Web designers and developers of today feel the effect as Adobe Business Catalyst reaches to its so called “end of life.” Several businesses and designers are wondering what to do now and it is a genuine concern. However, there is no reason to think it is the end of the world of web designing. In fact, it is the rise to a new dawn of opportunities.
You can use CMS as a viable alternative to it when you are concerned about the most favorable tool of yours going the way of the dodo. Web designers, developers and content specialists are finding it easy to make a switch over and provide the desired result to the project they are working on. Companies want to embrace new methods in the CMS industry as they go through some digital transformation. There are guides on how to choose a CMS that is best for you.
A Viable Alternative
Switching over from Business Catalyst to CMS will not be seamless but you will still have a solid replacement to go ahead with your web designing project. The reasons behind include:
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- You will have better content management
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- You can implement and incorporate better visuals
- Designing will be easy as well as productive.
It is a more designer-friendly and viable alternative when it comes to other different design and content management tools. You will be able to create a completely customized database visually. This database can be connected visually to your web design. It will transform the site into a beautiful, appealing and effective platform.
Alter and Update
A major part of web design is the content that needs to be altered and updated on a regular basis. It is for this reason that the entire site must be well-structured and designed keeping in mind the SEO factor. This will help you and your team to alter and make amendments right on the page itself. You can make the content portable via API. This will enable you to Create Once, Publish Everywhere or COPE with your content design.
Ideally, content will literally shape the design of the page around it. This is due to the fact that you will not have to force it like too many square pegs into several round holes. Other benefits of a well-structured design include:
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- You can blog with it
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- Publish well-structured events
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- Product and feature pages
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- Portfolio items and recipes
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- Case studies as well as news stories
- Bring rich content with dynamic embeds feature.
Therefore, you can publish almost everything.
Pull Contents Dynamically
In modern web designs there is no place for static contents. With the addition of audio and video to your design contents into your site nothing will be static anymore. The use of CMS technique and tool will make adding rich and new contents as simple as pasting any link to it.
Without even having to care for the front-end or back-end code the dynamic embeds of CMS you will be able to provide painless content migration feature to your site adding to its dynamic effect. Whether it is a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) product or anything in between it and a home grown product, if you stick to the principles you will enjoy the benefits of content portability and modularity.
Do So Much with So Little
These trendy philosophies of modern web design are very closely related to different sub-philosophies that include:
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- Separate display from content
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- Build content management systems instead of web publishing tools
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- Ensure content modularity, functionality and portability
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- Provide direct impact on API and
- Ensure better distribution strategies as well.
If you create an API in addition to a COPE-less system it will surely distribute the content but there is no guarantee that it will live on any platform. Therefore, all other philosophies must be considered during designing to make the site and content truly portable just like Tayloright. Once you upload the content, you will be able to match the columns in your CSV to the fields, omit any data you do not need anymore, and even incorporate new fields if necessary to your collection.
Additional Help Received
Use and better management of CMS will get rid of the clunky dashboard of Business Catalyst. You will be able to edit on live web pages. This means that you and your clients get exactly what you see. It is more productive and will empower your marketing engine. With the help of CMS, you can:
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- Use the collection fields to fill in SEO descriptions and titles dynamically
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- Create adaptable landing page templates
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- Enable to launch new pages by your marketing team right when they need
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- Set up 301 redirect easily from your old site so that you can keep the link juice unbroken
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- You can add a metadata quickly along with HTML5 semantic tags
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- Make your site easy to crawl and enjoy fast loading times to have better SEO
- Add social sharing buttons quickly and update contents directly on the page without having to wait for design help.
In short, you will have the most responsive web design that will ensure that your site is mobile friendly as well as mobile optimized.
Host Site World Class
CMS will enable you in world class hosting of your site without requiring a hosting provider as it is powered by exceptional hosting service. This will ensure that your site will load really fast which is a prime important feature of a good web design.
You can keep the data safe with the SSL certificate often offered free and you will not see the alarming cautionary screens in Chrome.
The Future of CMS
The future of CMS seems to be very bright and is here to stay far beyond 2018. Apart from the already existing useful features incorporated in it there are a few that are in the research and development stage and are surely and firmly on the road map to be included. Some of these features are native e-commerce, digital downloads, user logins, Customer Relationship Management and so much more.
It is the code free power that the CMS provides that you will surely love to use and implement in your web design to make it compete with any modern website successfully.
Author Bio: Randy Stark is a web developer working with a consultancy firm. He has worked on several relevant projects in the past and also writes for a blog where he talks about technology and great stores and services like Tayloright. He has an impressive fan base.