Forem: Agility CMS

Headless CMS Personalization: How it Works

joshua isaac — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 15:47:04 +0000

The consumer expectations for a personalized user experience are growing. In fact, according to research by Segment, 71% of the people surveyed are frustrated when digital experiences feel impersonal. Customers expect omnichannel experiences that seamlessly connect each of their devices and retain their attention throughout the customer journey.

Plus, as global entertainment and eCommerce behemoths like Amazon and Netflix set the bar for user experience higher every day, personalization has become an increasingly important part of the internet.

A headless CMS offers personalization features that help improve user experience and boost conversion rates by giving visitors exactly what they want when they want it. With these types of personalized interactions, there's no need to create new pages or tweak layouts every time something changes. Instead, you just have to personalize certain content fields so they update the content according to the visitor type.

In this blog post, we'll explore how headless CMS personalization works and the benefits it offers to your company.

Overcoming The Limitations of The Traditional CMS

In a traditional CMS system, all content is managed through the backend interface by an admin. This makes sense because editors are often not tech-savvy enough to use code directly on their websites.

A traditional CMS —or coupled CMS— is linked tightly between the frontend and the backend. All content and digital assets are created, managed, and stored on the site’s backend. The back end is also where website design and customization applications are stored.

Unlike a traditional CMS, a headless CMS is entirely decoupled from the presentation layer/frontend —or the head— and the backend is your content repository, known as the “body”. When you separate your content repository “body” from its presentation layer “head,” it becomes a headless CMS.

What truly makes a headless CMS better than a traditional CMS is its content-first approach with full APIs to access and display content in any desired way. With this approach, a headless CMS enables you to author your content through the RESTful API and deliver that content wherever you need it.

Legacy CMS platforms lack the API-driven architecture capabilities to connect with other systems seamlessly, which means that if they don’t have native personalization features, leaving you stuck without personalization features. And those traditional CMSs that have personalization features might cost more than a headless or hybrid headless CMS —also called agile CMS— that can integrate with third-party tools to enable personalized content delivery.

How To Personalize Website Content With Agility CMS

For the purposes of this tutorial and demonstration, we will use Google Optimize. With Optimize, you can test your website and customize certain parts of your site to find out what converts best.

Once you discover what's relevant to your audience and their interests – and what's most likely to help them convert – Optimize can deliver personalized experiences at scale that promote engagement and improve conversions.

Let’s take a look at how to use Google Optimize and Agility CMS together.

Don’t forget to set a Linked Content field to show both the Location and the Title field in the listing. That will make it easy for editors to see which location will be targeted for a piece of content.

On the Cards linked to the Content field, click ‘Advanced Settings’ > ‘Choose Visible Columns,’ and drag both the Title and Location (and any other fields you want to see) over to the right side of the section dialogue.

Now you just need to add our new module to a page and put in some example content.

Setup Your Page

We’ve created a page called geo-target to have a place to set this up, but it can be on any page on your site.

I've created items that target both Canada and the United States.

Create Google Analytics and Optimize Accounts

Now, to get Google Optimize’s geotargeting tool to work properly, you need both a Google Optimize and a Google Analytics account. If you don’t know how to set your Google Optimize account, here’s a simple step-by-step guide from Google.

Once you have your Analytics Property and your Optimize Container, you can start to set up your code. Don’t forget to link it to your Google Analytics property on your Google Optimize Container Settings page, under Measurement.

Now, Add the Google Optimize Script to your website. The generic method for adding to your site is to put this script in the

tag, like this

(Replace the OPTIMIZE_CONTAINER_ID with your container id)

Set Up Google Optimize

From your Optimize account, click on Create Experience, add a Name, the URL of your page, choose Personalization as the type of experience.

Create Targeting Rules

Once you're inside the Personalization tab, click on ‘Start by adding audience target rules.’

In the Geography screen, set the Country to whatever country you've set up your personalization for. Note that in order to personalize the same page differently for multiple countries, you will have to create multiple Personalization Experiences. Now click on the ‘add’ button.

Ready To Rumble

At this point you should be able to preview your content on Optimize. To do so, choose Web Preview. It will run the personalization for us as if we were from the target region.

Benefits of Personalized Content

If you’re not currently considering personalization within your content strategy you risk falling behind the competition. Serving personalized content that matches your target user’s intent can make a huge difference when compared to traditional approaches to content delivery.

Let’s talk about some of the business benefits of leveraging the headless architecture to give your content editors the tools to deliver dynamic content.

Much More Relevant Product Recommendations

If you’ve ever been bombarded with irrelevant product recommendations from a commerce platform, you know how annoying it can be to have a website recommending you something you don’t want. Website personalization uses customer data to recommend products that are both fresh and relevant to that type of user, which increases the likelihood of them purchasing something from your store.

Product recommendations generate business through uplift on conversion rates and average order values.

Highly Converting Landing Pages

Personalizing content types and fields enables your marketing team to change parts of your landing pages to suit different audiences. In fact, according to KIBO, 63% of consumers are influenced by personalized recommendations on home and landing pages. Creating a seamless, personalized landing page that shows the customer what he or she is looking for can increase your conversion rate.

Increased Time On-Site

A personalized experience can definitely increase the time your potential customers spend on your site. Users will stick around for longer if the website or app they’re visiting is talking to

them. Plus, content personalization gives users a reason to explore the site and try your products or services because they seem like they’re tailored for them specifically.

For more advice on web personalization, read our article: Web Personalization: Its Benefits and Its Use Cases.

You can create more Personalization Experiences on the same page to target different regions by following the same steps. What's really cool about this approach is that your content editors can now add content that will be automatically geo targeted based on the rules you've set up in Google Optimize.

Agility CMS: Driving 20% Revenue Increase Thanks To Personalization

To enhance their operations, Visit Orlando, the official tourism association for Orlando, moved to headless commerce centered around Agility’s agile CMS practices and increased revenue by 20% with the help of geotagging personalization and Agility CMS’ best-of-breed integrations.

To empower Visit Orlando content management team and increase tickets sales, Agility CMS developed a custom headless commerce solution with the following components, multi-site, multi-channel content management, eCommerce with online ticket sales, POS ticket sales, and personalization.

With the help of our hybrid headless CMS, the Visit Orlando team increased their conversion rate by 10% and online revenue by 20%.

If you want to learn more about how personalization can improve your sales, read more here: Case Study: Visit Orlando: 20% increase in revenue with agile headless commerce

What is a Content Hub and Why Do You Need One?

joshua isaac — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 14:00:55 +0000

The evolution of the internet has brought new efficiency to the business ecosystem. The speed at which we share information, buy products, and connect with people is unprecedented. But this increased connectivity also brings challenges for businesses trying to get their message and their content assets across the murky waters of the internet.

Content is the lifeblood of every business, and each organization has some important type of content. It could be your list of press releases, articles, or blog post. It could also be your amazing photos and videos. Or maybe it's the list of the very products that you sell.

Getting all of these things in a centralized, easy-to-manage place is what creating a content hub is all about. Let's take a closer look at what a content hub is and how building one enhances your business operations.

What is a Content Hub

A content hub aggregates all of your company's digital assets, enabling you to easily find what you need when you need it — from articles on product development, training videos on customer service best practices, and white papers about how to innovate in your industry.

This one-stop-shop centralizes everything so that employees can easily access the materials they need without having to search through multiple sites or accounts.

A content hub is a central location for all your company's content. The platform provides a single point of access and offers content marketers and editors greater visibility and control over all the digital assets.

It also helps you maintain an organized environment by providing automated workflows with intuitive user interfaces, which simplifies content creation and helps deliver better digital experiences overall.

Why Do Companies Need A Content Hub?

Often content production is spread out across many different formats, locations, and technologies. It may live as spreadsheets, databases, file folders, and as even older, traditional CMSs. Bringing this content together helps you identify what content you have and the value it provides for your marketing and lead generation processes.

