I’m a new software addict. Yes, I know, that's a super nerdy thing to be. I’ve used every email app that exists (and I’ll use the next one). I will join the early release of the calendar app your cousin’s friend’s niece built. And I’ll push just about every content management system (CMS) to our designers, developers, and writers to try out.
My grass-is-always-greener approach has led Mostly Serious to try nearly every CMS out there. At one point in our past, when the existing options didn’t meet our clients’ needs, we built our own. We’ve been down the well-worn path of Wordpress and led new voyages in Wagtail, learning the flaws of the masses and the challenges of the lesser-known along the way. We’ve made eyes with Umbraco from across the room and sprinted away from DotNetNuke when it wouldn’t stop staring at us from a dark corner of the room.
One CMS has kept our attention—largely because it brings our clients joy—longer than any other. That solution is Craft CMS, a powerhouse website management system that provides an excellent list of built-in features coupled with the flexibility to scale for any client need. And it’s all packed into a secure, up-to-date, intelligent platform maintained by industry professionals.
We are now one of a handful of verified Craft CMS Partners. Simply put, we’ve got a thing for Craft CMS and we want everyone to know it.
Learn more about our partnership with Craft CMS.
The Features & Benefits of Craft CMS Websites
What matters most to our team is that any CMS we select delivers the most value to our clients. That value is typically generated through accelerated timelines, less time spent putting our strategies and plans into action, and the ability for any tool we use to help us more quickly meet the goals of our clients. Craft has been a phenomenal tool in providing those things and more.
While there are many, many features included in Craft CMS and Craft Commerce (which you can read through directly on the Craft website), we find the most value in the following nine areas:
- Intuitive admin design
- Easy user management
- Safety & security
- Versatility & expandability
- Custom designs & easy expansion
- Live previews
- Fast load times
- Craft Commerce
- Enterprise features
Intuitive Admin Design
Most content management system admin areas feel a lot like your least favorite junk drawer. (We're not trying to fire shots at Wordpress, but... it's true.) Everything is available, but nothing seems useful, and one of the kids put chewed gum in there and it’s sticking to your sauce packets. (It’s a mess.)
The creators of Craft believe that content creators should have a great experience. Rather than working within the confines of a rigid CMS structure, Craft provides the flexibility to build each website around the content it will deliver to users. This is accomplished through an intuitive admin design, better tools to edit and expand a website over time, and improved customization when setting up a new website structure.
Easy User Management
Enabling your team to manage your website can also be a confusing mess in many content management systems, but Craft makes user management a breeze. Admins can easily create very specific user permissions, build groups of users out of those specific permissions, and add individual users to multiple groups.
The same ease of use applies to the public-facing side of a website. Craft makes it easy to streamline public user registration and manage user access. For example, we often gate content and deliver specific information on a user-by-user level, giving our clients the power to deliver sensitive information to the right people.
Safety & Security
Our team and the team behind Craft take security seriously. Weekly updates to Craft ensure all bugs are addressed quickly, creating a safer and more secure environment for your website. In addition, Craft’s approach to off-the-shelf plugins ensures your website is easily extendable without sacrificing quality or security.
Craft’s dedication to building a reliable platform is validated by the companies that trust them, including Netflix, Associated Press, and IKEA.
Versatility & Expandability
We understand that a website is a living property that requires continual tweaking and improvement to reach its full potential. Craft was built with superior flexibility for content creators, accomplished through features like entry types and matrix fields.
If you’ve worked in a CMS, you almost definitely know what a WYSIWYG is (and probably twitched when reading that). Craft uses entry types and matrix fields as a sort of building block approach, allowing your content to be fully integrated on a page. This approach allows sites to easily scale while maintaining a beautiful, effective design without huge blocks of text dominating each page.
Custom Designs & Easy Expansion
At Mostly Serious we follow a strategy and research first approach, ensuring the work we craft for our partners is perfectly aligned with the business objectives and goals we have defined. Because we spend time understanding how to maximize success for our clients, a template design is rarely built to achieve those goals, making a custom approach to design vital in building a successful website.
Craft gives our team the freedom and flexibility to build an entirely custom solution, from award-winning design to modern development delivered through an API. And, because Craft includes an excellent plugin ecosystem, we couple our custom approach with finding the right solution in proportion to any problem, saving our clients time and money with each Craft project.
Live Previews
There’s nothing worse than finishing what you thought was a masterpiece, but then you take a few steps back and view your work in the light and realize you’ve created Ecce Homo. Craft’s live preview feature is built to give content creators a live look at their work as it will appear to the public, ensuring your final masterpiece looks just as good to the outside world as it does in your mind.
Fast Load Times
From the ground up, Craft is built for speed. Instead of manipulating code that the CMS spits out with every new website, Craft generates nothing, allowing developers to create rather than manipulate. The result is less bloat, faster load times, and less expense to clients for developers to fix mistakes created by a CMS.
Craft Commerce
Craft built the same easy-to-use content management into a system that includes everything needed for a modern, custom ecommerce website. Just as Craft CMS is built with the flexibility to meet the specific goals of each project, Craft Commerce is completely customizable to build exactly the store that is needed—no more and no less.
That isn’t to say that Craft Commerce doesn’t include powerful built-in features. Out of the box, Craft includes custom order fields, checkout flows, order management, subscriptions, sales and promotions, and basic tax and shipping rules. The Plugin Store features over 60 vetted tools and integration to accelerate development and lower costs.
Enterprise Features
While Craft is an excellent fit for small and medium sized businesses, a few enterprise features make Craft an ideal solution for large businesses and organizations. Built-in localization allows your website to support multiple languages for regions or territories. Craft’s multi-site feature is the ideal solution for companies needing to manage divisions or companies within a corporate umbrella while keeping all content in a single content management system.
Are You Looking for a Craft CMS or Craft Commerce Website?
Our team is ready to introduce you to our new favorite addiction. We predict you’ll get hooked too. Just say YES and let’s get started.