In this tutorial, you will get an introduction to Episerver CMS. Clients or other developers will often ask me questions like:
Why should I use Episerver CMS?
Why isn’t my current website good enough?
Why should I switch to Episerver?
What is Episerver CMS?
If you have recently asked a similar question, this guide was written for you. In today's article, you will find several reasons why you should use Episerver CMS, who is using Episerver CMS and why you should consider using it. Sound fun? Read on ❤️
What is Episerver?
Episerver is an online, commercial website creation tool written using the Microsoft technology stack, ASP.NET. In non-geek speak, Episerver is one of the largest enterprise-level content management systems (CMS) in existence today. If you have never come across the term content management system (shortened to CMS) before, let me explain the role it plays. A CMS is a bit of software that allows non-technical people to create, edit, organise and publish content to your website without any development.
Organisations usually opt to build their websites powered by a CMS so non-technical people, like the marketing or HR department, can write website content without the need and pain to go through the IT department. In simple terms, Episerver is a CMS platform that can allow you to create and publish content on your website. It's a bit like using Microsoft Word online.
Who uses Episerver?
Due to Episerver's robust features, you’re in good company if you decide to use Episerver to publish on the web. Many of the world's top brands use Episerver to power their websites. As of writing companies include Gatwick Airport, Prezzo, Marie Curie, Legoland, Pizza Hut Restaurants, TalkTalk, Virgin, Reebok, Renault, and AXA. As you can see, you are in good company!
Why Pick Episerver?
Let’s take a look at why you should use Episerver:
Episerver is easy to use for content editors and has an easy interface for developers to interact with it. After your website has been built, you don’t need to be an internet expert or a developer to create flexible web pages using Episerver.
Episerver provides the tools for a company to succeed online. Episerver not only provides a CMS solution for your website but also provide extra modules that can be integrated easily to add quick enhancements to your website. These modules include forms, e-commerce, marketing automation, Social media capabilities, and analytics. More information about this is here.
Commercial Support. With Episerver you get great 24/7 support. As you have a commercial support agreement, if your website goes down you know you will have access to a guaranteed SLA support team that you can rely on to help your site back up and running
Episerver is a secure platform. Since Episerver is not open source it is harder for people to try and hack it. Episerver takes the security of its users very seriously. Episerver releases updates to the CMS every fortnight. These updates will contain fixes and patches that will ensure your website is as safe as it can be. No other CMS out there makes releases this frequently.
The Episerver community. Episerver has a great community of users who are happy to help with any issue you might have. Post a question on the Episerver forum and you will generally get an answer within an hour. With so many clients, it’s only natural that a great, active, and generous community has sprung up to help support and exchange ideas.
Episerver is mature. Episerver is over ten years old. Throughout this time, Episerver has been refined, tested, and enhanced to work with the latest web standards. In the process, it has evolved into a world-class web publishing system highly recommended in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CMS solutions.
Mobile friendly. Every modern website needs to be mobile-friendly. A large portion of web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. With Episerver, however, you don’t have to be concerned over that as it's been built with responsive websites in mind
How do I get started using Episerver?
Now you’re probably wondering, how can I try this platform out? Episerver provides free access to the CMS for evaluation purposes. You can download Episerver in a number of ways, however, you will need a developer to install it as it requires some .NET technical knowledge. If you are comfortable working with Visual Studio, I recommend that you read this guide, How To Install EPiServer 7.5 Using the New Visual Studio Extension.
If you are non-technical then you can contact Episerver direct from here. So, what are you waiting for? Go get Episerver today to start creating your awesome website. Happy Coding 🤘