A content hub brings out the content that's held captive and siloed in those spreadsheets, databases, and outdated portals and puts it front and center so you can make better use of it. Plus, it serves as a single point of truth for all your assets. You can streamline your content delivery workflows and send content anywhere, anytime from a centralized location to build a consistent brand presence.

These are some of the reasons why having a content hub simply makes sense for your business operations:

### 1 | Structured Content Delivery
Using structured content helps it flow faster through your pipeline, enabling faster content workflows and a more mobile content strategy. A platform like Agility CMS uses independent parts known as fields, that are edited independently and published to different devices and channels.

2 | Content Relationships

Content relationships enable digital marketing teams to give individual editors power over specific UI elements and assets such as grids, dropdowns, and checkboxes. This enables better control over how you display content and link different sections of your website.

Learn more: How to Create Relationships between Content

3 | Enhanced Governance

In many cases, your content exists in multiple versions. A content hub enables easier content governance and granular control over permissions, custom roles, and workflows across every version to prevent not only data breaches and leaks but also to simplify search and reduce time wasted when looking for specific content types and assets.

Learn more: How to Build a Content Governance Workflow That's Right For You

4 | Single Version of Truth

A content hub eliminates the need to copy your content to multiple places. Instead, any digital property that needs access to a digital asset can pull it from the content hub. Once your content is centralized in a single location, your teams can create new content more efficiently, and they can take advantage of what they have more effectively.

5 | Omnichannel Content Delivery

Thanks to its ability to work with structured content, a content hub like the one Agility CMS offers enables you to push and pull content to anywhere, from anywhere. Once structured, your content can easily move from one digital property to another. This means you're always ready to deliver omnichannel content.

Learn more: Omnichannel Content Delivery. How a Headless CMS Helps

6 | Simple Integrations

Every time you want to add a new asset, you must take the time to integrate it with each of your existing systems. A centralized system means a single point of integration and automatic connection with the rest. When your CMS is the hub of your communication channels, you'll have access to everything in one place, simplifying how you make and track changes across the board.

How Agility CMS Enables Content Delivery

In addition to being a robust hub for all your digital assets, Agility CMS' API-first, and cloud-native platform also gives marketers flexibility in content structuring. In addition, Agility CMS' content infrastructure enables omnichannel content delivery and data reusability and customization. With a flexible content-first approach, editors can manage content across multiple channels and streamline their operations.

Agility CMS enables companies to set the foundation for a proper content architecture. In addition to offering digital asset management and CMS capabilities, Agility CMS gives you the blueprints for functional content and site architecture, making it easy for your team to deliver site-wide updates across all your digital content.

Also, our CMS has extensible tooling that enables content marketing teams to test, apply, and roll back changes quicker and easier. A content hub makes it easier for editors and designers to edit existing content or create new content assets in accordance with their target audiences, which results in increased company outcomes.

Agility CMS' content hub offers you the following features:

REST APIs, UI extensions, and webhooks that can easily integrate with other systems
Flexible content modeling and architecture that future-proofs content
Enterprise-grade governance, including custom roles and permissions
A content hub platform with enhanced integrability to connect multiple backends and systems.
If you want to learn more about Agility CMS omnichannel-ready content hub, read more here: Agility CMS Content Hub.

Bringing It All Together

Often our content is spread out across many different formats, locations, and technologies. We may have it in spreadsheets, databases, file folders, and even older traditional CMSes. Bringing this content together can into a Content Hub helps you identify what content you have and its value. Bring that content out of those spreadsheets and databases. Bring all the assets and files off the hard drives and SharePoint portals to be cataloged and used.

There are lots of ways to get content into your hub. You can do a one-time import from an Excel spreadsheet or with the Content Management SDK. You could also use the SDK to do a synchronization of content from an external database or API.

Agility's Zapier Integration is an excellent place to start if you want to connect your Content Hub to an external system with a well-defined API.

Faster Jamstack: How to use Distributed Persistent Rendering with Next.js on Netlify

joshua isaac — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:09:54 +0000

Do you want to shorten build times?
Deploy larger sites faster?
Heard of DPR but not sure how to use it?

This Jamstack concept was born out of our work with large enterprise dev teams deploying hundreds of thousands of pages at a time. DPR (Distributed Persistent Rendering) is a new Jamstack approach for faster builds of large sites.

Now, Netlify's Next.js plugin supports DPR out of the box and we want to show how You can easily use it to speed up your deployments for large sites - without introducing unwanted complexity for Jamstack developers.

Join Joel from Agility CMS and Ekene from Netlify for this hand-on workshop and they will show you all the magic!

What you will learn:

How to use static rendering on large websites and still keep your build time down
How Agility CMS with Next.js on Netlify makes it easy to empower both your editors and your developers -How to set yourself up for success with continuous improvement with your website.

What is Jamstack?

Jamstack is not about specific technologies. It is the combination of underlying tooling that makes JAMstack so exciting. The web is rapidly changing away from monolithic to decoupled apps, and web developers are storming ahead with more power than ever.
Jamstack represents a new way of developing software based on build-time and client-side rendering, that doesn’t depend on web servers for outputting websites and apps.

What is Netlify?

Netlify is a web developer platform that multiplies productivity. By unifying the elements of the modern decoupled web, from local development to advanced edge logic, Netlify enables a 10x faster path to much more performant, secure, and scalable websites and apps.

What is Agility CMS?

Agility CMS, a Headless CMS (content management system) with Page Management.
It combines a fast flexible development environment (code in any language!) with familiar authoring tools (sitemap and URL management) that both developers and marketers can love.

Hosts:

Joel Varty is President at Agility CMS, a SaaS headless content management platform that combines flexible and fast Headless architecture with familiar and easy Authoring tools for editors. When it comes to cloud computing, development and software architecture, Joel is as good as they come. Follow Joel: Joel Varty (@joelvarty) / Twitter

Ekene Eze is a Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, Instructor and Technical Writer. He is currently working with the Developer Experience team at Netlify where they build tools, create content, open-source repos, and demos to teach and also help developers build a better web with Netlify's products and services.
At his spare time, he likes to write blog posts and create courses for different platforms to educate more learners. Follow Ekene on Twitter.

Introduction to Jamstack

joshua isaac — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 18:31:35 +0000

When you think about Jamstack, you can come at it from a few different viewpoints. We're going to take those viewpoints into account with this guide. Jamstack is more than just a technology, more than just a buzzword, and (since you're reading this, I'm sure you agree) it's something that needs serious consideration when you're looking to update your website.

The three viewpoints or perspectives we'll be looking at this from are the following:

1. Technology Leaders

These are the people who are making the final decisions. CEOs, CTOs, and marketing directors want to know how things will impact their business and its ROI.

2. Developers

The concept of Jamstack began with developers who wanted something better.

3. Marketers

How can the Jamstack benefit the people who are working day-in-day-out on the content itself?

Jamstack For Technology Leaders:

Jamstack refers to a better approach to architecting and designing websites. Previously, you may have considered running web servers with PHP, Java, or ASP.Net applications; Jamstack primarily uses Javascript as a programming language, and we serve content over a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

Often Jamstack guides will refer to static content. While this is still somewhat true today, the dynamic nature of Jamstack frameworks such as Next.js provides a foundation for enterprise application architectures that are as secure as they are fast.

As a leader in your organization, it's essential to understand the business impacts that Jamstack architectures represent. The most crucial concept overall is decoupling, where we can use different tools for more specific jobs.

An example of this is Headless CMS: we can decouple the content from the website, thus allowing you to use that content in more than one place (via APIs) and continue to use it through successive redesigns and rebuilds of your digital properties and websites. Jamstack brings a decoupled approach to your overall digital toolset, allowing you greater choice and flexibility when composing the digital experience for your organization and your customers.

Jamstack provides many benefits, all of which add up to a marked increase in ROI for any solution. The greatest benefits center around performance and security.

Jamstack websites are served via CDN using statically generated files, leading to massive improvements in performance and reliability, with a significantly reduced risk of cyberattack via web server hacking. Coupled with a lower cost of ownership for overall operation, Jamstack becomes an incredibly attractive option.

