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Magnolia: Authoring & Development High Level Overview
September 17, 2021

Magnolia: Authoring & Development High Level Overview

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Magnolia

Magnolia is used across different business departments (3 Magnolia systems supporting several portal sites). The main business problem being addressed is to split different authoring/editing activities into multiple teams. There is heavy usage of light modules so many separate frontend teams can focus on creating frontend apps on top of Magnolia systems.
  • Easy to start authoring (simplicity during editing pages/ components) as the UX is straightforward for newcomers.
  • Flexibility by proving light modules that helps front-end developers work independently compared to backend/Java modules' developers.
  • The personalization mechanism is easy to use (the variants/traits logic is really simple to familiarize yourself with).
  • The multiple site mechanism is easy to set up (for EE version) even for non-developers.
  • YAML configuration flexibility is easy to change on the fly (for developers).
  • There is a need for out of the box ready & reusable components (customizable components, e.g. banners).
  • Resource (js) loading mechanism (resources can be added at multiple levels: e.g. pages, components, files, etc.) is very hard to manage sometimes in real projects.
  • The drag 'n drop of components in UI author is not supported.
  • Documentation needs a lot of improvement, especially for migration to the newest version (Magnolia 6.2).
  • It would be nice to add integrations with other CMS systems (e.g. Adobe AEM, Hybris, etc.) or other systems in general.
  • I would appreciate more dynamic renditions for images/assets (e.g. now there are only predefined dimensions - thumbnails/medium, etc.).
  • I would appreciate improved functionality for publishing & unpublishing during a specific date & time.
  • It improved page loading time due to caching mechanism for pages with many different components.
  • The integration of different frontend (Angular/ React) apps with Magnolia (as a backend system) made use of the light modules.
  • It provides a custom Magnolia system to authors/publishers using the decoration mechanism (e.g. same app but different configuration per role using decorations).
  • Negative: the flexibility of deploying light modules sometimes is easily propagating errors into the production systems.
The usability of the system is pretty good, especially for editors. There is some lack of documentation, especially for developers for the newer Magnolia system (6.2).
Magnolia's performance in frontends (template rendering) is fine. Caching (EHCACHE3) implementation helps deliver faster pages/components, etc. Performance issues are noticed when having lots of definitions (e.g. components/page templates, etc.). When opening definition apps, it takes a significant amount of time to load all definitions. When Magnolia integrates with other systems, I have not noticed any slowness, but this also depends on any custom implementations (handling responses, etc.).
Used CMS: Hybris CQ5/Adobe CMS AEM

Do you think Magnolia delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Magnolia's feature set?

Yes

Did Magnolia live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Magnolia go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Magnolia again?

Yes

Well suited for Systems with big website content & multiple sites to manage (if set up properly - performance is very good), many different teams/users that are authoring different sites/business areas, and custom content apps for simple data units (and rest entities). Less appropriate for: Systems maintaining more complex data structures (including big data etc.) and integrations with other systems (e.g. commerce) when other CMS products include ready solutions.

Magnolia Feature Ratings

6.5
WYSIWYG editor
4
Code quality / cleanliness
8
Admin section
7
Page templates
6
Mobile optimization / responsive design
7
Publishing workflow
7
Form generator
Not Rated
6.5
Content taxonomy
Not Rated
SEO support
Not Rated
Bulk management
6
Availability / breadth of extensions
7
Community / comment management
Not Rated
7.0
API
6
Internationalization / multi-language
8
8.0
Role-based user permissions
8
CMS programming language or framework ()
Not Rated

Upgrading Magnolia

Yes - The release was smooth during deployment. However, lots of issues were found during analysis and real implementation. Sometimes, documentation was lacking for features or migration guidelines from Magnolia 5.7 to 6.2.