Articles - Page 45

Brightspot Illuminates the Future of CMS with Human-Controlled, AI-Powered Storytelling 

matt-garrepy

It’s impossible to deny Wix.
Just ask supermodel Karlie Kloss, the star of their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meDcOLeWSs">2019 Super Bowl ad</a> – and founder of a <a href="https://www.kodewithklossy.com/">code camp for young women</a>.
In 30 seconds, she shared her personal Wix website with millions of viewers, highlighting features like the Wix Pro Gallery and SEO Wiz (both catchy names for an event that involves a lot of catching). 
Needless to say, it was a touchdown.
Kloss isn’t the first celebrity to promote Wix as the world’s premier website building and content management platform. A quick YouTube search will bring up the likes of Jason Statham and Gal Gadot in a 2017 Big Game spot. And it’s no surprise they can foot the bill for these heavy hitters and massive media buys: at last count, Wix is host to 160 million websites.
That’s worthy of a Super Bowl ring. Or five.
Wix has certainly established itself as the go-to solution for small, do-it-yourself entrepreneurs (think local florist or photography studio), competing with other “pre-fab” solutions like <a href="/squarespace-7-review/">Squarespace</a> and <a href="/weebly-review-2016/">Weebly</a>.
Like these platforms, Wix has always lead with simplicity. Basic templates and attractive themes allow for mobile responsiveness and limited control over images, color, content, and other dimensions. You can easily add features like photo galleries or browse the Wix App Market for some nifty integrations. It’s also one of the only platforms that allow you to animate elements and offers an AI-driven design bot that (sort of) assists with simple tasks.
When it comes to offering more advanced designers the freedom to explore and customize – while still delivering a low-code experience – Wix has generally fumbled the ball. But the game might be changing with Editor X.
<h3 id="introducing-editor-x">Introducing Editor X</h3>
Previously available as a closed beta program, Wix recently launched its new Editor X, specifically built for web designers and digital agencies that are seeking to push the aesthetic limits without the hassle of coding from scratch. Much of the emphasis has been on adopting drag-and-drop feature sets, which has been the main focus of many CMS platforms – the most popular being <a href="/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">Gutenberg</a>.
Wix has now entered the competitive field with Editor X, combining advanced drag-and-drop capabilities with cutting edge responsive design, flexible grids with full breakpoint control, and advanced CSS editing and control (in fact, you don’t even need to know CSS). For designers who are seeking to create more bespoke, hand-crafted experiences, Editor X could be a win.
“Gifted and talented creators have the ability to see the invisible and create the unimaginable,” said Wix Co-founder and CEO, Avishai Abrahami. “Until now these creators’ only option was platforms with restricted design freedoms or limited business web infrastructure that demanded code and multiple plugins. With Editor X, we’ve built the world’s best CSS editor and designed a radical new creative landscape for designers and web professionals, one in which the technology keeps pace with designers’ visions and enables them to swiftly create breathtaking websites, applications and digital experiences that continually raise the standard of the web.”
Here's a short video introduction to Editor X:
<figure class="kg-card kg-embed-card kg-card-hascaption"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bpEHKYd51cY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><figcaption>Introducing Editor X</figcaption></figure>
<h3 id="what-features-come-with-editor-x">What Features Come with Editor X?</h3>
<a href="https://www.editorx.com/">Editor X</a> is made with designers and agencies in mind. It offers advanced layout capabilities that allow you to create more complex website designs for any device – all without using code.
While that’s the main selling point of Editor X, it actually comes with a number of additional features and capabilities for development, business solutions, digital marketing, and SEO.
Main Features
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/HVzjSdXdJCfiAg_T3SxrcCqzypCRDEhp2tyjBcSsc9noz5agWsbPDz5Jx8FF9TM1NZdXVsjScpkEqT0kGvdA5uavmE79DPZWq34zUt8xXy-RAd2MAG142nDy-xCZGKxv_qdnwBMwZA8GNJUPng" alt="A picture containing electronics, table, monitor, deskDescription automatically generated" /><figcaption>Editor X Responsive Views</figcaption></figure>
Editor X manages to solve some of the biggest challenges facing modern designers and web professionals – from custom code to no code. The core <a href="https://www.editorx.com/features">features</a> include:
<ul>
<li>Breakpoint Precision: Create custom breakpoints, rearrange layouts, choose what to show or hide, and fine tune sites at every viewport.</li>
<li>CSS Grid: Design with CSS – without even thinking about CSS! Editor X brings a truly accessible, easy-to-use gateway to CSS.</li>
<li>Flexbox Technology: Let your content automatically adjust to every screen in single, multiple, and repeating layouts.</li>
<li>Custom Code: Integrate custom code and connect to internal/external APIs.</li>
<li>Integrated Business Infrastructure: Access Wix’s expansive range of business solutions to manage multiple sales channels, set up online bookings and scheduling, improve SEO performance, and more.</li>
</ul>
Design &amp; Layout
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2F6sAkhXXmMn6_jYC4rKjBcvMrQfnsK-lqI1ACjWUfHJL-aKce6TkUJ-tfyqBaSf4RcVQ_v5grWu8mHz_YnusRc_VjLQ0V_BJhbVQU7vjQu36VQ0GZ3Od_aY9ya29C-dnFy3DWliYPFzrbGzow" alt="A screen shot of a computerDescription automatically generated" /><figcaption>Editor X Aligning Elements</figcaption></figure>
Editor X was built to expand the Wix design potential. It offers granular layout capabilities that allow you to create complex website designs for any device, all without using code. Some of the coolest design features include:
<ul>
<li>Grid Layouting: An advanced two-dimensional layout system based on CSS grid.</li>
<li>Docking: Anchors elements to a specific position as the viewport changes.</li>
<li>Stack &amp; scale: Reorient media for seamless responsive behavior.</li>
<li>Text scale: Create scalable font sizes as part of a design solution.</li>
<li>Flex Layouter: A smart layout system that relies on Flexbox technology for automatic reorganization of content while resizing.</li>
