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly-review-all-new-weebly/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Weebly Review</a> if you don't believe me.
Today, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly" rel="nofollow">Weebly</a> announced a couple of brand new features aimed at making ecommerce website easier to build, and all <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly" rel="nofollow">Weebly</a> website types safer to navigate for everybody concerned.
So, let's take a look at what's new with Weebly.
<h2>Start Selling with Weebly</h2>
From today onwards, Weebly users can enjoy the ability to build high-quality shopping experiences.
According to Weebly, their developers have studied the most successful online retailers and combined the simplicity of drag &amp; drop site creation with powerful selling features to make it easy and affordable to start selling products online.
So if you're looking to start selling online,  Weebly now gives you everything you need to get going.
Here are just some of the features on offer:
<ul>
<li>Integrated Shopping Cart</li>
<li>Mobile Store and Checkout</li>
<li>Coupon Codes</li>
<li>Digital Goods</li>
<li>Flexible Product Options (for sizes, colors, etc.)</li>
<li>Order Tracking and History</li>
<li>New <a href="https://secure.weebly.com/weebly/eclick.php?u=2522769&amp;c=announcement.2014-01-29.new-commerce-features.no-store&amp;s=418353603&amp;t=420df11430b7155bf31ab0ef8365b249&amp;r=https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly/weebly/mobile/landing.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">iPhone </a>  and <a href="https://secure.weebly.com/weebly/eclick.php?u=2522769&amp;c=announcement.2014-01-29.new-commerce-features.no-store&amp;s=418353603&amp;t=420df11430b7155bf31ab0ef8365b249&amp;r=https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly/weebly/mobile/landing.php?device%3Dandroid" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Android </a>  Apps to Manage Your Store</li>
<li>Accept Credit Cards (with Stripe, Authorize.net, or PayPal)</li>
<li>Amazing New Product Search</li>
<li>Inventory Tracking</li>
<li>Shipping &amp; Tax Calculations</li>
<li>Checkout On Your Own Domain (instead of checkout.weebly.com, SSL, PCI Compliant)</li>
</ul>
The full list of features, along with an ecommerce introductory video, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly-introduce-further-ecommerce-stock-photo-updates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> can be seen right here</a>.
For all the powerful ecommerce features, Weebly users will need to be using the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Business Plan</a>. Although, Weebly are now offering a smooth 30-day money back guarantee.
<h2>Safety First with Weebly's SSL</h2>
Security conscious Weebly Business Plan users can also benefit from another brand new enhancement, SSL certificates.
SSL certificates ensure that visitors can navigate your website over a secured 128-bit encrypted connection, displaying a universally recognised padlock in the address bar.
If you'll be using Weebly's Ecommerce features, the SSL certificate enables customers to checkout directly on your domain, instead of being re-directed to Weebly's standard payment gateway. Best of all, Weebly takes care of all the setup for you so it's incredibly easy to add an SSL certificate to your site.
For more information on Weebly, check out their <a href="https://www.weebly.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">official website</a>. Additionally, explore more of <a href="/products/weebly/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Weebly via our CMS Directory</a>.

