dotCMS 5.1 Launch Builds Upon ‘NoCode’ Philosophy, Empowers Marketing Teams in a Headless CMS Environment
Mar 13, 2019
dotCMS 5.1 introduces true in-line editing across touchpoints, Scripting as a Service, and native GraphQL support.
dotCMS, the leading open-source Java CMS, has unveiled dotCMS 5.1 featuring Edit Mode Anywhere, Scriptable APIs, simplified single page application development, and native GraphQL support.
“Following the pivotal release of dotCMS 5.0 in August 2018, our aim was to swiftly release dotCMS 5.1 with features that once again significantly improve the marketer experience in a headless CMS environment. We’re pleased to have achieved this goal,” said Will Ezell, dotCMS CTO.
“The release of dotCMS 5.1 stems from our efforts to provide enterprise brands with a Content Foundation as a Service, empowering them to build, orchestrate and deploy their digital experience platform, and subsequently offer connected, trusted and continuous customer experiences,” Ezell added.
dotCMS 5.1 Features
The major features of dotCMS 5.1—which simplifies inline content editing, custom endpoint building, single page application development, and GraphQL querying—are detailed below:
Edit Mode Anywhere: dotCMS now gives marketers and business users the full dotCMS editing experience in a headless environment. This includes inline editing, layout design, personalization, drag-and-drop capabilities, and device-specific content previews, no matter what front-end framework is being used. Thus, marketers can directly edit their sites, single page applications, kiosk experiences, or any other content-driven application without touching a single line of code.
Scripting as a Service: Users can now construct their responses at runtime by PUTting and POSTing Velocity script in the request. dotCMS 5.1 will then render the Velocity script and return the result as either a JSON or as a text snippet.
Native GraphQL Support: A first for Java-based content management systems. dotCMS 5.1 comes with support for the GraphQL API and the GraphQL query language. The dotCMS GraphQL support exposes the dotCMS content repository as GraphQL and provides an API that allows developers to query and return specific properties of content and shape the API response at call time.
Scriptable API Builder: In dotCMS 5.1, it is now possible to define and deliver scripted REST endpoints using a single versionable .VTL file under a convention-based folder structure. The Scriptable API Builder supports a full range of REST actions including content pulls, content formatting, remote API calls, and content rendering.
File-based Page Components: dotCMS’s page components and their content-specific templates can now be built completely offline as files and uploaded into dotCMS in batch.
Single Page Application Development Simplified: dotCMS 5.1 boasts a SPA starter kit that includes a demo site with full “Edit Mode Anywhere” features, helping brands launch SPAs faster, and with less reliance on IT. The SPA starter kit helps take care of things such as authentication, navigation, routing and Content API queries, which, when coupled with the Node.js server, also allows for full manageability.
Improved Content Relationship Management: We’ve overhauled the way we handle content relationships, making the relationship part of the content type. As a result, content types now include a new relationship field which enables users to easily manage existing relationships and pull content and their nested relationships in a single API call. Version 5.1 also introduces the ability to create one-way relationships, which shifts the management of content relationships to one side for better control.
Enhanced Content Type Builder: dotCMS’s content forms can now be broken down into rows, tabs, and columns for a better editor experience. We’ve also added field variables to simplify the editor experience.
Increased Accessibility: With even more keyboard shortcuts that bypass the need for a mouse, dotCMS 5.1 enhances our platform’s status as an accessible CMS.
About dotCMS
dotCMS is a content management system that helps global enterprises with multiple brands, subsidiaries, and franchises manage, optimize, and scale content across languages and channels. Brands such as Dairy Queen, Newell, Firstmac, Telus, and Comcast have chosen dotCMS for its unique ability to manage thousands of sites and consolidate multiple CMSs onto a single, unified instance of dotCMS to streamline content management across teams while saving money on platform costs.
dotCMS’ universal approach to content management also means that companies have the choice to deliver content traditionally or headlessly. Headless developers can work within the front-end framework of choice while still providing marketers with visual editing tools so they can go to market with their business-critical content and decrease their dependency on technical teams.