<li>Custom Breakpoints: Tailor designs to any viewport, not just classic devices.</li>
<li>Flexible canvas: Leverage resizing handles to instantly see and customize your design across viewports.</li>
<li>Advanced sizing control: Define your element as fixed or fluid, using wide support for modern CSS units.</li>
<li>Wix Design System: Features sections with built-in responsive behavior matched to the color palette of your site.</li>
</ul>
Development
Editor X also provides plenty of tools for developers who want to add custom code and build data rich websites. Some of these features include:
<ul>
<li>Dynamic Pages: Design one-page layouts or create unlimited pages – each with their own content, URL and SEO.</li>
<li>Database APIs: Use data APIs in your website’s front-end or backend code to manage and organize data.</li>
<li>Built-in IDE: Make coding more productive using the built-in IDE, equipped with syntax highlighting, code completion and more.</li>
<li>Custom Interactions: Create unique user interactions by triggering events when visitors perform specific actions.</li>
</ul>
Business Solutions
Running an online business always requires a few third-party applications. With Editor X and the Wix platform, you can have all of it in one place. Add an eCommerce store and accept payments, or a member section where customers can sign in and manage their personal accounts. You can also offer live chat, set up automations to collect leads, and <a href="https://www.editorx.com/features/business-ecommerce">so much more</a>.
The Wix App Market offers a wide range of integrations like form generators, social plugins, marketing tools and more. But builder beware: like open source marketplaces, many of the apps are made by third parties – and aren’t guaranteed by Wix.
Web Solutions
On Wix, every website you build is completely hosted – and includes an SSL certificate (which is being deprecated and replaced by TLS). Wix provides automatic updates, so your websites stay secure without any hassles or concerns over managing your own security requirements.
You can also search, purchase, and register domains directly through Editor X.
Marketing &amp; SEO
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/19u-wog6LhGCOi3lLpgMVChee4T3Kcx2xuCEK1NLbBzoDAUZrbNpoGNFI0jlt6xL1zv5LZM0ne1hPlxoBP-KpJVvx6a8ajhu_nkAP0MLsJvuDrAKl4XPe3FVk7Ba8lwxR5lpklq4BxR3ZZiCdA" alt="A screen shot of a clockDescription automatically generated" /><figcaption>Editor X SEO Settings</figcaption></figure>
In addition to providing basic SEO tools such as XML site maps, structured data, canonical URLs and 301 redirects, Editor X offers custom SEO plans and email marketing. Every website comes with a tailor-made SEO package that helps ensure your websites rank decently on Google. You can also drive traffic with professional email marketing campaigns, and review how visitors interact with your client sites by tracking visits through their built-in analytics tools.
<h3 id="performance">Performance</h3>
So far, Editor X looks a bit like “Weapon X.” It’s got everything that’s been missing from Wix and gives designers and agencies a more customizable platform to build on. Why choose anything else?
One word: performance.
When testing the <a href="https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.editorx.com%2F">page speed</a> of <a href="https://www.editorx.com/">editorx.com</a>, the score is staggering 34 out of 100 – almost exactly the same as the Rotten Tomatoes score for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” That’s not good.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/nsje8VvBnPAjtAcOsfn-F19_BGM9JgOsUeJs4MOxkeNski7caip-zddZcI1bb1brGYdJlwChaywa25b1oTQ69St5e7LN_nL6mZAAK-4QP79S128N8e4orDa6JNhvT62ri_R6IX7iO4w1IAK4qg" alt="Editor-X Page Speed Screenshot" /><figcaption>https://www.editorx.com's Google Page Insights Score</figcaption></figure>
This is not a problem unique to Editor X, of course. All website builders since Dreamweaver have been plagued by the code bloat problem. In case you’re not familiar, code bloat is unnecessarily long or wasteful code that slows down websites. A lot.
When Squarespace pioneered code-free website building and attracted millions with its style and aesthetics, it seemed like everyone could build websites with no working knowledge of HTML and CSS. Over time, as it became more complex and conflated, the entire platform evolved into a page-loading nightmare.
If performance really matters, you might want to think twice about Editor X. 
<h3 id="conclusion">Conclusion </h3>
Editor X was conceived with designers in mind. And it tends to deliver with a richer, more complete set of tools and greater domain over the design experience. Even a small business or solopreneur that craves more control could get a lot of value out of Editor X. The problem lies with performance: if page speed and loads times are critical – and you have a larger, more expansive website – you might want an enterprise-worthy solution that can handle the demands of a content team.
Ready to try it out? Click <a href="https://users.editorx.com/signin?sendEmail=true&amp;view=sign-up&amp;originUrl=https:%2F%2Fwww.editorx.com&amp;loginCompName=Signup_H&amp;referralInfo=Editorx_Signup_H&amp;postLogin=https:%2F%2Fmanage.editorx.com%2Faccount%2Fsites&amp;overrideLocale=en&amp;forceRender=true">here</a>. 
<h3 id="about-editor-x">About Editor-X</h3>
<a href="https://www.editorx.com/">Editor X</a> is an advanced creation platform for designers and web professionals. The platform combines cutting edge responsive design with smooth drag and drop. Those that want to can add custom code and use a powerful CMS to build data-driven sites and complex web applications. Editor X offers an unparalleled range of integrated business solutions from a leading eCommerce infrastructure to professional marketing and SEO tools. Editor X is part of <a href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix.com Ltd</a>.
<h3 id="about-wix">About Wix</h3>
<a href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a> is leading the way with a cloud-based development platform for over 170 million registered users worldwide. Wix was founded on the belief that the Internet should be accessible to everyone to develop, create and contribute. Through free and premium subscriptions, Wix empowers millions of businesses, organizations, artists and individuals to take their businesses, brands and workflow online. The Wix Editor, Wix ADI, a highly curated App Market, Ascend by Wix and Corvid by Wix enable users to build and manage a fully integrated and dynamic digital presence.

