Sitefinity version 9 and its measured evolution

My role here at Quba is that of a Platform specialist. I will use my sleuth skills and inquisitive tenacity to unravel the world of CMS. Today my radar is set on Sitefinity version 9; the dust has settled since it’s introduction in March 2016 and here is my report card on its progress.

So what’s changed in Sitefinity - The features

New Backend Theme (in Beta)

A theme named “Light” comes with a new fresh clean and attractive design. The aim is to remove any unnecessary clutter and improve the editing experience. Below is an example of the new user interface theme.

Multilingual Support for Digital Assets

Having the option to upload multilingual versions of Sitefinity files with powerful control on how they appear on the localised sites. Quite a few of our existing clients who have international sites and have translated localised content are very happy with this feature.

This new functionality is available for:

• Images
• Documents & Files
• Videos

Multi-Page Forms

Content editors can now split large complex online forms into several subpages. This will then improve the user experience which should reduce the form drop out rate. A really good functional improvement has been made here.

SEO Improvements

An option has been added to exclude Content Types from the sitemap generation.

MVC and Front-end Framework Feather - Performance and usability improvements

Developers can pre-compile the templates used by their widgets. This then allows the best possible performance immediately after the website is deployed. This release is one for the developers, while our existing clients or future Sitefinity clients may not get excited by this feature, it’s one which keeps Sitefinity up to date and ahead of some competitors.

Evaluation

While we have just highlighted some key high-level changes, there have been some improvements and bug fixes to improve the stability of the product. I often refer to these changes as ‘under-the-hood’. Sometimes, it can be underestimated and a marketer's nightmare that the updates are behind-the-scenes improvements and fixes rather than a shiny new feature. One thing is for certain, if a platform doesn’t keep on improving the performance, scalability and reliability of the product, the existing clients are not going to be happy.

From our previous blog post on Sitefinity we stated what we wanted to see some changes made to the CMS user interface, and they have certainly taking the steps to addressing these.

It is great to see the product making improvements, and demonstrates Progress’ commitment to listen to partner feedback. As a Sitefinity Elite partner it’s a big tick and an ‘A’ grade from us.

What next for Sitefinity?

We expect Sitefinity to keep on the making improvements and making more changes to make the platform more MVC friendly. Developers want to have the option and flexibility to use this coding framework if the situation is correct.

From a high-level, expect to see more features and maturity for existing integrations to business systems. Our clients want to continue to use and improve how the CMS integrates with adjacent systems such as;

CRM | Digital Asset Management (DAM) | Marketing Automation | Cloud-Based Services | Web Analytics tools.

No doubt Sitefinity will keep on evolving the product and will continue to listen to the user community using the product along with digital partners.

Upgrade or not? These are the questions we love to answer and offer a pragmatic approach to produce smart decisions.

We can help with the following:

• Review the current Sitefinity installation and code
• Help proposition the business case to upgrade if required
• Physically perform the upgrade and execute delivery
• Keep supporting the Sitefinity platform on a longer term basis

Call: 0114 279 7779 or Email: hello@quba.co.uk to speak to a Quban