Weebly Introduces Ecommerce & SSL Features

As times change, new devices emerge and browsing patterns evolve, it's never too long before your large scale enterprise website is in need of yet another complete revamp and relaunch. 
Website deployment is by no means an easy task for any enterprise. Fortunately though, <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Magnolia</a> are seasoned experts when it comes to such projects. Whether the challenges come in the form of training or retraining developers to manage the task at hand, or migrating huge sections of existing content, Magnolia have been there, and done that.
The pitfalls of deploying an enterprise website are many, and failing to avoid the unnecessary risks whilst managing the necessary ones can have seriously adverse consequences – sometimes at the expense of the entire project. 
So, to help you and your enterprise approach your website deployment in the smartest and safest way, here are some highly effective strategies derived from just some of the points within <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/campaigns/pitfalls-cms-critic.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Magnolia's information-rich white paper</a>.
<h2>Understand Content Migration Time</h2>
Migrating existing content when re-deploying your enterprise website has immense benefits. Regular visitors of the website will remain engaged post-launch thanks to the familiar content, whilst content migration also does wonders for maintaining your website's search engine rankings. 
However, the process is multi-layered, requiring a watchful eye, and most importantly, time. 
It is vital to understand that when carrying out a content migration process, it is not just page content that needs to be migrated. CSS, JavaScript, page templates, images and media files all need to be accounted for, with each of these different elements requiring a range of tools and differing amounts of time to successfully process and migrate.
 For example, a web-scraping tool might be able to migrate the content of a single page in a few seconds, but this would not be representative of the time required to transfer other resource types. Images might need to be resized or reformatted to fit the new page templates and so take significantly longer to be migrated. You also need to factor in time to manually check and validate each page, to make sure it's been properly migrated and doesn’t break when rendering.
Also, it's worth noting that the code captured by web-scraping tools does not transfer variation functionality. This includes things like geolocation and personalization parameters, which may need to be re-configured or re-written altogether prior to the launch of the new website. 
 Avoiding resource duplication is another potential issue. In many cases, the same resource might be referenced from multiple website pages. If your migration tool isn't intelligent enough to detect this, you'll end up with multiple copies of the resource in your asset library. Cleaning up these duplicates is a time-consuming manual process, which will only be further compounded if your asset library is on the large side.
<h2>Construct &amp; Stick to a Solid Post-launch Plan</h2>
Deploying a revamped website requires more than just a short-term event. You'll need to piece together an actionable, manageable post-launch plan to cover future additions and other aspects.
After all, it won't be too long before bugs need fixing, new features need adding and pages need updating. Hence, your post-launch plan should include processes for website backup, restore and upgrade. 
 When it comes to defining a backup schedule, ask yourself the question, “If a website failure occurs right now, how many hours of data can be lost without a critical impact on the business? A week? A day? An hour?”. The answer to this question should determine your backup interval. For most companies, a daily backup will usually suffice; however, this depends heavily on the nature of your website. If you have a large team of editors deployed to apply near-constant website updates, you may want to shorten the backup intervals down to just a few hours. 
Cloud backups are typically more complex than regular physical server backups, and the shared nature of cloud servers usually means you have to work harder to ensure that your backup contains all your data and only your data. Such checks would need to be made regularly.
 Of course, being able to restore backups is equally as important. A common mistake is to perform regular website backups without ever actually testing them. Ensuring that the backups are working on a regular basis is vital, as many factors can come into play to disrupt the process. For example, changes in server infrastructure might render a backup invalid, or a lack of familiarity with the restoration process might result in longer downtimes. As a rule of thumb, schedule backups to occur on at least a monthly basis to avoid problems during a genuine crisis. 
 When handling website upgrades, you will need separate environments to test the new version of the website before rolling it out to production. Typically, you will first deploy to a development environment with minimal data, then to a test environment with a larger sample of data, and finally to an integration environment which has a full copy of the production data. 
This last step will also provide you with a useful hint regarding the amount of time the upgrade will actually take. This allows you to comunicate more consicely with website visitors. Finally, if everything works well, you can backup the current production website with all its data (as a failsafe against unforeseen failures) and then deploy the new website.
<h2>Embrace the Change</h2>
Change of any type can be hard to adjust to – and that includes enterprising companies. Developing and deploying an enterprise website will not come without elements of internal politics and technical technical issues, so be prepared for some dissent as the impact of website's changes come into effect.
Naturally, this apprehension is primarily linked to the time and money involved in such a large project, along with the potential negative impact on the organization's reputation should the project fail.
So, before embarking on the journey to deployment, you must get all stakeholders and other important parties to agree on the high-level issues. This includes technical and branding requirements, budget, schedule, team and vision. But as work progresses and changes begin to come into effect, expect the lower-level details like icons, fonts, navigation, copy style and so forth to take center stage, as more people to come forward with criticism and feedback. 
In the three months prior to launch, comments, feedback and criticism of such elements will reach their peak. In many cases, it will seem as if everybody within the organization has a different, yet increasingly loud opinion. At this stage – and at all other stages, it is important to ensure that this large volume of often-conflicting feedback doesn't derail the project. Establish some ground rules, but maintain the openly communicative progress with all stakeholders, both internal and external. Ask for feedback as needed, but weigh opinions appropriately. 
Such feedback from different parties is all part of embracing the changes involved in overhauling a large scale website, and so level handedness is most certainly required amongst those in command.
 Most importantly, don't let the pressures of these comments, nor the weight of the company's reputation on your shoulders to falter the project. Just as their is risk involved, so too is there massive potential to make your website deployment a roaring success, simply by educating yourself about the likely issues you’ll encounter and making sure that you’ve planned for and mitigated important risks.
To delve even deeper into the most common obstacles of deploying large scale enterprise websites – and how to avoid them, read Magnolia's brilliantly explanatory white paper, <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/campaigns/pitfalls-cms-critic.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Top Ten Pitfalls Of Large Scale Website Deployments</a>.

