EPiServer, From a Quality Assurance Engineer's Point of View
Updated July 07, 2015
EPiServer, From a Quality Assurance Engineer's Point of View
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Episerver Content Cloud
Overall Satisfaction with Episerver Content Cloud
EPiServer is one of the content management systems that my company offers to our clients. We have been working on more EPiServer projects in the last 8 months or so, but it usually depends on the client's needs. EPiServer has a reputation of handling eSync and eCommerce a little bit better than some of the other content management systems we use.
- The ability to upload/delete images and files in bulk on the server. There are a few content management systems that don't have the bulk-upload functionality and it can be very time consuming to upload all of the assets for an entire website one-by-one. With EPiServer, you can paste a folder of assets on the server and it will appear in the workarea within seconds.
- The ability to recover deleted content. When it comes to content on your website, it can be very scary when you accidentally delete an important page and have to recreate the content from scratch. With EPiServer, even if you accidentally delete a page, it can be recovered within seconds.
- The form creator is very easy to use and requires no HTML code knowledge. When creating forms in EPiServer, it's as simple as clicking on the type of field you want and entering the label text and any additional information required (such as drop-down options, field validation, etc.). Some of the other content management systems I've worked with have similar form editors but the end result doesn't always look the way you expect it to.
- Not having a folder structure to organize content pages was a little hard to get used to. There are ways to create different levels of organization but it seemed like a workaround.
- We create a lot of custom templates and fields that are used by the content authors to help keep similar pages consistent and limit the ability for inline styles. When the page is mostly made up of custom fields (such as: product number, thumbnail/full-size image, caption, button text/link, etc.) then the WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) editor doesn't allow you to edit all of the content. We found that we had to switch to the forms-edit view in order to create most of the pages. Not sure if there is even anything that could be done about this, but I know people like to be able to see what they're editing and click on the problem area so they can easily fix it, without having to hunt down the field name.
- The native behavior of mirroring content pages into menu items automatically was also slightly difficult to work with for me. Although it makes the most sense to have your content follow the same structure as the navigation elements on your website, there are a few scenarios when it's best to have full control over the menu items as a separate piece. We were able to customize the set up so the menu was a separate section and you had to assign the content pages in order to have them display in the navigation.
- I don't have access to this kind of data since the projects I work on usually end once the client's site has gone live. I did hear from one of our clients directly that they were able to reach out to more international users with the new EPiServer implementation because they could easily create new contact forms and display translated content.
Ektron has been known to have issues with the WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) editor, eSync, and the lack of bulk-upload functionality. Some of the clients that we recommended EPiServer to had websites with a lot of content/assets that need to be maintained regularly and pages that used custom templates.