Articles - Page 159

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

janus-boye

ProcessWire, the winner of our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/critics-choice-for-best-free-cms-goes-to/">Best Free CMS</a> award in last year's <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">Critic's Choice Awards</a>, has a new release available for public consumption. Thanks to numerous optimizations and improvements, <a href="http://processwire.com/">ProcessWire 2.3</a> is the fastest, smartest and most capable version yet.
In version 2.3 of ProcessWire, major upgrades have been made throughout the entire system. If you are using an older version of ProcessWire, now is a good time to upgrade to ProcessWire 2.3. If you are not yet using ProcessWire, version 2.3 is a great place to start. Below is a partial list of what's been added and changed.
<ul>
<li>Optimized selector engine making ProcessWire faster and more accurate than ever before.</li>
<li>Installer upgrades, including the ability to specify your admin URL at install time.</li>
<li>Multi-language page names to round out our multi-language fields (dev branch).</li>
<li>New session handling features enabling you to use your database for session storage.</li>
<li>Image support updates including custom API-level cropping support.</li>
<li>Tagging of fields and templates for admin grouping.</li>
<li>Default admin theme upgrades including improved mobile support (responsive).</li>
<li>Numerous input field upgrades and additions for greater customizability and validation.</li>
<li>Password system updates now supporting enhanced security with PHP 5.3+.</li>
<li>Comments fieldtype additions like a new website field, Gravatar support and more.</li>
<li>File and image fieldtype upgrades including support for tags and queryable created/modified timestamps.</li>
<li>Support for secured page files: now file-based assets can have access control too.</li>
<li>Great new core API functions and methods.</li>
<li>Implementation of all jQuery traversal functions in our API.</li>
<li>Great new core modules and classes.</li>
<li>Numerous other upgrades and additions!</li>
</ul>
For more details about these upgrades and additions, please see our extended <a href="http://processwire.com/about/news/introducing-processwire-2.3/">ProcessWire 2.3 press release</a>.
<h2>About ProcessWire</h2>
ProcessWire is a friendly and powerful open source CMS and CMF with an exceptionally strong foundation. With all custom fields, an easy-to-use jQuery-inspired API, and a powerful page selector engine, ProcessWire will rise to any task.
Clients love ProcessWire for its no-fuss simplicity and ease of use when editing their site. Designers and developers love ProcessWire for its thoughtful, easy and powerful API-driven approach that keeps them in control of the markup and makes development fun again. Not to mention, ProcessWire's API can also be booted from other applications or command-line scripts, bringing entire new levels of accessibility to your content.
ProcessWire is a modern SEO specialist's dream come true. It uses logical, readable and search-friendly URLs that always reflect the content's home in the tree. Meaning you'll never have to worry about multiple URLs or play duplicate content games. With full markup control, all custom fields, and support for runtime URL segments, ProcessWire lets you take full advantage of all the on-site SEO possibilities without wasting your time on long irrelevant tags and tricks.
ProcessWire is designed for the needs of today and not limited by the past. It is equally at home powering small-to-large scale standards-friendly websites, mobile websites, JSON/XML web services, Flash applications, AJAX-driven content, iPhone/Android applications, and more. This output agnosticism drives ProcessWire's simplicity and makes it support, rather than interfere with your work.
ProcessWire is a mature product that comes from a strong bloodline of content management systems developed over nearly a decade. ProcessWire runs beautifully on web servers running PHP 5.3.8+ and MySQL 5.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://processwire.com/">Learn more about ProcessWire CMF/CMS</a> and <a href="http://processwire.com/download/">download</a> »</li>
<li><a href="http://processwire.com/demo/">Try out a demo of ProcessWire</a> »</li>
</ul>

ProcessWire 2.3 Released

mike-johnston

<a href="http://www.braindigit.com/">Braindigit</a> announces the release of SageFrame 2.1, an enhanced version of SageFrame2.0.
SageFrame is a highly extensible CMS, that helps users build their sites, and builds them to perfection. SageFrame is an open source CMS that is released under the MIT License and built on ASP.NET technology. As a matter of fact, SageFrame is much more than a CMS; it is a CMF (Content Management Framework) that is scalable, extensible and provides enhanced user experience. Further, it empowers users with all the essential tools required for developing custom modules, applications, templates and various-purpose websites with ease, convenience and simplicity. SageFrame employs an extensible modular architecture and implements role-based security.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sageframe-620x335.jpg" alt="sageframe" />
SageFrame 2.1 users can now use Open IDs like Facebook, Yahoo, etc. to login to the SageFrame. They can perform cache management, look at the site analytics, priorities events on system startups, schedule events, create and manage multi-portals, and make their sites multi-lingual. Furthermore, SageFrame users can customize their page by adding preset templates to their site. While adding such templates, the original data associated with the templates is also fetched. Another notable improvement that SageFrame 2.1 includes is that the pages built on SageFrame 2.1 are compatible with both handheld devices and PCs.
There are strong incentives for SageFrame 2.0 users to migrate to SageFrame 2.1, as this SageFrame version is truly built for developers, crafted for designers and developed for site administrators and comes with several powerful and handy features. Further, it comes with several bug fixes and security updates. For more information users can visit www.sageframe.com and see SageFrame in action at <a href="http://demo.sageframe.com/">http://demo.sageframe.com/</a>

Braindigit Announces the Release of SageFrame 2.1, a Promising Content Management System

One of the best things about SharePoint is its name. The moniker suggest a friendly place where people can gather, work, and say to themselves, “a good time was had by all.” If the greatest thing going for a software is its name, then it probably has some shortcomings elsewhere. SharePoint has shortcomings, and in the rough-and-tumble world of collaborative web applications, SharePoint has received more than its fair share of criticisms. Let's find out what these shortcomings are, and maybe what we, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, can do about it.

