The WCM Developer Glossary

APIs are pieces of code that expose data and functionality to enable applications and services to interact with each other, exchange information and perform tasks. APIs let your apps and services connect securely, share data and boost productivity. Sitefinity uses both standard-compliant REST APIs and the Sitefinity Web Services SDK to expose content.

A CMS using APIs to deliver content. Data services are handling the communication between the different application layers (backend and frontend). In Sitefinity, content management is separated from the page and template editing. The standard-compliant APIs that push content to the platform’s native presentation can also feed other frontend consumers, regardless of the technology they’re built on. This sort of decoupled architecture favors a wide range of headless implementations.

.NET Core is the successor of the ASP.NET web-development platform. A robust, feature-rich framework for developing super-fast APIs for web apps, .NET Core is open-source and cross-platform—a complete rewrite of ASP.NET that combines MVC structure and Web API into a single framework. In Sitefinity's 3-tier architecture, the .NET Core Renderer can be deployed and hosted on any platform that supports the ASP.NET Core framework.

A process of applying available software updates that requires minimum or no involvement of the software user and is governed and executed by the software proprietor or vendor instead. As a true Platform-as-a-Service, Sitefinity Cloud has automated key stages of the update process to save time and minimize the margin of error.

In software architecture, the layer of a piece of software that handles data storage and access, and the business logic. In CMS terms, the backend represents the administration (as opposed to the client-facing parts of the system) including installation, maintenance, development, deployment, data services, extensibility, security and access, along with content editing and governance.

Storage solution for unstructured data. A Binary Large Object (BLOB) is a collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management system. Blobs are typically images, audio or other multimedia objects. You can develop custom integrations with a number of external blob storage providers in Sitefinity.

Hardware or software data storage, which serves the collected data faster. The data in cache is stored temporarily and quickly retrieved when requested, to make sure your application or service run faster and deliver the best possible user experience. Sitefinity uses several layers of caching to ensure fast content editing and browsing. With the output cache warmup, the front-end experience is always fast and uninterrupted.

A Content Delivery Network is a distributed system of servers deployed in data centers across multiple geographic locations. CDN helps improve the user experience by providing higher performance and availability in delivering media content. Images, videos and documents are served faster to the end user, while minimizing the load on your web server(s). Sitefinity Cloud uses Cloudflare CDN.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery are some of the key concepts in modern software development, referring in general to introducing automation to the building, testing and deployment of applications. Continuous Integration is based on build and test automation, while Continuous Delivery is about deploying updates to production with minimum risk and downtime. Read more: CI/CD in Sitefinity Cloud.

Cloud-native computing in software development is using the infrastructure and underlying services of modern public and private cloud environments to develop and deploy scalable enterprise applications. In CMS terms, the architecture, hosting and deployment set the main alternatives apart. Traditional on-premises CMS are quickly losing ground to cloud-based platforms (conventionally built but hosted in the cloud). Ultimately, it’s cloud-native CMS’es that reap all the scalability and availability benefits of the cloud, and provide enterprise-grade security, services, workflows and tools. Explore the Sitefinity Cloud Platform Architecture.

A Decoupled CMS has the publishing tools of traditional content management, meaning it has a frontend layer and frontend development tools are available right out of the box. The architecture clearly separates the management and storage of content from the pages and templates that display it. That is, the presentation (frontend) is decoupled from the backend. The two layers communicate via APIs. A set of endpoints expose the content to one or many consumers, from websites that can be developed with the built-in toolset (widgets, templates and the like) to various platforms and frontend frameworks that can take in and interpret the data in the API responses. A decoupled CMS lets you opt between the inherent presentation layer and various headless implementations with a frontend technology of choice. Sitefinity is decoupled by design.

Electronic commerce (also Digital Commerce) is the electronic sale and purchase of goods and services on the Internet. From online shopping to various B2B online transactions, eCommerce is an integral part of the digital experience enterprises are providing to their customers and the general public. In CMS terms, it means a platform that allows tight integration with ERP, CRM, POS, order management and many other back-office systems that are essential to a successful online business. Through multiple partner solutions, Sitefinity can serve as powerful e-commerce platform.

Multi-region Failover is a disaster recovery instrument ensuring enterprise-grade business continuity. In a multi-region failover architecture, your production website or application has a replica of its entire service stack in a secondary region. In the event of an infrastructure failure or outage affecting the primary region you have the means of switching your application over to the secondary region.

In software architecture, the end-user-facing layer of a piece of software, including design, navigation, text and imagery—overall, an interface to interact with. In CMS terms, the frontend stands for the client-facing parts of the system, as opposed to the data and content administration. The frontend is often referred to as the presentation layer, which displays the content stored in the data access layer. Sitefinity was built for light, mobile-first presentations with full Bootstrap support, while its decoupled architecture lets you leverage multiple frontend technologies.

In the push for global presence and speed, enterprises need the capability to deliver digital content to visitors from the physically nearest possible location. And if you operate globally, you need consistent page load speed and performance across geographies. With tools such as content delivery networks (CDN), load balancing and distributed cache, Sitefinity lets you deliver multichannel, dynamic content to global audiences.