Jamstack For Developers:

Developers are where the Jamstack began: it's a more modern way to connect the tools we use to build websites and apps. At its heart, Jamstack has been about building with Javascript, APIs, and Markup, but it has come to be much more than that.

Firstly, the Jamstack is about better tools that are more accessible to all developers, including those who don't consider themselves "full-stack developers." Getting started with a Jamstack website is as simple as following a short, step-by-step tutorial to get an example website up and running locally, with your code in a git repository, and even hosted - all using tools that have generous free offerings.

The essential tools for Jamstack fall into these categories:

Code Editors
Javascript Frameworks
Website Frameworks
Hosting
Headless CMS

Jamstack for Marketers

While Developers were first to get on board with the Jamstack, the tools have since evolved to include Marketers as first-class citizens, too. When we consider the sheer volume and fast rhythm of content that marketers produce, they need tools that will keep up. The Jamstack tools that we outlined above have evolved to provide you with a great experience for all stages of your solution.

Starting with initial content scoping and architecture, Marketers can take advantage of Headless CMS to define the kinds of content that is most valuable to them. Even before development starts, you can start getting well-known content structures in place and populated. Now the development team has a great place to start when building the site.

Once the site is up and running, Marketers can use the CMS to move content through an optimized workflow process. Updates to all the websites and digital properties happen as soon as content is published.

The Top 5 Benefits of JAMstack for Marketers

1 | Jamstack Has Low to Zero Hosting Cost

A lower cost for hosting means better uptime, no processing power and you can rely on a scalable CDN (content delivery network). You don't need a web farm of dedicated servers which also means you don't need to pay for expensive hardware. Hosting of static files are cheap or basically free. This means you don't have to pay for costly databases, web servers, or a load balancer all you need is a CDN. Saving your stakeholders and customers thousands of dollars on servers and processing power will definitely make them happy.

2 | A Jamstack Website Will Never Go Down

As a content editor, there's always a worry that when you publish new content, something will happen, or your site will go down unexpectedly (maybe even in the middle of the night). Jamstack takes that worry away. Not having to manage a site, means less support. Instead, you can use your resources to increase user engagement, increasing the speed of your websites and improving the user experience (UX) and design experience (DX).

3 | Jamstack Makes Developers more Efficient

Every change requires a deployment which is a good thing because that means every change can be vetted either through an automated or manual process before something goes 'live'. It also means that your site can be 'rolled-back' to any previous change with a click of a button. Every change (code or content) creates a snapshot of your site. This can be a relief for editors in case a change was accidentally published. Also, a Jamstack website has no backend, so there's no database for your developers to manage which removes any bottlenecks as well. Developers can spend more time coding, and less time managing servers and uptime.

4 | Jamstack Demystifies Website Building

Using JAMstack gives marketers a better understanding of the site structure. When working with Jamstack, marketers are exposed to the building process and are able to make decisions about the content architecture and site structure.

This leads to a better understanding and communication between developers, designers, and marketers because marketing teams can see the iterative content improvements developers are making, leading to cross-functional teams and greater collaboration.

5 | Jamstack Websites Are Safe

Jamstack sites are often much more secure than traditional sites because there’s no web server delivering your static files. In Jamstack sites, hackers don’t have a point of entry, which minimizes the chances of suffering a cyberattack.

Also, attacks such a DDoS aren’t an issue either because most of the CDN services Jamstack websites use their own web app firewalls. This adds an extra layer of protection to your website and makes it impervious to even the most determined cybercriminal.

How To Choose The Best Headless CMS For Your Brand (2021 Edition)

joshua isaac — Thu, 13 May 2021 19:54:36 +0000

When deciding to build a new website, application, or digital experience, many businesses’ first question is: what headless CMS should I choose?

Sure, comparing features is a start, but it’s just as important to recognize that every company’s needs are different and, accordingly, different headless CMS platforms will be best for different companies.

Furthermore, many brands get stuck on the question of open-source vs proprietary CMS, opting for whichever avenue they have experience with. Or, they immediately narrow their shortlist down to headless content management systems that cater for their industry specifically. In both scenarios, we’ve found brands to be limiting themselves—and their options—for the sake of familiarity.

In fact, going for a platform that isn’t an obvious choice for your industry may lead to great ideas and new opportunities for growth that you hadn’t considered.

Before we begin, let's answer a foundational question:

What is a Headless CMS?

The key to choosing a headless CMS is to understand your unique requirements and those of your customers and to pick a solution that can accommodate these. In this article, we bring you the top 11 questions you should ask yourself and your stakeholders before choosing the headless or decoupled CMS that’s right for your brand’s present, and future.

10 questions you should ask yourself and your stakeholders before choosing a headless or decoupled CMS

Here are the top 10 questions you should ask yourself before you dive-in into our Ultimate 50-point Checklist for choosing a new CMS!

1. What’s your budget for CMS?

The first question before you even begin your search for a headless CMS platform is, what’s your budget? This will help you rule out whatever options are off the table from the very beginning and prevent you from wasting your time researching solutions that you will never be able to adopt.

Understanding the scope and size of your project, as well as of the CMS platforms available, is a good way of gauging what a reasonable budget may be.

Many CMSs now start with Free Trial and offer a number of pricing packages to fit your needs.

Is your organization paying too much for hosting, and licensing costs? A headless CMS uses a cloud-multitenant architecture. It eliminates the need for costly installations and upgrades to the hosting environment. We highly recommend this architecture because of its easy upgrades and security benefits.

For example, if a marketing department wishes to create a new series of product mini-sites, they can go straight into the CMS and start creating immediately without having to wait for developers to build CMS-based templates. This means your up-front cost is diminished because you can start with smaller solutions and then build your way up versus starting with one BIG install. It’s always best to start small and then scale up as you need to.
JAMStack approach can save you money because it allows you to update your website page by page instead of doing the full rebuild.

2. What is the purpose of your website (and your broader digital experience)?

Once you have budget considerations out of the way, the next thing you should consider is: what is the purpose of your digital system? Is it intended as a long-term business website, or are you building it for a short-term project?

This question will be important when considering your site’s content architecture; if you're thinking long-term, your site should be built in a way that is flexible enough for any future developments, growth and use cases. This approach will help you avoid any future unforeseen costs brought on by a badly planned content architecture.

If, on the other hand, you're building a short-term site, you may want to put all your efforts into making the site look exactly the way you'd like it to look right now, potentially saving time and resources that you would otherwise spend planning your content architecture. Keep this in mind when choosing a headless CMS, as different platforms may be geared towards different timelines and take different approaches to content architecture.

Another aspect to think about in regard to your site's purpose is whether you're looking only for a CMS, or for a CMS provider:

Are you just looking for a tool that your development team can use to build your site, or would you prefer a provider that is able to guide you through the process, to provide support and to maintain your site for you? These are the questions to keep in mind, as they'll come with different costs and platforms. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you choose the best Headless CMS for your brand.

3. What are your performance and integration needs?

The nature of your site will determine what your hosting and integration needs are and it's important to think of these in advance. Particularly online storefronts tend to be integration-heavy and often require scalable hosting options to prevent the site from crashing during high-traffic streaks.

Even if your site is not an online store, it is still important to determine first what your performance and integration needs are and then choose a headless CMS solution that can accommodate these. This goes hand in hand with planning your content architecture; as long as you've mapped out your entire site, you'll be aware of what particular integrations are needed. In the same way, thinking about your top use cases and expected traffic fluctuations will give you a better idea of what your hosting needs will be. Mapping all this in advance will help you make a better choice of which headless CMS to go with.

3. What are your performance and integration needs?

4. Which channels do you want a presence on?

Headless CMSs allow you to provide an omnichannel experience for your customers. This added flexibility offers an advantage as it means that the things can remain the same across multiple touchpoints within the customer journey. However, you do need to decide what channels will work best for your product or service.

Just because you can provide an omnichannel experience doesn’t mean that you should do so. Spreading yourself too thin and trying to be too many places at once is a recipe for disaster, no matter the capabilities of your content management system.

