The end of the quarter is approaching fast, and we are happy to share with you our progress on the Kentico 12 Service Pack! We have also gathered a lot of valuable feedback from our partners and clients already leveraging the MVC features in Kentico 12 and lined up additional ways to help you squeeze the maximum out of MVC in Kentico 12. So let’s not wait any longer and dive right in!
Kentico 12 has been out for some time, and our development team is working hard on bringing you the Kentico 12 Service Pack on time and with the features that marketers cannot live without. Even though we outlined the Service Pack some time ago, we would like to share with you more details on its progress and what you can expect from it so you can sleep well and expect the best.
A/B Testing
If you’ve already started building your current website project on Kentico 12 MVC, you are very likely going to finish and share your masterpiece with the online world this summer. Once live, your client’s marketing crew will demand/expect optimization capabilities so they can A/B test the website’s content, evaluate it, and (if needed) readjust it to push the conversion rates through the roof.
So, that’s precisely where our Kentico 12 Service Pack comes in. When applied, every website project built on Kentico 12 MVC will instantly receive these A/B testing capabilities.
Every marketer will be able to A/B test their chosen page directly in the Page Builder’s intuitive interface, gather the results, select a statistically significant winning variant, and publish that variant live with just one click.
Landing Pages
Page optimization is just one part of the marketing story, though—another important aspect of every digital marketer’s work revolves around landing pages.
When the latest offer, product, or service needs to be introduced to your audience, a landing page is a must. And if you want to get the information to your targeted audience even quicker, paid campaigns are a God-sent shortcut. Either way, every campaign needs a quality landing page where the offer can be presented so irresistibly that visitors cannot help but click that BUY NOW button.
As time is money, the faster and easier the landing page can be created, the better.
So, the Kentico 12 Service Pack will make it a real breeze with its easy-to-manage MVC page templates. Developers can use this functionality to offer marketers an excellent selection of ready-to-use page templates so they can create their ideal landing page in no time.
As shown above, marketers will also be able to load their own saved MVC page template configurations, including all the filled-in content and widgets, so that they can create their landing pages even faster!
Anything Else I Should Be Aware of?
Yes, indeed! As Kentico 12 was released back on November 27, 2018, we had enough time to gather lots of great input from our partners and clients to improve things even further. We realized that there are additional measures we can take to make Kentico 12 MVC development easier for everyone.
So, we are going to provide you with additional help to make MVC development in Kentico 12 more efficient and faster!
The Rise of the MVC Selectors
The Page Builder’s drag-and-drop functionality is intuitive enough, and the same should apply to the configuration of widgets used in the Page Builder.
Right now, when developers create their own dedicated widget for content editors to use, they also need to come up with an easy way for editors to configure the widget.
Typically, content editors might need to select an image, a content item in the content tree, or specify a URL.
These selectors are up to a developer to create and may not always be as intuitive to use as content editors (and marketers) may wish.
Therefore, along with the Kentico 12 Service Pack’s release, we will also provide you with a range of selectors ready for your MVC projects so you can develop faster.
Advanced Best Practices
We know the importance of best practices. That’s why we have joined forces with our partners who are leveraging MVC in Kentico daily to combine the collective knowledge as much as possible to bring you boilerplates that allow you dive into the MVC architecture, custom MVC routing, caching, and other advanced scenarios with confidence.
We are working relentlessly on bringing them to you as soon as possible, so, stay tuned!
Sample Widgets Are Coming
Even though the freedom to create MVC widgets according to each project’s needs is great, there might be situations where demonstrating a specific concept with an already existing widget would save a lot of time for developers. They would not need to start from scratch entirely. Instead, they would have the right guidance in an already functional and concept-proving MVC widget.
So, we are going to provide you with a range of MVC widgets that will help you immerse yourself in the Kentico 12 MVC concepts as fast as possible, and speed up your development.
The best part? We are not going to stop when the Service Pack is released! Instead, we will grow the number of the MVC sample widgets regardless of the EMS release cycle so you can become more and more proficient with particular concepts like Rich Text editor, image gallery, listing, commerce-related widgets, and more.
When is Service Pack Going to See the Light of Day?
As we are getting closer and closer to the end of this quarter, we can confidently say that the Kentico 12 Service Pack will be ready to shine by the end of June.
Our development team is working as hard as they can to ensure that this date is met and all the features described above are delivered.
How Do I Apply the Service Pack?
This is something that we decided to make as comfortable for you as possible. Therefore, as soon as the Kentico 12 Service Pack is released, you will be able to apply it in the exact same way as you would do with an ordinary hotfix. You don’t have to worry about any breaking changes!
You will find the Service Pack listed among our hotfixes on DevNet so you can quickly download it and apply to your project. The only difference (apart from bringing additional marketing features to your MVC project) will be in the size of the Service Pack, as it will be larger than a regular hotfix.
Stay Tuned!
As you can see, there is a lot of additional goodies coming your way soon. Nevertheless, the Service Pack release in June is only the tip of the iceberg. We are determined to provide you with everything you need to truly master the MVC development model in Kentico 12 and futureproof your projects with ease.
So, stay tuned for more, and if you have any comments regarding the upcoming Kentico Service Pack, feel free to send our product management an email to productmanagement@kentico.com!