Wix Introduces Editor X, Offers Designers Advanced Tools for Building Custom Websites

paris-tuzun

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

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

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

Acquia Launches New Open Digital Experience Platform

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

Gutenberg, 2 Years Later: Is WordPress Better Off?

If you’re a digital marketing professional, you’re probably familiar with the <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">Martech 5000 “Supergraphic”</a> that’s published annually by Chiefmartec.com. It depicts the complete landscape of marketing technologies across a range of categories such advertising, content management, eCommerce, and more – all with tiny, painstakingly positioned logos.
Now, if you haven’t seen this graphic before, consider yourself warned: you’ll never look at digital marketing technologies the same way again.
The 2020 edition of this mindboggling compilation was released a short while ago, and while the persistence of COVID-19 has consumed every facet of the daily news cycle, it’s worth a hard look. Why?  Because once again, the field of technologies has ballooned at an unimaginable pace.
According to Martech Conference Chair Scott Brinker (the “Chief Martec” and creator of the graphic), the entire landscape grew by 13.6% to a total of 8,000 tools. In addition, 1 in 5 of the solutions were new to the diagram since last year, which is nearly the equivalent of the entire 2015 Martech landscape.
Perhaps the most compelling metric? Since 2011, the landscape has swelled by a remarkable 5,233%.
Brinker also reported that the churn rate – which might include a technology being acquired, sunset, or going out of business – was 8.7%. 615 tools were removed since last year’s 7,040 count, but even with that, the growth of net new tools was 24.5% with 1,575 new tools added.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1600/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 1600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w2400/2020/06/martech-landscape-2020-martech5000-slide.jpg 2400w" /></figure>
What’s New in the 2020 Martech 5000 Supergraphic
Let’s start with the obvious: for the first time, the graphic looks like a piece of abstract art. Or maybe even a map of the Kingdoms of Westeros.
Regardless of your interpretation, this new design is a marked departure from the previously structured compositions, which accentuates the organic nature of the ecosystem. It also reflects how fluid and amorphous the industry has become, and how the shape is constantly shifting.
The concept of a map is perhaps the best metaphor, with the technology logos being organized compactly into six “continents” with a number of sub-categories as “countries.” These include:
<ul>
<li>Advertising &amp; Promotion: SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and Social Media Advertising</li>
<li>Commerce &amp; Sales: Sales Automation, Customer Support, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management)</li>
<li>Content &amp; Experience: CMS (Content Management Systems), SEO, and Marketing Automation</li>
<li>Data: Data Analytics and Web Analytics</li>
<li>Management: Project Management Software and Communication Software</li>
<li>Social &amp; Relationships: Social Media Management</li>
</ul>
The other big change is where the growth is happening across these categories. Below is how much each has grown since last year:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/martech-category-growth.jpg" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/06/martech-category-growth.jpg 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/06/martech-category-growth.jpg 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/06/martech-category-growth.jpg 1600w" /></figure>
While stalwarts like Advertising and Promotion appreciated modest gains, Data lead the way with double-digit growth. Specific areas such as Data Governance and Privacy, Video Marketing, Conversational Marketing and Chat, and Project and Workflow management saw the highest percentages of change, signaling that companies with mature stacks are now focused on harnessing their data assets and optimizing their investments.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Martech
Brinker’s 2020 research was collected before most of the world had ever heard the word “coronavirus.” The Supergraphic was published in the thick of the COVID-19 lockdowns – and while many areas of the world have reopened, resurgences in places like the U.S. continue to stir uncertainty in the markets.
In his article supporting the 2020 Supergraphic, Brinker taps his crystal ball, forecasting that the marketing technology industry will remain strong despite the effects of COVID-19. While he believes there will be short-term damage, the long-term outlook is positive.
While the future is always a little foggy, the pandemic has further obscured the prospects for the Martech landscape. First and foremost, companies may be more risk-adverse, pushing off digital transformation projects to meet budget cuts. Additionally, venture capital investment may be more difficult to secure, putting more pressure on startups.
On the bright side, this challenge has forced brands and organizations to pivot their operations to digital. Consider <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/23/21232401/zoom-300-million-users-growth-coronavirus-pandemic-security-privacy-concerns-response">Zoom’s jump from 10 million daily users to over 300 million</a> since the beginning of the lockdown; this ripple effect was felt across many categories as a direct result of the crisis. As companies continue to embrace digital operations – from collaboration to eCommerce to service – Martech may continue to experience broad growth.
An Interactive Martech 5000 Database
Including 8,000 logos inside a graphic is not an easy task. And if you’re trying to decipher the various players from a printed page, you might need a magnifying glass.
The good news is the Martech 5000 Supergraphic also comes in the form of an interactive database, making it easier to browse the companies along with their domain names, year founded, headquarter location, and even their Linkedin and Twitter handles if available.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/martech5000-database.png" srcset="/wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w600/2020/06/martech5000-database.png 600w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/size/w1000/2020/06/martech5000-database.png 1000w, /wp-content/themes/cmscritic/img/cmscritic/content/images/2020/06/martech5000-database.png 1209w" /></figure>
You can sign up to see the database <a href="https://martech5000.com/about">here</a>. To read the Chiefmartec article and download the Supergraphic in all of its glory, <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">click here.</a>
About Chiefmartec.com
<a href="https://chiefmartec.com/">Chiefmartec.com</a> is a leading online authority for marketing technology. Started in 2008 by Scott Brinker, the blog offers deep insights on strategy, management, and culture – as well as articles and interviews with Martech leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Scott also serves as VP platform ecosystem at Hubspot.