What are SharePoint's shortcomings? To answer that question, we'll ask a less biased question — what is SharePoint anyway? There are three main promises that SharePoint has made about itself. We'll consider each of these, and uncover how it may not have completely fulfilled its promises on all three fronts.
<h2>1.  SharePoint is everything.</h2>
SharePoint is allegedly everything that you could have ever wanted — at least that's how it was described in its infancy by Jeff Teper. Teper, “the father of SharePoint” sold the product on the promise that it would integrate everything — doc management, CMS, intranet, sharing, blogs, etc. — into a ginormous silver bullet. It's been called the “all-in-one collaboration and communication server” by one <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/meet-the-father-of-microsoft-sharepoint-jeff-teper/4299" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">organization</a>. Teper preferred to <a href="http://creese.typepad.com/pattern_finder/2009/10/quotes-from-the-sharepoint-conference-keynote.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">describe it</a> as the “ultimate Swiss Army Knife.”  Swiss Army Knives are great, precisely because they can do everything. That's precisely the point (no pun intended):  SharePoint can do everything!
SharePoint's Wikipedia entry tries to make sense of it all with its descriptions, an unending stream of functionality:  “SharePoint can be used to provide intranet portals, document &amp; file management, collaboration, social networks, extranets, websites, enterprise search, and business intelligence. It also has system integration, process integration, and workflow automation capabilities…central management, governance, and security controls,” and more.
Let's see…did they miss anything?
Unfortunately, a system that promises to be and do everything will probably not be and do all of those tasks with the highest degree of competency. When users discover that SharePoint doesn't execute what they were hoping it would, they may choose to use something else. A further concern is that the multifaceted features of the tool become buried in an overwhelming array of knives, tools, bottle openers, and awls, making it difficult to determine what to use — or how, or when to use them.
Sometimes, a product that promises to be everything ends up being nothing. When a product aspires to be so many things, it loses the power of  a single selling point.
<h2>2.  SharePoint is “simple, simple, simple.”</h2>
When SharePoint developers became concerned that people wouldn't understand how simple SharePoint was, they decided to describe it as “simple, simple, simple.” So, its simple.
Or is it?
Teper himself admitted in a retrospective mourn, “We may have oversold how simple SharePoint was to deploy.” And that's another shortcoming of an end-all system. When you describe a product as “simple,” and it ends up looking like a do-it-yourself home helicopter kit without the instruction manual, you're going to disappoint a lot of people. In order for a system to gain a loyal tribe, it must have a slick UI, intuitive purpose, and deliver quick solutions to obvious needs. Instead of fulfilling its prophecy for simplicity, SharePoint became “quite ambitious and complex.”
Information workers are a fairly intelligent group of people, but we want things to be simple enough to use without having to take night classes. Climbing a learning curve is something we don't mind doing, but we'd rather not do it at all. When SharePoint releases multiple versions and expansions, trying to make sense of itself, it loses touch with its user group who is left in the lurch of its latest not-so-simple iteration. Keep in mind that not everyone using SharePoint is tech-savvy. When non-tech user meets teched-up SharePoint, the relationship can get a bit awkward.
<h2>3.  SharePoint is collaboration.</h2>
Just about everyone thought that SharePoint was a collaboration platform. Hence the name. Yet it is also a content-driven system. That's the problem. Collaboration and content don't dance together very well. Forrester provided their perspective on the system's collaboration capability:  It is “SharePoint's least successful workload.”
Collaboration is crucial, and if a system lags in this department, it's a huge downer. SharePoint's oft-touted collaboration power is not much more than a newsfeed. As we reported recently, the majority of SharePoint users are stymied by the system's <a href="/microsoft-sharepoint-research-highlights-gaps/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">inability to deliver satisfactorily</a> on this front.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
Lest this article degenerate into a SharePoint bash fest, let's back up and admire its strong points. There are a few. And, true, many organizations have profited from it. Many businesses continue to use and value SharePoint for its advanced technologies and tools.
It's come to the point, however, that we need to realize that a unified source for everything may no longer be the most realistic and practical way to go about performing operations. It sounds nice, sure, but is it for real? Is SharePoint going to last? More and more collaborative platforms, CMSs, and powerful platforms have filled the marketplace. Is there still enough room for SharePoint to live on as the dominate force?
Like it or loathe it, SharePoint's market share is big enough to mean that it's not going to fade into oblivion in the next few years. Yes, it <a href="/is-sharepoint-going-away/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">might be on the decline</a>, but we still get to use it for a while.
So, in the meantime, lets try to utilize SharePoint correctly and capitalize on the strengths that it does possess.