How to Avoid the Prevalent Pitfalls of Deploying an Enterprise Website

If there's one thing that I've learned in my many years covering the CMS space, it's that I will never truly know about every single CMS out there, no matter how hard I try. Every day, it seems, a new content management system hits the ‘net and while some of the developers of these systems are good at marketing and pushing their product, many aren't.
That's one of the reasons I started CMS Critic in the first place over 6 years ago. I wanted to share my experiences with each CMS (including the lesser known ones) and help people find the real hidden gems.
Finding the perfect CMS is not an easy thing to accomplish. So today, I'm going to share with you some suggestions and tips I've learned over my many years of consulting and providing advice.
<h2>Don't be wowed by the interface.</h2>
There are some beautiful and stunning interfaces within a large number of content management systems out there but one important thing to keep in mind is that, just like choosing a partner, you don't always want to make your selection based on looks. The adage “it's what's on the inside that counts” couldn't possibly be more true and applies to far more than just dating and relationships. I've seen a significant number of CMS with beautiful interfaces but little to no functionality or they are chock full of bugs. That's not to say there aren't the exceptions to the rule but it's definitely something to keep in mind. It's easy to make something pretty, it's hard to make it pretty AND functionally useful.
Don't always be quick to dismiss the system with the simple interface. More often than not, these are the first ones you should look at. Usually, it's a sign that the developer prefers less bloat and is more focused on the code and functionality. In some cases, it's the flip-side and simple literally means simple but it's important to always thoroughly explore all options before you write something off as “too plain” or “too fancy”.
<h2>Do make a list of of needs and wants.</h2>
Another important item people tend to overlook when searching for a CMS is the requirement for a clear and concise need / want list. This list should be very straight forward and easy to compile. I recommend getting together with members of each functional area that will be using the CMS (or supporting it) and listing out items that absolutely MUST be in the new CMS and items that would simply be ‘nice to have'.
Some examples of needs might be:
<ul>
<li>Strong workflow functionality.</li>
<li>Integration with existing ecommerce suite.</li>
<li>Multilingual capabilities</li>
</ul>
An example of a want might be:
<ul>
<li>Workflow Notification by SMS (system may have email notification but no SMS in which case, you could make do fine if it fit your other requirements).</li>
</ul>
I recommend always making sure you involve all of the business units that will be in some way touching the system. This helps eliminate frustration amongst all parties and allows everyone to feel like they've had a chance to offer their input.
Don't forget to think about what you already have (if you are currently using a homegrown system or another CMS) and what you couldn't live without during a change.
<h2>Do check out each vendors support groups / forums / Twitter accounts (if available).</h2>
It's vital that you always check out how a vendor treats their existing customers before you go spending money with them. I recommend checking out their Twitter accounts thoroughly (if they have them).
<ul>
<li>Do they reply to queries from existing and potential customers?</li>
<li>Are they helpful when doing so?</li>
<li>How active are they on each platform?</li>
</ul>
Forums are another excellent way to see how people are reacting to a certain product. If the company you are considering is not active and assisting those with questions, steer clear as it's a sure sign of nightmares down the road.
<h2>Do contact each vendor you are considering and ask lots of questions.</h2>
Don't be afraid to grill each vendor you are considering. A good vendor will be happy to answer your questions and if they want your business, they will do their best to give you thorough and complete answers. This is another great way to guage how much value the vendor places on acquiring you as a customer. A good vendor will work hard for your business, answering your questions and directing you to the correct resources.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/questions_to_ask_when_chosing_a_cloud_vendor1.jpg" />
This is also a good way to guage how quickly a vendor can respond with accurate answers. If it takes them a long time and you get bounced from person to person, this could be a good indicator as to how easy or hard it might be to get support down the road if you became their customer.
<h2>Do not let the vendor lead the demo for you.</h2>
Now, this might seem a little bit odd but I've seen a number of demos where the customer has simply sat back and let the vendor lead the demo showcasing all of the great stuff within their product. Here's the problem with letting the vendor lead the demo, they will only show you the stuff that works and works well. 
I always recommend making a list of what you expect from the demo, what do you want to see, what you do not care about and telling the vendor how to proceed. Don't be afraid to throw in curveball questions during the demo to see how they react. Can they answer your question? Are they lost and stammering? These things are important as well as they make the vendor think how they would use their system to accomplish your specific tasks and since you are on a demo, you can visualize how easy it might be for you as a customer as well.
This is a critical one and can be the a significant deciding factor when choosing a product so don't be afraid to take charge! It's your money after all.
—
I hope these few items help you in your search for the perfect CMS. Do you have other things you think are important that you'd like to share? Please do so in the comments below

