Backend Usability in Pimcore – Better Editing for All

As part of our guest blog series, we are happy to introduce Jan Peifer - a Project Manager at anyMOTION Graphics located in Düsseldorf, Germany.  AnyMOTION is a full-service internet agency that provides all solutions and aspects of digital marketing. They offer professional services from conception and implementation to the point of moving into production including social media and online marketing. 

Backend Usability in Pimcore – Better Editing for All 

Working in back offices of websites is not always as easy as it seems. Or don’t you know the situation where the freshly introduced youngster destroys a template with simply one click? In projects where your client or someone of your team who is not into the specific content management system you’re working with, is taking over the maintenance this might lead to the worst case: a broken homepage. When you use a website based on Pimcore this is no longer a problem. It allows you to define exactly what page parts can be edited and which information is safe. This is important because nearly every day we as a digital agency face the situation that the knowledge about the functionality of software differs extremely within the editors and clients we’re working with. Using Pimcore allows us to specifically define do’s and don’ts for them. It delivers a great backend usability with the result that the described situation is no longer a problem.

 Pimcore for a Modern Frontend UX

With Pimcore we are able to assign users to roles with certain limited scopes of action. This behavior allows us to cover the knowledge gaps between the editors and prevent mistakes which lead to frustration and, in worst case, might cause errors on the webpage. So during the progress of a project we work closely together with our client to find out which levels of skills are represented in the team.

Other content management systems allow to classify users also. But Pimcore takes it one step further. I might explain it with an example of one of our latest projects we realized with Pimcore. When we started the project, we knew we’re not working with techies. Our customer, a non-profit organization, was not really interested in working with a system full of features and possibilities. As most of the customers they wanted a stable and reliable Website which is good looking towards the public and easy to maintain for the content administrators. So we used Pimcore to create a modern frontend user-experience for the visitors and defined in-detail what the editors are able to create and change within the backend.

Pimcore: Adaptable and Flexible

To do this, Pimcore has several advantages. First we set individual rights for each editor role in the backend while we defined precisely which parts of the website should be editable. In this project we reduced it to a few, so the users now are only able to work in the section we want them to work in. Here, the released parts are for example text paragraphs, headings and some images. Naturally, this works for 2 snippets and widgets as well. Last but not least, intuitive usability-features like drag & drop are easy to use and every customer’s delight.

To minimize the chance of errors in content management, we also created a custom setup for the WYSIWYG-Editor that only shows options which are actually used or needed.

It’s important for us to put editors in an environment where they can act freely to implement their ideas and feel confident at the same time having the guarantee not to destroy the system or the site’s appearance with a small mistake or a wrong action.

An Ideal Content Platform

To accomplish all this, Pimcore is the ideal platform for us. Not many content platforms match this extreme flexibility and intuitive usability Pimcore offers. Using the modular system, editors can feel free using the components they want to in an easy way. Therefore, Pimcore is the ideal flexible platform for customers prepared by agencies and developers.