At the very least, you are likely to have a web page or app with mobile capabilities. However, knowing beforehand which additional channels will work best for your audience, whether that be digital signage, smart speaker apps or something else entirely can go a long way. The channels you decide to be on will help to determine your overall marketing strategy, and your CMS needs to be able to provide a robust experience. The key to a great omnichannel experience is consistency. You can’t just have a presence on a platform; you also need to be able to personalize the experience on different platforms.

5. What are your internal resource capabilities?

Once you've established your integration and performance needs, it's time to think logistics. Who will actually build and maintain your website? Do you have in-house developers? Are your content editors technical or non-technical?

If you have in-house developers, keeping them in the decision-making process will be a key way to ensure that whatever headless CMS platform you choose uses programming languages that your developers are familiar with.

Many will agree that the biggest benefit of a headless CMS is how easy and fast it is to manage your content. The CMS implementation is cleaner meaning the CMS tool is purely for storing content and isn’t cluttered with “stuff” that’s irrelevant to business users and other resources that’s development only.

You will also need to work with your development team, agency or CMS provider to ensure that the site is coded in a way that reduces content editors’ reliance on developers as much as possible, especially if your content editors are non-technical. If every time you make an update to your website you need to rely on developers, you will waste precious time and resources, so make sure that your CMS allows you to do this.

You are half way there! Switch to your Your Ultimate 50-Point Checklist for Choosing a Headless CMS if you feel ready.

6. Are you forgetting your marketers?

One of the issues with some CMS platforms is creating and editing the content is quickly done by non-technical team members, but, then the job of displaying the content in a visually appealing way is only possible with the help of tech-savvy developers.

Too often, going headless means sacrificing marketer autonomy and speed for developmental freedom and more channels. It would be best if you opted for a hybrid headless CMS that can offer both without compromise.

Developers want to spend their time coding new features and not fixing minor issues or updating content. The best CMS platforms make it easy for developers to set up proper structures and workflows for marketers and content editors to operate; empowering both the marketer and the developer to produce the best content.

7. How soon do you need your solution?

What is your project timeline? Are you planning a long-term website and ready to wait a few months to ensure the site is optimal? Or do you need something quick within a few days or weeks?

If you need something fast, the best option may be to go for a pre-templated solution, although this will mean being quite restricted in terms of design. Picking a CMS that provides templates and that allows your team to quickly put a site together without relying on any external parties will be the best option.

If you’re thinking long-term, focusing on ensuring your design serves your unique business needs, and not the other way around, will enable you to build a more effective site and, ultimately, a more valuable tool in the long run.

8. What are your security requirements?

Security is always a concern for businesses building new websites, although how much of a priority it is will depend on the nature of your company. The key is to ensure that your site has the necessary security measures in place, without hindering performance or user experience.

The general perception is that open source platforms aren’t as secure as proprietary platforms, which isn’t always the case. However, as a rule of thumb, make sure that the platform you choose can be made secure according to your unique needs and that it has the necessary certifications. Thinking about this in advance will prevent any unforeseen security hiccups along the way.

9. Is commerce part of your brand's future?

When deciding on which CMS platform you should use, you should determine if you plan to offer a commerce option in the future. The likelihood that you answer yes to this question is quite high as by the year 2040, as much as 95% of shopping will be facilitated by eCommerce.

That said, it is vital to go with a CMS that has robust commerce platform integrations and APIs that won't hinder headless commerce projects. There are several eCommerce platforms able to provide your customers with an online shopping experience, but they aren't all right for your brand. The best CMS gives you the flexibility to choose the right one for you.

Ecommerce happens over multiple touchpoints and channels and therefore falls under the same requirements for an omnichannel experience. Factors such as UX design play a crucial role in whether a customer decides to purchase from a particular brand or not. Also, many customers make purchases from brands that they resonate with, or that have a great story they can support.

Those brands that are successful when it comes to eCommerce have various content types that help to tell their story. They also provide international buying options and can deliver their content and products to any device from a web page to a kiosk screen, smartwatch or smart speaker. None of that would be possible without the right CMS.

10. Are you planning to scale and grow into new markets?

Not thinking far enough into the future is a big mistake we see brands making when choosing a headless CMS. If you plan to keep your digital presence small and local, then feel free to skip this point. If not, read on.

A headless CMS is only as good as its infrastructure. Without enterprise-grade hosting and content delivery networks (CDNs), your digital experience will become slow, difficult to manage, and near-impossible to scale when traffic spikes occur. Poor infrastructure will also hinder you when it comes to launching your website or app in new regions and continents.

To ensure your headless CMS can grow with you, be sure to choose one that’s leveraging the cloud hosting prowess of leading hosting solutions like Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon’s AWS.

Ready for More Effective Content Management?

At Agility CMS, our goal is to help you grow through smart, strategic and agile content management. We’re here to guide you on implementing future proof content first approach, headless content architecture, including JAMstack implementation, omni-channel marketing, SEO friendly CMS, and more.

Need answers? Start a conversation with our experts by opening the chat box or request a demo here.

DXP vs Headless CMS: Modern DXP Architecture

joshua isaac — Mon, 03 May 2021 20:00:18 +0000

The impact DXPs have had on the content management industry is tremendous, and 2020 has been the year of the DXP.

Ever since Gartner decided to discontinue their report on WCMs and instead focus on digital experience platforms, there has been a lot of buzz about the future of CMSs and DXPs.

In simpler terms, we can say that both DXPs and CMSs enable companies and enterprises to build, deploy, and iterate experiences for websites, portals, mobile apps, progressive web applications, and IoT-powered devices.

CMS (Content Management System) is in the heart of any Modern DXP. A modern DXP uses a Headless CMS and its APIs to combine and coordinate applications. It works as a neural center that integrates content management, eCommerce, marketing, search and analytics, personalization, collaboration, and workflows.

Learn more from Joel Varty about the Modern DXP approach and How it can save time and money for your next Digital Transformation:

The Benefits of a Modern DXP

With traditional DXP you are using the features and the functionalities built into this particular DXP product and rely on support from the software provider. Yes, there is a benefit of simplicity in this, but it also limits your options to only CRM and Marketing Automations built-in into the product.

In other words, you are stuck with what that particular solution has to offer. With modern DXP approach, however, you integrate (and iterate your integrations!) to meet your exact needs. As the market evolves and new solutions emerge, you can always upgrade your DXP set up.

Flexibility is only one of the benefits of having a modern digital experience platform. There are many other things a Modern DXP can help companies with.

Best-of-Breed Approach: Marketing Automations and CRMs

With the best-of-breed approach, you select the best modern software products for your company and integrate them with your API-based CMS - and your perfect modern DXP is born.

Most Headless CMSs in the market are fully integrable with other third-party Marketing Automations and CRM tools, so you get the centralized hub to build every part of your stack granularly rather than searching for an all-in-one solution.

eCommerce Integration: Headless Commerce

Modern DXPs can integrate different third-party software to improve the performance and productivity of any eCommerce store. With tools like advanced testing and personalization, brands can tailor individual shopping experiences, enabling marketers to get data from every visitor across multiple touchpoints.

Headless commerce architecture is similar to headless CMS architecture in the sense that a headless commerce solution can store, manage, publish, and pull content from other applications headlessly. In other words, you can pull in content from anywhere, and push it out to any front-end.

With commerce in the equation, retailers and wholesalers can benefit by extending their experiences and products to new channels. Whereas a legacy CMS couldn’t display products and complete checkouts on a digital sign or smartwatch, a headless commerce solution can.

Future-Proof
Developers and marketers are under pressure to meet the needs of customers, especially those who expect consistent omni and cross-channel marketing across every touchpoint. The good news is that Modern DXP approach is advanced enough to accommodate and integrate the changes in both the technology and organizational landscapes. Also, if you choose carefully, you will get a platform that will accompany and support your company through its life cycle.

