Contentful CMS | Composable Content Platform - Touchtribe ✅

Question 1

What is the difference between Contentful and a CMS?

Accepted Answer

Traditional content management systems (CMS) are designed around one form of content presentation, namely a website. In doing so, the CMS not only determines how the content is defined and managed, but also largely determines how the website should be built. These include the programming language that programmers must use and the operating system of the web server. Simply put, a traditional system is responsible for the content management layer (back end) and the presentation layer (front end).

Contentful focuses only on the back end and does not interfere with the front end. Instead, developers can retrieve content from Contentful for any channel they want through its powerful APIs.

Contentful focuses only on the back end and does not interfere with the front end. Instead, developers can retrieve content from Contentful for any channel they want through its powerful APIs.

Question 2

What is an API?

Accepted Answer

An API enables communication between different software systems. Almost every modern software system has an API that can be queried by other systems. Simply put, one system asks a question to the API of another system and a readable answer comes back from the other system. How that answer came about is of no interest to the querying system. It is simply a matter of question and answer.

We will make this clear using an example.

Suppose that on a company's My environment a functionality needs to be developed whereby the user can find the nearest locations of the company. This user's address data is in Salesforce and can be retrieved via Salesforce's API.

From a technical perspective, the following should then happen:

From the My environment, an API request is sent to Salesforce. Salesforce's API response contains the address in the standard JSON format.

That response then looks like the following:

{ "data": 
{

"Street": "Helicopterstraat", 
"Number": "13",
"ZIP": " "1059 EC",
"City": "Amsterdam"

} 
}

As you can see, this information is easy for anyone to understand and use. The big advantage for developers is that with the help of an API information from different systems can be unlocked and integrated, without the developer needing specialist knowledge of the underlying systems.

Question 3

Do I need hosting for Contentful?

Accepted Answer

Contentful is hosted in the cloud at Amazon's AWS. The Contentful CDN, which is used to deliver the content, has edge nodes around the world, ensuring fast delivery of content regardless of destination. It is not possible to download Contentful and host it yourself, the CMS is a web service managed in the cloud.

Content is replicated between multiple servers and backed up daily. The global Contentful content delivery network stores content on servers around the world for high availability and short access times. Content transmission is encrypted with SSL - the same technology used for online banking.

Question 4

Can I build a website with Contentful?

Accepted Answer

No, Contentful itself cannot be used to build a website. Contentful is a headless content platform or infrastructure that operates independently of the systems that use it.

This means that Contentful is therefore very suitable for managing the content of a website (or any other digital channel).

Question 5

How does Contentful differ from other CMSs?

Accepted Answer

Contentful is a CMS that fully meets the requirements and expectations of today's organizations. Traditional CMSs, such as Sitecore, Drupal and Adobe, date back to the early days of the internet. A time without social media, cell phones, cloud and also without SCRUM and digital teams. How different is that with Contentful, whose development started in 2013.

Contentful provides a headless content platform that allows you to give customers a consistent experience across all channels, including web, apps, chatbots, IoT and marketplaces. Scalable from startup to enterprise, hardly any maintenance costs, embraced by developers and easy to use.

Contentful differentiates itself from traditional CMS vendors in the following ways: Best of breed: No unnecessary bells and whistles that make the system unwieldy and complicated. Content management as it was meant to be. User-friendly, fast and flexible.  API-first: APIs are at the heart of Contentful. Thanks to excellently documented APIs, the sky is the limit for developers.  Headless: Your "digital presence" is much more than just a website. Contentful enables you to manage all your content for all your digital content in one platform and leaves the development of "the front end" to the experts. Whether that's a website, a native app for Apple or Android, a chatbot or an innovative IoT solution. Cloud-native: Contentful is built directly in the cloud and thus benefits from all the advantages the cloud offers. Infinitely scalable, available worldwide and thanks to a CDN always lightning fast. SaaS: Every Contentful customer uses the same platform, just like GMail, Netflix, Uber or Facebook. Upgrades are a thing of the past and management is virtually unnecessary. Freedom for developers: Contentful's APIs can be used with any programming language. This allows developers to choose the language that best suits the problem to be solved.

Question 6

Does Contentful have a Live Preview?

Accepted Answer

Yes. In 2023, Contentful added live preview capability to the package's standard features. The lack of this capability meant that Contentful lagged behind StoryBlok and ContentStack, among others, for a long time. Now this is no longer the case.

Contentful: The future of digital

New standard in content management

Get advise about Contentful

Cloud Native

Headless Content Platform

API-first contentful

Contentful: The content platform for the digital-first era

How Touchtribe helps:

Realization of content driven websites

Experience driven commerce

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From branded house to house of brands

Unleashing an online fitness revolution with a modern digital platform

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