Marketing Technology Landscape Grows 13.6% in 2020, Supergraphic Now Features 8,000 Tools

When it comes to SEO, there are a number of tools that can help improve your website’s performance. And that’s the problem: you often need multiple resources to manage a comprehensive SEO strategy, and few platforms offer complete solution with the right mix of features.
While Siteimprove has built a strong reputation around their industry-leading <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/">accessibility scanning and monitoring solution</a>, their SEO platform boasts some powerful enterprise features for enhancing search while simplifying the overall management.
We took a fresh look at Siteimprove SEO to see what gives it an edge – and how their all-in-one platform can help power your search and Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) strategies.
<h3 id="the-impact-of-covid-19-on-seo">The Impact of COVID-19 on SEO</h3>
The Coronavirus pandemic has unquestionably changed the way we live. But it’s also dramatically elevated the value of SEO.
With more people working from home, streaming video content, and ordering goods online, internet usage has increased exponentially. While businesses have begun to reopen in most places, the effects of COVID-19 have had a profound and lasting impact on digital experience.
From events to food service to hospitality, almost every industry has been forced to transform their operations. As businesses continue to become more reliant on digital strategies, SEO is playing an even bigger role for driving leads and competing online.
<h3 id="seo-made-simple">SEO Made Simple</h3>
Digital professionals already know how challenging it is to manage a successful SEO strategy. With dozens of tools flooding the already overloaded <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">MarTech landscape</a> – from analytics to keyword research to linking – the choices can feel overwhelming.
Siteimprove SEO helps cut through this complexity by combining the most essential tools in one place and integrating their capabilities. This makes the SEO job less cumbersome while providing more actionable insight and value.
We’ve already mentioned Siteimprove’s best-of-breed accessibility platform. These features go hand-in-hand with SEO, as accessibility is built on structured website tagging and labeling. Search engines love these components, so fixing your accessibility means improving your SEO. It’s relatively easy to add Siteimprove’s accessibility scanning and monitoring to help flag ADA compliance violations.
<h3 id="an-all-in-one-platform-for-optimizing-search">An All-in-One Platform for Optimizing Search</h3>
While no platform can bring everything together in one place, Siteimprove gets pretty close. Here are some key features worth noting:
On-Page Diagnostics 
Siteimprove incorporates 66 unique SEO checks, including scans for missing meta descriptions, spelling mistakes, broken links, poor readability, and links to unsafe domains. Based on all the checkpoints, it then calculates your SEO score, measured on a scale of 0-100.
There are four separate categories: Technical, Content, User Experience, and Mobile Standards. Each category gets its own score with their total making up the overall score. The scoring system allows users to easily identify what needs to be improved and where they should direct their efforts. This makes managing and understanding your SEO much easier. The following ranges give an indication of how your website is doing:
- Red: 0-49 (poor)
- Orange: 50-89 (average)
- Green: 90-100 (good)
A score of 90+ will place your website in the top 5% of all websites, according to Google’s performance metrics. Making your score higher will improve your SEO, user engagement, and user experience – thus increasing conversions.
Keyword insights 
The Keyword insights feature allows for advanced keyword discovery and monitoring. Through a direct integration of <a href="https://search.google.com/search-console/about">Google’s Search console</a>, Siteimprove SEO helps you learn how Google’s search engine sees your website and which queries make your website appear in search results. With Keyword Insights, you can identify keywords that drive traffic to your website and see their search volume, estimated traffic, competition level, and even a specific keyword’s potential ranked from low to high.
Search Engine Analytics 
With Siteimprove, you can see where your visitors are coming from and how engaged they are with your content. Search Engine Analytics provides statistics on visitors from search engine referrals, their county, and even the devices they use. With all the data at your fingertips, you can enhance your digital strategies and focus your campaigns based on incredibly useful metrics.
Backlink checks 
Backlinks are hyperlinks that live on other websites that lead back to your website. Backlinks are an important part of any SEO strategy, as search engines use backlinks as an indicator of your domain authority (essentially how popular or important your website is). With backlink checks and analysis, you can see which sites are publishing links back to you, and identify links that boost your ranking or even put it at risk.
Duplicate Content Finder 
Duplicate content is a problem almost every web or content manager faces. Google and other search engines work hard to index pages with distinct information, and duplicated blocks of content can be seen as manipulating SEO to win more traffic. Even if duplicate content includes things like printer-only versions of pages, the search engines can’t always tell which version to display. Consequently, your page may rank lower or even be excluded from search results. While canonical tags can be used to combat this, it’s good to avoid the problem in the first place.
With Siteimprove, you can search and identify duplicate content, compare the percentage of similarity between pages, and provide page view statistics. Armed with this data, you can take action to remove or properly tag your duplicate content and improve your rankings.
Content Optimization 
With Siteimprove, you can map specific keywords to where they should appear in your content. You can even get recommendations on how to optimize your overall content for keywords.
Accessibility 
As we already mentioned, Siteimprove is well-regarded for their accessibility solutions. But improving your SEO can help support your overall accessibility – and adding Siteimprove’s scanning and monitoring tools can help give you a clean bill of health around violations.
Siteimprove’s scanning and monitoring tools check your website for a range of accessibility issues and compile scoring based on WCAG 2.0 ratings for A, AA, or AAA standards. If you have a big site, you can use automated accessibility checks to simultaneously test hundreds of pages. You can then generate actionable reports that allow you to remediate any issues and track your improvements for regulatory or governance requirements.
<a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/">Click here</a>  to learn more about Siteimprove’s accessibility solutions.
<h3 id="integration-with-cms-platforms">Integration with CMS Platforms</h3>
Siteimprove works seamlessly with most content management systems. It offers a set of pre-built plugins for specific platforms, as well as integrations developed in collaboration with CMS vendors. There are also a number of community plugins that have been developed and supported by third parties. Siteimprove does feature an <a href="https://api.siteimprove.com/v2/documentation">API spec with complete documentation</a> for building custom integrations.
<h3 id="pricing">Pricing</h3>
Along with their suite of SEO tools, Siteimprove offers multiple enterprise products through a subscription-based model. While they don’t offer pricing on their website, you can contact their sales team to develop a custom quote around your organization’s needs and goals.
You can also get a free demo of the software <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/request-a-demo/">https://siteimprove.com/en-us/request-a-demo/</a>
<h3 id="about-siteimprove">About Siteimprove</h3>
Siteimprove offers the world's most comprehensive cloud-based Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) software. The Siteimprove Intelligence Platform provides eye-opening insights that empower more than 7,500 teams to create higher quality content, drive better traffic, measure digital performance, and work towards regulatory compliance—all from one place. We are also proud to offer best-in-class technical support, academy courses, services, and technology integrations.

