Pimcore CMS: How to use its winning set of features?

Pimcore CMS is a powerful platform with a lot to offer, but what are its key features?

Today, we’ll talk about the best features that Pimcore CMS brings to the table.

Firstly, saying it’s a CMS may even be a wrongful statement, as it progressed far beyond the definition of a CMS. Stay with us and learn more about the best features of Pimcore CMS/DXP!

So, let’s dive in and find out more!

All the way from CMS to DXP — the course of evolution

To truly appreciate the extent of the power demonstrated by Pimcore’s DXP, we’ll need to go back a few years.

In the early 2000s, the monolithic CMS’ were introduced. This was a technological breakthrough. It was in this period that CMS platforms such as Drupal and Wordpress became popular. Back then, these platforms were capable of handling text, images, other file formats, and even downloadable content.

Just a few years later, we had another technological revolution — but this time it was focused on mobile technology. This is the period when we all got acquainted with smartphones, smart tablets, and even wearable devices. The sheer volume of content delivered to mobile devices was reaching its peak levels. In 2014, it happened for the first time that mobile internet use exceeded desktop internet use in the US.

And finally, we witnessed another technological breakthrough in content management — for the first time ever we got introduced to DXP — digital experience platforms. They expand on the definition of a CMS and go to great lengths to enable users to build and deliver integrated and optimized experiences across all touchpoints to all audiences.

Notice the switch from delivering content to delivering experiences!

This was the turning point in the whole content management space. The reign of headless CMS has begun and Pimcore is one of the leaders in this technological revolution.

Now, let’s see how do traditional CMS differ from the modern headless CMS platforms.

Monolithic CMS vs. Headless CMS

When we talk about content management systems, we tend to overuse the CMS abbreviation. Honestly speaking, CMS isn’t that relevant anymore. Today, businesses have much more complex requirements, rather than only managing content on a website. This is where monolithic CMS falls short.

Instead of simple web content management requirements, future-proof solutions such as Pimcore DXP provide businesses with an array of functionalities, such as order management, marketing campaign management, real-time analytics, and much more.

The biggest difference between a CMS and a DXP is that DXPs, such as Pimcore, always include a CMS. To be more accurate, CMS is only 1 out of 6 modules Pimcore has to offer.

A quick note here! If you’d like to learn more about different modules of Pimcore, check out our articles on digital asset management, customer data platform, product information management, and Pimcore’s eCommerce framework!

When implemented, other modules work in harmony with each other, providing businesses with real DXP benefits.

Another difference between CMS and DXP is the purpose of the system itself. For example, the purpose of a CMS, such as Wordpress, is to manage content and deliver it to various output channels. On the other hand, the purpose of a DXP, such as Pimcore, is to manage the full business lifecycle, provide businesses with in-depth analytics, provide detailed reports, assist in creating marketing campaigns, organizing finances, managing customer relationships, and much more.

After reviewing all of the similarities and differences between CMS and DXP, a clear conclusion arises. DXP represents the next generation of content management. It offers much more and its purpose is more aligned with business goals and requirements than that of its predecessors.

We can even compare these two systems with standard “old school” mobile phones and today’s smartphones. Their core purpose is to enable communication between phone users, but today’s smartphones expand on that greatly. They offer incredible amounts of content in various formats and for various purposes.

Clearly, we can agree that smartphones are the next generation of mobile phones. The same happened to CMS! They got outdated.

Additionally, if you’d like to take a look at our detailed comparison of Wordpress CMS alternatives, be sure to check it out and weigh in all of the factors.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the best features of Pimcore CMS/DXP and see how they fare in today’s digital world.

Why is the headless CMS superior when compared to a monolithic CMS?

Before delving deeper into some of the best features of Pimcore’s CMS module, we need to first make it clear that Pimcore’s CMS functions as a headless CMS. It’s a huge plus, but, what’s a headless CMS?

So, a headless CMS is a CMS without the head (obviously), where the head represents the frontend. To make it more clear, let’s visualize it!

Here, you can see that a CMS consists of 4 crucial parts:

• Database for the content
• Admin interface that lets us edit and manage the content
• Integration of reading and writing
• The frontend that combines HTML and data from the database

If we want to convert this traditional CMS into a headless CMS, we need to remove the 4th part out of the equation. The actual website, the head of the CMS, needs to be removed. By doing that, we’ve turned this CMS into a headless one.

Now, a website can’t be built using only a headless CMS. As we removed the actual website from its stack, it’s required that we build a website or use content delivery API to load the content.

At first, this may seem like a step back rather than forward, but by separating the CMS from the website developers can choose any technology they’re familiar with and build the website, without learning the technology for that specific CMS.

By doing this, developers won’t need to handle the bugs of an already existing technology stack, and they can more easily optimize the new website and achieve better performance and Google PageSpeed scores.

Without having a “head”, we’ve achieved a higher level of agility, and we can deliver content through APIs to any kind of output channel — kiosk, IoT devices, social platforms, online marketplaces, native apps, and so on.

By removing the head, we’ve “freed up space” for CMS to connect to a higher number of output channels, all by using APIs. The whole point of removing the head from the CMS was to not limit ourselves to websites and have more freedom regarding content distribution.

Now when you have a firm understanding of a headless CMS, let’s outline some of the best features of Pimcore’s CMS/DXP and see how they fare.

WYSIWYG and high usability

In essence, Pimcore is designed to be easy-to-use for all technical and non-technical users. Powered by context-sensitive navigation, a variety of WYSIWYG components, and drag-and-drop functionality, it enables users to manage content in an intuitive manner.

As seen in the image above, we can edit any part of the webpage by simply typing in the text, or drag-and-dropping a data object, or an asset. If we aren’t completely sure which parts we can edit without any ‘technical’ intervention, by clicking on the yellow lightbulb in the upper left corner, Pimcore will display all of the parts we can freely edit and add any type of content we want.

Assembling a landing page in Pimcore is easy and its WYSIWYG makes it a lot easier than it is the case with monolithic CMS.

Multi-language support

Pimcore CMS offers editors strong multi-language support, meaning that they can create new content in any supported language while working in their native language. Pimcore’s technology partners Translations.com and Across Systems extend the reach of Pimcore’s multilanguage support and enable editors to manage global enterprise content with minimal effort.

When editing a webpage, we can instantly open a translated version of the same page. The number of languages depends solely on the editor.

Also, when adding products, you’ll immediately see that you can add content for several languages simultaneously. You can check the completion and the quality of your input data under the “Data Quality” tab anytime. All in all, Pimcore ships with neat multilingual support that makes it easy for editors to manage content for global enterprises.

For the rest of the information on the best features of Pimcore CMS, click on the link!