Articles - Page 78

Bland Brands Beware: Optimizely’s New Identity Brings Human Creativity to its Agentic AI and AEO Ambitions

matt-garrepy

Recently FlashMoto.com introduced an arsenal of new <a href="http://templates.flashmoto.com">Flash CMS templates</a> that impress with their site structure, content presentation and unusual design approaches. These Flash CMS designs embody the most effective methods of putting form and content together. Brilliant technique and professional animation help the visitors focus on the most significant elements of the website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/flashmoto_templates_jwgtzu.jpg" />
These Flash CMS websites are designed for being used with an advanced FlashMoto Flash content management system and are equipped with a convenient WYSIWYG editor, video and image gallery components, rich media library, video and MP3 player components, info module component, all necessary SEO tools (Google Analytics &amp; Webmaster Tools integration, deep linking), etc.

FlashMoto Design Collection Updated with New Flash CMS Templates

mike-johnston

<a href="/hostgator">HostGator</a> is one of the largest web hosting providers in the world and offers some of the lowest monthly fees out there but does the adage “You get what you pay for” apply here? Read on to find out in this HostGator Review.
HostGator has been around for quite some time and is one of the largest shared hosting providers out there. They offer shared hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting and more. Today, we're going to take a look at some of the details behind their shared hosting offerings.
<h2>Pricing Structure</h2>
Shared hosting prices, at the time of this review, range from a meager $3.96 to $10.96 per month. Here is a quick breakdown of the differences between each of their Shared Hosting plans:
Hatchling
<ul>
<li>Single Domain</li>
<li>Unlimited Disk Space</li>
<li>Unlimited Bandwidth</li>
<li>Shared SSL Certificate</li>
<li>NO addon domains</li>
<li>NO anonymous FTP</li>
</ul>
Baby
<ul>
<li>Unlimited Domains</li>
<li>Unlimited Disk Space</li>
<li>Unlimited Bandwidth</li>
<li>Shared SSL Certificate</li>
<li>Unlimited addon domains</li>
</ul>
Business
<ul>
<li>Unlimited Domains</li>
<li>Unlimited Disk Space</li>
<li>Unlimited Bandwidth</li>
<li>Unlimited addon domains</li>
<li>Free Private SSL &amp; IP</li>
<li>Free Toll Free Number</li>
<li>Unlimited addon domains</li>
<li>Anonymous FTP</li>
</ul>
Price wise, HostGator is definitely competitive. For shared hosting, there are thousands of hosts out there that are competing for your business and HostGator definitely has priced their packages well. Most people should have no problem affording any of these, but how do they fare from a usability standpoint?
Let's explore…
<h2>Usability</h2>
When it comes to usability, if you've never had a hosting package before, you're going to be in for an eye opening experience. I will say, however, that if you have someone with even the slightest bit of technical knowledge looking after your hosting (or you are willing to learn) then you'll be happy with the setup that HostGator provides.
There are numerous options for hosting control panels (the place you log into to set up things such as your email accounts, addon domains, statistics, etc) but few are as good as CPanel setups and HostGator uses them for all of it's shared hosting plans.
This is a good thing.
CPanel is easy to use, yet very powerful and once you get used to it, you'll find yourself falling in love with the fact that everything is just there and easily accessible without distracting graphics and colors. Functionality is broken up into logical categories and getting to the task at hand is quick and easy to do.
Curious as to what it looks like? Here's a screenshot:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cpanel-620x570.jpg" alt="HostGator Review - CPanel" />
Are you the hands-on type and want to explore it further? Here's a fully functional <a href="http://174.121.236.237:2082/frontend/x3/index.html">CPanel demo</a> that you can mess around with to see how it works.
Installing scripts is quick and easy as well. Should you need to set up a WordPress, Joomla or Drupal Site or even a forum software for your website, HostGator offers QuickInstall and Fantastico Deluxe which are basically interfaces that help you install various things such as calendar software, billing software, CMS software, eCommerce and much more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/quickinstall-620x605.jpg" alt="HostGator Review - QuickInstall" />
Installation scripts such as QuickInstall are great additions to the service and offer a quick and easy means to get up and running with as little technical knowledge as possible. Within about 10-15 seconds, you can have a fully functional WordPress, Drupal or Joomla install up and running and ready for you to use. Obviously, the system won't teach you how to use it but it definitely helps shield you from (what can be) a complicated installation process.
What else do you get with a HostGator install?
<h2>Bonus Features</h2>
HostGator is out to win you over as a customer and they throw tons of bonus features in with each purchase of a hosting plan. Here's a quick breakdown of what else you receive over and above the hosting package itself:
<ul>
<li>Free BaseKit SiteBuilder and Website Building Tools</li>
<li>4,500 Free Website Templates</li>
<li>Free Website Transfer, Domain Transfer, MySQL Transfer, Script Transfer</li>
<li>$100 Google Adwords Offer</li>
</ul>
Of particular value is the $100 Google Adwords credit which you can use to kick off a campaign through Google and help drive traffic to your newly created site.
<h2>Support</h2>
I've had plenty of experience with HostGator as CMS Critic was, at one time, hosted with their shared hosting service on the Business plan and we were with them for several years. During this time, I've had plenty of times when I've had to reach out to their support for either simple questions or advanced troubleshooting.
They are quick to answer the phone and the bulk of the support technicians are very good at their jobs. I've had very few poor experiences over the years and coming from many years experience dealing with web hosts, HostGator definitely is one of the best I've used.
The only reason we are no longer hosted with them is we needed to graduate to managed hosting and as a result, switched to WP Engine (you can read that review here: <a href="/wp-engine-review/">WP Engine Review</a>).
<h2>Things you need to know</h2>
I'm now going to flag something that I experienced with HostGator that I didn't realize until it was too late.  This was not the fault of HostGator but rather my own for not paying attention and catching it. By filling you in now, it's my hope that you'll be sure to pay attention and won't cause yourself headaches down the road.
If you have a website hosted with them that contains an extremely large number of files (in excess of 100,000 or over 20 GB in size) they will not back your site or any of the files up if you exceed these limits. There is an option to enter an email so that you are notified if a backup fails or whenever one is run but not when you are closing in on these limits. As such, it is very important to pay attention to this box and if you start creeping up on the limits, you'll want to act quickly to ensure your site is backed up. Otherwise, you could be exposing yourself to the risk of no backups. It is YOUR responsibility to pay mind to the backup summary box within the hosting control panel.
Here is how it looks when you've exceeded the limits:
<img style="max-width:226px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/backupstatus.jpg" alt="HostGator Review - Backups" />
I would suggest that if you choose to use HostGator, you enter your email here first thing when you log into your account. That way, if you don't get a backup email, you'll notice it and hopefully react accordingly. I wouldn't exclusively rely on the emails, however.  I would also suggest you check watch for the red exclamation mark if you want your site backed up. I didn't do this initially and it caused me tons of headaches down the road.
Of course, there are plenty of alternative backup services such as <a href="http://vaultpress.com/" target="_blank">VaultPress</a> and others but if you want to rely on HostGator to do it, be sure to pay attention to this box. That's my only major piece of advice. Otherwise, I think HostGator is a great option. Most people never exceed these levels, it just so happens that I had 6 sites running with thousands of photos on them and didn't notice this until it was too late. The average single site will not exceed these limits for several years and when you do, you should be thinking about upgrading your plan anyway.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
HostGator offers great value for a great price. If you are in the market for shared hosting, you'll be pleased with the results. They offer excellent support and tons of value for your dollar.
Interested in learning more? Visit their website for more details: <a href="/hostgator">HostGator </a>

