Articles

Hippo CMS Article

During my recent trip to Amsterdam as part of the <a href="/preparing-for-the-european-tour/" target="_blank">CMS Critic European Tour</a>, I had an opportunity to visit the offices of the popular Open Source ECM, Hippo. While there, I took the time to interview two of the companies' co-founders, Arje Cahn (CTO) and Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer (CMO) about their latest release, plans for the future and more.
Here is that interview for your viewing pleasure:
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6XNTW2k0pMY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Interested in learning more about Hippo? Visit them on the web at <a href="http://onehippo.com" target="_blank">http://onehippo.com.</a>

Interview with Hippo CMS Co-Founders

mike-johnston

Hippo CMS has partnered with Commercetools — the company behind cloud-based eCommerce platform <a href="http://sphere.io/" target="_blank">Sphere.io</a> — in what the two companies have called a “technical alliance”.
As the winner of the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-free-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Best Free Java CMS</a> and the <a href="/2014-best-enterprise-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 People's Choice CMS Award for Best Enterprise Java CMS</a>, Hippo's influence and importance in the Java niche is only increasing.
<img style="max-width:400px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hippo_logo_-_color_400x0.png" />
Sphere.io is also a well-rounded eCommerce PaaS (platform-as-a-service), servicing the likes of RedBull and Brita.
Here's what this news means for enterprises making use of either platform.
<h2>“Relevant Content &amp; eCommerce Has a Bright Future”</h2>
The integration of Sphere.io and Hippo CMS brings flexibility, agility and the insights of content performance metrics to enterprise eCommerce content strategies and the technical infrastructure supporting them.
For Commercetools, Hippo CMS brings a modern, proven Web Content Management System to support the platform's APIs with the power of relevance, personalization and onsite content targeting.
As for Hippo, partnering with Germany-based Commercetools offers a key step into the DACH region. With offices in Boston and New York both companies will work together to market their joint offering globally.
Hippo's CEO Jeroen Verberg made these comments upon the announcement.
<blockquote>“Hippo has a long history of anticipating future screens and devices, and we’ve found a shared vision in Commercetools.
At Hippo we see that better customer experiences drive results in online commerce. We believe the marriage between relevant content and E-Commerce has a bright future – and we look forward to making that future a reality with this partnership.”</blockquote>
Find out more about Hippo via our CMS Directory.

Hippo Teams With Commercetools to Bring Relevant & Content Rich eCommerce Experiences

Hippo 10 has been released, and it brings a new focus on content performance along with it.
Last year's CMS Awards saw Hippo CMS win in two categories; the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-free-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award for Best Free Java CMS</a> and the <a href="/2014-best-enterprise-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 People's Choice CMS Award for Best Enterprise Java CMS</a>. Those victories were no mean feat, considering the competition in the two respective niches.
Touted now as a Content Performance Platform, Hippo 10 enables a data-driven omni-channel content strategy which aims to bring a more personable digital experience for every visitor. It is designed to help businesses understand their visitors – both known and anonymous – before helping them to deliver their content in any context and on any device.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/login.png" />
<h2>A Change in Direction</h2>
Content has always been the priority, and it probably always will be. Hippo 10 in changing the direction of the platform's focus to reflect the personalization-centric times.
Here's how.
A Move Towards Being A Content Performance Platform
Whereas traditional web analytics have focused on the majority and average visitor, Content Performance metrics tailor content delivery to the individual, based on that individual’s real time engagement with content.
Built on the power of the existing Hippo’s relevance engine, the Content Performance Platform adds further precision to real-time personalized content delivery. By providing a continuous feedback loop, Hippo CMS 10 offers actionable insights on content's success in supporting business goals.
A Refreshed User Interface
What good is a software update without a facelift?
Hippo 10 users will benefit from a revamped user interface, offering a new visual style alongside improvements to user interaction, making it more efficient and intuitive for end users.
Personalization, Testing and Continuous Optimization Combined
Given the dynamic nature of personalized onsite content, traditional A/B testing isn't as effective as it once was. During the period that an A/B test reaches statistical significance, the enterprise risks repeatedly delivering the wrong content to the wrong audience. By testing of content (rather than pages) per persona, and dynamically optimizing that content, Hippo CMS 10 avoids the pitfalls of standard A/B testing and drives better user experience for more visitors.
Hippo's multi-pronged bandit algorithm optimises while testing is going on. The algorithm initially tests content versions delivered in equal proportion— adjusting the proportion of content delivered in favour of the well performing content, wasting no time to continuously optimise the digital experience. This approach makes content performance metrics actionable even with a limited number of users in a test group.
Developer Agility
Hippo 10 also offers a major step towards the company’s SaaS and PaaS product vision, enabling developers to truly focus on what’s important: rapid development and continuous deployments.
Thanks to Live Reload functionality, developers utilize their preferred IDE to create code, templates, CSS and JavaScript, which then automatically synchronizes with the Hippo CMS repository. Changes are instantly visible without the need for publication or refresh. All this makes for a tight and optimized loop between code development and deployment.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/running_experiments.png" />
Upon the release of Hippo 10, the company's CEO Jeroen Verberg made the following comments.
“By learning about and responding to the individual visitor’s preferences, interests and intent in- real time, Hippo CMS 10 takes the guesswork out of content strategy.
This release transforms the CMS into a data-driven intelligent marketing technology that measures real-time content performance against the online goals of the enterprise – attracting visitors, improving engagement and increasing conversion.”
For more information on Hippo 10, check out the <a href="http://www.onehippo.org/" target="_blank">Hippo Community Website</a>.
Additionally, be sure to explore more of Hippo via our CMS Directory.

