Extreme Makeover: CMS Critic Edition

You may have noticed that things look a little different around here.

I'm pleased to announce that CMS Critic has completed its migration from ProcessWire to WordPress, the world-renowned platform that CMS Critic originally launched with back in 2008.

What's New?

Well, everything really.

Our homepage is now far easier to navigate. A slider and the categories below make it simple for you to find new and interesting content without having to dig too deeply into the website.

Also, our growing CMS Directory looks fancier than ever, and it has been joined by a few new friends:

• CRM Directory
• Ecommerce Directory
• Marketing System Directory
• Analytics Directory
• Hosting Directory
• Themes Directory

And with those new directories, come new product hubs – and they're better than ever before.

From a product hub, you can quickly view; a product's site rating and average user rating, an overview of the product, the product's latest review, and the latest news from CMS Critic, and the vendor's very own blog.

The overview section gives you a synopsis of the product, along with; the business sizes we think suit it best, featured videos, screenshots, and more.

We even provide relevant content to help get new users started, like recommended hosting solutions for open source products.

And perhaps most interestingly, you can go straight to any product hub and rate it out of ten stars, making an impact on the “Average User Rating” displayed in all hub headers. Furthermore, you can submit your very own reviews of products by clicking “Write a Review”.

As you can see, our new directories cover all the essentials of business software. You won't ever need to look elsewhere to plan the next digital move for your brand.

But wait, there's more.

A Better Experience For Our Readers

This new design brings about numerous benefits for our readers.

First of all, you can now sign up to CMS Critic using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a whole bunch of other social platforms by clicking “Register” at the top of the page.

After signing up, you can “Follow” product hubs from within any directory.

Once you follow a hub, like the WordPress hub for example, you'll be notified (within the confines of your account here at CMS Critic) of any new WordPress-related articles that we publish.

We also have a new and improved commenting system, powered by Spot.im.

Each visitor is given a unique username to partake in conversations below articles, even if that visitor is not logged in.

Plus, there's a newsfeed that you can access from the bottom right corner of the page, which highlights conversations from around the website.

A Stronger Presence for Vendors

Vendors will also benefit from this new-look CMS Critic.

The product hubs that make up all of our directories are now far better equipped than ever before. They're ripe for content publication, lead generation and building customer-vendor relationships.

Over the new few days, we will be notifying vendors personally about the new opportunities that our product hubs have to offer.

More (Relevant) Topics

After my appointment as Editor back in 2015, Mike and I got to steering CMS Critic towards covering more topics, but we were adamant that we would not stray into industries that don't complement web content management.

Why? Because the world of CMS has been meshing with other industries for years now.

Content management systems, CRMs, marketing automation systems, and analytics platforms have all become essential tools for the toolbox of every ambitious brand.

To put it simply, a CMS isn't enough to propel your business online anymore.

And that's why our new directories are accompanied by new industry hubs, where we will cover the new topics alongside our usual CMS news and editorials.

These new industry hubs are:

• CRM Hub
• Ecommerce Hub
• Marketing Hub
• Analytics Hub
• Hosting Hub
• Themes Hub

So, we're talking about improvements for visitors, more opportunities for vendors, and broader industry coverage. I don't know about you, but I'm liking this all-new CMS Critic already!

Found an issue? Want to work with us? Get in touch.