How to Find the Perfect CMS

Kontent.ai - Agentic CMS

Meet the world's first Agentic CMS

#ffffff

Today, <a href="http://www.sdl.com" target="_blank">SDL</a> launched a unified suite of offerings to help marketers create and deliver seamless customer experiences across all channels, devices, regions and languages. 
 For a number of years, SDL have provided innovative software and service solutions via web content management, analytics, social intelligence, campaign management and translation services. Today, over 1,500 organizations, including 42 of the top 50 global brands, rely on SDL to deliver locally relevant customer experiences throughout the customer journey.
The <a href="http://www.sdl.com/CXC" target="_blank">SDL Customer Experience Cloud™</a> has been introduced in order to make it easier to deliver data-driven experiences at each point of the buying journey, regardless of location or device. 
<h2>Any Language, Any Context, Anywhere</h2>
Regarding the launch of the SDL Customer Experience Cloud™, Mark Terauchi – general manager at the Corporate Brand Office at Fujitsu, had this to say:
<blockquote>
“With thousands of customers all over the world, it’s especially important to have technology that allows us to engage with our user base in real time, in any language and context, from anywhere. We believe SDL can provide us with the ability to deliver a comprehensive customer experience, and the new releases from SDL will help us to advance our customer strategy more effectively.”
</blockquote>
Additionally, Mark Lancaster – the CEO of SDL, also commented:
<blockquote>
“We are in a new age of customer marketing where the journey and post-sale behavior can glean insights for brands to make smarter decisions about how they build relationships. This Customer Experience Cloud packs all the critical elements of customer experience management into one accessible suite and delivers on our vision that every marketer can meet the expectations of their global customer base and remain connected and responsive throughout the entire buyer journey.”
</blockquote>
<h2>Everything in the Cloud</h2>
Based on customer demand, SDL has spent the last several years integrating its Customer Experience Management products to work together and to deliver the entire solution in the cloud.  
Highlights of this new release include:
<ul>
<li>A single intuitive user interface across all SDL’s CXM products that has been significantly enhanced to provide a seamless marketing user experience that is modern, easy to use and easy to deploy.</li>
<li>SaaS delivery model for all SDL products, available now, with continuous enhancements quarterly throughout 2014.</li>
<li>Industry-first, integrated CXM Suite which enable marketers to create engaging, personalized and contextual customer experiences leveraging real-time data to drive better marketing decisions.</li>
<li>SDL Social is the only social intelligence solution with real-time analysis of social data and conversations across all social channels to effectively predict buying and brand advocacy across the entire customer journey.</li>
<li>The introduction of SDL Language Cloud, the industry’s first cloud translation solution offering both machine and human translation for radically simplified global translation – enabling marketers to engage customers in their preferred language across all interactions quickly and cost-effectively.</li>
<li>SDL Web Content Management is the first to enable marketers to easily target and drive consistent, contextually relevant digital customer experiences across all channels and devices from a single, intuitive interface.</li>
<li>SDL Marketing Campaign enables campaign testing, simulation, optimization and advanced segmentations – enabling customers to drive large-scale campaigns faster and more cost-effectively.</li>
<li>SDL E-Commerce provides advanced digital merchandizing features, which give retailers precise control over campaign context and prioritization over the placement of product and offers across search, navigation and promotional activities.</li>
<li>SDL Analytics provides real-time customer intelligence to understand, target and convert customers across the entire buyer journey.</li>
<li>SDL Documentation enables seamless post sales customer support by providing easy access to online materials including manuals, support information and other important documentation.</li>
</ul>
To find out more about the newly launched SDL Customer Experience Cloud™, check out <a href="http://www.sdl.com/CXC" target="_blank"> SDL's official website </a> .