Hippo 10 Release "Transforms" Hippo Into Content Performance Platform

<a href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.onehippo.com&amp;esheet=51042117&amp;newsitemid=20150218005454&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Hippo&amp;index=1&amp;md5=8c25ba830bcb9f352242fdf61317f289" target="_blank">Hippo</a>, a leading Web Content Management System provider, has announced an enhanced working relationship with EMC® Documentum®, as part of its participation in the EMC Business Partner Program for Technology Connect Partners.
Hippo CMS is a big player in the world of open source software, and was recently awarded both the <a href="/2014-critics-choice-award-winner-best-free-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 Critics' Choice Award For Best Free Java CMS</a>, and the <a href="/2014-best-enterprise-java-cms/" target="_blank">2014 People's Choice CMS Award for Best Enterprise Java CMS</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/media_screenshots-login_cms7_9700x0.jpg" />
The aim of this integration between Hippo CMS and Documentum is to enable businesses to leverage the power of Hippo’s omnichannel web content management, alongside enterprise content management.
<h2>Seamless Integration Into Online Ecosystems</h2>
The combined power of Hippo’s Web Content Management System and Documentum deliver the following key benefits to end users:
<ul>
<li>Seamless integration into online business ecosystems with Hippo’s lightweight Java stack built for uptime, security and performance</li>
<li>Improved content performance through data driven content optimization and delivery that makes content a business driver</li>
<li>Editorial velocity across channels that seamlessly integrates Documentum content and publishes it to the web</li>
<li>Consistency of workflow that enables users to run content through a secure validation workflow, maintain versions, and serve approved content to external audiences</li>
<li>Ease of use with the freedom to integrate external data sources (such as Pivotal Big Data Suite) to drive personalized web experiences</li>
<li>Flexibility to run Hippo on premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid solution with <a href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.onehippo.com%2Fen%2Fondemand&amp;esheet=51042117&amp;newsitemid=20150218005454&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Hippo+OnDemand&amp;index=2&amp;md5=b626870cd724a0fdffeee7294ab9da08" target="_blank">Hippo OnDemand</a></li>
</ul>
Hippo's CTO,  Arjé Cahn, made these comments:
<blockquote>“We’re proud to be offering EMC’s customer base a best-in-class Web Content Management System solution.
There’s a strong technological alignment between Hippo and EMC. Hippo’s roots in the Apache Software Foundation and Open Source, and EMC’s ECM heritage and relationship with Spring and Pivotal, and our mutual belief in content as the backbone of online business make us a great fit to empower our joint customers to innovate through the creation of truly compelling web experiences.”</blockquote>
Mr Cahn's enthusiasm was echoed by Jeroen van Rotterdam, the CTO of the Enterprise Content Division at EMC:
<blockquote>“EMC is pleased that Hippo has achieved the Select tier level in the EMC Technology Connect track, demonstrating its commitment to excellence in technology innovation for Enterprise Content Management, Web Experience Management, Real-Time Analytics and Personalized Content Delivery.
Hippo validates our platform strategy by embedding EMC's open, extensible information infrastructure platform for managing information and expanding our combined solutions into new markets. We look forward to working with Hippo to ensure that our mutual customers have the highest level of support possible for their information infrastructure initiatives.”</blockquote>
To learn more about this new working relationship between Hippo CMS and EMC Documentum, <a href="http://www.onehippo.com/en/about/news/2015/hippo-partnership-emc-documentum.html" target="_blank">check out the official announcement</a>.
Also, you can explore more of Hippo via our CMS Directory.

