Second look at Kentico CMS 6.0

It's been a busy month for the people at Kentico with the release of the new www.kentico.com website. But that is not all! Yesterday they released a beta of the upcoming version 6.0! In this post I wil show you the things that I did not cover in my first look of the 6.0 CTP.

It's been a busy month for the people at Kentico with the release of the new www.kentico.com website. But that is not all! Yesterday they released a beta of the upcoming version 6.0! In this post I wil show you the things that I did not cover in my first look of the 6.0 CTP.

Shipping new with Kentico CMS 6.0 is the Kentico Installation Manager. This is your starting point for creating and managing your websites.



In this this screen you will be able to install a new instance of Kentico CMS. Clicking on the "Install" button will open up the familiar Kentico CMS Web Installer in the new 6.0 look-and-feel:



Once you have reached the point of choosing the starter site to install, notice the new "Corporate Site" template:



And below the result, a nice new looking Corporate Site!



Including updated mobile section:



Let's have a look at the CMS Desk. Notice the new layout in the log on page:



First impression: simply awesome!



In the document properties you will find some new features for generating a preview link and the possibility to clear the output cache of the document.



The URLs tab has been updated and now allows you to specify to path type to be either: Standard URL or wildcard, Route or MVC.



The multi file uploader has been integrated in Kentico CMS 6.0 and allows you to select multiple files when uploading.



Macros is one of my favorite features in Kentico CMS. Version 6.0 brings you the new and improved Macro editor with IntelliSense!!!



It also has a nice navigation feature which allows you to sort of browse through the available macros:



When previewing or viewing the live site you can now validate the documents HTML, CSS and check for broken links!



Kentico CMS 6.0 ships with some new web parts like the Facebook web parts:



New web parts for localization like the Bing & Google translator web parts:



New membership web parts for LinkedIn:



And available for use in certain web parts, there are new simple, text and logic captcha's:



The "My desk" section is updated with the new ribbon navigation and contains the new dashboards feature.



Taking a closer look at the "My profile" section, I noticed a nice new feature that indicates the strength of the password!



The "Tools" section has been updated with the ribbon navigation.



Next to the layout changes, the "Administration" contains two new modules: "E-mail templates" and "Categories".



With version 6.0 it will be possible to create hierarchical categories:



The "E-commerce" module is now stand alone with the new ribbon navigation:



And brings you the new "Product types": Membership, E-product, Donations and Bundles.



The new "On-line marketing" module, which I will be covering in-depth in a seperate blog post in one of the upcoming weeks, is also added as a stand alone module:



This is where you can setup the lead score, view the conversions, campaigns and web analytics. But you can also view and configure the activities that should be tracked:



Manage your contacts:



Create and manage accounts with merge and split options:



Plus you can create contact groups and use the new E-mail marketing features:



Let's have a look at the Kentico Site Manager:



Notice that the "Import Site" wizard has been updated with a new layout and now allows you to upload packages!



The "Administration" section has been updated with some new modules like "Categories", "E-mail templates", "Memberships" and "SMTP servers":



And also the "Integration bus":



In "Settings" you will find the new categorized look and feel:



And some new settings like the "HTML 5 support":



The "Password policy" settings:



Settings for the "Captcha":



Performance settings for caching (content, files, client, output, resouces, css styles):



No more need for web.config debug settings with the new "Debug" settings:



Settings for "REST" services:



And also "Cloud" services settings for Windows Azure:



In the "Development" section you will find two new modules: "Custom settings" and "Search engines":



One of the features I have been looking forward to is the object versioning. You can see an example of this for CSS stylesheets in the screenshot below:



And another example applied to transformations because I really love this feature:
 


Version 6.0 brings a new "Tools" section to the Site Manager with "Contact management" and "E-commerce configuration".



The "Dashboard" section allows the websites administrators to monitor the website:



The "Licenses" section is similar to the previous Kentico CMS versions:



The "Support" section has been slightly updated:



With the new API examples module:



And the "Buy" section takes you directly to the purchase page on www.kentico.com



With every new release of Kentico CMS we are usely in for a treat and this exactly applies to version 6.0. In my opinion Kentico CMS 6.0 will definitely be the biggest Kentico CMS release we have seen and I am looking forward to use it in our projects. Great job Kentico!

For more information on version 6.0 make sure to check out the blog posts below:

My own:
- Hierarchical viewers and transformations
- First look at Kentico CMS 6.0

Brian McKeiver's:   
- Kentico CMS 6.0 Beta is Out

Michal Neuwirth's:
- Real-time performance monitoring of your websites
- 1-2-3 Kentico CMS 6.0 Deployment and Maintenance
- Small features the Content Editors will love in CMS 6.0
- Small features the developers will love in CMS 6.0
- Small features the administrators will love in CMS 6.0
- Health Monitoring in Kentico CMS 6.0
- E-mail marketing in Kentico CMS 6.0

Petr Vozak's:         
- New design of E-commerce UI in Kentico CMS 6.0
- API examples in Kentico CMS 6.0
- Better image editor in Kentico CMS 6.0
- Improved settings in Kentico CMS 6.0