MagiClick has been delivering digital experiences on the Sitefinity CMS (and now DXP) platform since 2013 and last month we were one of a number of select partners invited to attend their Sitefinity Partner Summit in Sofia, Bulgaria. In this post we summarise some of the key news and takeaways from the two-day event.
Sitefinity Version 15
The latest version of Sitefinity, version 15, has just launched and represents the next step in the modernisation of the platform, as well as delivering new features for content creators, digital marketers and developers.
Content creators now have access to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionality from directly within the Sitefinity the content editor interface for text composition, summarisation and content personalisation.
It’s still early days in the commercial adoption of generative AI for website content creation, and there was some discussion amongst the audience around some of the nuances of copywrite, audit trails and SEO for content generated by it, however it’s great to see Sitefinity embracing the new opportunities the technology undoubtedly affords.
Digital marketeers benefit from a redesign main dashboard (which is enabled by default after upgrading) with new widgets that are designed to provide a sleeker, faster experience. The default new experience includes Recent Content, Most Visited Pages and Pages with No SEO description however this can be customised by the user using the new page editor directly on the Dashboard.
A new Sitefinity Integration Layer will enable easy connectivity to 1000s of connectors to third party systems and applications, including CRMs, eCommerce, data lakes, etc. The new interface enables website administrators to create custom data connectivity and workflow automation scenarios using a low-code/no-code visual designer.
There were are also a number of other general improcements including:
- A number of new .NET Core widget and functionality including A/B testing and Document Lists
- Default security headers configuration in .NET Core Renderer
- Option to exclude the Script manager for certain pages
- Files uploaded when submitting a form, are now accessible for consumption outside Sitefinity CMS.
- Automatic tracking of embedded Vimeo videos in Sitefinity Insight
Sitefinity SaaS
Sitefinity have been on a journey towards a fully SaaS product offering for a number of years, starting with the launch of Sitefinity Cloud a number of years ago. Since then, they have been busy evolving the underlying platform in the direction of a decoupled architecture, service hooks and content synchronisation for content editors.
At the event they shared their intention for the journey towards a fully SaaS Sitefinity product to accelerate, building on the foundations of Sitefinity Cloud which have been rolled out in recent years. This will feature cloud-first infrastructure (SaaS services and PaaS front-end app) with a fully composable architecture and decoupled extensibility.
Again, it was great to see the vision and investment which Progress are making into the platform and this aligns with some wider trends we’re seeing in the market. However, it was emphasised by partners that an “on-premises” version of the product will still be required for those companies in sectors (and regions) that forbid usage of cloud in some instances for regulatory reasons, and to give the flexibility for clients whose preference is to host within their own infrastructure (be that “on prem” or within their own instances of cloud infrastructure).
Sitefinity NEXT Gen
Looking beyond Sitefinity 15 towards the future roadmap for the product, they announced that a next-generation Sitefinity platform is in the works which will remove the technical debt in the platform and set the platform up on the latest tech stack for the years ahead.
They shared their vision to deliver the Sitefinity "you know and love, improved and polished, on a modern backend stack, working with the decoupled frontend renderer." In practice this means a product which is fully built on .NET Core, Entity Framework and Angular (for the back end). They are also using this opportunity to reinvent existing functionality based on feedback and best practices.
It was great to hear this and get a sneak peak of the features and approach. Sitefinity, like all of the .NET CMS platforms in the market, are on a technology journey away from some of the legacy core technologies (such as .NET Framework, DataAccess, WebForms, Windows Workflow Foundation) that underpin some parts of the platform.
There were some lively (but fruitful) discussions on the approach and strategy for the transition to the new architecture in the coming years, which naturally will come with its own challenges and opportunities. One of the things the MagiClick team appreciate most about partnering with Progress, and Sitefinity in particular, is the open dialog with the teams building the product and opportunity for partners to input to the roadmap, and these discussions were a great example of this.
Headless
We’re seeing a continued increase in the adoption of fully headless CMS architecture, so it was useful to get a deep dive into their vision for leveraging the benefits of the Sitefinity platform (including the WYSIWYG editor experience with full editor control over the presentation) in a fully headless setup.
The latest version of Sitefinity features a decoupled architecture which separates content management from page and template editing. The APIs that push content to the platform’s native presentation layer can also feed other frontend consumers, regardless of the technology they’re built on. To demonstrate the flexibility of this approach, on the second day Martin Gebov demonstrated how to utilise React as the front-end renderer, using the Sitefinity Layout API services to render the layout and widget content.
The new decoupled architecture gives agencies like us the power to effectively take the parts of the platform which we want so use and leverage other technologies and frameworks (for example, for rendering) where that is a better fit for our client’s needs.
Overall, we found the event to be a really insightful couple of days and it was reassuring to see the level of investment Progress are making into the future of the Sitefinity platform.
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