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Kentico is an enterprise level digital experience platform (it is used for really epic modern day websites).

Like a line out of the Wizard of Oz, what started in Brno, Czech Republic has grown beyond borders into an international challenger. 

Kentico has had an exciting progression, evolving itself into 2 clear product offerings Xperience (DX) and Kontent (Headless CMS). Now Kentico Xperience is entering a new phase of its product lifecycle.

If you want your business to thrive, though, there are certain advantages that old-fashioned strategies can never offer. That's why a strong digital lineup of digital assets is important.

How do you start building your digital strategy? How do you know what will and will not boost your business? It's a more complex task than you might expect. Start with these clear steps.

Kentico Xperience 13 has landed. Accelerating effective digital communication for businesses worldwide, the latest version of the award-winning DXP brings a host of features and improvements for marketers and developers, setting them up for the future.

Kentico Xperience 13 Uses .NET Core at its core

Developers will get what we mean for the rest - Kentico Xperience 13 is one of the first digital experience platforms to use the new .NET Core MVC framework. .NET Core is next-generation technology from Microsoft. It's an open-source project with wide support from a community for web development.

Developers can use the updated tooling and APIs to build ASP.NET Core MVC sites and custom libraries. .NET Core is a lightweight platform. Code is easier to develop, debug, and maintain. Your team can spend less time fixing bugs and more time developing upgrades and new features. With the previous .NET framework, developers had to include functionality whether they needed it or not. With Kentico 13, developers can add only what your business needs.

Kentico 13 has a clear separation between the public-facing website and the back-end content admin interface. The public-facing website loads only the content and libraries it needs. The website loads faster and has a smaller footprint. Websites can process more data and handle more traffic using fewer resources. They'll also get better SEO because Google prefers faster loading times.

.NET Core allows better testing. For example, the improved command-line tooling makes running tests easier. Better testing makes websites more reliable. Automated testing ensures that an application meets its design specifications and behaves as intended. This creates a better website, which can have a big impact on your business's success.

Marketing automation for the next-gen of digital marketing

The secret website of technology savvy marketeers, marketing automation is often the most underutilized area for any content management platform, Kentico Xperience has a stack load of features that both optimise experience, but also make one marketeer seem like many. In KX13 Marketers can build automated workflows with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. The automated workflows have built-in analytics to improve communication and performance. Marketers can copy workflow steps for reuse or save the entire workflow as a template. Kentico 13 now also includes automation templates to help showcase and guide your team in ways it can be used, for example birthday and abandoned shopping cart templates. This is a two part benefit, firstly it helps maximise the use of the marketing suite offered by Xperience, and also gives more independence to your team without having to have an expert in the field or developer. Thanks to templates and instructions, your team can invest more time in creativity, adding value to services or products.

Another update is the ability to compose new emails directly into the marketing tool. Your team can run automation processes with A/B testing for marketing emails, and we all know how powerful A/B testing is in optimising campaign performance. Although these features were in previous versions of Kentico Xperience, the challenge was marketers still needed developers to set it up. The change is one we love, less dependance of developers and more autonomy for content creators and non-coders.

Small content changes have a big ripple effect in the cyber world

Kentico Xperience 13 provides an enhanced feature set based around how pages are created, the use of sections and relationship to widgets. They also address the reuse and dynamic functionality when presenting the same content in many places on your website. The changes are good for those who need quick control of content presentation or looking to optimise search engine performance. 

Custom dynamic URL routing has changed

Kentico Xperience 13 has a new content tree-based URL routing system. This individual system can automatically generate URLs for pages based on their positions in the content tree along with their page types. The pages display in the MVC without needing the technical step of knotting routes to controllers. Content tree-based routing lets content admins move pages around freely to, you will also notice that the areas previously used to manage Alias and Canonical URLs has moved in line with this, but you can still:

  • Change page URLs
  • Automatically redirect old URLs to new ones
  • Provide alternate alias URLs for landing pages

Support is available for configuring the format of URLs on multilingual sites in the content tree-based routing mode. You can activate content tree-based routing with a setting. Your existing custom implementations of routing will continue to work. 

Smarter page indexing for search

In earlier versions of Kentico Xperience not all pages indexed automatically in search results (as there was a delineation between page templates, types and widget-based page building). Developers still need to check and ensure pages were visible and they would be crawled. That meant custom development for custom indexing. Xperience 13 now indexes pages more autonomously than ever regardless of how they were built and where they sit in the backend.

