Wednesday, 26 July 2017

Enabling Website Management with CMS like Sitefinity

When rebuilding or redesigning your website, it is easy to get caught up with the visual aspect of the site and forget the governance aspect. The design is not just how it looks like and feels like but how it works. This is where the Content Management System (CMS) comes in. The CMS functions at the core of your website and helps you govern and manage your web content – everything from basic edits, media uploads to creating new web pages or menu. The importance of selecting the right CMS can’t be stressed enough, therefore. Sitefinity is among the more popular CMSs around with clients like BBC, Gatorade, Mercedes Benz etc. Let’s take a look at some of its core features that have made it a favorite among website managers, marketing teams and IT:

Ease of Content Management:
Sitefinity allows ASP.NET specialists to manage content easily with some stellar features for layout configuration:

  • Within the code in the grid system templates and layouts
  • At page template level
  • At actual page level

Create Placeholders Within The Grid System:
Content sections like the header and footer that are global elements must ideally be placed within the grid template. Using the grid system templates, web developers easily manage the layout and HTML required to provide users with the end pages and are also able to create the “divs” for each section of the web page. Whenever the webmaster or content manager needs these global elements, he/she can drag the template and drop the required widget.

Planned Page Templates:
With Sitefinity CMS, you can create layout templates either by using Sitefinity CMS Layout editor or by using master pages.
You manage templates on Templates page. Before content population, create the layout that sets the display for content. Using predefined or custom templates you can set the space allocation and display for navigation, title, and content blocks. You can modify and personalize these templates as required.
Sitefinity CMS enables you to set page template through the Pages API. You set the template in the PageData object. You must get the temp draft before setting the template.

Page Level Content Blocks:
Create content blocks to display generic information – which is all the information that doesn’t fall into a predefined content type like news or announcements. A content block is useful for creating text that can be used for several pages of your website – for instance, company address.

There are many other features that make Sitefinity a robust and SEO friendly CMS:

  1. Supports your mobile strategy: Sitefinity helps in creating mobile optimized websites quite easily. The flexibility allows you build apps, or design a responsive website, depending on your requirement.
  2. Inbuilt email campaigns: Sitefinity has excellent drag and drop email designer that is a boon for digital marketers. Create custom email campaigns as per your marketing calendar and send the emails directly via the CMS. The built-in tracking tools allow you to measure the success of your campaign.
  3. Social-media friendly: The CMS has social media integration and makes it easy for the users to communicate on their preferred channels. The timely updates and communication allow users to stay close to their target audience.
  4. CMS Migration: It is very easy to import data from other content management systems like WordPress or Joomla to Sitefinity. 
Finally
The CMS is SEO friendly and has integrated Google Analytics into the platform. It is also flexible and scalable so it will support your enterprise website no matter how large your business grows in the future. What other features should a modern CMS support? Please share your comments in the section below.