Hostgator Review - Shared Hosting on the Cheap

<img style="max-width:150px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/modx_jpg-150x150_s193od.png" alt="modx" />
MODx CMS, the Open Source Web Content Management System, announces it has published the first release candidate for its upcoming flagship product, MODx Revolution. Over three years in the making, this release candidate moves MODx CMS Revolution 2.0 out of beta and brings it one step closer to final General Release.
In addition to maintaining MODx's reputation of offering absolute freedom over design and content structure, and the ability to build sites quickly and easily that perform well with Search Engines, MODx Revolution 2.0 Release Candidate 1 comes tightly packed with more than 240 bugfixes and enhancements since its last beta release. This release offers a faster Manager, easier installation, better Rich Text Editing (RTE) for content managers, a robust Package Manager for installing Add-ons directly  within the Manager, and a new native file browser for direct access of files and other website assets.
“We're excited to see Revo moving out of beta, as it takes everything great about our classic code base, and re-envisions it in a modern architecture with Enterprise-level scalability,” said Ryan Thrash, MODx's co-founder. “When developers start working with Revo and experience first-hand what we've talked about for so long—let's just say I think there's going to be a lot of happy developers and site owners. Revo really is a platform on which you can build a robust, mission-critical website. Our upcoming user conference, Partner Program and Commercial Support offerings will further enhance the MODx ecosystem and demonstrate our level of commitment to the MODx platform.”
MODx Revolution 2.0 is designed to be a the most flexible, extensible and highly configurable platform on which to build and manage websites and custom web applications where users, permissions and content resources are a key component of the application. MODx Revolution offers users a completely customizable web content solution on a modern, object-oriented core with a fully documented API for developers, and backed by a robust data abstraction layer powered by its sister-project, xPDO (<a href="http://xpdo.org/">http://xpdo.org/</a>).
To stay on top of MODx news visit <a href="http://modxcms.com/about/blog.html">http://modxcms.com/about/blog.html</a>.

Total Creative Freedom, No Limits, SEO Nirvana and the Future of MODx CMS

If you are, like me, always eager to test the latest and greatest that the CMS world has to offer, you'll be excited to know that there's a new beta available for the upcoming 3.6 release of WordPress. Just released today, this new beta includes a host of new features, outlined below. I'd suggest that if you are a theme or plugin developer, you start testing right away in order to ensure your code is going to function properly with the changes in this release.
Here’s what’s new in 3.6:
<ul>
<li>Post Formats:  Post Formats now have their own UI, and theme authors have access to templating functions to access the structured data.</li>
<li>Twenty Thirteen: We’re shipping this year’s default theme in our first release of the year. Twenty Thirteen is an opinionated, color-rich, blog-centric theme that makes full use of the new Post Formats support.</li>
<li>Audio/Video: You can embed audio and video files into your posts without relying on a plugin or a third party media hosting service.</li>
<li>Autosave:  Posts are now autosaved locally. If your browser crashes, your computer dies, or the server goes offline as you’re saving, you won’t lose the your post.</li>
<li>Post Locking:  See when someone is currently editing a post, and kick them out of it if they fall asleep at the keyboard.</li>
<li>Nav Menus:  Nav menus have been simplified with an accordion-based UI, and a separate tab for bulk-assigning menus to locations.</li>
<li>Revisions: The all-new revisions UI features avatars, a slider that “scrubs” through history, and two-slider range comparisons.</li>
</ul>
Don't have time to download but you're dying to know what the changes look like?
Here's what the new post formats interface looks like in WordPress 3.6:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/new-post-format-ui-wordpress-36-620x447.jpg" alt="new-post-format-ui-wordpress-36" />
 
Here is the new default theme, entitled “Twenty Thirteen” for those who haven't seen it:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/twenty-thirteen-wordpress-36-620x448.jpg" alt="twenty-thirteen-wordpress-36" />
Eager to test it out? Here you go: <a href="http://wordpress.org/news/2013/04/wordpress-3-6-beta-1/">http://wordpress.org/news/2013/04/wordpress-3-6-beta-1/</a>

WordPress 3.6 Beta 1 is out! (With Screenshots)

