If you’ve been keeping up with Sitecore news, you’d know that Sitecore has released a new SaaS CMS called XM Cloud. It’s said to be the first, truly SaaS CMS and comes with a whole host of new features and benefits, and is built to fit into Sitecore’s new composable DXP structure. XM Cloud is being marketed as the ‘no-compromise’ CMS, that offers both developer and marketer agility, and as a marketer myself I am absolutely ecstatic about some of the new and important features for marketers.
One of the big new features that’s getting a lot of attention is the new visual authoring experience called Pages. It’s so marketer friendly that we can even build our own components without needing a developer. I wanted to consolidate everything I know so far about Pages in this blog.
- What Is Sitecore Pages?
- Pages Interface
- Component Builder
- Is Sitecore Pages Headless?
- Data Source Connectors
- Embedded Personalization
- Experience Editor & Content Editor In XM Cloud
- Will I Need A Developer To Use Sitecore Pages?
- Does Pages Only Come With XM Cloud?
What Is Sitecore Pages?
Sitecore Pages is a completely new, low code / no code visual authoring tool that comes with Sitecore XM Cloud. It’s a drag and drop WYSIWYG editor that makes it super easy and fast for content authors to build aesthetic web pages, components and other UI with nothing more than the drag and drop of their mouse.
If you’ve used Sitecore Experience Editor and Content Editor to build websites before, you’ll know that unless you’re an experienced content author, it can take a while to author a webpage. With Pages, the concept is that you can build an entire website very quickly and easily using multiple content sources, and get it up and running in record time, without having to involve any developers.
Pages can also be used to curate amazing user experiences, rather than just simply authoring content.
Pages Interface
The interface is intuitive, responsive and simple with visual editing as the focus. You can access everything you need to build a page within Pages, including templates, media, static and dynamic content.
Sitecore built Pages with learnings from Horizon, their previous drag and drop next generation editor in Sitecore XP. Horizon has recently been enhanced to give users a more visually appealing and easy to use interface than Experience Editor, and Sitecore has basically taken the latest version of Horizon and rebuilt it as a native cloud experience (basically Horizon for SaaS), to build Pages.
With Sitecore Pages you’ll find an improved editing experience that allows users to build components that can then be reused across a number of different websites, as well as an interface that makes it easier to manage multi-site content.
Pages Component Builder
One of the coolest features of Pages is the built-in component builder. The component builder allows content editors to build functional UI components from scratch. Yes you read that right. You can design and build a component without a developer! All in an elegant interface. You can also connect the components to data sources and power them with data from third party providers like other headless CMSs’.
Aside from empowering marketers, the component builder flips the page layout and composition process to design-first, which speeds up authoring and the page design process. Atomic components like rich text blocks and image blocks can be dragged onto the layout and used to design and build a page. The components can then be reused elsewhere.
Is Sitecore Pages Headless?
Yes! Sitecore Pages is a separate SaaS application that communicates with XM Cloud through headless APIs. This gives marketers even more flexibility by empowering them to design and build new components in Sitecore Pages and then sync these layouts with XM Cloud.
Not only does this show that Sitecore has built its product following a truly decoupled architecture, but it also now provides flexibility for how content authors conduct their work. Authors can design custom components in the new Sitecore Pages app and synchronize page layouts with XM Cloud, or authors can continue to leverage the existing Experience Editor interface directly on XM Cloud to design page layouts through traditional UI components.
Data Source Connectors
Sitecore Pages has both out of the box and custom built data source connectors that allow you to connect content to other headless CMS’s. This is great for users who have multiple CMS platforms with separate content libraries.
Embedded Personalization
Sitecore is well known for its personalization features so it’s no surprise that they’ve added embedded personalization features to XM Cloud too. Powered by Sitecore Personalize, Sitecore’s new SaaS personalization app, XM Cloud comes with 20 OOTB condition templates that you can use to personalize content. If that’s not enough for you, you can also add Sitecore Personalize to XM Cloud to open up a gammat of personalization options.
You can also combine conditions to form audiences, which can then be saved to page variants. This means that you can power super fast experiences for your visitors that are personalized for them in real-time.
Experience Editor & Content Editor In XM Cloud
Experience Editor and Content Editor are the content editing interfaces that Sitecore’s had for many years. If you love using them and are worrying that they’ll be axed in XM Cloud, don’t fret. Experience Editor and Content Editor are included in XM Cloud, so you’ll still still be able to use them. Pages is an additional, new headless tool that you’ll also get with XM Cloud to manage your content and design pages in a faster and more efficient way, but you can also continue to use Experience Editor and Content Editor directly in XM Cloud to build pages with traditional UI components.
Will I Need A Developer To Use Sitecore Pages?
No, Sitecore Pages is built specifically for marketers to be able to get beautiful webpages up in minimal time and without any development. You’ll get a WYSIWYG editor that you can use to build stunning webpages and even components, all without writing a line of code.
Does Pages Only Come With XM Cloud?
Yes, right now Pages is only available with XM Cloud, so you need to buy XM Cloud to have access to Pages.
Wrap Up
Thanks for reading! I hope you were able to learn something from it about Pages, and I hope you're just as excited as I am to get your hands on it. I'll be updating this blog with more information about Pages as it's released so keep an eye out if you're interested. Until then, good luck out there!
