You will find a lot of people are focusing on technologies and platforms that are ever advancing. Content Management System's are no different, people are looking API-first CMS's (or Content-as-a-Service) and decoupled solutions and microservices to deliver multi channel solutions. Kentico Cloud is a one of the many CaaS providers out there and I really like their feature set and the services they provide.
Kentico Cloud, what is it?
I tend to write a lot of blog posts, majority of them are on the company website posts and would be covering the Kentico EMS product. Kentico Cloud is different and focuses more on the headless CMS route.
Kentico Cloud is an API-first CMS and works as a content hub, allowing you to create pure content without dependency on a specific channel or medium. This approach enables you to take a pure omni-channel view, creating content that can be served from this central hub to any channel – whether that be your website, a Progressive Web App, smart watch or home assistant. The possibilities are endless.
It's really good for Content Strategists and Developers to have a content hub where they can manage pieces of content to be served to the different channels.
Here are some areas to look into when looking to adopt Kentico Cloud.
Kentico Cloud subscription
If you want to get familiar with Kentico Cloud, try looking at the different plans they offer. First thing to do is to get started with the Starter plan. This will allow you to have a play around and experiment with the CMS.
As you start to use the system more and depending if this is a personal site or a site for the client, you may need to reach out to the Kentico Cloud team to see what other plans you may require.
Getting started
Kentico Cloud provide you with lots of guides, helpful tutorials and videos to start using it.
- A great place to start is with the onboarding information - http://help.kenticocloud.com/get-started-with-kentico-cloud.
- Context is always great so I would recommend following this tutorial on producing some sample content in 5 minutes using a step by step guide - Hello world in 5 minutes.
- Every product has its own lingo so it’s important that you get to grips with the Kentico Cloud terminology.
- Interactive guides are always useful and Kentico Cloud provide it within the app, e.g. https://app.kenticocloud.com/?imWidget=1 - Have a look at this Kentico Cloud Interactive Guide example.
Digging deep into the API's
You need to think how you will be using Kentico Cloud and how the data entered in the CMS would respresent onto the channels you wish to serve the content.
Have a look through the different API's that are available on Kentico Cloud.
Modelling your content
Modelling your content is really important these days. If not done well it can cause lots of issues and also create scenarios where the content hub becomes a minefield. Therefore resulting in content not served in channels corrected and confusing for the content editing teams.
It's important to plan the content models out and thinking of the channels they need to target. Focusing on this will establish a easy to use and manage content hub within Kentico Cloud.
Thinking about architecture
Depending on the size and scale of your project, there are likely to be lots of things to consider as well as Kentico Cloud.
It’s worth looking into the SDKs (Standard Development Kits) that Kentico Cloud provides to get building in the programming discipline you like building with best. If it's not in the list, then contact Kentico Cloud to help with a discipline you want to use.
Join the community
The Kentico Cloud community is a growing community for you to get to know likeminded individuals who are looking to start on Kentico Cloud. The developer community is expanding lots and lots and allows people to contribute to open source elements. Contributing to the community is important and highly recommended.
Conclusion
This is a general quick introduction on getting started with Kentico Cloud. If you like to read a more detailed version, then you can go to the the blog post I've written on the MMT Digital website. Hopefully it will help you on the moving over to Kentico Cloud and in your challenges of exploring a CaaS to help deliver to omnichannel devices.