Kentico Users: are you ready for this significant update?

Calling UK business owners: do you use Kentico? British companies represent a healthy 12% of users of the popular content management system and a fresh version of the platform looks set to make everyone’s lives even easier.

One amazing feature - Page Builder - provides a convenient, user-friendly interface, ideal for non-technical users to manage their content using configurable widgets prepared by its developers. Users can also work with page templates to quickly create new pages based on predefined layouts. When you want to allow editors to create visually captivating pages, by experimenting with design and layout, this feature is invaluable - learn more about choosing the format of page content.

Out of the box, improved performance is another great advantage of Kentico .NET Core model for your new website. This impacts how your site ranks in search engines and takes user experience up a notch.

Of course, there are significant improvements in other areas too, such as marketing automation, email marketing, search, an impressive Froala rich text editor (WYSIWYG) and third party systems integration.

If these benefits sound good - and you’d like to keep making the most of them - you need also to be aware of a rather significant upcoming change to the platform. Recently setting out a roadmap for the near future, Kentico is planning on closing its Portal Engine facility – its technical support arm – by the end of 2023. 

Don’t Let this Kentico Development Impact Your Business

What does the upcoming development mean for you? Should you experience any tech-based issues – and you may, as the current version of Kentico will soon no longer be supported – you will not be entitled to the support you will need. 

“If your version [of Kentico] is no longer supported…,” says the company, “we’re not able to provide support even if you have a valid maintenance and we suggest that you upgrade to a supported version or, preferably, to the latest available version.”

What can you do?

Kentico suggests anyone who uses older versions of their platform moves to the latest version of the system. Benefits of doing so include the chance to get back on track with support and Hotfixes, and the opportunity to boost your website’s ranking (thanks to the performance and site speeds Kentico offers).

Here at Bits Orchestra, we’ve helped UK company TimeOutdoors get well ahead of the update by migrating their site onto Kentico.NET Core MVC now.

Reduce Stress and Enjoy Improved Performance by Migrating Now

The new Kentico software is built with the latest Microsoft .NET Core technology, which is much faster than the ASP.NET web forms used by Portal Engine. Offering improved performance, it provides boosted speeds via multiple mechanisms designed to make it even easier for customers to reach your site.

The team at TimeOutdoors, thanks to our support, is now making the most of a more flexible site, with complete control over its content. Building a technical platform which offers optimum flexibility and leaving them with the means from which to create quality content, Bits Orchestra has made the whole process smooth and stress-free.

If you want to enjoy these benefits too, you need to complete the migration well ahead of 2023. As we move closer to the deadline, the demand for this support will be even higher, so if you’d like to boost the security and functionality of your site now, get in touch with our friendly and dedicated team.

Our focus here is on building a top-performing site, providing enough flexibility for further extension, and keeping user experience very much in mind. Content editors can now create articles, features and landing pages with ease and external users such as event organisers, clubs and charities can quickly add their content via a secure login area - all of which helps to create fresh content and draw more customers to the TimeOutdoors site.

Following the migration to the new version of Kentico, TimeOutdoors has seen a significant increase in page load speed - according to their monitoring platform, Site24x7. Within the media industry their homepage response time is within the fastest 10 websites globally, performing alongside sites such as CNN and faster than sites such as National Geographic and Wall Street Journal.

Drilling into the detail of performance using GTmetrix performance report, their website achieves a GTmetrix Grade ‘A’, with a Structure Score of 98%. These scores reflect how fast the page loads for users and how well it is built for performance, and key metrics for ranking well in Google.
The key metric for Google is now Core Web Vitals and the website performs extremely well in this area too. GTmetrix confirms a zero Cumulative Layout Shift score and a Semrush site audit reveals a 100% score for Core Web Vitals.

Commenting on the new website, Andrew Risbey, Founder of TimeOutdoors, said: “We’ve worked really hard with Bits Orchestra to create a website that continues to inspire our audience to get active outdoors whilst at the same time working for our editors, our advertisers and, of course, Google. It’s great to see such a positive reaction to the new site from our users and now being recognised as one of the Top 100 Digital Businesses in Yorkshire and winning Kentico Site of the Month in August is a great way to start things off.”

What’s involved in the migration process?

In short, it’s tricky – particularly if you opt to do it yourself. Content migration is a challenge, and you may need to implement a custom import procedure, if you have a lot of articles to transfer. Kentico users will need to migrate, one by one, to the new version, too, and this is no mean feat.

You will need to update old URLs, and certain functionality, which was once relatively easy for content editors using Kentico, may now prove much more stressful.

Ready to outsource the migration of your site?

For those who would prefer to outsource the task of migrating their site, our team here at Bits Orchestra can help. Don’t be put off by the time difference; while we are based in Ukraine, we have successfully worked with a host of UK companies and the differing time zone hasn’t yet proved an issue, with just two hours’ difference between EU countries and ourselves.

Our team is English-speaking – and to a great level, as well – and we make the most of user-friendly documentation, time-tracking software and more. Working remotely, we are always available for a chat – whether over video, by phone or email – within a reasonable timeframe.

Ukrainian IT services are cost-effective too, with our developers’ attitudes to your project exceeding your expectations. Keen to hear more about our Kentico migration service? Get in touch with our team and we will happily answer any of your questions.