SharePoint's Shortcomings

daniel-threlfall

Telerik’s Web Content Management (WCM) platform, Sitefinity, has announced the release of the 6.0 edition. With this release, Sitefinity becomes the first platform that allows business users to take advantage of all three mobile development strategies—Responsive Web Design, mobile websites, and mobile apps. Business users can now deliver the right mobile presence optimized for multiple devices directly from one user interface.
Sitefinity 6.0 offers a one platform approach to mobile. This is critical because as business needs evolve, WCM platforms must be agile to quickly respond to changing market opportunities. By providing a single platform to address all mobile options, enterprises can use Sitefinity to mix and match mobile approaches as much as they like without having to scrap existing work to start over.
Access to unique Telerik technology gives Sitefinity mobile capabilities no other Web Content Management platform can offer. Sitefinity enables organizations to execute on any mobile strategy, yet still respond to future developments. With the ever changing mobile landscape, choice and flexibility are essential to ensure public-facing content stays relevant and ahead of the competition. In this, Sitefinity delivers.
Beyond advancements in mobile with the addition of a Mobile App Builder and improvements to Responsive Web Design elements, Sitefinity customers can now effortlessly surface SharePoint assets to mobile devices via the Sitefinity Connector for SharePoint.
The Sitefinity Connector for SharePoint is a two-way connector between Sitefinity and SharePoint which allows digital assets to be edited and synced from both ends. The connection enables the content authoring experience, page design flexibility and comprehensive solution to mobile content delivery of Sitefinity to be made available for SharePoint assets without disrupting existing processes and infrastructure.
Hybrid-Cloud is newly available from Telerik, enabling Sitefinity administrators to securely expose internal business data living in various systems to mobile devices. Users can choose what internal data to expose to the cloud and keeping the rest behind their firewall, minimizing worry around VPN connections or hosting infrastructure. Hybird-Cloud Services uses a non-relational database built for speed and scalability to maximize mobile app performance. RESTful web services result in less traffic and lightning fast mobile apps. All this comes with effortless –and automatic–syncing with your Sitefinity website.
In addition, Sitefinity 6.0 offers enhancements to many features, including SiteSync, Ecommerce, and more, to help our customers power their business success.
Interested in trying it out? Give it a test drive with the <a href="http://www.sitefinity.com/try-now">Sitefinity Demo</a>

Complete Mobile Strategies Now Possible with Release of Telerik Sitefinity 6.0

Five months after the initial release of Kajona 4, the first update v4.1 focuses on simplicity.
Besides regular bug fixes and optimizations the new insite editor is the most remarkable feature of the new release. Introduces with version 4.0, the insite editor allows to change and format content directly within the page layout. The new editor in 4.1 extends the functionality, offering not only markup functions such as bold or italic, but even the possibility te edit links and images directly.
Content-editors are now able to work in the page layout exclusively while the switch to the comfortable backend is still possible, but no longer required for most of the editors' tasks.
<h3>Screenshots:</h3>
<img style="max-width:600px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image.png" alt="image" />
<img style="max-width:600px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image-2.png" alt="image (2)" />
When it comes to developing new modules, a newly introduced module structure reduces the efforts to develop a new module. The new approach is the result of a developer-sprint in early 2013 and is based on annotations rather than complex source code. All relevant methods and elements of a module are generated by analyzing and interpreting the annotations provided by the developer. This ensures the maintainability of a module and reduces the expenditure of time to develop a new module.
Since Kajona 4.1 brings several bug fixes, security updates, and updates for compatibility with current web browsers and web server systems, the upgrade to 4.1 is recommended to all users. The update is available and recommended via integrated package management.
The download of the system is possible on the project's website <a href="http://www.kajona.de">http://www.kajona.de</a>.

Content Management Framework Kajona released in version 4.1

If you aren't used to using an open source CMS, then you may have fallen victim to several popular myths. Even those who are familiar with the open source environment believe some of these myths. For both avid open source users and proprietary CMS users, we offer fair warning regarding the four worst myths about open source CMSs. 1.  Open source CMS are much easier to use than proprietary systems.This is sheer myth. The person who declares that open source X is easier than proprietary Y in has a lot of explaining to do. We need a more detailed explanation in order to make “easier” or “harder” comparisons. There are tons of open source CMSs, untold numbers of proprietaries, a million or so hybrids, and an infinite number of “easy” or “hard” things that you can do with them. This sweeping “easier” declaration is firmly founded upon the speaker's lack of knowledge regarding his or her subject matter.Perhaps the real downer to a statement like this is its ramifications. Believing that one CMS is “easier” than another may contribute to further mistakes.<ul><li>It may cause a business to choose said open source CMS without being prepared for the learning curve.</li><li>It may lead to a business being shorthanded on developers or IT, once they discover that it takes more than just someone handy with Microsoft Word to run the thing.</li><li>It mistakenly leads some to conclude that “easier” means “cheaper” in terms of talent acquisition and/or training.</li></ul>On the flip side, it's dangerous to think that proprietary systems are easier. Before we talk about easy or hard, let's just make sure we're making it really clear what we're talking about.2.  Open source is free. The fact is, WordPress, Joomla, TYPO3, or Drupal won't ask you to pay for their system. Yes, the system itself is free. But what about everything else? Hosting, design, plugins, themes, extensions, tools, implementation, support, maintenance, adoption costs, programs, designers, developers and whatever else is involved in a CMS are usually not free. The buzzword “free” leads many astray with the assumption that they're getting something for nothing. That's just not how life works, not even in the promised land of open source CMSs. In the end, the total cost of ownership does not necessarily land lower than the TCO of a proprietary system. You're going to pay for something, even if it's not the CMS itself.3.  Open source costs more than proprietary.Some have reversed the above myth (#2) to postulate another myth that is equally untrue. They say, with a glint of disdain in their eye, that open source CMSs actually have more hidden costs than proprietary systems. The furtive word “hidden” likely denotes such things as development, maintenance, etc.Here's the grain of truth in the myth:  Somewhere, in the distant passages of past time, a company did a cost-survey analysis and discovered a proprietary system might actually cost less overall than some open source alternative. Fair enough; end of story.My chief carp against this myth is its lack of legitimate comparison. It is never appropriate to say one type of CMS is superior to/cheaper than/ easier than/ more powerful than another type of CMS. (See myth #1.) There are a bajillion more factors to consider. A better approach is to survey your TCO, and to make no decisions based on that one lonely datapoint — the cost of the CMS itself.4.  There is no training or support if you choose open source. Um, no. Any developer who has spent time honing his open source craft can tell you that this is untrue. Just because some well-funded proprietary CMS hosts an annual conference doesn't mean that the open source users lacks support. Open source users can find online help, forums, paid classes, local meet ups, YouTube how-tos, expensive manuals, more expensive consultants, and whizz-bang contract developers. The support and training are there; they just don't get packaged into some monthly fee along with the CMS itself.A white paper published by a proprietary CMS developer discussed the downside of open source with a teary-eyed tale of someone who had been there, done that with open source:  “As a service provider looking for support for critical applications, I don't want to depend on the equivalent of begging in the street for answers — that is what support is like with open source content management system [CMS]. I want to know that I'll get a real person, whose job is on the line, to help me.”The slant of this statement is evident. We don't know what this gentleman was doing, cryptically referred to as “begging in the street for answers,” but we know that online support manuals, sophisticated training programs, up-to-the-minute forums, and easy Google searches are not begging in the streets. The answers are there; the support for your critical applications is there. You can stay off the streets.Choosing a CMS is an <a href="/contact">important decision</a> — too important to fall prey to these myths. As long as you're doing your homework, comparing CMSs in the right way, and getting a broad survey of CMSs, you'll be fine.