Hippo & EMC Documentum Come Together To Enhance Web Content Management

The <a href="http://hgt14.onehippo.org/" target="_blank">2014 Hippo Get Together</a> was held on May 16th, in the heart of a sunny, serene Amsterdam.
The CMS Critic team were in attendance, in the form of Mike Johnston and myself.
On the morning of the event, Mike and I made our way to the venue – the trendy Amsterdam Trouw Club – before taking up our front row seats. As usual, we were <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic" target="_blank"> live-tweeting the event</a> from start to finish using the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23hgt14&amp;src=hash" target="_blank"> #HGT14 hashtag</a>.
For some very quick highlights of the Hippo Get Together 2014, check out Hippo's brilliant, “HGT14 In 64 Seconds” video below. You might even catch a glimpse of the CMS Critic team!
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/95676527?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
<h2>Marketing Versus IT &amp; The Future of Hippo</h2>
The event was being presented by Hippo's Community manager, Bas Van Leeuwen. He welcomed everybody formally before handing the stage over to Tobias Jeger – Hippo's Lead Developer – to kick off the first talk.
Tobias wasted no time, jumping right into the Marketing vs IT dilemma which many companies face. A worthy topic to get the audience's juices flowing.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tobias_jeger2.jpg" alt="Hippo Get Together 2014 Tobias Jeger" />
Tobias Jeger – Hippo Get Together 2014
Being on the IT side of the fence, he put forward some of the key flash points between the two opposing sides, highlighting how marketing teams could improve their approach.
<blockquote>Tobias Jeger, Hippo CMS Lead Developer: “Marketing, if you want us (IT) to be happy, please respect our development best practices.” <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HGT14&amp;src=hash"> #HGT14 </a>
— CMS Critic (@cmscritic) <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic/statuses/467211222937792512"> May 16, 2014 </a></blockquote>
Immediately after Tobias Jeger's presentation, marketers everywhere will be pleased that they got their rebuttal through none other that Sonja Wraith, Hippo's head of Marketing.
She offered up some highly interesting statistics regarding the IT vs Marketing clash, and drove home the lack of support marketers generally get from their friends over in IT.
<blockquote>Sonja Wraith, Hippo CMS Marketing VP: “61% of marketers feel that the IT department does not support them.” <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HGT14&amp;src=hash"> #HGT14 </a> <a href="https://twitter.com/sonjawraith"> @sonjawraith </a>
— CMS Critic (@cmscritic) <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic/statuses/467213368961814528"> May 16, 2014 </a></blockquote>
Sonja Wraith ended the quasi-debate on a positive note though. She underlined the need for both marketing and IT teams to work on improving communication and collaboration in order to bridge the gap between the two sides.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sonja_wraith.png" alt="Sonja Wraith Hippo Get Together 2014" />
Sonja Wraith – Hippo Get Together 2014
Before the Get Together's first Coffee break, Arje Cahn, Hippo CTO, wrapped up the points put forth by Tobias Jeger and Sonja Wraith, and gave a brief insight into how Hippo CMS is working to help bring the two feuding sides together.
He touched on Hippo's aim to introduce A/B Testing features, as well as their brand new user interface, which is currently in the works.
<blockquote>Arjé Cahn, Hippo CTO: “We're working on a new UI that works well on all devices, looks better and is more efficient.” <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HGT14&amp;src=hash"> #HGT14 </a> <a href="https://twitter.com/arjecahn"> @arjecahn </a>
— CMS Critic (@cmscritic) <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic/statuses/467223340835684353"> May 16, 2014 </a></blockquote>
<h2>Hippo Essentials, The New UI &amp; Happy Hippo Customers</h2>
