The Power of an Episerver CMS Website

One of the most important parts of any website is its Content Management System (CMS). While we’re happy to help our clients update their website, a proper CMS makes this process work so much easier. You shouldn’t have to be a software developer to update your website! 

We’ve used many CMS systems at Moncur (including our own in-house solution that works great for small sites and large enterprises alike). In 2018, we had an opportunity to work with a client that wanted to use Episerver CMS to manage their websites.  

One of my favorite things about being a developer is testing new systems and technologies. That tinkering was my playtime as a kid and continues to this day. I was the lucky person at Moncur who got to dive head first into Episerver to learn everything I could. 

At first blush, Episerver looked like an impressive platform that offered several interesting features. Seamless management of multiple sites from one CMS with the ability to share assets. Powerful tooling to manage multiple languages. Project collaboration and content approvals to coordinate the creation of major updates, with easily defined rules to allow stakeholders the ability to approve content before going live. Built-in personalization and A/B testing, in conjunction with additional services that use machine learning, help ensure the best messaging and experience for each user. Perhaps most importantly, powerful and easy-to-use content editing functionality.  

When researching Episerver CMS, the biggest thing I was worried about was: how difficult would it be to develop for? It’s not that I’m against a challenge (sometimes it can be fun!), but there are clear advantages to having something that’s easy to develop: Fewer bugs, faster time to implement a feature, which means we have the bandwidth to go deeper into implementing solutions, as well as time to stand up more features. Ultimately this means a better end product, and more value we can provide. It also means fewer migraines, which makes me a very happy developer. :) 

So, how is the development experience with Episerver? It’s fantastic. If you are already familiar with Microsoft .NET Framework MVC architecture (which we use every day at Moncur), then you will be right at home. You use the same tools (such as Visual Studio) to develop for Episerver as you would any other .NET MVC website application. 

It’s obvious that Episerver put a ton of thought into how it would complement the existing .NET Framework instead of reimplementing features that are already in place. Creating a CMS content object is as easy as creating a MVC model. CMS page templates are just standard MVC views with the great Razor syntax. There is a Visual Studio Extension that makes development seamless, which includes project and item templates that cover just about anything you would need to add to your solution. 

My favorite part is how extensible Episerver is, allowing you to do truly anything you want. Episerver smartly included Dependency Injection to surface the major systems and APIs required to interact with the CMS. Episerver is designed to work with Microsoft SQL Server, but you can replace the storage repository with one of your own. Same goes for if you want a custom rendering, routing, caching, or logging solutions. The process for replacing all of these systems to meet your needs is straightforward. You can even replace their own dependency injection solution (based on StructureMap) with your own! 

Since being introduced to the technology, I’ve become a certified Episerver Developer (twice!), and have worked with the Moncur team to deliver a complete Episerver CMS website (check it out at www.Dana.com)!  

Moncur is proud to offer Episerver CMS as an option for your business. With several certified Episervicer Developers on our team, we have the in-house expertise to build the complex, enterprise-level website your company needs. Contact us today to learn more!