The Four Worst Myths about Open Source CMS

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

Joomla today announced the immediate availability of Joomla 3.1. The biggest feature of Joomla 3.1 is Tags, a built-in tagging system that allows dynamic tagging across content-types. Tags hasn’t been created for articles only, but rather Joomla integrated tagging into other areas of its core that made sense (e.g. contacts, feeds, etc). For example, Tags allow end-users to create lists, blogs, or other layouts that combine articles with other content types any way they like. These tags can be dynamically created from the content, without having to navigate to the Tags component, thus bringing both power and simplicity.
<blockquote>
“With Joomla 3.1, the most important new feature is definitely the support of tags,” said Paul Orwig, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project. “Tags have previously been available through third party extensions, but for 3.1 we are adding them to the core. This will make it easier for third party extensions to integrate with them. Another underlying benefit is that the way the code has been written to support tags will lay the foundation for future enhancements for how Joomla content can be displayed with much more flexibility”
</blockquote>
Along with the new Tags feature, the Joomla 3.X series offers the following major features:
<ul>
<li>Mobile-ready. Joomla is the first and only major CMS that is fully responsive. It has a responsive site template, responsive admin UI, responsive core output, and it provides developers tools to make their extensions responsive</li>
<li>Customizable access control</li>
<li>User friendly interface</li>
<li>Streamlined 30 second install</li>
<li>One-click upgrades with backward compatibility, so that a site continues working seamlessly</li>
<li>Built-in multilingual capabilities. Again, the first and only major CMS that has such a feature</li>
<li>For developers, the Joomla User Interface (JUI) library gives a standardized backend &amp; frontend interface</li>
</ul>
Joomla 3.1 is truly a collaborative community-driven software project developed with the feedback gathered from more than 2.7 million Joomla forum posts, nearly 605,000 Joomla forum members and data from more than 6,100 Joomla extensions. To download Joomla 3.1, go to <a href="http://www.joomla.org/download.html">http://www.joomla.org/download.html</a>

Joomla! 3.1 Released; New Built-In Tagging System Makes Displaying and Finding Content More Dynamic

Microsoft SharePoint has emerged as the gateway to the mass of stored enterprise information that organizations around the world rely on to conduct business each day, but there are areas in which its capabilities need to be augmented by additional applications – particularly for metadata management and automatic classification – according to new research.
A new <a href="http://www.smartlogic.com/home/knowledge-zone">whitepaper</a> from content intelligence software provider Smartlogic shows that the majority of information professionals in the US and Europe are disillusioned with SharePoint, but the report also explores solutions that could radically improve the performance of the workflow and content management application. The Smartlogic whitepaper, entitled Filling the Gaps, pulls together independent findings from recent studies by MindMetre Research and Gartner.
In the paper, Smartlogic chief executive Jeremy Bentley draws on the results of a survey of more than 500 information professionals by MindMetre, which found that more 53% of the respondents use Microsoft SharePoint to access internal information within their organization. However, the study also reveals that ‘findability’ could be an issue with the platform, as 80% of the SharePoint users surveyed say the application is falling short of their and their colleagues’ expectations when it comes to enterprise search – with 34% saying it is doing so by a considerable margin.
Bentley says in the report: “This, in turn, is leading to dissatisfaction with return on investment in SharePoint, with 62% reporting a degree of disillusionment with the ROI that the platform has delivered, due to the fact that some important content is still difficult to find and search results are not sufficiently relevant.”
MindMetre also found that 76% of SharePoint users surveyed see the elimination of work duplication is the one of the major goals they are trying to achieve with the application, but even more – 78% – are disappointed with the platform’s ability to deliver satisfactory access to internal information.
Discussing the significance of the whitepaper findings, Bentley notes: “At a time when organizations across the globe face continued economic uncertainty, improving returns on investment by better leveraging information assets is essential. The big challenge for the vast majority of enterprises is harnessing the information they have available and making it findable for staff, partners, clients, investors, regulators and other stakeholders.”
The Smartlogic whitepaper also draws on recent research from Gartner that identifies significant functional gaps in SharePoint that can be addressed with the installation of additional tools – particularly those that impact search performance. Specific functions flagged up in the Gartner report as areas in which SharePoint’s performance could be enhanced include the “mass-tagging of content and ingestion of existing content” and the “management of taxonomies and structures”.
“While SharePoint supports many crucial information applications, this report demonstrates that enhancing its functionality in the area of ‘findability’ can be of vital benefit to enterprises,” Bentley says. “Solutions are available that can be implemented alongside SharePoint to infuse it with ‘content intelligence’, enabling more precise and rapid retrieval of information.”
He adds: “By providing accurate and consistent auto-classification and visualization capabilities, as well as enterprise grade taxonomy and ontology management, these applications filter out extraneous documents and ensure that content is placed in context, enabling organizations to access, describe and control unstructured enterprise information.”
You can download this free whitepaper from here: <a href="http://www.smartlogic.com/home/knowledge-zone">Smartlogic whitepaper</a>