<img style="max-width:150px" title="dotnetnuke" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/dotnetnuke-150x150_thb3fn.jpg" />
DotNetNuke Corp., the company behind the most widely adopted Web Content Management Platform for Microsoft® .NET, today announced the release of the DotNetNuke Professional Edition 5.3. The release includes new tools targeting the needs of business-critical web sites including page level content change approval workflows, new tools for editing pages, and a new ribbon bar control panel. The DotNetNuke platform, which is the core of the DotNetNuke Community, Professional and Elite Editions, includes new features in version 5.3 such as a sophisticated taxonomy system, a new messaging capability and API, and an enhanced social media user profile feature for richer online user experiences.
News Highlights
Available today, the DotNetNuke Professional and Elite Editions 5.3 exclusively feature:
<ul>
<li>Page Level Content Change Approval Workflows – Administrators can create custom workflows with an unlimited number of states and reviewers. Workflows can be set at the page level to require approval for any changes to any module on a specified page. Workflows can also be defined at the module level, requiring approvals for changes to content changes in an individual module.</li>
<li>Ribbon Bar Control Panel – The new ribbon bar control panel provides content contributors with more editing options in a highly convenient format, allowing users to create pages, install new modules, edit content, and preview pages more quickly and easily than ever before.</li>
<li>My Editable Pages – This new editing feature provides links to all of the pages and modules in the site that a content contributor has permission to modify, enabling more efficient page editing.</li>
</ul>
New features in the open source core of the DotNetNuke Professional, Elite and Community Editions version 5.3 include:
<ul>
<li>Taxonomy – A sophisticated taxonomy system allows a web site administrator to create an unlimited number of vocabularies of terms to associate to pages or modules in a site. These attributes are stored in a common content store, which provides new ways to aggregate and publish content.</li>
<li>Social Networking – A new, rich user profile forms the basis for advanced social networking applications. It supports templates for simple layout customizations and allows users to upload photos so they can easily personalize their identities.</li>
<li>Messaging Capability – A new message repository and API allows messages to be delivered in a variety of ways including real-time and batch. An inbox provides users with a view of the messages they have received and sent, as well as administrative tools to manage the messages.</li>
</ul>
Shaun Walker, Chief Architect and Co-Founder of DotNetNuke Corp.:
<blockquote>“Our customers will be very pleased with the 5.3 release. The Professional and Elite Editions include valuable new features that will help users with business-critical web sites achieve more control over their web site content and more efficient content editing. The new features in the open source core including the taxonomy, messaging, and rich social media profiles will delight all users of the DotNetNuke platform who wish to extend the capabilities of their web site to create more engaging experiences for site visitors.”</blockquote>
About DotNetNuke Corp.
DotNetNuke Corp. is the steward of the DotNetNuke open source project, the most widely adopted Web Content Management Platform for building web sites and web applications on Microsoft .NET. Organizations use DotNetNuke to quickly develop and deploy interactive and dynamic web sites, intranets, extranets and web applications. The DotNetNuke platform is available in a free Community and subscription-based Professional, Elite and Elite Premier Editions. DotNetNuke Corp. also operates Snowcovered.com where users purchase third party software modules and skins. Founded in 2006 and funded by Sierra Ventures, August Capital and UV Partners, DotNetNuke Corp. is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif.
For additional information, visit <a href="http://www.dotnetnuke.com">www.dotnetnuke.com</a>.

DotNetNuke Corp. Launches Version 5.3 of the DotNetNuke Professional and Elite Editions

Document management systems are a mainstay for business everywhere and sometimes finding the right one can be a bit of a challenge. As such, I've decided to share with you my list of the top 5 document management systems, based on my experience.
These are listed in no particular order but rather as they come to mind. They are all equally excellent choices and I'd recommend exploring each before making a selection as your needs should be what determines the choice you make.
<h2>LogicalDOC</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/logicaldoc.jpg" />
LogicalDOC are the <a href="/awards/">recent winners</a> of our 2016 CMS Critic Awards – People's Choice for Best Document Management System. LogicalDOC is an easy to use, intuitive document management system that offers a wide breadth of features worth investigating.
Learn more at <a href="https://www.logicaldoc.com/" target="_blank">https://www.logicaldoc.com/</a>
<h2>eFileCabinet</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/efilecabinet-review-31137x0-is.png" />
When it comes to ease of use and beauty, nothing beats out eFileCabinet's document management system. It has perhaps one of the most intuitive interfaces I've ever seen and has been designed to function just like a filing cabinet, making it incredibly easy to adapt to for those who are not as apt with technology.
Learn more at <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/" target="_blank">http://www.efilecabinet.com/</a>
<h2>M-Files</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mfiles1478x0-is.jpg" />M-Files enterprise information management (EIM) solutions transform how businesses manage, secure and share information with a unique metadata-driven approach that organizes and processes document and other content based on what it is, rather than where it is.
Learn more at <a href="https://www.m-files.com/" target="_blank">https://www.m-files.com/</a>
<h2>Ademero Content Central</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/unnamed.png" />
Content Central gives organizations like yours quick and easy access to your information. The all-in-one, browser-based document management system provides what matters most to you: Access, Speed, Process Automation, and Security.
Learn more at <a href="https://www.ademero.com/" target="_blank">https://www.ademero.com/</a>
<h2>Dokmee</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/dokmee_6.png" />
Dokmee is a secure, easy to use document management system designed for a variety of purposes including document capture and storage, search and retrieval, and file sharing. It adapts to any business model by maximizing accessibility and functionality in repositories of all sizes and has a user friendly interface available in 19 languages.
Learn more at <a href="https://www.dokmee.com/" target="_blank">https://www.dokmee.com/</a>
Do you agree or disagree with this list? Let us know in the comments below. Be sure to share your favorites as well and perhaps I will expand this list to include them.

