Selecting the right content management system (CMS) is not an easy task. No matter if you’re a web designer, a marketing professional or a front-end developer, it’s something you’ll have a hard time with.

There are plenty of amazing options around, with each having its pros and cons. And, of course, who can dare to not consider everyone’s favorite ‘the mighty’ WordPress while choosing the CMS for their website.

While WordPress might be the go-to solution for many, there are some other CMSs as well that are worth giving a shot. Top of the list is Craft – an economical, modern, open-source content management system with exceptional security and first-party support.

Here’s a detailed developer’s perspective on why Craft can be a suitable option for many web projects.

Never-Before-Seen Content Editing Experience

The content editing experience offered by Craft is practically one of its kind. Craft strives to make things simple and easy for the user. Here are some of its features that are worth mentioning.

• Craft is crazily fast. No matter if you’re dealing with its control panel or working on its front end, Craft will top almost all older CMSs in terms of speed.
• Craft has one of the best UIs. You can easily learn its control panel without any training.
• Content managers can easily preview custom page layout building and updates in real–time by Craft’s Live Preview feature. It is understandably something that sets it apart from other CMSs.
• You can easily publish workflows across various individuals and departments, thanks to Craft’s fine-grained group management and user permissions. And guess what, you don’t even require a plugin to do all this.
• Each and everything can be accessed in just one place. This feature helps editors to quickly find what they were looking for and is one of the reasons they love this CMS.

Unparalleled Out-Of-The-Box Features, Without Plugins

Craft offers scores of features that aren’t available with many other CMSs without plugins. These out-of-the-box features are readily available to users soon after installation and are extremely useful not only for web designers but also for developers.

While there are plenty of such features, here’s an incomplete list for you as a tip of the iceberg.

• • Freedom to build any kind of page layout. Editors can build sections of one-off pages by adding any kind of content blocks while ensuring consistency with their branding and custom design.
  • Multilingual and multi-site capabilities. You can also use any of their combinations. This amazing feature enables you to manage your brand websites under one roof and localize them as per your need.
  • Full control over your design and content with robust custom fields.
  • The Live Preview feature allows real-time editing (Though few CMSs implement it but not as beautifully as Craft).
  • Updating is just a single click away, just like in WordPress. You just have to click a button to update Craft core and plugins.
  • Full control over HTML/JS/CSS by PHP templating language ‘Twig.’ It allows front end developers to bring their own markup instead of using built-in or pre-designed themes.

• • An incredibly easy-to-use image editor that allows you to resize, re-crop, and rotate an image among other controls. You can even have automated image crops and transformations by setting an image focal point.

A Huge Store With Tons Of Amazing Plugins

As if Craft isn’t amazing enough with its out-of-the-box features, you can make it even more amazing by using its plugins or add-ons. Craft has a store containing hundreds of plugins, most of which are developed by globally leading developer agencies. Pixel and Tonic, the firm behind Craft, has also developed dozens of first-party plugins.

While all these plugins are exceptional in quality and features, what makes them even better is how you can acquire them. You can manage their payment/ licensing by Craft ID – the same spot you go to manage Craft license. It means, you no longer have to worry about renewals and expirations from an assortment of vendors. And you can just forget about third-party systems.

The plugins available in the Craft store are truly splendid. Some of them, such as the ones mentioned below, are popular with everyone.

• Super Table for matrix-in-matrix inception on your website
• Freeform Pro for web form building and form management
• Feed Me Pro for content migration and feed
• SEOmatic for SEO implementation

First-Party Help & Community Support

Another huge benefit you get with Craft CMS is the first-party support that you get from Pixel and Tonic. As soon as you get your license, you can have any issued resolved by turning to the support team using your control panel.

You can also rely on community support from Craft’s Stack Exchange forum or the company’s Slack, both of which have thousands of active users. The Craft community isn’t only helpful but also very kind and welcoming.

A Modern Solution For Modern Times

Craft is relatively modern as compared to other major content management systems. It uses the latest PHP development and is built on the Yii framework. Since it was developed at a time when web CMSs got established for good, Craft is free of all issues that usually plague the older content management systems.

Craft doesn’t face the issue of backwards compatibility for millions of websites. The modern technologies used in its development make it extremely secure, amazingly flexible, highly customizable, and ridiculously fast.

To give you a perspective about the age difference in leading CMSs: Craft was launched in 2012, WordPress in 2003, and Drupal in 2000. Craft’s young age makes it attractive to countless organizations and that’s exactly why brands like Netflix, Salesforce, Duck Brand Duck Tape, PBS, and Moz have been running Craft sites.

The Final Word

To summarize what has been said above, Craft is a modern, secure, and affordable content management system. Its flexible and unparalleled out-of-the-box features make it the go-to CMS for countless developers.

If you want to learn more about Craft CMS, feel free to contact us.

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