Microsoft SharePoint emerging as CMS platform of choice but new research highlights  ‘gaps’ that information professionals seek to fill

It's one thing to feel overwhelmed with the task of finding and selecting a CMS, but what about finding a unique look to build your site off of? This is where themes and templates come in. Today, I'm going to share with you one of the places I recommend checking out in your search for a template or theme to use as a base to start from.
One of the most popular (and largest) marketplaces for CMS themes and CMS templates is the ever popular <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/themeforest">Themeforest</a>. Themeforest has been around for a number of years and has a very impressive selection of themes and templates for all kinds of systems. For example, at Themeforest you can find:
<ul>
<li>WordPress themes</li>
<li>Joomla Templates</li>
<li>Drupal Themes</li>
<li>Concrete5 Themes</li>
<li>ExpressionEngine Themes</li>
<li>Tumblr Themes</li>
<li>Blogger Themes</li>
<li>Magento Themes</li>
<li>Shopify Themes</li>
<li>OpenCart Themes</li>
<li>osCommerce Themes</li>
<li>PrestaShop Themes</li>
<li>Zen Cart Themes</li>
</ul>
That's just SOME of the types you can find there. I personally have Themeforest bookmarked and check it every few days to see what type of themes and templates are being released (I have a bit of an obsession with themes..)
 <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/themeforest-620x546_vmyrk3.jpg" alt="themeforest" />
The selection is so large that there are currently over 9,300 different types of themes, templates and even plugins available on their site. There are also a number of Themeforest contributors that have developed their own custom HTML templates and themes, some with their own integrated custom content management systems, complete with administrative interfaces.
It's a great place to start from as well. If you aren't sure what your CMS might be capable of or are curious as to what you could accomplish visually with a specific CMS, you can browse Themeforest's selection to get an idea as to what some people have come up with. Obviously, it's not going to necessarily showcase every possible setup and look but it's a good place to start from for sure.
If you are a theme developer or template developer and want to make some money, you can use Themeforest as well to sell your products to their enormous user-base. I highly recommend taking a look at what they have to offer and seeing if anything fits your needs.
<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/themeforest">Check out Themeforest</a>.

Where to Find CMS Themes & CMS Templates

Anthony Casalena is the founder and CEO of the extremely popular content management system / website builder, Squarespace (read our <a href="/squarespace-review-the-long-awaited-commerce-solution/">Squarespace Review</a> for more on the system). We recently had an opportunity to interview him and get his insights on how Squarespace got to where it is today and where it's going in the future. Read on for the full scoop! Please tell us a bit about yourself and your background.I grew up in Northern Maryland and learned to program around age 15, initially with a focus on user interfaces. I launched Squarespace from my dorm room at the University of Maryland in 2004, moved to New York, and still live and work here today.Can you tell us a bit about the circumstances that guided you to the creation of Squarespace?I was trying to make my personal website and I wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing services. At the time, you had to seek out and cobble together a mix of blogging software, statistics software, page builder software, and web hosting. Instead of going that route, I decided to create an elegant solution that offered all the necessary elements to build a professional website.Further, none of the hosting or publishing services available really had a focus on design. I wasn't comfortable using them for my online identity.Did you ever suspect it would turn into such a large and successful player in the CMS industry?I've always sought to make Squarespace the best platform possible. I had set out to solve a problem for myself, but quickly realized that others also struggled with a similar predicament. It was exciting to think that Squarespace could be a solution for them as well, and that what made me decide to open up the platform to others.Of the achievements you’ve made as a team at Squarespace, what are you the most proud of and why?The launch of Squarespace 6, which we introduced in July, has been a huge accomplishment for us. We worked on Squarespace 6 for about two years behind the scenes, with the mission of disrupting the publishing platform that got us to where we were since our inception.We wanted to create a platform that truly allowed us to create any kind of website, but also a platform that would allow consumers to manage those sites on their own once developers created them. Squarespace 6 is that platform: developers get full code control and use of their own tools, while consumers get a modern, refined content management system that is a joy to use. The kinds of sites consumers can create on Squarespace 6 are revolutionary. We see our customers winning design awards by simply using our templates. I don't think the judges know about that.The next year will be incredible for us as we continue to build on the powerful base that is Squarepsace 6. We introduced a completely seamless eCommerce component last month, and have an ambitious roadmap ahead that we're uniquely posed to execute on.What do you think has contributed to the huge success of Squarespace?There are so many things — Squarespace is really here because so many things are working out well in one place. Our template and interface design is industry-leading, our engineering to pull that off is phenomenal, and we have a superb support team in place backing it all up.It’s no secret that a large selling point for Squarespace is the excellent user experience, how did that come to be? What led to the choices your team made with the design /structure of the UI?A lot of the initial user interface choices are the result of a very small group of us refining a consistent, simple style over the years. I think a lot of it comes from just using the interface over and over to accomplish things for ourselves, then fixing what doesn't work.Once you have a framework like that, you can reuse those stylistic building blocks over and over with great results.Now with eCommerce in the mix, how has this affected the overall appeal of Squarespace to designers / developers? Are you seeing a boost in signups?We are indeed seeing a big lift from the introduction of eCommerce. Squarespace Commerce was one of the most requested features since the platform's inception. It's awesome to be able to finally offer a commerce solution that's completely integrated with the rest of the CMS. I believe we're really the only product on the market that establishes this level of a fit between commerce and the underlying system.Can you share with us some of your favorite Squarespace implementations? Are there any that really stood out to you as great use of the CMS?Here's just a few.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.destinationkors.com">http://www.destinationkors.com</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.destinationkors.com">http://skiesandbeyond.bottegaveneta.com</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.aldernyc.com/">http://www.aldernyc.com/</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hodinkee.com/">http://www.hodinkee.com/</a> http://blog.maptia.com/There are actually hundreds of great examples linked to our template pages for inspiration. We love showcasing our customers.What is your team doing to improve the overall experience that customers have when it comes to dealing with Squarespace (support issues, etc)?Customer experience is extremely important to us — that encompasses everything from how you perceive our brand from an ad, to your initial signup experience, to our product, and through to your interactions with customer support.Customer support represents about a third of our company and has always been one of the best parts about using Squarespace. I personally answered tens of thousands of support tickets over the years when we were getting started, so I am intimately familiar with how great support can improve customer experience.With the recent success of Squarespace 6, we are seeing upwards of 15,000 tickets per week. Making sure these are well handled and seeing that everyone receives personal attention is critical to our success.What other features would you like to see come to fruition within the CMS?We've really just begun our expansion across multiple verticals: portfolios, small businesses, blogs, stores, restaurants, etc. Many of the features in our CMS are common to all of these groups, but we're starting to introduce some really amazing features specific to them. From things like the iOS Portfolio app for artists and photographers to menu blocks and OpenTable integration for restaurants – we have a lot of new features on the docket.What is your next goal for Squarespace? What can we expect to see coming down the road in future releases?We choose not to comment on details of our upcoming releases, but if you take a look at our blog, we are on a tear. The last 6 months have brought us some really incredible and long-awaited releases. We are a team of 120 now. That sort of size allows us to accomplish an incredible amount at once.Rest assured, we're working on some huge things that will further cement our position as the absolute best publishing platform on the web.—And there you have it folks. Want to learn more about Squarespace, the winner of our <a href="/critics-choice-for-best-website-builder-goes-to/">Best Website Builder</a> award? Check them out here: <a href="/products/squarespace">Squarespace</a>