Siteimprove SEO Provides All-In-One Capabilities for Enhancing Search Performance

Shopify Inc. has announced the release of Shop, a first-of-its-kind mobile shopping app designed to create a more intuitive online shopping experience from product discovery to package delivery.
We are setting out to reimagine the online shopping experience for customers — to provide them greater convenience, transparency, and personalization. As a result of social distancing and stay-at-home measures, customers have become more reliant on online ordering than ever before as it becomes more challenging to stay connected to the brands they love.
Designed to bridge the gaps in online shopping, Shop offers users the ability to easily discover local businesses, receive relevant product recommendations from their favorite brands, check out effortlessly, and track all of their online orders. We’ve brought together our expertise in commerce and proven features from Shop Pay, a one-click accelerated checkout, and Arrive, an app to track online orders, to make purchasing and order tracking frictionless for shoppers. To date, Shop Pay has processed over $8 billion in sales, while Arrive has been used by 16 million shoppers to track their ecommerce orders.
In a world of increasing physical separation, we want to help businesses deepen their connection with their customers and, over time, understand what they want to continue to build trust and loyalty.
“Shopify has focused the last decade on solving complex problems for entrepreneurs by making commerce seamless and accessible,” said Carl Rivera, General Manager of Shop. “Now, we want to do the same for customers. We set out to solve the common pain points in the customer’s shopping journey today, while developing specific features, like local business discovery, that will be relevant today and in the future.”
Shop’s features include:
<ul>
<li>Local filters: Shop’s users can locate nearby merchants to support local businesses. The app identifies businesses currently offering shipping, pick-up, and highlights return policies.</li>
<li>Seamless payment and checkout: Through Shop Pay, shoppers have fast and easy checkout across all brands on the app.</li>
<li>Transparent tracking: With the innovative technology of Arrive, all order and tracking information is stored in one convenient place. Tracking shows the status of each package and provides real-time updates.</li>
<li>Customized recommendations: Through personalized recommendations, like new releases and deals from the brands shoppers love, Shop ensures merchants’ customers consistently rediscover the storefronts of their favorite brands, as well as new brands.</li>
</ul>
The iOS and Android app are available to <a href="https://shop.app/" rel="noreferrer noopener">download</a> in the app store today. For more information, please visit <a href="http://shopify.com/shop" rel="noreferrer noopener">shopify.com/shop</a>.
About Shopify
Shopify is a leading global commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify powers over one million businesses in more than 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, PepsiCo, Staples and many more. For more information, visit www.shopify.com.

Shopify Unveils Its Consumer App: Shop

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<a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">Magnolia</a> today announces the launch of Magnolia 6.2, the latest version of its leading content management system (CMS), designed to manage connected experiences.
Along with a series of new features, Magnolia 6.2 provides a headless digital experience hub, which aims to take managing digital experiences in headless and omnichannel environments to the next level.
Within the hub, marketers can use Magnolia’s Visual Single-Page Apps Editor to re-use content across all channels and digital touchpoints, while maintaining autonomy for creating and editing all layouts and content. It also enables previewing of any experience before publishing.
Additional features mean users will be able to curate collections of content and data from external sources — with no programming required. Magnolia 6.2’s Multisource feature also allows for dynamic integration of multiple content repositories, whether on-premises or cloud, giving marketers a single access point to all available content and data that’s needed for greater personalization.
As an open platform, Magnolia 6.2 enables customers to choose the exact systems they need and helps them accelerate integration using Magnolia’s<a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/product/connectors.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener"> Connector Packs</a>. New connectors to Salesforce Marketing and Commerce Clouds, Marketo, Adobe Analytics and more enable marketers to get out-of-the-box integrations to industry leading marketing technologies.
Commenting on the launch of Magnolia 6.2, Tim Brown, CEO at Magnolia said: “Brands today are expected to deliver personalized customer experiences across a myriad of different touchpoints. But it’s not easy. So much of what’s available to marketers today is either split into silos, lacking in integrations or overly-reliant on IT and developer support. For all the talk of great digital experiences, too many CMS’ rely on cumbersome architectures that don’t put the end user first.
“That’s what we set out to change with Magnolia 6.2 and our new headless digital experience hub. Our latest update lets marketers assemble experiences, instead of just entering content. It brings together all available data and content for personalization, no matter where it lives. The result is a platform that takes digital experiences to the next level; providing a more powerful resource for marketers, less hard work for developers, and ultimately, a better digital experience for customers.”
To find out more about Magnolia 6.2, visit the <a href="https://blog.magnolia-cms.com/author/antti-hietala/magnolia-6.2-headless-for-marketers.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">release announcement</a>.

