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Why Use Wagtail CMS?

If you’re looking to develop a new website for your business, you’ve probably been doing a bit of research on website development agencies, what content management system (CMS) to use, and maybe even considered building the site in house. If you’re here on this blog article, you’re probably in the phase of researching what CMS to use.

While we have developed websites in most of the popular content management systems including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, our favourite CMS is Wagtail. Every CMS has its strengths and weaknesses, but for the vast majority of business cases, we’ve found that Wagtail CMS is the perfect fit for our clients.

What Is Wagtail CMS?

Wagtail is a popular leading content management system. What is a content management system? A content management system (CMS) is web software that gives website administrators a user-friendly interface to create, edit, and publish website pages, including blog posts, images, and video.

Rather than having to write everything in static HTML, a CMS allows for a simpler way of maintaining a website. A CMS also ensures more dynamic aspects of a website are easier for administrators, even if those administrators are less technically focused.

Wagtail CMS is open source and based on the Django Web Framework. The Django Web Framework is Python based which makes it fast and quick to develop for. This means websites of any size can be developed quickly and efficiently, saving both time and money.

End user benefits of Wagtail CMS

Ultimately, if you’re building a new website, you don’t want to have to pay a developer to make changes to it. Sure, there may be more complex aspects that need to be added over time, and having a developer is great for that, but for simpler things like adding a new page or just updating content, it’s usually faster and cheaper to just do it yourself.

SteamField

SteamField is Wagtail’s easy to use drag and drop page builder. With SteamField, users can update the content on their existing pages, create new pages and more. The strength of SteamField is one of the main reasons we recommend Wagtail CMS to clients. Once set up, SteamField is extremely easy to use for end users. This ensures training time on the new CMS is kept to a minimum and all staff can use it regardless of technical background.

Built in SEO

While every website needs SEO maintenance, it’s important that it’s built on good foundations for search. And Wagtail CMS does a stellar job of building this foundation. This means that a new site built with Wagtail is ready for search as soon as it’s built without further work needing to be done. From there, administrators can monitor traffic and easily make changes to the site for further optimisation.

Security

Sure ease of use and good search visibility is important for any CMS, but it also needs to be secure. If a business’ website gets hacked or goes down, it can have devastating effects on that business. Wagtail has built in security features to ensure protection against a range of vulnerabilities.

Integrations and Scalability

While a lot of businesses just need a simple website to showcase their business, many others have third-party systems that need to work with their website. Wagtail CMS is very compatible with third-party integrations. Whether it be a custom database, a payment system, or something more complicated, Wagtail integrates quickly and easily with other systems. What’s more, developers can create unique integrations quickly and efficiently thanks to Wagtail being based on the Django Web Framework.

Comparisons to other content management systems

Every CMS has its own strengths and weaknesses, and Wagtail is no different. Wagtail is fast for site users and easy to use for administrators, but some content management systems have their advantages over Wagtail.

Technical Knowledge for Setup

While some popular content management systems are very easy to set up, even for people with limited technical knowledge, Wagtail requires some expertise to get going. However, this is countered by the fact that Wagtail is extremely easy to use once it’s up and running.

Some Out of the Box Integrations Are Limited

Although Wagtail integrates very well with a lot of third-party pieces of software, plugins that require only a few clicks for integration (like you may find with WordPress) are limited. Wagtail, however, is designed for easy to create integrations that work to solve a specific problem. Basically, rather than change a problem to fit a solution, Wagtail is designed to just solve the problem.

Django Isn’t Right for Everyone

Django is a great framework for web applications. It works well for websites, apps, and general web software. But it’s not the solution for every web based project. This is the case for any system and, like choosing a CMS, the pros and cons of a framework need to be understood and weighed up.

Is Wagtail right for your business?

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, we’ve found that Wagtail CMS is a great choice for the majority of business cases we’ve seen. The only way to find out if Wagtail CMS is the right choice for your next project is to talk to an expert about what the project entails. Get in touch with us to have a chat about your project and what you’re looking to build. From there we can let you know whether Wagtail is right for you or suggest another CMS for your new website.