About 10 consultants from Softronic were at the EPiServer Partner Days 2012 (June 7-8). It was a nice event with a lot of useful info!
A lot of interesting stuff was ”revealed” on these days I think. At-least for me, I hadn’t seen EPiServer 7 yet. So I will summarize in short the main points of interest that I gathered from Bob Egner and the team about EPiServer 7 (Falcon) on day 1, first session.
EPiServer 7 Falcon
EPiServer CMS 7 (Falcon) will:
- be strongly typed (like PageTypeBuilder)
- use ”blocks” that will replace both Composer and Dynamic Content
- have multiple renderers (e.g. for mobile, for desktop etc)
- be able to use MVC (and WebForms)
- be testable
The UI concepts were:
- one way to handle content for all different contents
- updates will be done in one place
- simplicity
- drag’n’drop
- easy to add video
- multiple file upload in all browsers
- search almost everywhere
UI redesign:
- using hidden menus to get a larger working area
- using ”blocks” across (reusable blocks of code)
- cleaner and easier
- heavy use of ”the eye” to set the Views / Channels to see (desktop, mobile etc)
- save/undo/redo is automatic, all changes saved with history (undo stack)
- navigation is everything, can’t buy what you can’t find => EPiServer Find (renamed from Truffler) Will be available both on-primes and as SaaS
Primary persona is a 40-something lady, self thought, knows Office, uses CMS occasionally. Adds news or other smaller texts only.
Secondary persona is a bit more advanced person creating landing pages, do more complex things.
There will be an Add-on-store where site owners can download (and install, one-click) add-ons for EPiServer. Uninstall is also supported just as easily. Add-ons are trustworthy guaranteed by EPiServer.
EPiServer CMS 7 will come ”later this year”.
Check out CMS 7: http://world.episerver.com/Articles/Items/A-first-glimpse-of-the-all-new-EPiServer-7/
Note on upgrading from CMS 6; yes, it will work with some minor changes. And yes, it will work along-side with PageTypeBuilder.
It will require:
- .Net 4
- MVC 4
- IIS 7
- move the CMS 6 site to IIS 7
- make sure it works (changes configs etc?)
- upgrade to CMS 7
- re-compile the code, fix the errors (e.g. PageReference -> ContentReference)
- should now work
EPiServer Commerce (Condor):
- takes advantage of the new CMS / GUI (finally!): blocks, MVC, strongly typed etc
- will use content channels/markets (can segment the market into groups like e.g. UK, Nordics, etc)
- able to scale these out and copy channels etc
- manage languages via CMS
- installing will work! (wow! 😉 )
- will be faster
- new pricing provider
First persona is a merchandiser. Manages products, translates content, pricing and discounts.
Second persona is SEO-master. Cerated landing pages, traffic generator, campaign performance.
Commerce will come maybe at year end.
Videos were recorded of the sessions, so keep your eyes at world.episerver.com. Don’t know when they will add them…
Softronic DevLab 