Magnolia announces new 6.2 release, with first ever headless digital experience hub

The most popular open-source headless content management system (CMS) <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=t5_FPcCTthEU0ymmYwQjMlFRUUpcDIxkDMaj-n8FfDcxPFAyPp_9LakdMWyMGO-h" rel="nofollow">Strapi</a> can now be deployed in less than two minutes on DigitalOcean. The company announced today that it has been listed on the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=CKiPFiyUkEchztZjtKbXx6K9AjCb9BL9F24ABm8ezw1QIjXzl_S7VSrVcUazuUtjHoDmRsXsgJqAIWIPnrHzlRqh2LA5RHIW2BzKUaQYVXtYSsSQOC8aF6CM6jrkkvOz" rel="nofollow">DigitalOcean Marketplace</a> with a preconfigured one-click option.
<blockquote>Strapi’s  mission is to make content management and delivery as easy as possible  for developers and end-users,” said Pierre Burgy, co-founder and CEO of  Strapi. “Our availability on the DigitalOcean Marketplace enables users  to deploy Strapi with one-click, saving them time and deployment  headaches.”</blockquote>
Strapi works with all the JAMstack static site  generators like React, Vue.js, Next.js, Nuxt.js, Gatsby.js or Angular  supports both SQL and NoSQL databases and can be deployed anywhere:  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Netlify, Heroku, a dedicated or virtual  private server. The release of the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=zp_N1CXQvF7NZGkv3G8p2ofk3RBDzkn-ORi4RELCgW2Z2hxWYZ3FeAaD_7wN5B7954MFXzfz0EAY4qTjz940q1GOd-f11kEB323kuUlLtD7PeAbCl5cG4aviH2hqNxNJZToKDxuJrNrhE8OLQnLRbyOhS7LwOvHfyKMPY1S7-1k=" rel="nofollow">platform.sh one-click deploy button</a> last week and DigitalOcean this week gives developers the option to  save time installing Strapi instances directly on their favorite cloud  platform in minutes.
“With this new ‘Strapi Marketplace app,’  developers can spin up Strapi instances easily and almost  instantaneously,” said Chris Sevilleja, founder, Scotch.io, and web  community manager at DigitalOcean. “With support for both REST and  GraphQL application programming interfaces (APIs), Strapi is a very good  option for the A in the JAMstack, a powerful backend that just works  with all JavaScript static site generators.”
On Thursday, March 12, Sevilleja will be hosting a <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=7lXANVhSHyzPu0FbqEDy63Qee8GAL2n6RWVgZtkhxUxOQOg7SfWl_SBPOP424czPdpRwoa6QzJHYE6OMBpBLSJ39oFg7PQYdXEHkvPaHM3Taeobu9l50RSGI39Es0sbqYNJZvFS2CN8r_vrnZONFEA==" rel="nofollow">webinar</a> discussing JAMstack best practices and ways to set up API layers by  running a headless CMS on DigitalOcean Droplets, featuring Strapi. To  create a Strapi Droplet go to: <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=Reg2XsTvoKgAV_9tgC8JTLGpB8xD9sdkQmoCOwYp5qQgfsTQ-hJ7-JEKz-ij5qDYTf3R145TQoUghIaJBvZH7zNkvDRFsa7ZkpyhMaEqjDPAtlDLAWhlEP0yQ5uBjem7upmh5x02YhyXlOlk9WSn0ZjAJ1b2wBkIZJJ5qZJAd28=" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/strapi</a>.

Headless CMS Strapi now available on the DigitalOcean Marketplace

Contentful, the global leader in headless content management, today announced its App Framework — the new standard for companies to build a best-in-class digital experience stack, as opposed to buying a monolithic suite. This approach has been validated by Gartner, which found a <a href="https://blogs.gartner.com/benjamin-bloom/2019/12/20/360-review-integrated-suite/" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">28-point preference for a stack</a> over an integrated suite. Brands that assemble their own stacks maximize flexibility and agility to deliver digital experiences across channels while leveraging their existing investments.
The App Framework builds on Contentful’s market-leading extensibility, which champions the “modern tech stack,” an approach to assembling a group of best-in-class services, seamlessly integrated with open APIs. This approach also enables brands to evolve their tech stacks to incorporate new tools. Thousands of brands are moving from legacy suites to modern platform architectures.
“We’re in a new era of digital experiences, where customers expect unique brand experiences across an increasing number of channels,” said Steve Sloan, CEO of Contentful. “Brands can’t keep up with this demand using monolithic, legacy CMS suites. Contentful’s App Framework enables businesses to build connected experiences with scalable apps on a unified content platform.”
When customers connect their growing portfolio of digital experience services such as optimization, analytics, collaboration, translation, and deployment and delivery to Contentful’s content platform, they make more of both content and technology investments. That’s because the App Framework lets businesses scale services programmatically, instead of one-off integrations that are hard to maintain and upgrade. This gives Contentful customers and its partner ecosystem more agility and flexibility, while strengthening governance for customers’ global content operations.
“We are happy to team up with Contentful on our quest to enable our customers to create seamless commerce experiences,” says Dirk Weckerlei, Global Head of Partner Management at Commercetools. “Our microservices approach, combined with Contentful’s API-first App Framework, enables brands such as Bang &amp; Olufsen to unify content across all their channels.”
A set of new API endpoints, libraries and blueprints make up the App Framework. These tools are designed to help developers quickly build custom apps and integrate existing services. Developing apps is made easier because customers can use the open source code to build integrations and deliver digital experiences faster. Plus, more than a dozen independent software vendors, including Optimizely, Netlify and Commercetools, now offer apps on Contentful to help customers to apply these services across their entire organization in just a few clicks.
The number of companies using this technology is growing rapidly — Contentful has the largest technology and <a href="https://www.contentful.com/partners/" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">solutions partner</a> ecosystem among headless CMS providers. In addition to <a href="https://www.contentful.com/ecosystem/" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">technology partners</a> including leading third-party SaaS companies, Contentful partners with top global agencies such as EPAM, AKQA and Publicis Sapient. With the App Framework, tech partners can more easily connect their services with the Contentful platform and equip customers with new capabilities; meanwhile, solution partners can build richer digital experiences for brands by creating custom apps to service or resell to their clients.
“Global brands like Bang &amp; Olufsen need to maintain a luxury digital experience across numerous channels, which is only possible with a content platform that’s extensible and modular,” said Om Singh, Head of Engineering, Nordic at Publicis Sapient. “We confidently recommend Contentful to our clients because we know it will easily integrate with commerce solutions, digital displays or any future customer touchpoint.”

