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CHOOSING THE RIGHT CMS

05 Mar CHOOSING THE RIGHT CMS

Posted at 12:23h in CMS, Technology News by
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When it comes to building websites and managing content there are many platforms to choose from. At Aware we use several, both open source and proprietary. The Content Management System (CMS) we recommend often depends on the nature of the site, client preferences and existing client infrastructure. Ease of use, ease of development, extendibility and maturity of the platform are also important factors. If a free open-source environment is preferred, we often opt to use Joomla or Drupal as the CMS.

Often the best match for a CMS in a corporate environment is Kentico, which is an ASP.NET / SQL server based content management system. Kentico integrates very well in an ecosystem that already implements Microsoft technologies such as, SQL Server, SharePoint, or custom .NET applications. Aware is a certified Kentico partner and uses the CMS for our corporate website as well as several clients’ sites. Leveraging Kentico reduces development time, which allows us to focus on the actual content and user experience of the site.

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Kentico is a flexible platform that can be easily modified and extended. It supports the requirements for almost any standard public-facing website. There are dozens of standard modules, hundreds ofbuilt-in web parts, and many templates that are readily available to help build a great looking site fast. For example, the JW Media Player is a very reliable component to serve up YouTube videos. Other examples include image galleries, social network integration, support for embedding Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or offering a ‘Live Chat’ feature embedded within the website.

This means we can do more with less code. Kentico’s browser-based interface gives a similar capability / flexibility to Visual Studio. However, it is available anywhere, anytime and without programming. Most tasks when building a website using Kentico do not require programming skills, anyone can use it. This frees up resources which allows us to deliver websites quicker and at a lower cost.

For advanced development, we can integrate a Kentico site with our own web parts and data entry forms from external systems. Kentico comes with a fully documented API that we can use in our .NET code. The CMS is a standard ASP.NET project, allowing us to open it in Visual Studio and extend it where needed. What this means is that it becomes much easier to create a consistent, single user experience across the public web content, as well as more advanced member features or enterprise applications.

Kentico has a clean, three-tier application architecture that follows the best practices for scalability, maintenance and security. We can take full control over our HTML code. We can use CSS-based layouts, integrate our JavaScript code and/or write custom .NET functions for our transformations, and it can all be done through the browser-based interface.

In conclusion, the ideal CMS is one that works with any existing systems and infrastructure. It is mature and secure, easy to use for end-users who are writing the content, and fast to build for developers while still offering the flexibility of up-scaling in co Kentico is a flexible platform that can be easily modified and extended. It supports the requirements for almost any standard public-facing website. There are dozens of standard modules, hundreds ofbuilt-in web parts, and many templates that are readily available to help build a great looking site fast. For example, the JW Media Player is a very reliable component to serve up YouTube videos. Other examples include image galleries, social network integration, support for embedding Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or offering a ‘Live Chat’ feature embedded within the website. This means we can do more with less code. Kentico’s browser-based interface gives a similar capability / flexibility to Visual Studio. However, it is available anywhere, anytime and without programming. Most tasks when building a website using Kentico do not require programming skills, anyone can use it. This frees up resources which allows us to deliver websites quicker and at a lower cost. For advanced development, we can integrate a Kentico site with our own web parts and data entry forms from external systems. Kentico comes with a fully documented API that we can use in our .NET code. The CMS is a standard ASP.NET project, allowing us to open it in Visual Studio and extend it where needed. What this means is that it becomes much easier to create a consistent, single user experience across the public web content, as well as more advanced member features or enterprise applications. Kentico has a clean, three-tier application architecture that follows the best practices for scalability, maintenance and security. We can take full control over our HTML code. We can use CSS-based layouts, integrate our JavaScript code and/or write custom .NET functions for our transformations, and it can all be done through the browser-based interface. In conclusion, the ideal CMS is one that works with any existing systems and infrastructure. It is mature and secure, easy to use for end-users who are writing the content, and fast to build for developers while still offering the flexibility of up-scaling in co ]]>