Visibility

While most CMSs in the market offer analytics and dashboards, you can integrate Headless CMS with any advanced analytical tools. This Modern DXPs go beyond simple analytics. They show customer data and all the associated information on a digital interface where workers can see everything at a glance, allowing them to make informed business decisions by bringing together all digital channels with the internal operational systems.

Customer-Centric Approach

One of the major benefits of a Modern DXP is that it can help you build a better brand identity and connection with your customers. With a Headless CMS in heart, you not only get a robust system that does your bidding but also a solution where you can build content for a specific customer profile.

Marketer-focus

Marketers are continually finding ways to deliver their content in the best way possible. However, this can be a gargantuan task in a siloed environment. Modern CMS-based DXPs prevent these silos and make it easy for marketers to create integrated experiences with agility and autonomy.

Cloud-based

The major benefit of the cloud for modern DXPs is that headless CMSs enable different members of the team to make changes and edit content in real-time without damaging what the rest of the team members are creating at that moment.

Enhanced Collaboration

As we said before, modern headless CMSs are designed to be simple to use for marketers. Still, they also foster collaboration between the marketing team and the developers because it serves as an environment where both parts of the content equation can work together to delight the audience with unique content.

Are You Ready for a Modern DXP?

The playing field is changing, and traditional CMSs and DXPs won’t be able to cut through the noise, simply because they aren’t equipped for a post-IoT world, nor are they easy to use with new and emerging front-end technologies. Modern DXPs build around Headless CMSs give you a centralized hub where you can connect all the tools you need to build timely digital experiences that will delight your audience, your developers, and your marketers.

Modern DXPs gives you all the tools developers need to build the best architecture while giving marketers the ease of use they require to respond to what the audience demands. With a hybrid approach, you gain not only flexibility, but you’re also future-proofing your business and building a solid foundation that will guide you through the digital transformation.

Choosing a Hosting Provider

joshua isaac — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 20:45:54 +0000

It can be challenging to choose a hosting provider, especially with so many different options and features that you need to compare. Modern hosting landscape is changing fast.

In fact, according to Statista, the percentage of on-premise users has gone from 37% in 2018 to 27% in 2020 whereas the percentage of cloud users increased from 28% to 41% in 2020.

You want to make sure there are top-of-the-line security protocols in place for your data, which includes protecting against hacks from malicious cybercriminals. Many hosting providers will guarantee their services, so if there is any downtime or other issues with your website, they will resolve them as quickly as possible; this ease of service has fueled an increase in cloud vs on-premise.

Hosting is a critical component of any website, and choosing the right one can have a significant impact. There are many considerations to make when looking for hosting, including cost, reliability, customer support and server location. We'll explore all of these factors here so you can select the best hosting provider for your business or organization.

What Is Hosting?

Let's start by saying that every website and app you've visited is hosted on a server. Hosting a website means storing the content and the assets on a web server. A web host makes the files, code, and images available for viewing online.

Most modern hosting providers and hosting services use cloud computing or an ISP to host websites. A company may require a dedicated web server or even multiple ones, whereas a small business can share a server with other customers.

Types of hosting:

Shared hosting: In this type of hosting, your digital assets are hosted on the same server as other websites. All the websites share the same pool of resources, like memory and CPU. Shared hosting tends to be insufficient for enterprise companies or websites with a large number of visitors.
Virtual Private Server Hosting: This hosting is the middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. This type of hosting gives you a virtual machine, but you still share physical resources with other users. That means you still won't be able to face traffic spikes and large numbers of users.
Dedicated Server Hosting: In this kind of hosting, you can control everything on your hosting server because only your server is stored on it. Dedicated servers are expensive and require technical support and expertise to run properly.
Cloud Hosting: Cloud hosting is becoming increasingly popular as they enable users to employ as many resources as they need to build their computing infrastructure. Since resources are spread across a network, this hosting has fewer chances of downtime. Also, they're scalable and can grow with your website.

What Should I Look for In A Web Hosting Company?

What Should I Look for In A Web Hosting Company?
Choosing a hosting provider can be a daunting task. The process is complex and requires you to take into account several factors. When thinking about choosing a hosting provider, ask yourself these questions:

Can this hosting provider be integrated with other third-party software?
How many concurrent users your website will have at peak times?
How different each plan is, and how do they enable scalability?
Are you planning to build omnichannel digital experiences? How frequently are you planning to update your site?
What's that particular hosting company's reputation?
How intuitive is this hosting service's interface?
What are your security needs?
How's their uptime score?

The Advantages of Cloud Hosting

According to Statista, the worldwide cloud computing market continues to grow and is expected to reach an estimated $362b in 2022. For businesses, the growth of cloud services has resulted in lower costs and less upfront investment as opposed to on-premise hosting or other hosting models that rely on physical hosting somewhere else.

Cloud service providers ensure proper management and maintenance of the systems, and customers only pay for the services they consume. Providers like AWS and Azure are dominating the market, and other niche providers like Vercel and Netlify are growing to get a piece of the action. Plus, the cloud is a mature and growing technology with providers continuously improving their services and bringing cloud operations and applications to a global scale to ensure that users will have a seamless experience despite their location.

Similarly, since most non-cloud hosting providers host your site on a single server, if something goes awry, then your website would go offline, and you wouldn't be able to get it back online until that server's been fixed. However, if you're hosting your website on the cloud, you get redundant hosting, which means that you'll always get a backup and your site will be up in seconds.

Finally, and most importantly, cloud hosting offers you blazing fast speeds because it can balance loads between multiple server environments, which can help pages load faster and put less strain on your servers.

Most Popular Cloud Website Hosting Providers

The hosting provider sector is a battleground. You only have to google the term to find out why. For this article's purposes, we selected those website hosting providers that play well with hybrid and pure headless CMSs and give users the best tools to build digital experiences. Let's take a look.

Netlify

Netlify is a San Francisco-based cloud computing company. Netlify offers cloud hosting and serverless backend services for web applications and static websites. Netlify is built on top of native cloud providers (AWS, GCP, and Azure) and removes the need to have a skilled cloud engineer on your team, as they take care of the hard work of managing native cloud infrastructure.

One of the things that make Netlify a solid choice for CMS users is that it includes continuous deployment across Netlify Edge, the company's global delivery network infrastructure. Also, Netlify offers serverless form handling and supports AWS Lambda as well as integration with Let's Encrypt.

Plus, Netlify is an all-in-one platform that enables users to build static sites and gives them everything they need, from local development to production deployments.

Check out this tutorial and see for yourself how easy it is to deploy to Netlify.

Vercel

Vercel is a San Francisco-based cloud platform for static sites and serverless functions that adapts to any development workflow and environment. They are the author of the Next.js site generator and have great support for it, as well as other frontends. Vercel enables developers to host websites and web services and deploy instantly. Like Netlify, Vercel is built on top of native cloud providers (AWS and GCP) and simplifies deployment considerably compared to native deployments.

It also enables automatic scaling at peak traffic times. It requires no supervision and little configuration, which means that it's a great tool for non-technical users who are looking for a simple to use platform that enables them to host and deploy digital experiences in minutes.

You can use Vercel with Github, Gitlab, and Bitbucket to deploy an existing project by selecting a code repository from your Git account. Vercel offers users quickstarts paired with static site generators and let you get started quickly.

Here is a tutorial on how to deploy your Next.js site to Vercel.

We've made it super easy for you to deploy your Next.js and Agility projects to Vercel with the integration built-in to the Agility CMS Manager. If you use Agility CMS Next.js blog starter, all you need to do is to click a Deploy button and follow the instructions.

If you want to compare Netlify vs Vercel side by side, here is a good review from Bejamas:

Source: Bejamas

Gatsby Cloud

Gatsby Cloud is the easiest way to host your Gatsby website. With intelligent caching and incremental builds, Gatsby Cloud takes the speed and performance of your Gatsby website to another level.

This tutorial will guide you on how to deploy a Gatsby website to Gatsby Cloud from a Git Repository and you can learn how to connect Gatsby to Agility here. Our integration with Gatsby is the only one that will not only source your content but also generate your pages for you. This leaves developers to build UI components and empowers editors to compose and manage their pages.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure offers an ever-expanding set of cloud computing services to help your organization meet its business challenges. With Azure, your business or organization has the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive, global network using your preferred tools and frameworks.

