At Kooba, we love working with Craft CMS. Not only do we have an extremely experienced Backend development team who specialise in Craft CMS projects, but we also believe that Craft offers greater value to clients.
From a marketing perspective, Craft is a uniquely powerful CMS, allowing for flexible and streamlined content publishing. As somebody who has worked directly with Craft CMS solutions built by the Kooba team, I understand this as well as anyone else.
Here’s my full guide to Craft CMS, which should help explain why content teams love it so much:
The basics: What is Craft CMS?
Craft CMS is a content management system for building high-performance custom websites. When we build a website for a client, they use this CMS to edit the content and pages that users will see. Kooba specialise in building websites on Craft CMS, and have used it on award-winning projects such as SETU, IHREC, WaterWipes, and Skillnet Ireland.
Compared to more basic CMS solutions such as WordPress, Craft offers several advantages;
- It is very easy to work with and edit content within
- It is relatively affordable and provides great value for money
- It allows for more customised and bespoke content forms
- It is better suited for accessibility work, and makes your website more inclusive
- It lets you build flexible pages and content without going off-brand
I’ll explain these benefits in more detail below.
Streamlined editing and version control
Anyone who has worked in content marketing knows just how much time publishing on your website can take. Fortunately, Craft CMS makes uploading, editing, and publishing content as seamless as possible. Authors can change content as easily as within a word doc, and can add imagery, videos, or other components quickly and conveniently.
You’ll also be able to enjoy Craft CMS’s built-in version control, which allows you to roll-back changes and see who has been working on what. In general, everything works as you would hope, and you’ll be able to publish without any unexpected surprises.
Full content previews
Craft CMS also includes a comprehensive preview feature, which helps you understand how your content will translate into the visual layout of your actual website. These previews are accurate, interactive, and can be refreshed alongside your content.
If, like me, you want to be sure everything looks good before it goes live, this preview feature will save you precious time each time you go to publish. You’ll also receive previews for SEO thumbnails, so you’ll see how your content will appear in each context.
See the example below of me previewing a blog on AccessPoint’s website:
Completely customised content
One of the main benefits content teams gain from Craft CMS is access to bespoke content forms that perfectly match your exact requirements. Because Craft CMS is built for designers and developers to work with, any design priorities you identify can be integrated into the CMS itself as they build it for you.
That means you can define headings, imagery sizes and layouts in advance, and our team will ensure that your CMS will deliver those by default in your content. This keeps your website on-brand, and reduces the time that you need to spend checking the visual appearance of your content.
Creating modular pages
Normally the work of a content team is contained within re-usable content templates. These might include blogs, case studies, or other formats you regularly publish in. Sometimes, however, it can be necessary to build new pages on your website.
Craft CMS is perfectly suited to this, allowing you to combine pre-built modules to create entirely new pages and content forms. These modules will be designed in advance, meaning that your new page will match the rest of your beautiful site, all whilst allowing you to present content in a flexible manner that suits your immediate needs.
In the example below, you can see me selecting a module to add to a new page:
Perfect for large-scale website projects
When working on large website projects, your CMS is extremely important. Authors will need to manage content across hundreds of different pages, and sometimes even multiple websites across different regions and languages.
Craft CMS is a great choice for these larger projects, as it allows backend developers to optimise the author experience (AX) and define re-usable components across the website. It also contains in-built translation features, ensuring that international audiences don’t miss out on your content.
Craft CMS: A personal endorsement
There are plenty of great CMS options available on the market, but Craft remains number one for me. The control that it provides designers, developers, and (most importantly!) content writers make it an easy choice for any large website project.
If you’d like to find out more about Craft CMS, or implement it on your own site, just reach out to our development team today. They’d love to speak more with you and your team!