Content is king, reusing content is an art form

Kentico 13 has a feature devoted to creating pages, sections, and elements by reusing existing content. This feature saves time by eliminating duplicated content. Editors don't need to update content in multiple places. They can update content in one location and the system will distribute it across the website. They can create a content item in multiple places in the content tree. Editors can reuse content by:

  • Linking a page or object through the new Linked Node interface
  • Using related pages through the related pages tab
  • Using ad-hoc related documents through a page type field

Canonical links give the main URL of the original page. This meets SEO requirements for not duplicating content. You can safely keep information updated throughout the website.

Integrations are only getting easier and easier

Zapier, Bynder, and Recombee are even more supported, support autonomous and connected digital ecosystems. 

Zapier integration

Kentico Xperience 13 has native integration with Zapier. You can install the Zapier module with a NuGet package. You can synchronize Kentico pages and objects with any third-party systems that already have an integration with Zapier. Synchronization works with third-party REST API and Integration Bus integrations too. Triggering Zaps with custom workflows and marketing actions is also possible.

Bynder integration

The Bynder connector lets your team manage assets in the Bynder digital asset management system. They can use them across Kentico Xperience. Users can search, browse, and filter using the Bynder interface. Content updates automatically when an asset is set with a new version in Bynder. Keeping Bynder as the single source of truth for digital assets avoids content silos. Your teams save time. Using approved assets from Bynder directly in Xperience streamlines processes.

Recombee Integration

The Recombee integration gives marketers the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Recombee is a powerful AI recommendations engine. It helps personalise websites. Each site visitor sees the most relevant content. Recombee automatically defines relevant content based on users' interests and behavior. AI is incredibly accurate and is becoming highly effective for personalisation through personas.

Voice assistant integration

KEVIN is the code name for the Xperience 13 integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Users can control the Kentico admin interface without using a keyboard or mouse. This makes the Kentico upgrade more accessible. Users who need or prefer to control the interface without typing can do so. They can define commands in any language.

We know you are keen, so let us start the Kentico Xperience 13 migration

How to make the Xperience 13 migration

The Kentico upgrade is not a quick one due to the change in the physical architecture, previous versions were quicker. But this is a good thing, Kentico bit the bullet and made the substantial changes to really position the technioclly for a strong future roadmap. The time required to make the change is based on your current website, both what version it is on and how much customisation has been done. There will be some wins and some extra development required, we can advise this before we even start. Upgrading from a lower version does requires you to sequentially upgrade to each version, hence why it is important to keep up to date with the latest version of Kentico. 

The most important thing to note is that Kentico will no longer be supporting Portal Engine, WebForms or ASPX templates moving forward, so the topic of upgrading needs to be discussed regardless.

Before you start your Kentico Xperience 13 update

Before you start the upgrade, the first step is to do a code review, and map out your existing website, noting all the features and functionality present. This gives a clear current state and agreed review point once the new version is implemented. The handy thing is that Kentico has created an Xperience code upgrade tool that checks to help highlight code that is not supported or valid in the new version Xperience 13, so at least ask your developer to check that now. The tool also gives some recommendations, as well as your developer who can advise a plan to move forward.
 

The recommended Kentico Xperience 13 upgrade process

Right now you can download the Xperience 13 upgrade pack from Kentico. Developers can run and install the upgrade procedure. Kentico recommends using the Kentico Upgrade Utility to perform the upgrade automatically. Run the utility and enter the path to your Kentico 12 web project folder. You'll need to upgrade project files and the database.

You also need to upgrade your MVC projects. When you open the MVC application in Visual Studio, you can update the target framework version to .NET Framework 4.8. Uninstall the Kentico 12 integration packages for MVC development. Then, install the Kentico.Xperience.AspNet.Mvc5 NuGet package. Clean the project's output folder and rebuild the solution.

After the upgrade, clear your browser cache before you open the website or the Xperience admin interface. You also need to run the website before you apply any hotfixes. When you run the site, the system finalises the upgrade.

Expert roundtable from Kentico 

Our partner, Kentico, recently hosted an insightful roundtable discussion on the topic of 'What to look out for when migrating your website'. For invaluable insights into the pitfalls and strategies for a successful website migration, you can read the article here. 

Why upgrade to Kentico Xperience 13? Book a meeting and we can show you.

We appreciate it is a lot to take in, you probably want to know what is the value doing this, what things you need to be aware of, and how much is it going to cost to get there. Our mission is to educate and inform, so that clients can make the best decision moving forward. Making the complicated less so. If we can help with plain speaking then we would love to chat about it.

With Kentico Xperience 13 you get a future-proof web framework better positioned to serve marketeers and developers alike. The Kentico upgrade process can be a challenge but with good reason. Our team know how to help our clients grow through their digital evolution and KX13 offers an opportunity to do so.

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Daniel del Pino
Digital Solutions Manager, Dapth
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