SDL Launches SDL Customer Experience Cloud™, Aiming to Deliver Personalized Customer Experiences

<a href="http://www.squarespace.com"> Squarespace </a> , winners of our  <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-critic-awards/"> Critics' Choice Award </a> for Best Website Builder, have hit the big time and are now heading to the Superbowl.
Given the cost of these ad spots and the fact that they are often talked about more than the Superbowl itself, this is a major step forward for the popular website builder and goes to show that Squarespace is doing very well for themselves.
From their announcement, they describe the ad as follows:
<blockquote>Our ad. A Better Web Awaits, strikes a contrast between two very different visions of the web. All too often, the Internet we experience today is a sea of clutter and spam – dubious discounts, mortgage offers, and weight loss tips abound. As a company, we’ve always fought to keep our product, and our customers’ websites, imbued with a respect for simple and beautiful design. We believe strongly in these values. We believe that a better web starts with your website.</blockquote>
You can check out the ad ahead of time here:
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S0Or1f_RxKQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
What do you think of Squarespace? Do you like it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments below. If you aren't familiar with <a href="http://www.squarespace.com">Squarespace</a>, check out our  <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/squarespace-review-the-long-awaited-commerce-solution/"> Squarespace Review </a> to get the inside scoop.

Squarespace goes to the Superbowl

The latest release of WordPress is now available and it is recommended that all running the previous version of the CMS update via the dashboard or by downloading the latest release.
WordPress 3.8.1 is a maintenance released that includes some fixes to a number of bugs and issues that arose in the 3.8 release.
It contains the following:
<ul>
<li>a fix for embedding tweets (by placing the URL to the tweet on its own line), which was broken due to a recent Twitter API change.</li>
<li>various fixes and improvements for the new dashboard design and new themes admin screen.</li>
<li>An issue with taxonomy queries in WP_Query was resolved.</li>
<li>submit buttons that won’t do anything when you click on them have been found and fixed.</li>
</ul>
You can read the full list of changes here: <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/log/branches/3.8?rev=27018&amp;stop_rev=26862">Changelog</a>

WordPress 3.8.1 Released

When you build a website – or in this case, an online store, it's nice to feel the support of a community behind you. <a href="http://www.prestashop.com/" target="_blank"> PrestaShop</a> recognise, and facilitate that.
The free to use, user friendly online store builder boasts a <a href="http://www.prestashop.com/forums/" target="_blank"> fully fledged online forum</a> with discussions spanning a range of topics related to PrestaShop itself, and the wider prospect of selling online.
But there's more to PrestaShop than just a thriving online community. In fact, the platform is bursting at the seams with features.
<h2>Online Store Features Galore</h2>
PrestaShop has over 310 built-in features and functionalities, accompanied by over 3,500 modules and templates. Naturally then, building a unique online store with the platform should be a piece of cake.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/presta1700x0.png" alt="PrestaShop" /> 
The admin dashboard is simple, yet it doesn't leave much out. After signing in, you'll be presented with vital store information relating to sales, page views, and other statistics. All areas of your online store can be accessed and modified within the dashboard, giving you complete control over how your store looks and works.
Some of the general features you'll eventually come across in PrestaShop will allow you to optimize your website for search engines, create marketing campaigns, review website statistics, and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/presta2700x0.png" alt="PrestaShop" />
Additionally, <a href="https://addons.prestashop.com/en/?utm_source=prestaEN&amp;utm_medium=Modules&amp;utm_campaign=prestashop" target="_blank">PrestaShop's Official Marketplace</a> provides pretty much everything you need to make your online store the best it can possibly be.
With a myriad of themes and modules to choose from, you can go about implementing new payment options, marketing tools, customer service functions, and so forth.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/presta5700x0.png" alt="PrestaShop" /> 
The PrestaShop Official Marketplace even holds regular sales, giving its worldwide community a chance to grab high quality modules and templates at discounted prices.
<h2>A Professional Helping Hand</h2>
With so many features to learn and implement, <a href="http://www.prestashop.com/en/training-prestashop" target="_blank">PrestaShop offer a range of training courses</a> to help you get the hang of their platform.
PrestaShop's dedicated training courses are held online, in English, at various points throughout the year. The online courses offer two days worth of helpful content, offered in three packages to target different user types, from complete beginner to aspiring PrestaShop expert.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/presta3700x0.png" alt="PrestaShop" />
The help doesn't stop there though. You can also <a href="http://addons.prestashop.com/en/35-guides-training-official" target="_blank">purchase further guides and training packages</a> from the PrestaSgop Marketplace.
So, whether you're a brand new online merchant looking for some professional advice, or if you simply want to optimize your store and your selling skills to the best of your ability, PrestaShop can offer the helping hand you need.
<h2>A Sense of Community</h2>
As previously mentioned, PrestaShop offers an interestingly active online forum community, where users can ask questions, share strategies and learn about the extensive features within the PrestaShop platform.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/presta4700x0.png" alt="PrestaShop" />
The forum allows you to discuss general PrestaShop issues, third-party modules, themes, and even job offers.
Some of the discussion boards within the PrestaShop community hold thousands upon thousands of topics and replies. Hence, finding solutions to problems, and ideas for improving your store should come very easily. Not to mention, it's nice knowing that  you have a like-minded community to fall back on if you were to face any issues.
Also, to accommodate PrestaShop's international user base, the forums have dedicated sections for a very wide range of languages and regions, allowing you to connect not just with other PrestaShop users, but local ones too.
 Does PrestaShop sound good? Find out more about <a href="/products/prestashop/" target="_blank"> PrestaShop via our CMS Directory</a>. Or, check out their website to <a href="http://www.prestashop.com/" target="_blank">download PrestaShop</a> for yourself.