Semrush - Be an SEO hero

Be an SEO hero with Semrush

#ffffff

Be you a blogger, an entrepreneur or a web developer, you have probably thought about a possible perfect platform for your website. But what if there is a one single solution, versatile enough to power all types of websites on all possible topics?
<a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes/monstroid/" target="_blank"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/monstroid-featured-img684x0-is.jpg" /></a> Today we’ll draw your attention to the new player in the team of all-purpose WordPress themes – <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes/monstroid/" target="_blank">Monstroid</a> by TemplateMonster. With its roots in <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/presentations/cherry-framework-4-0/" target="_blank">Cherry Framework 4.0</a>, the number of its functions is immense.
The framework itself is pretty impressive, and all the additions and tweaks of Monstroid make it even more diverse. Let’s take a closer look at its features.
<h2>Styling Options</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/skins-and-child-themes923x0-is.jpg" />
Evergrowing Selection of Subtopics
Monstroid’s starting package includes five child themes – the core theme and 4 themes dedicated to the most popular topics – Finance, Education, Portfolio, Interior &amp; Furniture. The core theme is highly versatile: it has neutral layout and can be used for any type of website. Additionally it has three color schemes and is ready to be used as a WooCommerce-based online store.
Every new child theme (it’s over 15 themes monthly) will be available to Monstroid users for free. They will just have to download and activate them in the dashboard via Monstroid Wizard.
Monstroid Skin Switcher 
This feature appeared in some of the recent TemplateMonster templates, now they decided to implement it in Monstroid. It allows switching between premade style schemes from the frontend of the site. You can choose between dark, minimal or flat styles.
Cherry Grid 
Cherry Grid defines how your post list will look like.
You can choose from rows, columns or extremely popular masonry grid.
MotoPress Content Editor 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/motopress.jpg" />
MotoPress is a popular premium drag’n’drop content editor for WordPress which is available in Monstroid for free. MotoPress allows you to adjust the size, position and properties of the your website elements without touching any shortcodes.
<h3>Unique Features of Monstroid</h3>
Shortcode Template Editor 
Dozens of shortcodes, available for Monstroid users, can be additionally customized via the Shortcode template editor. It is capable of changing shortcode attributes, element loading order etc.
CSS Compile / Minify 
This trick is a lifesaver for coders. With this function compiling of multiple CSS files into one is just a matter of two clicks. How it works: you work with several style sheets and then compile them to get one optimized file at the output. This helps to decrease page loading time and contributes to website’s performance.
Dynamic CSS 
It allows changing CSS dynamically. You don’t overwrite the existing file, but create new files each time you make changes.
Static Area Builder 
You can completely redesign your header and footer by changing the positions of their elements – logos, widgets, banners, menus, etc. You can drag and drop these elements and adjust their position with Bootstrap grid classes.
Monstroid Wizard
This plugin is a combination of an installation tool and a showcase of available child themes. You can switch between them in any moment. Additionally it is used for installation of sample data.
Theme Settings
Backup All the changes made in theme settings can be rolled back with the help of this plugin. Simply set the checkpoint and continue experimenting safely.
Independent Module Structure 
The Monstroid package includes 23 plugins; most of them have been developed specially for the theme. All of them can be used either with the theme, or separately. This feature gives unlimited possibilities to advanced web developers.
<h3>Powerful Plugins Coming with Monstroid</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/features919x0-is.jpg" />
Cherry Mega Menu 
This plugin is made to effectively manage sophisticated menus with complex structure and lots of assorted elements – links, banners and embedded YouTube videos. These menus have proven themselves in large multitopic websites and online stores.
Cherry Social
Cherry Social plugin incorporates social interactions on all levels. It includes social sharing, login and widgets of the most popular social networks.
Cherry Custom Sidebars 
Sidebars are important for focusing the attention of your audience. For example, simply moving your sidebar to the left you can boost email subscription. Cherry Custom Sidebars gives you full control over this element of user interface.
Cherry Testimonials 
The Testimonials editor will help you show the love of your customers to your potential customers. This is a powerful factor for acquiring trust, which is so important for every business.
Cherry Portfolio 
If you want to present your works in a stylish way, this plugin is for you. Your portfolio will look awesome with Ajax-powered visual effects and customization options.
Cherry Services 
The plugin is used to set up landing pages with your business information. Among the available functions are, for example, customizable price tables and blocks with address and phone information for better conversion.
Cherry Team 
Cherry Team is probably the best way of presenting your team members. Profiles are created independently and can be later merged into one page. Then you can edit them and rearrange their order.
Cherry Charts 
Now there is no need in external (often paid) services for creating compelling visualizations of your statistical data. Cherry Charts is created specifically for this purpose.
Cherry Blog Layouts 
If you are going to build a blog, this plugin will be your main tool. Adjust elements of your blog until you find the layout that is perfect for you.
Cherry Ranking 
With the help of “like” and “star” ranking systems you can insensibly call your visitors for expressing their opinion. Product rating is a very important factor when it comes to trust, so why not let your customers do a part of your job for you?
Cherry Data Manager
This tool serves as a “briefcase”, allowing you to export and import your website data to back-up it or transfer to another domain. It is particularly useful for developers, who need to test their work on different servers.
MotoPress Slider 
MotoPress slider is a premium plugin that can be used to add visual appeal to your layout. It is able to compose versatile complex slides of text, images and even videos, accompanied with transition effects.
<h3>Full WooCommerce Compatibility</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/woocommerce800x0-is.jpg" />
For merchants who have chosen WooCommerce as their online store platform (they account for 22% of the total number of online sellers), TemplateMonster have prepared several useful tweaks.
Firstly, all child themes of Monstroid are ready to use with WooCommerce.
Secondly, the core Monstroid theme is supplied with all possible ecommerce page types: product lists, product pages, checkout pages, etc., and is able to become a live store in a few minutes after installation. It also includes premade product templates, so you just need to change images and descriptions to start selling.
YITH WooCommerce Compare &amp; YITH WooCommerce Wishlist 
Two plugins from YiThemes are included by default to enhance the selling possibilities of WooCommerce – they add functions of product comparison and adding to wishlist with an option of social sharing of wishlisted items.
<h3>Support of Major WordPress plugins</h3>
If you’ve been with WordPress for a long time, you probably know these titles: BuddyPress, and BBpress. If not, it’s high time to squeeze the most out of your website. The plugins above are complex solutions for turning a WordPress website into a social network (BuddyPress) or a forum board (BBpress). Monstroid supports them, so you can try them out right after the installation.
<h3>Other features</h3>
Lifetime Support <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/monstroid-support.jpg" /> TemplateMonster is well known for its lifetime 24/7 support for every product. Monstroid is no exception. Moreover, you will get access to their support live chat from your WordPress dashboard. Another option is sending a support email, but “live chat with average response time of 2-4 hours” sounds very attractive.
Library of 500+ fonts 
Monstroid supports the whole collection of Google web fonts. You may choose any of 500 for your titles, body text or interface elements, combining them as you wish.
RTL and WPML ready 
This necessary function is, of course, present in Monstroid. RTL stands for “right-to-left” and grants correct display of such languages as Arabic and Hebrew. “WPML” means “WordPress Multilingual” and it allows hosting different language versions of your website on one domain.
Google-oriented 
Despite the variety of native and external options, Monstroid is crafted with Google requirements in mind. It is not only fast, but is also SEO-optimized, including the support of Yoast SEO Plugin.
<h3>With Monstroid You Also Get:</h3>
Source PSD Files <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/psd-files1306x0-is.jpg" /> Over 100 PSD files come with Monstroid as a separate downloadable option. This package includes pages for the main Monstroid theme and all the child themes, furthermore, new sources will be delivered with every new child theme every month.
50+ Licensed Images 
More than 50 licensed royalty-free images are included in the Monstroid package. Whatever is the topic of your site, you will find pictures to your liking.
<h3>What’s now?</h3>
Now you are probably going to <a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes/monstroid/" target="_blank">see Monstroid for yourself</a>. Seriously, if you are looking for a theme with possibilities of a framework, look no further: Monstroid has everything you may ever want from a WordPress theme, it has much more.