Hippo Product Manager Oscar Scholten also used his time to discuss the upcoming <a href="http://www.onehippo.org/library/essentials/hippo-developer-essentials.html" target="_blank">Hippo Essentials</a>, a frame work offering a range of tools designed to help get Hippo projects up and running faster than ever before.
He mentioned the integration of Hippo certified plugins, video plugins, &amp; other key features like blogs and banners, all of which are needed to start projects quickly and effectively.
<blockquote>Oscar Scholten from Hippo “With Hippo Essentials we wanted people to have better out-of-the-box experiences when they start projects” <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HGT14&amp;src=hash"> #HGT14 </a>
— CMS Critic (@cmscritic) <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic/statuses/467249019514023936"> May 16, 2014 </a></blockquote>
Hippo's Get Together also offered some high profile customers a chance to air their experiences with the platform.
Hugo Valk for example, the lead developer of <a href="http://www.ibridge.nl/ibr/home/index.xml" target="_blank">I-Bridge</a>, a Randstad company, presented some interesting insights into how Hippo CMS helped build their online presence better than ever before. He detailed how Hippo had an immediate impact on things like site speed and general SEO.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hugo.png" alt="Hugo Valk Hippo Get Together 2014" />
Hugo Valk – Hippo Get Together 2014
Speakers from <a href="http://www.elasticpath.com/" target="_blank">ElasticPath</a>,  <a href="http://www.finalist.nl" target="_blank">Finalist</a> and <a href="http://www.oracle.com/index.html" target="_blank">Oracle</a> also delivered presentations.
Anton Bensdorp from Hippo also expanded on Arje Cahn's earlier mention of Hippo's new user interface. He spoke about the need to revamp Hippo's UI to help support new, less experienced user types, relocate functionality &amp; to also accommodate different screen sizes.
<blockquote>Anton Bensdorp from Hippo: “We're changing the UI to support new user types, relocate functionality &amp; to support diff screen sizes.” <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HGT14&amp;src=hash"> #HGT14 </a>
— CMS Critic (@cmscritic) <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic/statuses/467290676624130050"> May 16, 2014 </a></blockquote>
He also touched upon a handy new feature of the new UI, which allows publishers to view autosaved content edits,which are individually presented in an accessible list. The ideas is to make edits easier to track, and content easier to publish.
<h2>Open Source, Open Friendliness</h2>
Away from the scheduled talks and presentations, Hippo Get Together 2014 offered up an extremely pleasant atmosphere.
The Club setting was about as unique as they come – but it worked. There was plenty of space to move around and converse, meet new people and hear new Hippo-related stories. Everybody seemed to have a blast.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hippo2700x0.png" alt="Hippo Get Together 2014" />
The Friendly Atmosphere of Hippo Get Together 2014
A number of friendly Hippo representatives were on hand throughout the coffee breaks and lunch times, holding flowers – an indicator that they were there to help out and answer any questions.
Hippo T-Shirt were handed out and quick thrown on by attendees. Many though, were already rocking the Hippo T-Shirt from the 2013 Get Together. That tells you all you need to know about the passionate and loyal Hippo community, which only continues to grow.
All in all, the event was a resounding success. Attendees had fun, heard some juicy insights into the future of Hippo, and got to celebrate the nature of open source software.
To top it all off, attendees were invited to join the Hippo team on a boat trip through Amsterdam to cap off the evening. What more could you ask for?
For more information on the Hippo Get Together 2014, <a href="http://hgt14.onehippo.org/" target="_blank">check out their official website</a>.