Interview with Squarespace CEO and Founder, Anthony Casalena

<img style="max-width:710px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cmsswitch.jpg" alt="switching CMSs" />
Your CMS is not going to last forever. Just face it. At some point, you may need to switch your CMS. Hopefully, you've made the right CMS choice from the start and won't have to go through the dreaded task of a data migration. Nonetheless, you may be experience the vague, stomach-churning misgiving that your CMS is failing you. Here's how to know for sure.

<h2>“It won't let us do that.”</h2>
This is the mother of all CMS complaints:  “It won't let us do that.” There are a couple of reasons why “it won't let us do that,” so be sure to inspect the potential causes:
<ul>
<li>Is the developer not capable? Is it a really a CMS limitation, or is it a skills limitation on the part of the CMS operator? With a bit of coding magic, much that was thought “impossible” suddenly because realistic. When you confront this complaint, try to investigate all the possible causes. There may indeed be a way forward.</li>
<li>Is the CMS incapable? Some CMSs do have legitimate limitations. If your CMS does not allow you to do something, it could be time for an upgrade.</li>
</ul>
Still, it pays to ask a few more questions. Don't get too switcheroo-happy, because changing CMSs is a gargantuan undertaking. Here's what you should find out before deciding to switch.
<ul>
<li>Is there a way around? If you want to complete a certain action with your content or site, first find out if there are fixes. Is there a plugin or extension that will let you do that? Have you searched forums to see if anyone else has encountered (or solved) the problem? What about contacting support and just asking them if they will add this functionality?</li>
<li>Is this action really necessary to your core operation? If all you wanted to do was make a miniscule aesthetic tweak, it's probably not worth switching CMSs over. If, however, you're wanting to, say, accept payments or something — yeah, you probably want to switch to a system that makes it possible.</li>
</ul>
You don't ever want to be held back by your CMS. This is 2013. Defy limitations.
<h2>“That's going to cost us extra.”</h2>
The extra-cost barrier is usually levied by proprietary CMSs. The problem arises when you want to expand operations or capability, but keep bumping into price jumps. To be sure, some price increases are legitimate, but some may actually hold you back.
It's like this. When a restaurant waiter asks you, “Do you want bacon with that?” you automatically answer “Yes.” Of course you want bacon. Bacon goes with anything, even creme brûlée. (Bacon in creme brûlée is legit.) Then you ask, “How much is it going to cost?”
That's the scenario that some businesses experience when they want an extra bell or whistle on their CMS. Of course you want the bigger more powerful widget, but the cost of upgrading comes as a coffee-spurting shock.
Herein is the danger of a proprietary CMS. These people are in the business for the money (duh). The more you want, the more you have to pay. There is nothing wrong with a solid, reputable, and robust proprietary CMS. There's no problem with paying for it. The problem, however, comes when your budget says “can't do it,” while operations say “gotta have it”
If you are getting nickel-and-dimed for every color change, added user, uploads, new page, or whatnot, it's time to start thinking:  Do I really want to keep paying for every minor tweak?
You may need to call an IT meeting this afternoon to talk about switching your CMS. Your tech budget may be draining like a sieve due to a money-grubbing proprietary CMS.
<h2>“It hasn't really had an overhaul in a few years.”</h2>
&lt;Gulp.&gt;
“A few years” in this earthly sojourn is like “a few centuries” in CMS-speak. A CMS is a living, breathing, sweating, working, pulsating living being. (Enough organism gerunds?) A CMS must evolve with the rest of the tech world, keeping pace as new technology rolls out and transforms the entire landscape of content, data, web, search, and design.
A CMS without regular upgrades is doomed to failure. It will drown every one of its users the vortex of its demise.
You cannot survive long on a CMS that fails to adapt. In “a few years,” it's going to die. Start preparing your eulogy now. A CMS that isn't updated in a few years is a CMS that's probably never going to get updated again. You have been warned.
Time for the ol' CMS switcheroo.
<h2>“We can't switch our CMS.”</h2>
If you want to switch your CMS, but “can't,” then do it anyway. If you've read any of my <a href="/" target="_blank">CMS Critic</a> articles, you've probably discovered that I lack fondness for most proprietary CMSs. It's nothing personal. One of my biggest pet peeves about the proprietary CMS industry is the fact that they want to “trap” — yes, I've heard that very term — clients for life.
You don't want to be trapped.
If you suspect or know that your CMS is holding you hostage, get out while you can. The earlier, the better. You're only going to get bigger and more complicated from this point onward. Try to extricate yourself from the clutches when you have an opportunity to do so. It's only going to get harder the longer you wait.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
The best way to avoid nightmares, migration all-nighters, and nervous tremors not induced by caffeine intake is to get the best CMS as early as possible. The answer to “the best CMS” just depends on who you are, what you need, and how you're going to go about it. It pays to read CMS reviews. It also pays to think long and hard before making a final decision.