PrestaShop: a Free, Feature-filled Online Store Builder With a Thriving Community

Sometimes I forget that CMS Critic started off back in 2008 as a blog and for 2014, I've decided to start sharing not just news and reviews but also more related personal stories that are relevant.
We've had the fortune to have been in business for over 6 years now and 2014 needs to be a year of being grateful for all of the amazing experiences we've been able to achieve with this site. So watch for not just news and reviews but also more editorials, personal stories (related of course) and many more interviews.
Now that that is out of the way…
I'm excited to announce that Jahia has invited us to join them at their first ever conference in Paris, France from February 6th to 7th of this year. Since they were so kind as to cover our costs for travel from wintery Canada to attend and cover the event, we've decided to ensure that we get to check out as many things as we can along the way.
Since <a href="http://thekitchenmagpie.com">my wife</a> is a bit of a Disney fanatic, we've chosen to fly in several days early (we arrive February 1st) and visit Disneyland Paris prior to attending the <a href="http://jahiaone.com">JahiaOne </a>conference. Given that we've just arrived back from a crazy long vacation of over a month (including a Disney Cruise, New Orleans, Disneyland and Phoenix), you might think we're Disney'd out but when I said she was a fanatic, I wasn't joking. As soon as she found out it was there, going became a must. Not that I'm not looking forward to it, it's going to be an amazing experience. 
Not only will we be visiting Paris, however. Once the fine folks at <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/">Magnolia</a> found out we were going to be in Europe, they quickly arranged to have us take a train from Paris to visit them for a few days in Switzerland for an interview and tour of their offices. They are located in beautiful Basel, so we get to enjoy some time there as well before flying home mid-month.
Having never really had a chance to explore Europe before, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do so while also getting to connect with two amazing CMS vendors. If anyone is going to be attending the <a href="http://jahiaone.com">JahiaOne</a> conference, be sure to swing by and say hello. We'll be the crazy people taking tons of pictures and covering the event.
Kaya will also be joining us for the Paris portion of the trip which is great since he's been writing for CMS Critic for quite some time and we've never actually had a chance to meet. He resides in London so this works out perfectly and we're looking forward to connecting.
Watch for plenty of updates on the site from these two adventures throughout February!
~Mike

