By Janus Boye
Technology decisions have huge impact and with the seemingly never ending growth in tools to power the digital experience, it has not become easier for buyers to navigate a crowded marketplace.
At SFMOMA, one of the largest museums in the US, they needed an improved ticketing part of their website. Rather than the usual Swiss-army knife approach of “The One CMS To Rule Everything”, they went looking for a new solution where their editors could focus on content, while their developers could keep developing using familiar code.
To achieve this, they selected Kentico Kontent, an API-based and headless content solution, while the rest of the website is powered by WordPress.
John Higgins is the Lead Software Architect at SFMOMA
For this customer story, I spoke to SFMOMA’s lead software architect John Higgins to learn more about this technology decision and hear how the implementation went. John directs the design of new software projects and leads the architectural vision for technology and system design strategies.
The selection criteria that led to choosing Kentico Kontent
In talking to John, he in particular highlighted three selection criteria:
First, a commitment for maintenance & support, so that they could count on commercial-grade help and rely on a vendor to make sure things stays up and running.
Secondly, they wanted a headless solution so that the editors could focus on the content, without having to worry about the underlying technology. In other words, a back-end only content management system.
And finally, content delivered via an API, so that we could keep developing using the code they were already familiar with.
Making the implementation happen
Before the actual implementation and before letting the editors work on getting content into Kontent, an initial training was provided by Kentico. The training started with a high-level overview about Content Modeling highlighting terminology and best practices.
This was followed with a focus on defining and utilizing Workflow as well as Scheduled Publishing functionality. The training session was a success in getting the team more comfortable and confident with Kontent and enabled them to get started right away. The feedback from the editors on working with the tool has been positive since the implementation.
The actual technical implementation was done together with Pop, a Seattle-based digital agency. Using the API to retrieve and manage content was without surprises and painless.
What’s the big picture?
To help understand the change in the marketplace, I spoke to James Bloor from UK-based digital agency Distinction. Distinction are one of the most experienced Kentico Gold Solution partners in the world, having worked closely with Kentico since 2005.
To quote James:
CMS adoption has always been a big hurdle for both content and technical teams. Content management systems typically please one of these groups, but rarely are both totally happy.
Content-as-a-Service solutions, such as Kontent, appear to be meeting both needs. Editors get a slick, fast and feature-rich content management experience. And developers get to use whatever tech stack they want.
Sounds too good to be true? At SFMOMA, it certainly seems like it worked out well.
Contemplating a similar project?
You can read more on content modelling and the difference happy editors make. To learn more about the specific tool used at SFMOMA, refer to why Kentico Kontent means goodbye to legacy CMS.
For another museum story, we’ve covered using augmented reality to improve the museum experience at Brooklyn Museum.
Thanks to Thomas Murphy from Kentico for providing additional background for this project.