How to jump start your Sitefinity experience

Progress Sitefinity is a content management and marketing analytics platform designed to create a great customer experience. Many businesses see Sitefinity DXP as a natural next step up from an open-source solution like Wordpress, to ensure their digital presence is scalable and secure.

Today we are talking to one of our Project Managers, Hilary, to learn more about how easy it is to learn the Sitefinity content management system and what her favourite features of the CMS are.

How easy is it to learn Sitefinity as a PM?

Overall, I found it quite easy to learn Sitefinity. I was the Project Manager for a client who was using Sitefinity, so I needed to familiarize myself with the CMS quickly. I can really say I learned it by doing.

First, I got access to a preprod site (it was too risky to access the live website!) and I played around with the UI. I then created a new page to see how to add custom features. Having previous experience with other CMS’ like WordPress and Kentico I found Sitefinity seamless and easy to get the hang of! I really like the Sitefinity interface and found it easy to navigate around the backend. The navigation on how to add elements, such as images, or how to add a dynamic banner was very logical.

What was helpful for you in learning how to use the technology?

For me, I found it very helpful to take my time to create and get used to Sitefinity, it took me a while to become comfortable using Sitefinity but initially I blocked two hours into my calendar and went looked at how to upload images, change people’s user access and how to create spotlights on my own test content page. I also looked at the Sitefinity tutorials to get an understanding of the various user roles.

I also looked at training manuals for other Arekibo clients who use Sitefinity, the training manuals really helped me to learn how to do the basics of Sitefinity and how the standard content page structure differs from a product overview page. Adding images and videos is slightly different so the training manuals were helpful to learn how to add images to spotlights.

Lastly, when I had any questions relating to Sitefinity I asked one of my colleagues to show me how to perform certain tasks or answer any questions I had. I asked questions like how to add the custom layouts to a page before adding any custom spotlights or dynamic banners and how to link CTA buttons to other internal pages.

From start to finish, I would say it took me approximately two months to become comfortable with Sitefinity as a CMS to the point where I could answer any questions which the clients asked about.

Why do you like working with Sitefinity?

• Drag and Drop layout: I liked the Drag and Drop layout; this was a feature which was really easy to use and meant that every page could have different and interesting layouts depending on the designed template. Using the Preview page, you can instantly see what the widgets look like for the end user.
• Digital Asset Management: In Sitefinity, I really like the fact that a user can add and store images, graphics and videos which are then easy to find when you want to add them to a dynamic banner.
• Out-of-the-box features: having so many out-of-the-box features which our development team can build is great and one of Sitefinity’s best features because it allows an extensive amount of personalization and customization for clients. From a client perspective it also means that their requirements for their new website can be easily met. I had one client who at the very last minute wanted a complete unique search engine for their Help Centre. By using Sitefinity as a CMS our developers were able to build a new search engine within Sitefinity which met the customer's needs.
• Messaging: a lot of our clients who use Sitefinity need to have urgent messages with weather alerts or Covid related alerts. Using the CMS, it’s easy for the developers to create these alerts which the client can update with messages and turn on and off the alert message at the top of the page.

Arekibo are a Sitefinity golden partner since 2010. Would you like to discuss a new website? Would you like to know how to use Sitefinity to get the most of your digital presence? Get in touch.