Contentful launches App Framework under new CEO

<a href="https://u7061146.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=4tNED-2FM8iDZJQyQ53jATUeS0h4DJ623Zdp12Z8IUD4NRrOE19deqmmvxd5LSqfP-2BCBl-2Fm6mlVCZeuUGmOuaSKaj3w8pVOMfpjQivDrGHEOwWLvbzzfAlJbPGpFNGTNmaKwBluWvqYlE6-2FplUoTgs-2FViyLKNFkmRC0LF0l5b7pFcFLG51bR1kozc6G-2FsBGTv4NiFXmFETZZeGSzOCvKPf72zUvulPmBvzXmypgH1NUiZ5t2QeF-2BQTBxL6n7zbEutI6ZG4_mdytbyizDIdVO1JQUbUtCUfTtSkZ3al2-2FoZcynX0Ktn6hOE7IfOACcFjaA4gaM87CLaIV8D-2F4R3bXVK-2F39GQKZa7LoEedhOhatWDdO5RiK8RFpGGroK7F-2FcLFKwui72-2Bhe7QUr-2FZk1iSABX-2BEw1CJwLz3PJ4d-2BqQcHNBkHMS9C5RWqZ3kUIFZIzdmxs-2F-2FdErWZYOxBgdLNaGgR-2Bd6bTQhdy1nJgXWqeGKyRh3K8hqqgJU49ZORB9N0JvCg1xZH-2FutfMcPgFa0fqMN7lY6wdX-2B-2FU7Plpf6-2F6dQpk4jVCBkbE0iIeSVEsQpcZRzjLJ9MhGcKqIKM7o-2FHK9EAqTkvc-2FwgUxD4qcSEa5KfyM2iBCH-2BA-3D" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">Nuxeo</a>,  the leading cloud-native Content Services Platform (CSP), today  announced 2019 revenue and growth figures that reflect the company’s  ongoing success in the fast-growing Content Services market, where Nuxeo  continues to outpace its competitors.
In 2019, Nuxeo's revenues grew by 32 percent, with Q4 revenue growing  46 percent year-on-year, making the company one of the fastest-growing  vendors in the Content Services and Enterprise Content Management (ECM)  market. 2019 continued a well-established trend of rapid growth for  Nuxeo and the company has achieved a sustained 40 percent compounded  annual growth rate (CAGR) since taking investment from Goldman Sachs and  Kennet Partners in 2016. In fact, the company has more than tripled  revenues over the last four years.
In addition, customers are deploying the Nuxeo Platform via the cloud  at an accelerating pace, as evidenced by a 63 percent increase in the  company cloud revenues in 2019. Nuxeo Cloud now represents 32 percent of  the company’s total recurring revenue.
“We have a sustained, strong track record of success in the Content  Services market,” said Eric Barroca, CEO of Nuxeo. "The results and  milestones we achieved in 2019 illustrate that we’re meeting the complex  information management challenges of global enterprises. We anticipate  another strong year in 2020 as more enterprises continue to embrace the  Nuxeo Platform to address a variety of different business needs, from  modernizing large-scale legacy ECM systems for leading financial  institutions to helping fashion and apparel companies to accelerate  their digital supply chains and bring new products to market much more  quickly.”
2019 was a year of innovation for Nuxeo as the company launched two  new cloud services and delivered numerous new platform features. In  July, the company introduced <a href="https://u7061146.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=4tNED-2FM8iDZJQyQ53jATUV-2FnaGUdJN1Rf8R29HcZZ-2FLaKI1HaEL79nRXBLCPPHDlVkU6cCupg1XSG-2FTNb6IGyjk76MeNaub5EJU7-2Fppm2KxxbTcwhW6ZmCriXMxF0TQOPhNhF-2FocCNUBPIb5QHDUoQ-3D-3Drj0g_mdytbyizDIdVO1JQUbUtCUfTtSkZ3al2-2FoZcynX0Ktn6hOE7IfOACcFjaA4gaM87CLaIV8D-2F4R3bXVK-2F39GQKZa7LoEedhOhatWDdO5RiK8RFpGGroK7F-2FcLFKwui72-2Bhe7QUr-2FZk1iSABX-2BEw1CJwLz3PJ4d-2BqQcHNBkHMS9C5RWqZ3kUIFZIzdmxs-2F-2FdErHeBXKi5EyIv5zoAJNpK1UcpT26kzgX6Nh-2FgY0BuomuNlKlA8r5MpOlYGF9YSs4mA20o0aTa0kurAQLZjbdRNb1ZJlX3FTBoVuFwBjw8-2Bbyts1jRTLFPM3HZWO-2BY66aphMFy469xU2VRsEWEv-2BmqrlO93zrsgzNlVqawRLzrDiL4-3D" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">Nuxeo Insight</a> and became the first CSP vendor to release a fully-trainable artificial  intelligence (AI) offering for content. In November, the company  launched its Nuxeo Transformation service, a fully-elastic cloud service  for rendering and transforming content and digital assets at extreme  scale.
“We are focusing on delivering breakthrough technology to our  customers,” explained Barroca, “Our Nuxeo Insight service is the most  advanced, trainable AI engine in the Content Services market today. It  enables our customers to build custom AI models using their own content  and data to deliver real, quantifiable business results, like  recognizing talent and products, identifying characters and other  intellectual property, and intelligently classifying documents and  content -- all at an unprecedented scale and with exceptional accuracy.”