Monstroid: A Multipurpose WordPress Theme from TemplateMonster

<a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.progress.com%2F&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Progress&amp;index=1&amp;md5=cc113aefe089e8ec7976006d0b1de8c4">Progress</a>, the company now behind <a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telerik.com&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Telerik&amp;index=2&amp;md5=0793eb0d8f4ddd4aaee058ae99d6f5b9">Telerik</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sitefinity.com&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Sitefinity&amp;index=3&amp;md5=ae3343b33c80db43b16f312723849234">Sitefinity</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sitefinity.com%2Fproduct%2Fsee-also%2Fwhat%27s-new&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=CMS+and+Digital+Experience+Cloud+%28DEC%29&amp;index=4&amp;md5=17c2c1827228fe31951237095b7efb9a">CMS &amp; Digital Experience Cloud (DEC)</a>, has announced a new release with improved translation, multi-site synchronization and predictive analytics.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sitefinitylogo_wtagline_rgb_400x0.png" />Aiming to provide developers with richer tools, extended content tracking and personalization to mobile apps, Progress also announced a new strategic alliance with <a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lionbridge.com%2F&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Lionbridge&amp;index=5&amp;md5=149609736688ca985aa17e5deb095c3e">Lionbridge</a>, specialists in translation and localization.<h2>Cross-site Content Syncing</h2>When an organization is made up of various departments and teams, it is often difficult to schedule and sync projects, operations and tasks efficiently.This latest release enables Sitefinity administrators to schedule content syncing to different sites at set times, with notifications and automatic retries if syncs fail. This feature has been designed to reduce effort and improve site and workflow quality.<h2>Enhanced Translation Management</h2>As global content proliferating continues to grow exponentially, the ability to speak with customers in their preferred language is a must for any enterprise.<a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sitefinity.com%2Fweb-content-management&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Telerik+Sitefinity+CMS&amp;index=6&amp;md5=e77abd7913fbb739206eca64cb328831">Telerik Sitefinity CMS</a> is now equipped with powerful translation management features to simplify and automate the content translation process when working with third-party translation agencies.The platform now automatically integrates with <a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lionbridge.com&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Lionbridge+Freeway&amp;index=7&amp;md5=db507fb6fbe849a1815e378493504932">Lionbridge Freeway</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.translations.com&amp;esheet=51145478&amp;newsitemid=20150721005173&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=translations.com&amp;index=8&amp;md5=69bea3c8516ddc30062ace1406496d73">translations.com</a>, while other translation services can also be added if desired.In addition, with Telerik Sitefinity CMS, content authors can easily determine which content items to send for translation, and to which languages. They can then review the status of all sent translations; preview all returned translations before publishing; and handle any errors or conflicts prior to publication.<h2>Improved Predictive &amp; Prescriptive Analytics, Mobile Personalization &amp; Campaign Support</h2>Also with this new release, Telerik Sitefinity CMS users will benefit from the following improvements:<ul><li>Conversion recommendation ranking based on the estimated likelihood of assumed outcomes</li><li>Tracking and personalization of mobile apps, based on website behavior and CRM data for efficient real-time marketing</li><li>Greater granularity in defining segments, leveraging demographic data such as job title, location and more</li><li>More tracking control—enables site administrators to easily track visitors across sub-domains, configure tracking for multiple Telerik Sitefinity CMS websites, mobile apps and/or exclude traffic from specific IP addresses</li><li>Easier integration with Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com and Oracle Eloqua with improved data merging</li><li>Enhancements to online marketing campaigns to support large email campaigns, integration capabilities with cloud hosted mail services such as SendGrid and usability improvement.</li></ul>Svetozar Georgiev, Progess' Senior Vice President of App Dev, made the following comments upon the arrival of this new release:<blockquote>“More than ever before, the global enterprise needs to support all manners of customer engagement–from first time site visitors to repeat buyers.The latest release of Telerik Sitefinity CMS and DEC further strengthens support for the global enterprise. It enhances the customer experience, ensuring that organizations can create a personalized, seamless experience across languages, sites, mobile apps and geographies.”</blockquote>More details on this relase can be with the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150721005173/en/#.Va9vQ_lViko">official press release</a>.And of course, you can delve further into <a href="/products/progress-sitefinity">Sitefinity via our CMS directory</a>.

Telerik Sitefinity Gets Enhanced Multi-site Synchronization, Translation & Analytics Features