Upcoming Paris and Switzerland Trips

CMS Critic is proud to announce their status as a media sponsor for the <a href="https://conference.modmore.com/" target="_blank"> MODX Weekend by Modmore conference</a>.
The event begins on Friday 19th and ends Sunday 21st of September 2014. 
The venue is to be within the Netherlands, in the heart of a privately owned 111 acre forest. Along with all-inclusive hotel rooms, food and drink, attendees can enjoy listening to a range of speakers who will be speaking on all the latest goings on at <a href="http://modx.com/" target="_blank"> MODX</a>. Additionally, the weekend talks will serve to update the MODX community on whatever is coming soon for the platform, as well as the Web industry as a whole. 
 The MODX Weekend conference promises to offer a high quality experience on a number of fronts, so let's take a closer look at what's on offer.
<h2>All-inclusive Treatment at a Stunning Venue</h2>
Attendees of the MODX Weekend by modmore conference can essentially kick back and relax, as the hosts take care of pretty much everything – from start to finish. 
 Luxurious VIP coaches are scheduled to pick up attendees from local airports and train stations, taking them right to the Conference Center Woudschoten, where the event will be held. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/woudschotenbovenaf700x0.jpg" alt="MODX Weekend by Modmore" /> The Conference Center Woudschoten is home to a professional conference center, complete with three star hotel rooms, multiple bars and restaurants, and a breathtaking view. 
Every hotel and conference room has a beautiful view of the natural environment surrounding the buildings, which will certainly enhance the typical conference experience. To explore the forest, attendees are also more than welcome to go for a stroll or even a bike ride. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/woudschotenhotel700x0.jpg" alt="MODX Weekend by Modmore" />
The rooms provided all have a great view of the surrounding grounds, and come with two single beds, a shower, a flatscreen TV, a desk to work on and some friendly amenities. 
A full list of what's on offer throughout the conference can be seen below:
<ul>
<li>3 nights in an on-site three star hotel room (Check-in Friday afternoon/evening, checkout Monday morning)</li>
<li>Breakfast Buffet on Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning</li>
<li>Lunch Buffet on Saturday and Sunday</li>
<li>Dinner on Friday (buffet), Saturday (three-course menu) and Sunday (BBQ)</li>
<li>Unlimited coffee, tea, water and a variety of soft drinks and snacks during the day</li>
<li>Drinks (including a selection of alcoholic beverages) and snacks every evening</li>
<li>Munchies and water in the hotel room</li>
<li>Evening Entertainment, including live music on Friday and Saturday, a Fussball tournament and more</li>
<li>Complimentary maps of the estate for walking or biking</li>
<li>Bikes are available at no charge at a first come-first serve basis</li>
<li>Access to at least 15 sessions on MODX and the Web</li>
<li>Unlimited streaming access to professionally recorded and edited videofootage for the sessions, available within a week or two after the event.</li>
<li>Pick-up on Friday from Schiphol Airport or Utrecht Central Station with a luxury VIP Coach.</li>
<li>Drop-off at the same location on Sunday evening or Monday morning.</li>
<li>Free goodies from modmore and event partners</li>
</ul>
<h2>The MODX Weekend Programme</h2>
MODX's weekend event boasts over 15 individual sessions, all of which will stretch from between Friday 19th to Sunday 21st of September 2014. 
The official programme can be seen below.
<blockquote>
 Friday (Sept 19th): We look forward to welcoming you to the venue on Friday afternoon/evening. There will be a dinner buffet served in the bar at 6pm, with plenty of drinks and opportunity to socialise while the lounge band plays. 
 Saturday (Sept 20th): The conference starts around 9.30. The morning programme is all about the latest and upcoming techniques to use in MODX and the web in general. After lunch we look at performance and workflow in the broadest sense of the words. Attendees are also invited to do a 5 minute lighting talk at the end of the day. After a three-course menu in the restaurant there will be a good ol' fashioned party night in the bar complete with live band, stand-up comedy and more…
 Sunday (Sept 21st): On Sunday there will be two tracks of sessions. In the front-end track we talk about web techniques and front-end integration with MODX. The back-end track will be about developing custom components, plugins and other techniques on the manager or framework level. To end the conference we're firing up the BBQ and enjoying the last evening together.
 Monday (Sept 22nd): After breakfast it's time to check out. We're looking into some activities for the monday morning.
</blockquote>
Early Bird Tickets are available at €699 (including VAT) until February 28th. After that, the price goes up to €799. So, make sure you <a href="https://conference.modmore.com/register/" target="_blank"> take advantage of the massive €100 discount</a> before it's too late! 
 To find out more about the all-inclusive MODX Weekend by modmore, check out the event's <a href="https://conference.modmore.com/" target="_blank"> official website</a>.

All-inclusive "MODX Weekend by Modmore Conference" Set for September 2014

CMS Kickoff 26

Find out at CMS Kickoff 26, January 13 - 14, St. Pete FL

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