Cloud Deployments Drive Rapid Growth of Nuxeo in 2019

Joomla is a popular open-source content management system used on millions of different websites. It has hundreds of great features built into its core system, and many more that can be installed using a convenient plugin system. Webmasters who use Joomla need to become familiar with the various features so that they can build the best website possible. One of the most powerful features (which is often overlooked or under used by site owners) are the access control lists (ACL). Access control lists give the site owner the ability to decide who can do what on the site. Learning about this great feature is essential for anyone using, or considering, Joomla as their CMS.
<h3>What is the Joomla ACL?</h3>
Joomla’s ACLs allow an administrator of a website to create and control various different roles. Users of the site, as well as visitors, can then be assigned to specific roles according to their roles or activities. The ACLs are broken up into two separate sections. The first are the user viewing access levels, which are for visitors to the site. The second is for user action permissions, which is for administrators, content contributors, moderators, and others who will need to perform actions on the site itself.
<h3>User Viewing ACL</h3>
The user viewing ACL will allow you to set up groups with different permissions based on a variety of factors. The most common way to use this system is to have one group that is for users who are visiting the site as a guest, and another group for those who have registered with the site. It is also possible to create child groups under each parent group to further control who has access to what. For example, a popular type of child group would be for users who have not only registered for the site, but also made a purchase. These users may need access to pages such as a return policy, a dedicated customer service area, or a billing page.
When creating any parent group, it is important to remember that all the child groups under it will inherit the same permissions. So, the highest level parent group should be given the most restrictive permissions, and additional permissions are added in child groups as they are needed.
<h3>User Action ACL</h3>
The action permission system works in much the same way as the viewing ACL system. The difference is only in regard to what type of permissions will be granted. The permission options for actions are broken up into several levels, which include global configuration level, component level, and article level. These apply as follows:
<ul>
<li>Global Configuration Level – This level will grant all users who will have any type of action permissions the basic controls they need. This will include things like allowing the user to log onto the site, into the administrator page, offline access, and more.</li>
<li>Component Level – Under the component level users can be assigned permissions to edit specific components of the site. This could include banners, contacts, languages, plugins, and more.</li>
<li>Article Level – This is the level where users are given permissions to create, edit, and publish articles on the site.  It can also be used to provide access only to specific articles, or to articles that this user published.</li>
</ul>
An example of how the permissions setting look in Joomla can be seen in the image below. This image is showing some of the options available for global configuration:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image-13.png" alt="Permissions setting in Joomla" /></figure>
This ACL system allows the administrator to allow moderators, writers, and others to have the ability to access the portions of the site that they need, while still restricting them from areas that they shouldn’t control. Setting up access control lists properly from the beginning will make the management of a Joomla site in the future. There will be no need to adjust permissions on a case by case basis, and the users will only have access to that which they really need.
<h3>Joomla ACL Addons</h3>
The access control list system included with core Joomla is powerful and will allow an administrator to precisely grant and restrict just about any permissions they desire. While this will be more than sufficient for most site owners, there are additional options available through Joomla addons. These third-party addons provide additional functionality or adjust the user interface for ACLs, which some people may like. Whether addons are used or not, the Joomla access control lists are an essential part of running any site.

Introduction to Joomla Access Control Lists

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As of January 14th, Microsoft has officially stopped supporting Windows 7. If you’re still using this operating system on your computer, there are some important things that you need to be aware of. The end of support may have a significant impact on both your day to day computer usage, and any activities related to running your website(s). This end of support is a normal part of the Microsoft planned life-cycle, which promises technical support for ten years for each operating system. Windows 7 was first released in October of 2009.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image-12.png" /></figure>
<h3>What Support is Ending?</h3>
For the last several years, Windows 7 was technically only supported under their ‘extended support’ solutions. This means that they continued to provide security updates and software updates to support new devices. Users could also get direct technical support if they were willing to pay for it. All of these options have now come to an end and Microsoft will not be patching or updating this operating system at all going forward. Individuals and businesses who choose to continue using Windows 7 will not be able to get any support from Microsoft engineers.
<h3>Risks of Remaining on Windows 7</h3>
While Windows 7 will continue to function normally, those who do not upgrade to Windows 10 (or at the least, Windows 8.1, which is still supported through 2023), will face additional problems. The following are the most significant risks users need to be aware of if they keep running Windows 7:
<ul>
<li>Regular Security Patches – Microsoft will not be releasing any further updates to Windows 7, which means their normal security patches will end. This leaves users at risk for viruses, malware, and other issues. A computer infected with these types of things can easily spread them to their managed websites as well.</li>
<li>Known Security Fixes – When a significant security issue is found, Microsoft will no longer provide ‘zero day’ fixing. While under support, a patch would be developed and rolled out very quickly to combat major security flaws that were found.</li>
<li>Updated Drivers – Drivers will no longer be updated, which means computers running Windows 7 will be increasingly unable to run new types of hardware.</li>
<li>Support for Software – No new software, or updates to existing software, will be made to run on Windows 7, and Microsoft won’t update the operating system to run modern software. Over time, users will have more and more problems running the latest software (including CMS’s).</li>
</ul>
<h3>What Options Do You Have?</h3>
Those who are still running Windows 7 have several options available to them. For the vast majority of people, the best course of action is to simply upgrade to Windows 10. This is the latest version of Windows and is the best supported. While the initial roll-out of Windows 10 did have some problems, the OS has been greatly improved and most people are now very happy with it. That being said, it will have a slight learning curve associated with it, so keep that in mind.
To get Windows 10, users can purchase it (currently $139) online and install it. For now, Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users can also participate in Microsoft’s free upgrade program, which gives a full version of Windows 10 to all users. This program was scheduled to end back in 2016, but is still active. Instructions on this, click <a href="https://www.cnet.com/how-to/rip-windows-7-upgrade-to-windows-10-free-heres-how/">HERE</a>.
The least popular option is going to be to upgrade to Windows 8.1. This version of Windows is still supported through 2023 using Microsoft’s extended support category. There are no real advantages to moving to Windows 8.1 instead of going directly to 10, however, so this isn’t a good option for most people.
The final option, which is not at all recommended, is to remain on windows 7. While most users won’t experience any immediate issues, they are putting themselves at an ever growing risk. It can make sense to keep running Windows 7 for a short period of time while preparing for an upgrade, moving up to Windows 10 should be a priority for all users.

What You Need to Know About the End of Windows 7 Support

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