Four Signs It's Time to Change Your CMS

Squarespace has been busy ramping up the feature set to keep themselves on top of their game and there have been some exciting new features as well as some new Squarespace themes added to their CMS.
For those who are unfamiliar with Squarespace, they won our <a href="/critics-choice-for-best-website-builder-goes-to/">Best Website Builder</a> award in our 2012 Critic's Choice CMS Awards and we recently shared our <a href="/squarespace-review-the-long-awaited-commerce-solution/">Squarespace review</a> of the newly releases Squarespace 6.
Let's get down to what they've recently added to the system, shall we?
<h2>Squarespace Commerce now supports Canada</h2>
First off, for those of you who are Canadian users and have been pining for a chance to use their sweet new ecommerce integration, you are now in luck. Squarespace recently announced full integration with Stripe Canada and now offers the ability to tie into your Stripe account and sell via your Squarespace page. As part of this integration, you get:
<ul>
<li>Canadian Currency Support – The currency displayed throughout your Squarespace store will reflect the currency set in your Stripe account currency (which you select upon sign-up, and cannot be changed). All prices are quoted in CAD for Canadian stores on Squarespace.</li>
<li>Tax System Improvements – You can now define taxes internationally and locally, down to the zip code level. As before, you can choose to add tax on products as well as shipping. Easily add more fine-grained shipping rules by jurisdiction, and define local rules by a single postal code or a range of postal codes.</li>
<li>Metric System Support – In Store Settings, you may now choose between Imperial and Metric standards to define product weights and weight-based shipping options.</li>
</ul>
<h2>New Theme: Adirondack</h2>
Check out this beautiful new theme available in the Squarespace template design library:
<blockquote>Adirondack is a modern, clean design built with small business owners and savvy entrepreneurs in mind. Minimal navigation and full header images provide a bold framework for your company or brand. The template is characterized by scrolling effects; the header shrinks to become less obtrusive as you scroll, and the banner image fades out and moves up in relation to the distance you’ve scrolled. Navigation links can be hidden to reduce clutter, and become visible when you hover the mouse over the menu icon or the site title.</blockquote>
 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-theme-620x394.png" alt="squarespace theme" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-theme-2-620x354.png" alt="squarespace theme - 2" /> 
It's always nice to see new themes being added and we have to give kudos to the fact that Squarespace doesn't just release your typical themes, they take the time to do beautiful ones that you WANT to use.
<h2>The Events Collection</h2>
Squarespace has also introduced a new calendar system that they call the Events Collection. Here's how it looks and a bit of a breakdown on what you can expect from it.
<blockquote>The Events Collection comes with two viewing modes: Calendar View and List View. Each mode is responsively designed – like all other elements of a Squarespace website, your Events Collection looks perfect no matter what device you’re using. In List View, you can add thumbnail images to accompany each item, presenting your upcoming events in a compelling, elegant way.</blockquote>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-calendar-1-620x393.jpg" alt="squarespace calendar - 1" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-calendar-2-620x359.jpg" alt="squarespace calendar - 1" />
<h2>Even More Features</h2>
The changes don't stop there, however. There are a few additional features that have been added as well. They include:
<ul>
<li>Duplicate Pages – Since launch, we’ve gotten numerous requests for the ability to create copies of a page within your Squarespace site. As of today, this is now possible. You can find the Duplicate button at the bottom of the Collection Settings area (near the remove and save buttons).</li>
<li>Restore Deleted Collections  – Never worry about accidentally deleting a collection again. You can recover any deleted collections by clicking on “Restore Deleted Collections” under the Search bar in your Website Manager.</li>
<li>Multiple Backends for Form Builder – Unlimited and Business Account Users can now save form submissions to multiple destinations at once (Mailchimp and Google Docs, for example), instead of selecting just one.</li>
<li>Github Social Icon – We've added the ability to connect your Github profile to Squarespace. Look for the Github icon under ‘Connected Accounts’.</li>
</ul>
 
So what are you waiting for? <a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">Check them out</a> or go <a href="https://www.squarespace.com/templates">sign up for their two-week free trial</a> (you don't need a credit card, which is nice) and see if Squarespace is the right tool for you.

Squarespace Introduces New Features, Themes and a new Calendar!