Marketers everywhere are trying to get a better grip on what their customers really want. Yet many are so overwhelmed by the deluge of user data that they simply don't know where to start.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/marketing-791202_1280548x0-is.jpg" />
Sometimes it helps to ask the basic questions: what are your customers doing (trends and patterns); where is your customer base active; and why are they behaving online the way they do.
Here's some insight from the CEOs of three companies (Including CMS Critic's Mike Johnston) offering unique solutions for the elusive quest to better understand your customers.
<h2>Understanding Customers</h2>
CMS Critic: Traditionally, marketers rely on web analytics, A/B testing and Voice-of-Customer tools to try to get a handle on trends and patterns in customer behavior. How do <a href="http://www.clicktale.com">ClickTale’s</a> heat maps and session recordings help Fortune 500 companies make sense of all that data to understand why online customers behave the way they do.
ClickTale CEO Dr. Tal Schwartz: Looking at your data, it can be clear that you have a problem with conversion rates, for example, but much less clear why. Why did so many customers abandon their shopping carts, why did they linger on one web page over another, or in the case of an online publication, why did they choose to read one article over another?
Web analytics, A/B testing and Voice-of-Customer tools are a great way to gather quantitative data. The next step is to understand the “why,” which is the qualitative insights to optimize digital customer experience. For example, <a href="http://www.clicktale.com/casestudies/walmart-optimizing-christmas-shopping-experience">we worked with Walmart</a> on one case where they had introduced a very user-friendly gift finder tool timed to the holiday season.
It was a great way to help customers find what they were looking for. Yet Walmart realized soon after launching the tool that very few people were actually using it, and they couldn’t figure out why.
ClickTale’s anonymous session replays revealed what was wrong. Due to where the tool was placed on the home page, many users couldn’t see it, and you could literally see their cursors and mouses searching the site to no avail, and then giving up. Others visitors found the tool but received a JavaScript error message when they clicked on the call to action “Go” button.
With the unique insights they gained from being able to literally see their customers’ frustrations, Walmart was able to quickly fix these issues and ensure their customers encountered the smoothest experience possible. And their conversions increased as a direct result.
CMS Critic: When you gather millions of data points, you might end up with a very generic overview that doesn’t help much in determining strategy for targeted marketing campaigns. In what ways can marketers leverage wefi’s hyper-local geo-based context to map out geo-based campaigns?
Wefi CEO Zur Feldman: Whether you’re in the app business or work for a company that has a mobile app, you can get a pretty good general sense of what your data tells you about your app users on the whole. What’s more difficult is seeing hyper-local patterns and getting a sense of how your users behave within rival or complementary apps (such as how much time they spend in rival apps and how often). That has until now been a mystery.
We developed <a href="https://compariscope.wefi.com/">Compariscope by wefi</a> to offer mobile app marketers unprecedented competitive intelligence so they can better address relevant messages to their consumers. It is now possible to break down the big data into smaller pools by geography so that, for instance, you can tell that your app has a strong presence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side but your competition is crushing it on the West Side. Your marketing team might then launch a targeted ad campaign on the West Side to try to gain market share. Or say you are a marketer for a travel application.
You’d be able to see what percentage of your users engage with rival or complementary apps on a daily basis. Based on this input, the product team can implement features to improve engagement or launch campaigns that interact with apps popular with your users.
By introducing a hyper local dimension, marketers provide a win for consumers who will end up with information that is useful to them and relevant to their location, as opposed to generic ads and messages.
CMS Critic: Until now, we’ve talked about the data deluge from websites and mobile applications. Marketers gather data from a multitude of sources – from Google AdWords and Analytics to Salesforce, information from a CRM, Excel files, and Zendesk. How do we break through the siloes and get a sense of patterns across the board?
Sisense CEO Amir Orad: It’s critical for web marketers to dig deep into their data in order to truly understand the impact of marketing campaigns, content performance and user site behavior. If your data lives in siloes you are only catching glimpses without understanding the full picture of your business.
But it can be a nightmare to mash together data from multiple sources. There are modern BI tools, like ours, that can hep do that simply.
For example, <a href="http://www.sisense.com">Sisense’s</a> proprietary In-Chip technology allows non-techies to easily join large data sets from multiple sources and create one neat central repository. It then visualizes your big data so you can get straight to drawing insights.
One more item to keep in mind. What’s important for marketers to keep in mind is that you can only count on data analytics if it is error free and up to date. In other words, one version of the truth that’s current.

How to Understand Your Customers (With Insights From Three Experts)

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mollom.jpg" alt="Mollum " />
Acquia, the enterprise guide to Drupal and the developers of Mollom, just announced the release of its new content moderation platform. Mollom is a Content Moderation Platform service that analyzes content quality on a website and filters out spam or inappropriate messages. Content moderation is a challenging and time-consuming job, but Mollom's advanced solution makes the task quick and easy.

According to one of the developers, Dries Buytaert (of Drupal fame), “I feel like we've secured our place as the leading enterprise-ready content moderation system.” The new rollout is the climax to two years of development, 600 beta testers, and millions of filtered comments.
<h2>What's New in Mollom</h2>
Users of Mollom are accustomed to its vast power to control website input (social, comments, forums, etc) with ease and accuracy — accuracy to the tune of 99.98%. The new platform provides the following major benefits:
<ul>
<li>Easy to manage teams. The task of moderation is never a one-man show. Now it's easy for admins to add moderators, analyze their performance, gain at-a-gance view of their overall work, and make sure that they're keeping up with filtering standards.</li>
<li>Instant automatic moderation. One of Mollom's biggest advantages is its ability to scrub spam without a trace. Only the “ham” comes through, making the moderator's job easy and fast.</li>
<li>Customization. Mollom now has the power of customization. Users can set up a specific set of parameters for a site, thus creating specific spam or profanity scores. Customizing is as easy as dragging a score bar up or down.</li>
<li>Multi-site control. Mollom is an enterprise level solution. Customers can manage literally hundreds of sites. For agencies, reputation management consultants, or big brands with tons of web properties, this is a dream come true.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The Mollom Solution</h2>
Companies, especially bigger ones, are often the targets of damaging spam. According to some estimate, 90% of the content submitted to websites is spam. Manually filtering such spam would require the full time and attention of dozens of employees — and a boring job it would be.
Mollom makes it easy, and excises thousands of comments a minute. The site's homepage has a ticker, which at the time of writing, registered over 2.28 billion spam sites caught across more than 61,000 sites. Such large scale filtering allows companies to weed out harmful commentary, and improve their social credibility across the web. “With the Mollom Content Management Platform, organizations can manage social content with the confidence that their brand will be protected with our enterprise-ready content assurance solution,” says Tom Erickson, CEO of Acquia.
Mollom is one of the few moderation systems that works really well and does so on a massive scale. The product is becoming more and more important in an era when social is incredibly important, and when moderation is crucial to a brand's integrity.
<h2>About Acquia</h2>
Acquia provides enterprises with the freedom to create extraordinary web experiences based on Drupal, the open source platform that integrates content, community and commerce. Offering a variety of SaaS solutions specifically designed for Drupal, Acquia gives global organizations the unparalleled ability to rapidly deploy and manage multichannel content across web and mobile devices. Co-founded by Drupal project's creator in 2007, Acquia has helped more than 2,500 companies including Twitter Warner Music Group, Humana, Stanford University, Mercedes-Benz and the New York MTA, to grow and scale their digital experiences with confidence. Acquia was recently named the number one software company in the 2012 Inc. 500 and was named one of the 100 most promising companies in America by Forbes Magazine.  For more information visit <a href="http://www.acquia.com/">www.acquia.com</a> or call +1 781 238 8600. Acquia is a registered trademark of Acquia, Inc.
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/20/idUSnMKW98547a+1c0+MKW20130320">View Mollom's Press Release</a>
Read about it on <a href="http://mollom.com/blog/new-mollom-content-moderation-platform-launched" target="_blank">Mollum's blog</a>.
If Mollom is new to you, check out the three and a half minute video intro here:
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pTLsUeXafac?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

