Item: Magnolia
Rating: 7
Author: alex plouff

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I train developers how to use, build and customize every nook and cranny of Magnolia.

Pros and Cons

Allows easy/fast development/configuration via yaml.
Allows devs to override out of box functionality.
Allows many integration points.

Admincentral UI is clunky and animations make it feel slow.
Admincentral UI layout fosters a frustrating experience w/ many misclicks wasting time.
Documentation as of late has been inaccurate and hard to follow.

Return on Investment

YAML config speeds up and simplifies development where othe CMSs fail.

There are a ton of small things that could make this CMS great Off the top of my head... 1) Better navigation between a component and its corresponding node in the jcr ( devs often have to flip between a page and a spot in the jcr even though there could be a button to take you from a page/component in the pages app to its location in the JCR) 2) Why does a content editor need to open the page to edit the page properties? They could just as easily edit the dialog from the tree view if they have many pages to touch, and it would save them time by not having to render the page.

Performance

We often have over 100 sites in 1 instance, and Magnolia does not handle this well—lots of issues w/ authoring performance in general, publishing, and multiple editors at once.

Alternatives Considered

I've used several CMSs like AEM and EpiServer, and comparatively, they all excel at different things. Magnolia is the best to develop for/against. Episerver has the best/most fluid UI in terms of content editing, and the overall admin experience AEM is just all around sucks.

Key Insights

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

Likelihood to Recommend

A colleague here being another business. Magnolia is on its way to being a 'good' product but the 6.2 implementation simply isn't there yet (6.2.26 as of this writing). The admincentral UI could use a complete overhaul to be better streamlined for devs and content editors (the two who actually use it).

Meh

Overall Satisfaction with Magnolia