You're about to witness a showdown between the world's two most popular open-source CMSs — WordPress and Joomla. The WordPress vs. Joomla question is kind of like a high school rivalry. Or maybe, it's like the old Mac vs. PC debate. Thankfully, the discussion below is civil. My perspective claims WordPress as the winner. In my roles as site editor and SEO consultant, I've used both WordPress and Joomla. Working at an agency provided opportunity to collaborate with designers, network admins, developers, and coders on the various advantages and disadvantages of respective CMSs. This article admits that CMS is a context-dependent choice, but advances the merits of WordPress as opposed to Joomla.<h2>Your CMS — Your Choice</h2>I picked WordPress for a variety of reasons outlined below. You may prefer Joomla. That's fine, and we're not going to call you names. Joomla and WordPress are both fine CMSs. Joomla may actually be better for you. Different users have different needs, and different CMSs serve those different needs.Thus, with that disclaimer firmly in place, here are the reasons why I prefer WordPress over Joomla.<h2>Popularity</h2>I'm a believer in the “safety in numbers” of CMSs. If there are millions of people using something, there's probably something good going on. WordPress and Joomla are the world's most-used CMSs. However, WordPress is far more popular than Joomla. WordPress was founded in 2003, and Joomla in 2005. Over that time, WordPress's growth has exponentially exceeded Joomla's, owning a whopping 55.1% of the market share, as opposed to Joomla's 8.8%. Furthermore, when WordPress receives a vote of confidence from some of the most intelligent developers I know, I have a greater appreciation of its capability and longevity. Of course, merely because something is popular doesn't make it the best. Granted. However, we're going to consider another factor below that flows directly from the popularity issue.<h2>Community and Support</h2>If you're doing regular work on a site, you'll probably need some help at some point. Both Joomla and WordPress have loyal tribes offering plenty of support for those who need it. One distinguishing factor of the WordPress tribe, however, is its sheer size. If you have a WordPress question and you can Google, you'll probably find answers to your question on a forum, site, or blog of a WordPress devotee.<h2>User Interface</h2>WordPress has a much cleaner, slicker UI than Joomla. You can't judge a CMS by its looks alone, but there is something to be said for a CMS that is intuitive, flexible, and even beautiful. For website agencies, handing over to the client the reigns of a WordPress site is something that takes an hour or two of coaching. Handing over the reigns of a Joomla site may take a bit more coaching, a few more desperate calls from the client, and a longer learning curve. The difference lies in the user interface. Of course, WordPress doesn't have the same drag-and-drop kind of ease as something like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.weebly.com">Weebly</a>. However, as powerful CMSs go, WordPress is as pretty as they come.<h2>Plugins and Extensions</h2>Plugins, or “extensions” as the Joomla moniker goes, can help to power up a site or to implement bits of complex code without the hard work of complex coding. At present, Joomla has over 6,000 extensions from the <a target="_blank" href="http://extensions.joomla.org/">Joomla Extension Directory</a>. Developers offer many more that are not hosted on the Extension Directory. <a target="_blank" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/">WordPress Plugins</a> number approximately 24,000. Although numbers don't decide the power of plugins, it is evident from our experience that WordPress plugins possess a few advantages over Joomla plugins:<ul><li>Easier to setup and install on the site</li><li>Wider selection and plugin browsing ability</li><li>Greater capability and power of plugins</li></ul><h2>Simplicity</h2>Setup and configuration is simple on a WordPress site. Right out of the box, it delivers a robust CMS experience. Joomla, on the other hand, takes a bit of setup and adjustment. One CMS Critic reader who is the site manager of a large site commented, “Joomla is a hell when it comes to modify and template it.” A significant amount of Joomla configuration is necessary, including a specific server architecture, is necessary to make things shipshape. Starting a WordPress site, particularly if using the free hosted version, takes a couple minutes. Sure, you'll have to make some sweeping changes to the bland 2013 theme, but that's also a relatively easy affair. And, by the way, “simplicity” doesn't denote lack of power. See  the discussion on”power” below for more on this incendiary topic.<h2>SEO</h2>Because my field of expertise is in SEO, I've done significant research and consulting for agencies using both WordPress and Joomla. Onsite optimization of a Joomla site is a headache compared to the ease of a WordPress site. It is an accepted fact that Joomla is not an SEO-friendly CMS. There are, to be fair, Joomla extensions that make it far more successful for search optimization. Suffice it to say that WordPress is the superior CMS for easy and effective SEO. This is a crucial issue, due to the all-important nature of search.<h2>Cost</h2>Due in part, to the lighter developmental workload, WordPress is less expensive than its counterpart. In our recent survey of <a href="/four-features-you-should-know-about-the-top-five-cmss/">notable features of the top five CMSs</a>, I provided estimates of the setup and ongoing monthly costs of popular open-source CMSs. Here is the recap:<ul><li>Joomla:  $2,400 – 20,000 setup; $500 ongoing monthly.</li><li>WordPress: $1,000 – $15,000 setup; $250 ongoing monthly</li></ul>Obviously, there's a difference in those two numbers, even if the numbers are widely rounded out.<h2>Power</h2>I've put this at the bottom of my list, because it needs a bit of a disclaimer. I'm not claiming that WordPress is the most powerful CMS on the market. I merely want to defend against its naysayers. Castigations of WordPress usually begin with an assault on its allegedly diminutive “blogging” platform. Let's get this settled once and for all:WordPress is not just for blogs.I could site examples of really big and powerful WordPress sites (that aren't blogs), but I'll resist. Instead, let's simply accept the fact that WordPress has passed its adolescent period as a blogging platform. It's part of the big leagues now. Sure, you may not be able to build an Amazon.com or an eBay with WordPress, but you can have a thriving e-commerce site with zero problems. And, hey, eBay does use WordPress (even if it is <a target="_blank" href="http://blog.ebay.com/">for its blog</a>).<h2>Conclusion</h2>These topics outlined above aren't the ultimate criterion by which to evaluate a CMS. If you are considering a CMS, a thorough understanding of your own needs is in order before you start asking questions about a particular CMS. We've chosen WordPress, and, understandably, use WordPress as the CMS of choice for CMS Critic. As you make your own decision, please check out our in-depth CMS reviews to see if your choice makes the grade.So that's my perspective. What's yours?

WordPress vs. Joomla — A Perspective

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