Mollom Releases New Content Moderation Platform

daniel-threlfall

A new <a href="https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/userview/report-2015/" target="_blank">study by Software Advice</a> has uncovered some surprising statistics to do with the rigidity of enterprise content management systems.
The study consisted of Software Advice surveying brands and businesses about their enterprise CMS experiences. Below is a breakdown of the company sizes sampled, sorted by number of employees.
<a href="https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/userview/report-2015/" target="_blank"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/4-number-employees.png" /></a>As you can see from the graph above, Software Advice took a broad range of company sizes into account with their study. Here's what they uncovered.
<h2>Key Findings</h2>
<ol>
<li>A majority of respondents rate their CMS as “very important” in overcoming content-related business challenges, such as distributing documents and tracking changes.</li>
<li>The three CMS applications employees use most frequently are document distribution, reporting/analytics and content capture.</li>
<li>Reporting and analytics functionality is used daily by 63% of companies with over 1,000 employees, but by only 47% of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.</li>
<li>Nearly half (48%) of respondents report “moderate to major” difficulty integrating their CMS with other systems, while 37% say the same about customizing their CMS system.</li>
<li>41% of respondents describe learning to use a CMS and training others as a challenge: 35% say the challenge is “moderate,” while 6% call it a “major challenge.”</li>
</ol>
Most of these findings are to be expected. We all know how important a CMS is to both content and analytical processes, particularly in the enterprise market. However, those last two findings stand out like two particularly sore thumbs.
As we move past the halfway mark of 2015, I certainly don't expect to see almost half of the businesses surveyed to be struggling majorly with integrations. Nor do I expect to see 41% of them struggling to train their employees.
These findings expose the rigid nature of today's enterprise content management systems. It's a problem. But is it a problem that can be alleviated?
<h2>How Solvable Is This Rigidity?</h2>
The three main issues here are; integration, customization, and training. Let's take a look at each one individually.
Integration Issues
Brands are having trouble when it comes to integrating their CMS with third-party solutions.
For the most part, enterprise content management systems do a good job of making sure big guns like Salesforce, Marketo, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics are catered for. The top tier of the CRM and MAS (Marketing Automation System) industries is where most enterprise CMS align themselves.
But perhaps the company's surveyed were talking about the not-so-popular solutions. Maybe it's time enterprise CMS vendors expanded their scope in this regard. The study certainly suggests that they should.
Customization Issues
When it comes to customization, the difficulty faced here could be the symptom of an issue brought about by the brand in question, rather than the CMS.
What I mean by that is, if a company is facing difficulty when customizing the way a certain CMS performs or presents, then that may well fall under the blame of the company's CMS selection. It's unfair to brand a CMS as un-customizable when you're trying to change its fundamentals.
However, if the survey question was regarding design customization, then I agree that this is an area where enterprise platforms fall short. Brands should be able to personalize their working environments beyond simply adding their logo.
Training Issues
Here's where CMS vendors really don't have much of an excuse.
A company which adopts your software shouldn't only be offered one round of training. They should be offered adequate training in training others, too.
Brands are constantly shifting employees from one department to another, while many new recruits enter such organizations all the time. Each time this happens, new processes and functions will need to be taught all over again. A single training session (or even a single round of training sessions) at the very beginning of the vendor-client relationship simply isn't a realistic solution.
Furthermore, customized training manuals should be something we see more of. When a company works with a vendor to configure the CMS in a certain way, documentation should be provided to help the company carry on training staff as years go by.
<h2>Reaction Required</h2>
CMS vendors need to react to this study.
Exactly how they react will need to vary, depending on how much they already offer when it comes to integration, customization, and training. But there needs to be some action here, as company's are clearly struggling with these rather important aspects of their digital workload.
Integrating with only a small range of third party applications is becoming less and less acceptable, while client training is something that needs a serious re-think, from a variety of angles.
How do you think vendors should react to this study? Let us know in the comments below, or start a discussion on the <a href="https://forum.www.cmscritic.com/" target="_blank">CMS forums</a>.

The Stiff Side of CMS? New Study Shows Brands Struggling to Integrate, Adapt & Learn

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/janrain.png" alt="Janrain" />
Janrain, the social web management solution, announced today new partnerships with Automattic, the creators of WordPress, Disqus, and Umbel. These organizations can now better leverage the power of social by using the Janrain User Management Platform (JUMP). Janrain provides sites with an easy way to engage their site visitors by allowing them to login or join using virtually any social platform — Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo!, etc. Site owners can then use this data to deliver targeted content, for a streamlined and effective marketing approach.

<h2>Big News for WordPress.com VIP</h2>
Janrain’s integration with WordPress.com VIP is the biggest partnership. <a href="http://automattic.com/" target="_blank">Automattic</a>, the creators of <a href="http://vip.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">WordPress.com VIP</a>, has chosen Janrain as their preferred technology partner for user management. The organizations that run the WordPress VIP CMS include such big-name brands as CNN, New York Times, CBS, Forbes, and others. Instead of cumbersome login processes, these networks can gain more members by allowing them to login via their preferred social media account, specifically market to site visitors, and serve up specific content for a better user experience.
<h2>More Partners. More Power.</h2>
<a href="http://disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>, a hugely popular comment system, is another major partner for Janrain. Disqus has been called the “community of communities” for good reason — it transcends social media to comprise a vast discussion platform, rich with features and easy to use. Aided by the power of Janrain, Disqus will enhance their value by collecting user profile information for publisher who want to maximize the use of registered audience development. “Janrain integration is really compelling,” explained Ro Gupta, Disqus’s VP of Development. Compelling indeed, since sites can now socially connect with “the largest population of commenters on the web.”
Janrain’s contribution to the ever-expanding social population is personalizing online consumer experience more than ever before. Automattic, Disqus, and Umbel join more than 30 other partners who are reaping the benefits of better audience engagement. Tore Steen, VP of Business Development for Janrain, said, “JUMP [the user management platform] was designed to easily integrate with other industry leaders to support an entire ecosystem of technology choices and engagement strategies for our clients.”
<h2>The Social Solution</h2>
According to Janrain, more than 86% of site visitors will give up and leave if confronted with a tedious login process on a site. 77% of users prefer social login. Adding such social login gives companies far more members than they would otherwise have.
It’s apparent how easy the registration process is, when powered by JUMP. Compare the screenshots below with a conventional sign-up process, which often involves seven times as many questions, and takes three times as much time.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/vega1-620x314.png" alt="Janrain User Management Platform 1" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/vega2-620x312.png" alt="Janrain User Management Platform 2" />
Janrain gives people precisely what they want, but it does something more. Janrain’s biggest advantage is to the partners, now including WordPress and Disqus. Partners possess social profile data, customer audience insights, and a huge collection of other information that enables them to better serve their customers. Janrain is more than just ease of use and social integration. It’s a powerful way to improve online marketing.
Check out this video to see how Janrain can totally transform a site.
http://vimeo.com/janrain/overview
<h2>About Janrain</h2>
The Janrain User Management Platform (JUMP) helps organizations succeed on the social web by providing leading technology to leverage the popularity of social networks and identities for user acquisition, engagement, and enhanced customer intelligence. Our solutions, including social login, social sharing, social profile data collection and storage, access to the social graph, and digital strategy services, improve the effectiveness of online marketing initiatives for leading brands like Fox, Universal Music Group, Whole Foods, Purina, Samsung and Dr Pepper. Founded in 2005, Janrain is based in Portland, Oregon. For more information, please call 1-888-563-3082 or visit <a href="http://www.janrain.com/">www.janrain.com</a> and follow @janrain.

