What do you think is the most important part of your digital presence? Your message. So the main asset of your apps and websites is content. Knowing this, you want to efficiently create, manage and distribute content for your mobile apps, web apps, e-commerce store and website. You probably want your marketing team, content creators and developers to work seamlessly together without getting in each other’s way.
Sounds like a tall order, doesn’t it? And you’re right, if you’re just looking at traditional CMSs (content management systems). The traditional CMS is a monolithic system that’s an all-in-one. It allows you to create, edit and manage the content on your website. As the term all-in-one suggests, it doesn’t separate the content management part (the backend) from the display part (the frontend). Popular traditional CMSs include Drupal, Joomla and WordPress.
Traditional CMSs are great options because they’re easy to use and often come with a user-friendly interface so you don’t need access to technical resources. If you only have 1 website, they are nice and efficient.
Which begs the question: What if you have multiple websites, plus apps and maybe even an online store? Then it’s time to consider a headless CMS.
A headless CMS separates the content management backend from the frontend display. This gives you the freedom to manage your content while your developers can build all the content into a native app or corporate website. It’s just the backend that manages your content, and your developers can pull and display the content however they need to via APIs.
Prismic comes with a tool for marketers and content creators to create and manage content and a set of APIs for developers to pull and deliver it into apps or websites.
Pros and cons of Prismic
As a headless CMS, Prismic provides a set of APIs for delivery and a user interface for content creation and management. This allows you to use your content across multiple channels such as your applications and website.
It’s a cloud-based CMS, so you don’t need to host, install or maintain the application. All you need is an internet connection and a browser.
Pros
- Free forever plan
- Quite accessible and only a minimal learning curve
- Easy to collaborate with colleagues
- Comprehensive and easy to understand documentation
- Multilingual content support
Cons
- You need time and developers to set up and maintain everything
- You need to use one of its recommended frameworks, especially if you want to use its developer tool Slice Machine
- Import and export only with a paid account
Who is Prismic for?
If you want a simple tool to create and manage your content so that it can be delivered to any application, website or online store, Prismic is a practical tool. If you fit one of the following scenarios, then take a look at Prismic:
- You are a developer or an agency and want a CMS that is easy for your client to use and maintain after the project is finished.
- You want a flexible API that allows you to retrieve and display content in different ways on different platforms.
- You need multilingual support
- You want to create and display content with rich media, text and custom fields
- You want to be able to reuse content snippets across multiple pages for consistent branding
- You want to collaborate in teams and value features such as versioning, history tracking and role-based access control.
That said, as long as you or your developers know and write everything in Javascript, Prismic is useful.
How easy is it to use Prismic?
If you’re still with me after reading that you or your developers need to write everything in Javascript, go ahead, but know that you’ll need to set aside time for planning and content modelling.
If words like API, Javascript, locales and the like scare you, don’t worry. Once set up (by the administrator or developer), Prismic will help speed up your content creation process.
Whether you’re tech-savvy or not, you can experience Prismic without creating an account. You can easily create and edit your pages. A page is made up of sections, and the cool thing is that you can reuse them on different pages.
If you decide to create an account, the first thing you need to do is choose your preferred framework. After entering the name for your repository, Prismic will take you through a four-step onboarding guide.
Content creator and editor
Notable features
Collaboration
Prismic makes collaboration easy. For one, you can use roles to control who can access what in the content management system.
As you collaborate, you may want to see the history and version of the content. Prismic comes with versioning and history so you can track changes and roll back to previous versions. You can also schedule and automatically publish your content.
Image optimisation
You don’t need to take an extra step to optimise and compress your images. Prismic does this on the fly when you upload images. Optimised images speed up loading times, which is one of the elements of SEO.
Prismic developer support
If you can do without Prismic’s Slice Machine – the tool that lets you reuse website sections – Prismic offers SDKS so you can use the tech stack you prefer.
Prismic support
Even though Prismic is proprietary software, there’s an official forum where you can ask questions. Prismic also has extensive documentation and a searchable help centre. Unfortunately, access to the support portal is only available with a paid account (Medium plans or higher).
Prismic pricing
With so many different plans to choose from, Prismic isn’t just for businesses. It’s also attractive to bootstrap startups and smaller teams. Prismic bases its plans on the features set. So, if you need more features, you need to upgrade.
Is Prismic the right tool for you?
Prismic is a tool for you if you need to have consistent content across your different platforms, such as native apps or a website. It’s easy to set up and comes with handy features such as versioning, which allows you to track changes.
But if you need something more flexible and versatile, take a look at Sanity.
If you don’t have an IT department, Prismic isn’t for you either, as it doesn’t have an out-of-the-box front-end.
In summary, it’s not for you if you are
- You are not tech-savvy or have access to technical expertise
- Your site is simple and doesn’t require frequent updates
- Have a limited budget
- Want to build and launch quickly
If that’s the case, look at something like Cargo or Ukit.
If you liked this review, please feel free to share it. This will help others who want to know more about headless CMS to find us.
Original post here: Prismic Review
No comments:
Post a Comment