Azure enables developers to build, test, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers across the globe.

Azure provides CMSs with SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services and is language-agnostic, which means that it supports different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including third-party software and systems, making it a highly extensible platform.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services provides users with on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs for every user type, from individuals to governments, and enterprise businesses, on a pay-as-you-go basis. AWS provides users with a variety of technical infrastructure and distributed servers as well as building blocks and tools.

The best thing about AWS hosting is that it offers a wide range of website hosting options and that they can help you select a plan that really works for you. Also, AWS integrates well with headless CMSs like Agility CMS, and it also provides SDKs for popular languages and libraries.

Similarly, AWS offers users different hosting options based on what they will build; the hosting provider has different offers for companies wanting to build static sites and progressive web apps and enterprise hosting and a solid CDN for blazing-fast performance.

Using Agility CMS With An External Hosting Provider

When using Agility CMS, you’re always hosting Agility CMS first on Azure. We host your Agility CMS instances on Azure App Service, a Paas offering that allows you to build, manage, and scale web apps. Azure gives users an increased ability to manage their environments better.

However, that doesn’t mean Agility CMS is married to Azure. On the contrary, Agility CMS is hosting agnostic. That means that even though we use Azure App Service to host your Agility CMS instances, all the websites, apps, or solutions you build off Agility can be hosted anywhere.

You can pick any provider you want and gain unlimited flexibility on where to host your digital experiences.

The idea is that if you have a database somewhere else you can also connect it to Agility CMS and build a digital experience using the CMS while your content is hosted somewhere else.

Here are some of the benefits of hosting agnosticism:

You can pick the best hosting provider for your solution
You don’t have to worry about latency between your data center and ours
You can use Agility’s sync SDKs to synchronize content down to the hosting provider

When you publish content via the Agility Content Manager a new sync process is initiated and Agility will copy over the published content to all of your active syncing web servers. This content is then saved in the file system of the server in the Agility Content Repository.

The location of the Agility Content Repository is configurable via the web.config using the ContentCacheFilePath property in the Agility. Web section.

If you want to learn more about Agility CMS and how can you use different hosting services with it, read this guide in our help center and find out more: Hosting Agility Websites

If you want to learn about more Jamstack-friendly options, check out this excellent article from Bejamas that also analyses:

Cloudflare

Heroku

Digital Ocean

Firebase

Render

GitHub Pages

Begin

Fullstack Jamstack 2021: Architecting Fullstack Solutions in a Jamstack World

joshua isaac — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 22:19:47 +0000

Jamstack is primarily a set of technologies to drive UIs.

It empowers frontend developers to wrangle backend APIs into compelling experiences easily. That leaves many developers wondering where "everything else" goes - things like user registration, authentication, restricted access, user-generated-content, commerce and search.

In this session, two Jamstack superstars - Joel Varty and Brian Rinaldi will take you through a Jamstack architecture that has more than just a frontend.

This workshop will help you architect and build solutions that enable you to solve all of your customers' requirements.

What you will learn

1 | Learn the kinds of solutions that Jamstack is great at solving

2| See how you can add existing APIs onto your Jamstack solution

3 | Learn how you can build new APIs to solve unique customer problems as part of your Jamstack website

Why you should attend

1 | You want to start using modern web JAMstack technology stack

2 | You've heard about JAMStack, but you think it's only for new builds

3 | You want to get a head start on a popular technology

What is JAMstack?

JAMstack represents a new way of developing software based on build-time and client-side rendering, that doesn’t depend on web servers for outputting websites and apps.

JAMstack solves many of the problems other tech stacks face and enables quicker development, but before we talk about why and how JAMstack has become one of the hottest stacks in 2020 and beyond, let’s take a look at the world before JAMstack.

Hosts

Joel Varty - President at Agility CMS

Brian Rinaldi - JAMstacked Dev Advocate at StepZen

Brian Rinaldi is a Developer Advocate at StepZen with over 20 years experience as a developer for the web. Brian is actively involved in the community running developer meetups via CFE.dev and Orlando Devs. He’s the editor of the Jamstacked newsletter (Subscribe!) and co-editor of Mobile Dev Weekly and co-author of The Jamstack Book from Manning.

Agility CMS Named a Leader in G2 Grid Spring 2021 Report

joshua isaac — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 17:46:20 +0000

About the G2’s Summer 2020 Grid® Reports

G2 is the world’s leading business software review platform that drives better purchasing decisions by scoring products and vendors based on reviews gathered from verified users, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks.

The G2 Grid® for Headless CMS identifies solutions that offer content modeling, facilitate content production workflow, allow businesses to store and manage content in a cloud-based repository, and reuse it across multiple channels.

We’re excited to announce that Agility CMSt has been named a Leader in the Summer 2020 G2 Grid® for Headless CMS!

G2 scores products and sellers based on reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. Together, these scores are mapped on our proprietary G2 Grid®, which you can use to compare products, streamline the buying process, and quickly identify the best products based on the experiences of your peers.

In G2’s Spring 2021 Reports, Agility CMS received 6 badges including:

Leader, Grid® Report for Headless CMS - Products that are awarded the Leader badge have been highly rated by G2 users and have substantial satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
High Performer, Grid® Report for Web Content Management - Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Grid® Report have high customer Satisfaction scores and lower Market Presence scores compared to the rest of the category.
High Performer, Enterprise CMS - Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Enterprise Report have high customer Satisfaction scores and lower Market Presence scores compared to the rest of the category.
Users Love Us - The Users Love Us badge is earned after collecting 20 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 stars.

Headless CMS Leaders Spring 2021

We’re proud that Agility CMS has been named a Leader for Spring 2021 in the headless CMS category by G2 Crowd.

The other two leaders in the category are Contentful and Kentiko Kontent.

Agility CMS Product Overview

Agility CMS is a headless CMS platform designed with speed and flexibility in mind. Agility CMS gives users the tools to build, manage, and maintain their content with ease, having evolved from a .NET-based CMS to become a JAMstack-ready, API-first headless CMS.

The Agility platform has a rich and deep set of powerful features to power your omnichannel experiences. Most headless CMS platforms offer workflow functionality for approvals, publication scheduling, and similar needs. Agility also offers an HTML and text e-mail builder that can be tied to workflow triggers. It provides multi-site functionality, linking the same content and user permissions across multiple sites. Agility has robust analytics and convenient report generation built-in. Website search is a capability built into the platform, rather than requiring third-party services like Algolia

On the hosting side, Agility CMS leverages Microsoft Azure’s hosting services and provides users with enterprise-grade security and support and data protection. Microsoft was the first cloud vendor to secure approval from European Union’s data protection authorities. They have a strong track record with data security standards compliance.

Agility CMS vs Contentful

Currently, Agility CMS and Contentful are rated very closely by customers, with Agility CMS leading with marketer-friendly features like built-in Page Management and URL/Sitemap management.

Contentful recently released a Page Management feature but it some at additional cost and currently offers limited functionality compared to powerful Agility's pages feature.

When assessing the two solutions, reviewers found them equally easy to use. Reviewers felt that Agility CMS meets the needs of their business better than Contentful.

Users of Agility CMS also rate this system higher for Content Authoring, Rich Text Editor, Versioning and Approval Process.

You can access the full comparison on G2 Crowd site here.

Learn more: Contentful vs Agility CMS: Which Headless CMS is Right for You?

Agility CMS vs Kentiko Kontent

Currently, Agility CMS and Contentful are rated very closely by customers, with Agility scoring 4.2 out of 5 and Kentiko Kontent scoring 4.3.

Unlike Agility CMS and Contenful, Kentiko Kontent does not offer a Free plan for the developers' community.

At Agility, we believe that it's necessary to give users a free version of our CMS to help them get started and see what we have to offer. Our free plan offers potential users unlimited content types, 2,500 content items, access to up to five users, and community support.

