One of the main trade-offs with most headless CMS platforms is the complete lack of, or disjointed, content preview experience. Unlike traditional CMS’, headless platforms can often create a fragmented editing experience due to site previews opening in new environments.

Introducing Kentico’s Web Spotlight feature, there’s no need to wonder what your content will look like after it has been published. Leveraging modern technologies and live editing functionality, you can ensure your content looks the way you want it to before your audience sees it.

Traditional CMS content editing  

If you have used a traditional CMS product, you will be used to a "WYSIWYG" editing experience. This allows you to make edits directly to a page rather than editing using a form view - a feature we've seen in Umbraco and Kentico Xperience for years.

Headless CMS content editing

Headless CMS platforms, on the other hand, will only provide a basic form for content entry. Any preview options would typically open the website in a new tab and effectively works more like a shortcut to a UAT environment. This leads to a disjointed editing experience.

Furthermore, to edit a particular element of a page, the editing experience needs to understand the content item structure to be able to locate the correct content item and element. Through Kentico’s introduction of Web Spotlight, this new feature allows you to own your content while creating impressive digital experiences.

Kentico’s Web Spotlight

Content-first design has been the talk of the industry for some time. No matter what your website design looks like, your content should display seamlessly without disrupting your user’s experience.

Providing a solution to the disjointed editing experience of headless CMS’, Web Spotlight offers key functionality within the CMS itself:

• An embedded preview window allows draft content to be viewed without leaving Kontent. Although this is a relatively simple change, it reduces the amount of context switching involved in editing page content, making a more seamless editing experience.
• A hierarchical content tree provides better control over the website structure and allows content to be easily navigated within the CMS. This is handled via a new "subpages" field type that can be included on content models with child pages, allowing you to begin editing it any content item from that location.
• An on-page edit UI for components and elements means the content editor no longer needs to manually search and browse the content item based on an understanding of the content item structure. Clicking the Edit button next to a component or element will open the appropriate content item for editing directly from the preview window.

Although Kentico’s Web Spotlight feature will require an additional cost on top of the individual tier price, its functionality offers desirable benefits for content editors. Gone are the days of guessing the length of your headlines and subtext or whether your graphics fits in line with your content before publishing your page. The modular nature of Kentico’s new feature makes it easy to create pages, add content and rearrange components through one uninterrupted process.

Want to find out more about our partnership with Kentico and how it could make your website easier to manage? Contact the team at NetConstruct and let’s talk.