Looking Back on The Hippo Get Together 2014

<a href="http://www.onehippo.org/" target="_blank">Hippo</a> have today launched Hippo CMS 7.9, which brings about a host of enhancements.
Hippo CMS is a powerful, enterprise-class platform which helps deliver personalized experiences across a wide variety of channels and devices to increase conversion and to improve brand loyalty. Hippo CMS is also open source, 100%  Java.
Version 7.9 of Hippo CMS brings brings extended functionality for all users, improving ease of use and security. The most notable changes are the Advanced Channel Management and the introduction of CKEditor, along with SCXML Workflows and Secure Content Replication.
Now, let's take a deeper look into what's new with Hippo.
<h2>Improved Performance &amp; Another Layer of Security</h2>
Hippo's new functionality changes bring increased control over website navigation and content presentation into the hands of end-users, and enable developers to develop advanced workflow scenarios. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/unicoblogimage.jpg" alt="Hippo CMS" /> 
By introducing a secure replication mechanism between delivery and authoring environments, Hippo CMS 7.9 adds an additional layer of security to content in staging and embargo phases. Moreover, the performance of the content repository and delivery tier of Hippo CMS have been further increased.
Here are a few highlights of Hippo's newly introduced functionality:
<ul>
<li>With the Advanced Channel Management, business users can modify site menus from the Hippo CMS user interface without IT involvement. With Hippo’s drag and drop interface, marketers can quickly build dedicated (sub)home, landing and campaign pages.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> The introduction of CKEditor as the new rich text field editor enhances usability through a wide range of new functionalities including intuitive context menus, configurable keyboard shortcuts, spell-check as you type and many more.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>With Secure Content Replication, only published live content resides in the delivery repository.  Any published content, layout or targeting rule change is replicated automatically, immediately and consistently from the authoring to the delivery zone. All inbound connections to the authoring zone can be rejected, making intrusion impossible.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Hippo CMS 7.9 introduces the open source Apache Commons SCXML 2.0 library and the W3C State Chart for XML (SCXML) standard specification to execute a workflow definition as a state machine. Also, workflows can be adjusted in a running system.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Introducing a streamlined document model in the repository tier and fast model reloading on the delivery tier to better accommodate implementations with a vast number of channels as well as frequent channel configuration changes have further optimized performance.  Furthermore, memory usage of the delivery tier was reduced by an average of 30%.</li>
</ul>
Furthermore, here is a quick breakdown of the offerings found within the last three versions of Hippo CMS:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hipponew.png" alt="Hippo 7.9 Features" /> 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/hippo2.png" alt="Hippo CMS" />
<h2>Offering Relevant Customer Experiences</h2>
Hippo CTO and co-founder Arjé Cahn had this to say upon the release of Hippo CMS 7.9:
<blockquote>“Hippo CMS 7.9 brings improvements to IT and business users alike as they are both crucial for organizations looking to connect to their online audiences in the most relevant way. Advanced Channel Management removes IT bottlenecks from website management so that content managers can optimize their channel experiences easier and faster.
When used in combination with Hippo CMS’ targeting and personalization capabilities, marketers can now enhance their campaign success with high-converting landing pages.
With secure replication and SCXML workflows, the IT department can support the agile demands of the marketing department better and more easily. By letting both IT and Marketing focus on their strengths, and making that easier, with Hippo CMS 7.9 organizations should be able to optimize their value, offering the most relevant customer experience they can.”</blockquote>
For more detail on the enhancements introduced along with Hippo CMS 7.9 for developers, check out the <a href="http://www.onehippo.org/" target="_blank">Hippo Community Website</a>.
Additionally, be sure to explore more of Hippo via our CMS Directory.

Hippo CMS 7.9 Released: Advanced Channel Management, Secure Content Replication & More

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Enterprise content management vendor, Hippo (<a href="http://onehippo.com">site</a>,<a href="/tag/hippo-cms">news</a>), has been making great strides with their popular ECM platform and has just announced the release of their latest version. Hippo 7.6 brings with it some great new features and plenty of additional training tools to help end users quickly learn their platform.
New enhancements in this version include:
<ul>
<li>Native support to change content types on the fly, providing much faster development cycles</li>
<li>CMIS Support – adding interoperability with ECM Systems</li>
<li>Support for Tomcat 6, Cargo and JRebel giving developers the tools to develop faster without time consuming rebuilds</li>
<li>Automatic exporting of developer configurations</li>
<li>Extensive Spring MVC support</li>
</ul>
What is especially significant about this release is that fact that Hippo has also release a new training website which allows you to choose a path and walk through a step by step guide to implementing the CMS. This is an excellent addition to their already well put together documentation and should greatly improve adoption.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cmscritic1_gytllk.png" alt="Hippo Trail Training Site" />
The Hippo Trail is available immediately at https://wiki.onehippo.com/display/CMS7/Hippo+Trail
Arjé Cahn, CTO of Hippo, said:
<blockquote>“Hippo CMS 7.6 is designed to help not just end-users get more out of their Web Content Management experience, but also the developers that implement our software. We noticed that more and more of these developers were also using Spring technologies. It was clear that the Spring ecosystem was in need of a good enterprise-grade Web Content Management system, and Hippo CMS 7.6 fills that gap. In every Enterprise Java environment we see the same issues when it comes to WCM and integration; and this is where Hippo is an ideal fit. We strive to create a perfect balance. While we want to provide end-users with an intuitive enterprise-class CMS experience, we never lose focus that we also need to continually provide more powerful and flexible solutions for developers and architects.”</blockquote>
Developer Webinar
Hippo has scheduled a webinar for developers who are interested in getting started with Hippo 7.6 on Monday, July 25th, 5 pm CEST / 8 am PDT. Attendees can sign up for this free online webinar athttps://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/910111576.

Hippo announces 7.6 and a new step by step training website

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