Kentico Kontent, on the other hand, doesn't offer a free tier of the platform. They offer a 30-day, no-obligation free trial. After that, plans begin at $999 per month for the business plan that provides one project, ten users, unlimited content types, and 10,000 content items.

In addition, Agility CMS's users give higher scores to Reusable Content and SEO features.

Agility CMS's SEO allows users to control their URL, define meta descriptions and keywords, as well as maintain an organized sitemap that can be easily managed by marketing teams without developers involved.

Integrated Page Management

API-based headless CMSs allow you to repurpose content across multiple channels: web pages, native mobile apps, kiosks, even smartwatches, and football stadium billboards. This flexibility comes at a price with many headless platforms. Changes to the layout of web pages (and other channels) require developer time. Agility CMS solves this by using templates and modules that determine how content will look when it’s rendered on the website. Editors can modify the layout of pages in the easy-to-ease visual interface using drag and drop functionality The system is extensible, with many built-in modules and the opportunity to add new modules created by your development team.

Kentico Kontent doesn't offer a page management solution out of the box. The platform recently released Spotlight, an installable solution that helps marketers structure the site's navigation; yet, Spotlight doesn't come out-of-the-box and must be installed. Kentico Kontent doesn’t support content modules with custom styling and functionality through its content management API, but doesn't offer support out-of-the-box. Instead, it requires you to install the official publishing module to be able to synchronize all published content and assets from a specific site using the API.

Learn more: The Headless CMS Showdown: Kentico Kontent vs Agility CMS

What is Headless CMS Software?

A headless CMS, also known as API-first CMS, is a back-end exclusive content management system where the content repository “body" is decoupled from the front-end presentation layer. The architecture of a headless CMS differs from traditional CMS architecture. Instead of a static front-end display, content is pulled from the repository via a RESTful API (web services that implement a REST API), which allows it to be displayed on any type of device. Since content is pulled from a RESTful API, the front-end presentation is generated on the end user’s side and developers can create digital experiences without creating bespoke front-end displays for different types of devices.

What are the Common Features of Headless CMS Software?

The following are features that make managing content using a headless CMS efficient for an organization.

RESTful API: REST stands for representational state transfer, an architectural style for communications utilized in web services. An API is a set of procedures or functions that allow programmers to access features or data of an application, operating system, or database within their application. A RESTful API uses HTTP calls to GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE resources from a content repository. A RESTful API is the backbone of a headless CMS. Without it, device and channel-agnostic content delivery wouldn’t be possible since developers would need to create bespoke front-end layers for every device and channel. With a RESTful API, how content should be displayed is already built into the code and isn’t dictated by a static presentation layer.

Editor interface: Like other web CMS software, a headless CMS provides an editor interface or dashboard where users can draft content, upload and manage assets, and view different project layers.

Content repository: A core component of a headless CMS is its content repository. The content repository houses all content that will be delivered through a website or application via the RESTful API, including written content, images, video, and audio files.

Content taxonomy and tagging: A headless CMS often provides a comprehensive taxonomy and tagging system for content added to the content repository. This provides structure to the content repository for ease of navigation and simplifies reusing assets.

Versioning: Headless CMS options also provide content versioning akin to versioning features in other content management systems. This feature allows content authors to keep track of changes and revert edits to content if the need arises.

User permissions: User permissions features allow administrators to designate access to specific features or permission to view and edit particular projects and content. Permissions and roles are standard features in content management systems, including headless CMSs. Every user working within a headless CMS does not need access to every project or piece of content; locking specific features or access to content is a practical solution to ensure security and prevent mistakes.

Workflows: Many headless CMS providers provide built-in agile workflows to enhance efficiency within the application. This allows teams to delegate tasks and keep track of the different stages of a project.

What are the Benefits of Headless CMS Software?

Multi-platform and omnichannel content delivery: A headless CMS allows for omnichannel content delivery, meaning that it gives companies the ability to distribute content to users through various channels and build a cohesive user experience across multiple platforms. A headless CMS streamlines operations and allows for content management to occur from a single location, making content optimization and delivery efficient.

Flexibility for developers while developing front-end layers: Using a traditional CMS structure can be extremely limiting for developers because the front-end layers are dependent on the back-end, meaning that there needs to be separate code for each type of device that the content will be displayed on. With a headless CMS, the front-end presentation layer is decoupled from the content repository, giving the user freedom to build a front-end framework that makes sense for the project. Headless CMS allows users to focus on content creation as opposed to content management, allowing for more freedom and scalability.

Who Uses Headless CMS Software?

Developers and programmers: While a headless CMS provides many benefits over a traditional CMS, it does require more technical coding knowledge. In a traditional CMS, marketers would be provided a WYSIWYG editor to draft content for publishing or a functionality of website builder software to design and publish a website. Since headless CMS removes the static front-end delivery of a WCMS, presentation layers must be built before content can be delivered. While developers and programmers have always had a hand in creating their business’s web experiences, marketers have less knowledge of what they can typically do in a headless CMS. As a result, the majority of a workforce’s time spent in a headless CMS belongs to development teams.

Marketers and content creators: While developers and programmers will likely spend the most time within a headless CMS, marketers, content creators, and content editors still leverage some features within one. In particular, written content and assets still need to be added to the CMS’s content repository. Since marketers and other content creators handle writing text-based content or designing assets, they might also be tasked with adding their new content (text, images, or videos) to a headless CMS’s content repository.

Headless CMS Use Cases

Okay, so a headless or decoupled CMS can store content and delivery anywhere via APIs, unlike a traditional CMS, which was built to send content to one or two specific types of front end. But what does that actually look like in practice?

Visit Orlando

Visit Orlando, the official tourism association for Orlando, Florida - home to Disney World and one of the most visited tourist destinations in the US - wanted to increase their engagement, conversion rate metrics and ticket sales. To achieve this goal they wanted to manage their content across various channels and personalize marketing campaigns for a targeted audience.

Visit Orlando was severely hampered by an inefficient ticket management system and process and needed to revamp their entire digital strategy and bring everything under one umbrella. Through Agility’s Headless CMS they now have a multi-site, multi-channel content management system and a new ticket sales and POS solution. Their team is now able to focus on adding new properties onto the platform, both as new website instances or as digital channels.

Learn more:
Visit Orlando Case Study

Cineplex

Cineplex, a leading name in the Film Entertainment and Content, Amusement and Leisure, and Media sectors, accommodates over 70 million guests per year on its digital platforms. The initial challenges Cineplex faced was a system that didn’t allow freedom of design and was extremely limiting in terms of performance, scalability, usability and multilingual capabilities. They needed to improve the overall customer experience across various channels and improve conversation rates.

Agility’s CMS has allowed Cineplex to increase the scalability of the site and to optimize their hosting resources. The latest iteration utilizes a new hosting environment across load-balanced servers for optimal site speed and performance. The site is now handling more traffic with less CPU load than in previous years.

Learn more:
Cineplex Case Study

Headless CMS: Go Content-first to Future-proof your Brand

Consumers are making use of more devices and channels than ever before, and brands have to meet them there to provide quality omnichannel experiences. Going headless, whether that’s through a pure headless CMS or a decoupled CMS, is the simplest way to achieve that.

By adopting a content-first approach, which seeks to make your content the focal point of your digital presence, while your many front-ends and their frameworks can be evolved and expanded, is the most logical way to ensure that your brand and its content can meet consumers wherever they end up going. Whether that’s smart speakers, digital signage, VR headsets, or something else exciting

If you are an Agility CMS user and haven’t yet reviewed the platform, take 2 minutes to do it. Your review can help other users pick the right headless CMS.

10 Frontend Trends You Need To Know About In 2021

joshua isaac — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 18:18:02 +0000

A recurring joke in the frontend community is that if you don't understand a library or framework, just wait one or two months and a new one will appear to supersede the one you don't understand.

Jokes aside, the truth is that frontend web development standards and trends change quicker than they can be implemented. This makes it challenging for developers because it's tough to separate the wheat from the chaff; the game-changing trends from the passing fads.