Janrain Improves Online Marketing for WordPress, Disqus, and Others

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

At this point, you’ve certainly heard what content marketing can do for your business. Heck, since you’re here, you’ve most definitely heard the acronyms CMS (Content Management System), and MAS (Marketing Automation Software).
You might not know exactly how each one can benefit your business, but what you’ve probably heard is that using them can boost the impact and return on investment of your content marketing efforts.
All too often, these tools are recommended separately from each other. A content management system like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla allows you to power-charge your website, and makes managing it a piece of cake. Marketing automation software helps you to increase productivity by making it easier than ever to create and automate campaigns, evaluate data, and more.
By themselves, they each offer outstanding benefits in particular areas of content marketing. When integrated properly, though, they have the potential to become the powerful tool that your business needs to truly turbocharge your content marketing efforts.
Now that we’ve piqued your curiosity about using both marketing automation software and a content management system, here are 5 ways that integrating the two of them can benefit your business.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/marketing_automation700x0-is.jpg" />

<h3>#1. They complement each other.</h3>
Using a content management system like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal simplifies content creation and management. It adds consistency to your website, enables you to track changes to your content, and makes it easier than ever to manage workflow.
Marketing automation software, on the other hand, is great at marketing your content – getting eyeballs on the content you’ve created, gathering data about your readers, and then using that data to create prospect or customer profiles.
Yes, a CMS can help you market, and MAS can help you with the creation of content, but at their core, they’re designed to do different things. To get the most out of each, you’re better off using them in tandem with each other.
<h3>#2. They allow you to serve your existing customer base while also reaching out to new prospects.</h3>
This goes hand-in-hand with the first reason. A CMS makes it easier for you to create and manage content designed to reach out to and inform your existing constituency.
While most content management systems offer some level of SEO optimization for your content, they are specifically designed to significantly boost targeted traffic. With the available plugins and themes, a CMS makes it easy to boost the eye-appeal of your website while presenting easy-to-read content to your existing customer base.
Chances are, you want more than to just service your existing customer base – you want to grow it. That’s really where marketing automation software shines. It allows you to automate the processes of driving new targeted traffic, capturing leads, and getting your message out to the public.
Simply going with one or the other, a content management system or automated marketing software, might offer you some benefits, but for most business owners, they’ll fall short at maximizing return on investment. Together, however, they’ll turn your content marketing efforts into a well-oiled machine.
<h3>#3. Your MAS can guide your content strategy.</h3>
An MAS can help you speed up your marketing, and when you have it working at full speed, it will give you lots of feedback about your content. You can learn what information was searched for when bringing users to your site, which of your posts are getting the most traction, and what kind of content leaves people cold and ready to turn away.
All of this is useful for shaping your content moving forward. By identifying what your audience wants and developing target customer profiles, automated marketing software enables you to personalize your content and give your users something they’ll want to share. Finally, It also lets you know when a content strategy has run its course, and it’s time to switch gears.
A CMS working on its own can give you rudimentary data, but it struggles to compete with the enhanced insights that a high-quality MAS can offer.
<h3>#4. Your MAS can learn from your CMS, and vice versa, giving your audience a personalized experience.</h3>
If you hook your contact database up to your site, your MAS can give each visitor contextual content – meaning the actual experience changes to be super-targeted to their habits and needs.
This is what Amazon does, for example. It recommends content to you based on what you’ve browsed or bought previously.
Some MAS options allow you to do the same. This way, if a committed customer is coming to your website, they can skip any marketing and go straight to the content that meets their needs. Likewise, a prospect will have marketing targeted to them, and they’ll be shown content based on what they’ve already identified as being of interest to them.
#5. Using them together allows you to decrease the sales cycle.
Because MAS and CMS give you incredibly accurate data on your customers and prospects, you can use this information to dramatically reduce the sales cycle. In fact, you can keep a close eye on your leads, so that you know exactly when to use a given message.
For example, as a prospect enters your sales funnel by visiting your website, you can monitor his activity and see what content he’s accessing. You can continue marketing to him and sending him targeted content, until he gets deeper into the funnel – say, to a sales page.
Then, your MAS can re-classify his “temperature” and transfer his info from the marketing department to the sales team. This gives your salesmen hyper-targeted and red-hot leads to work with, as well as increasing the efficiency of your marketing.
Without a strong CMS to back up your marketing automation, however, many of your leads would fall through the cracks before they ever got this far.
<h3>For Best Results, Combine Your CMS with a Proven MAS </h3>
As strong as your content marketing efforts may be, they could always use a little boost. Getting the extra “oomph” that a marketing automation software can provide could make the difference in turning a visitor into a customer.
If you’re looking to take your business’s content marketing to the next level, try integrating your CMS with a strong, proven MAS. As powerful as both types of software can be on their own, they’re exponentially more effective when used together.

5 Ways Integrating CMS and Marketing Automation Software Can Benefit Your Business

CMS Summit 26

Find out at CMS Connect 26, August 4-5 in Montreal, Canada

What's ahead for CMS in the agentic era?

Explore a wide range of informative articles, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry. Page - 78