However, despite the overabundance of trends and technologies, it's fundamental for developers to stay up-to-date with the latest languages, frameworks, and technologies to remain relevant and competitive in the frontend field in 2021.

With that in mind, we want to start the year with what we think will be the top trends in frontend development in 2021. But first, let's start with some stats about frontend development to give you more context.

Frontend Development Statistics for 2020

Before we dive deeper into what 2021 holds for frontend developers, let's rewind and take a look at 2020, a year full of uncertainties, but at the same time excited about the rapid digitization of work.

A Third of The Frontend Developers Built A Jamstack Site

According to the survey The State of Frontend 2020, a third of the surveyed frontend developers have used Jamstack and built a website or an app with Jamstack architecture.

Gatsby Is The Most Used Static Site Generator

A look at npm Trends shows that Gatsby was, by far, the most popular static site generator in 2020.

Unsurprisingly, React Is The Most Popular JS Framework

The State of JS revealed that React is still at the top when it comes to JS frameworks, but it also shows that the user interest for this framework has dipped slightly and that Svelte was the framework that captured the minds of frontend developers in 2020.

Headless Content Management is Going Mainstream

The headless CMS software market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.6% from 2020 to 2027.

Amid the COVID-19 outbreak pandemic, several business organizations have been pushed to reduce their operations owing to lockdowns announced by governments across the world. It is adversely affecting businesses that depend on physical interaction to generate revenues. Thus, companies are now using digital channels to make conversions, interactions, and revenue creation. Therefore, the platform that handles online experiences, such as headless CMS, are becoming mission-critical applications for many companies.

Now that we showed you these stats let's dive into the trends.

10 Frontend Trends for 2021

1| Hybrid Site Architecture

In 2021, we expect to see greater Jamstack adoption. In 2020, Jamstack had been characterized as a static site-only architecture, but this puts an additional constraint on the Jamstack methodology, especially because in the frontend development world we see increased use of JavaScript, APIs, and Markup.

Therefore, it's possible that Jamstack as a way of architecting websites grows and changes to also include hybrid, or semi-static websites, giving birth to a static-first development model that prioritizes static site generation where every route is assumed to be static unless the specific requirements for that route require it to be dynamic.

2| Motion Design

Thanks to growing maturity in the Web Animations API and CSS animations, motion design can be implemented into websites and applications without loss of speed. With catchy, minimalistic animations, getting prospects to stay on your website becomes easier and provides the potential to increase the website's click-through rate.

However, motion design and animations need to be implemented as part of an overall strategy, since adding animations just for the sake of it might not cut it. The movement needs to mean something or highlight something to be valuable.

3| Alternatives To JavaScript Are Appearing

While JavaScript is the frontend behemoth, 2021 is the year where other languages will gain their moment in the sun. For instance, Blazor is a strong contender that's silently gaining popularity.

Blazor allows frontend developers to write browser-based applications using C# and transpiles that code to WebAssembly. WASM support has reached critical mass and is now supported in all modern browsers.

Besides Blazor, other languages like Python that transpile to WASM will be a big trend this year as developers are looking for alternatives to Javascript, especially ones that let them use the same language front-end and back-end as Node has done for Javascript.

4| Increased Importance of Privacy

Cookies, and privacy in general, are fundamental parts of frontend development; yet, a lot of websites don’t ask users to accept cookies. Even for websites whose visitors aren't in Europe and don't feel compelled to comply with the GDPR, the US' Consumer California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 presents a similar challenge in protecting the users' privacy.

Frontend developers need to ensure that websites include necessary cookies which indicate the information they ask of visitors so that these visitors can give consent.

Read more: How Enterprise Single Sign-On Makes your Teams More Efficient while using Headless CMS

5| Accessibility

A frontend developer needs to present visual information in such a way that it looks good and gives users cues to find what they're looking for. Since websites are more than just words, frontend developers need to conform to best practices for accessibility to both stay competitive and help fellow human beings.

In 2021, WAI-ARIA, the community standard for how accessible markup should be written, will also become increasingly important. The standard focuses on more than just design for visually impaired users — it's also designed for people with poor mobility. For example, developers need to consider things like making a button big enough so that a user can click on it if it's hard to control a mouse and similar accessibility issues.

6| Schema Markup

Schema is one of those trends that has been making waves in the SEO community for a while now, but it seems that it's still not very known for frontend developers. With Schema, frontend developers can semantically mark content to specify details about a specific piece of content or site.

Thus, when content editors post content, Schema tells the search engine what the content is about. This is the tech powering Google’s Featured Snippets and other structured data, increasing the chances of that piece of content ranking higher on the search engine of your choosing.

7| CSS-in-JS

CSS-in-JS replacing style libraries like Twitter Bootstrap is a big trend and Bootstrap will see its usage drop. For frontend developers, CSS-in-JS represents a collection of ideas created to solve friction and pain points with vanilla CSS and CSS-only style libraries, improving developer velocity and happiness.

The basic idea is when you use a frontend Javascript framework like React, Vue, or Angular, you also use Javascript to manage the stylings. It's been controversial in the developer community for a few years since it gained steam, but it just turned critical mass in 2019-2021 and will probably see greater adoption in 2021. Emotion is a popular choice and has gathered an ecosystem around it, like Theme UI.

8| Laser Focus On Lighthouse Tests

Frontend developers need to be acquainted with Google’s Lighthouse test. In case you're not, Lighthouse is Google's web page test. The test is a significant indicator for SERP ranking and tells you how fast or slow the website is. For legacy CMSs like WordPress, despite all the optimizations, the results will always be low, whereas with a website created using Jamstack and a hybrid CMS like Agility CMS, Lighthouse scores will always be high.

9| AI-Based Chatbots

AI has officially emerged as a technology With every software vendor in the market touting the many benefits of artificial intelligence, and others developing increasingly convenient chatbot options, frontend developers can use ready-made solutions and augment them with JavaScript.

Google and Facebook have already started developing and offering ready-made natural language processing and machine learning functionalities. This would make it possible to do sentiment analysis with AI chatbots, detect intent, and understand user journeys better.

10| Hybrid Content Management

The frontend development ecosystem is changing fast, and traditional CMSs lack the required tools, and therefore aren't prepared to embrace the new technologies and trends. Headless with Hybrid architecture give you a centralized hub where you can connect all the tools you need to build timely digital experiences that will delight developers, editors, users and visitors alike.

Agility CMS gives frontend developers all the tools they need to build the best UI and the architecture to integrate and implement the new trends with confidence. Plus, marketers are provided with unparalleled ease of use that makes publishing and editing content a breeze.

If you're looking for a CMS that simplifies your frontend development job, a hybrid DXP is the best bet. Forget about traditional approaches and embrace the new frontend trends that 2021 brings. To learn more about hybrid CMSs, check out this guide on how to choose the best headless CMS for 2021.

Previewing Content in Agility CMS

Joel Varty — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 14:28:34 +0000

If there’s a universal truth about building websites, it’s that you can’t trust things will look right at the first try. Even the most meticulous developer can make a mistake. Now imagine what could happen if you enter non-technical content editors into the equation. The chances of something breaking can suddenly increase.

That’s where content preview comes to the rescue, giving editors an instance where they can preview their work before it’s live. It’s the editors’ safety net; it provides them with the visibility they need to fix issues before visitors spot them.

Keep reading!

How Agility CMS Modules Work

Joel Varty — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 14:26:59 +0000

‘Module’ is one of those words that can have different meanings in the software world. In the content management system space, a module is a collection of code files that enables developers to add features to your website.

Modules allow developers to install extra capabilities to the digital experiences you create, augmenting the functionality of your installation. They also allow you to customize your deployment and give your website or app.

Modules are a fundamental part of creating a digital experience in Agility CMS. In this series of Agility Sneak Peeks, we will show some of our features and explain how you can use them.

Let’s take a closer look at how modules work and learn how developers and marketers can leverage their functionality to create memorable digital experiences.

Keep reading!