A headless CMS, as opposed to a traditional CMS, omits the frontend and is not bound by a specific delivery channel, such as a website. There is no presentation layer, no frontend development toolset out-of-the-box. In other words, there is no head – hence the name. In a headless platform, the content is made available to frontend consumer via APIs and you can have anything on the receiving end: websites, mobile apps, AR and IoT devices and various integrations with third-party systems. Read more: Decoupled or Headless CMS? Why Sitefinity is the Right Answer.

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a suite of developer tools and facilities to write, test and compile code. The essential components of an IDE are typically a source code editor and libraries, as well as tools for building and testing. IDEs can be proprietary or open-source, web-based, cloud-based or mobile, multi-language or language-specific. Sitefinity VSIX is a Visual Studio extension based on the Sitefinity CLI.

The process of distributing requests across multiple nodes, to more efficiently handle the overall load. Load balancing can optimize the response time for each request. Sitefinity can run in a load balanced environment, commonly referred to as web farm, to improve the performance and availability of application. The main components of a load-balanced setup are the load balancer and multiple server nodes that are hosting an application. The load balancer’s main task is to dynamically decide which node processes the incoming requests.

The capacity and toolset to create, manage and deliver content to multiple channels. Also known as Single Source Publishing, it’s a content management process leveraging decoupled architecture and a robust set of data services that can distribute technology agnostic, presentation neutral content to multiple frontend consumers—platforms built on diverse frameworks, emerging web and native applications and devices beyond traditional websites. Read more: Multichannel Content Management with Sitefinity.

In content management, the capacity to create and distribute content in different languages. Sitefinity enables content creators to localize their website(s) with as many language versions as needed. Sitefinity supports translation of pages, content items, taxonomies and more to deliver messaging to an international audience and target a greater number of users.

In content management, the capacity to run and centrally manage multiple sites via a single CMS instance. With multisite management in Sitefinity, you can configure different languages for different sites, assign site-specific permissions and configure content-specific settings. Content can be shared across sites while every site can have its own configuration. You can have different domains or set up sites as subfolders.

The Model-View-Controller framework is an application design pattern that breaks down software implementation into the following self-contained components: user-interface (view), business logic (model) and application logic (controller). This pattern applies the principle of “separation of concerns” in application development, whereby each of the components is responsible for one function only. In Sitefinity, ASP.NET MVC is an alternative to the classic WebForms model in ASP.NET.

Omnichannel content delivery involves multiple endpoints and the capacity to distribute content to traditional and emerging platforms and devices to seamlessly engage audiences. An omnichannel platform enables enterprises to deliver consistent user experiences powered by apps, data and content within a cohesive digital ecosystem. As the core of a Digital Experience Platform, Sitefinity enables marketers and developers to deliver compelling, omnichannel user experiences.

Platform as a service or a managed platform for development and deployment in the cloud. In a PaaS model, the infrastructure and underlying services, development tools, networking and operating system are the responsibility of the vendor, while you have full control over your data and the services or applications you develop. PaaS CMS solutions such as Sitefinity Cloud enable organization to reduce time to market, achieve operational efficiency and scale to best meet current demands. Sitefinity Cloud was designed to reduce the overhead and upfront investment into enterprise-grade infrastructure.

In web design, an approach that adapts the layout of a web application to the viewing environment, e.g. device screen size and orientation. Popular libraries like Bootstrap control content rendering based on layout grids while languages like CSS can apply various styles to the markup. The ASP.NET MVC and the Bootstrap frontend framework in Sitefinity enable you to build and develop apps that are responsive, mobile-first and work seamlessly on any device, desktop or mobile. All MVC widgets are built with a mobile-first mindset.

The process of getting a web application production-ready after a restart / reinitialization. In essence, the application gets hit with requests in order to cache critical data before it starts handling production traffic. Each time your application restarts, for reasons including but not limited to new code deployment or scaling up, response to the first requests on the frontend may be delayed as pages are being compiled and cached. The Sitefinity Warmup service rules out those delays and makes sure your site is configured for optimal performance. The Warmup service calls all sitemap pages, compiles them based on sitemap priority and stores them in the output cache, so they are ready to be served to visitors.

SiteSync is the Sitefinity solution for creating, staging and publishing content in line with the best content governance practices. The SiteSync module handles content promotion between your Sitefinity website environments, from the content authoring environment all the way up to production. SiteSync can be used as a standalone solution for content promotion or be integrated into a Continuous Deployment (CD) setup.

User management is a crucial aspect of administration in governing user access to diverse project resources, environments, services and components. In CMS terms, setting up the right permissions for the right roles and giving the right level of access to the right environments is key to maintaining a high level of security and efficient workflows. In Sitefinity, you can granularly and precisely manage users, roles and permissions for a tightly integrated and secure workspace, and operational efficiency. Read more: Self-service in Sitefinity Cloud. 

Webhooks are automated requests that can transfer data between or modify/extend the behavior of apps and services. Those requests (also called web callbacks) have a specified URL and payload and are typically triggered by certain events. In Sitefinity, webhooks are configured to send data to a specified URL via a POST callback with JSON payload whenever an event is registered by the Sitefinity EventHub system. Webhooks are a handy tool to trigger follow-up actions in external systems and applications that you want to sync or integrate with Sitefinity. Read more: Sitefinity Webhooks >> Fast Forward

An integrated security solution in Sitefinity that lets customers achieve an enterprise-grade level of protection and covers things like HTTP security headers, redirect and referrer validation, SSL configurations, authentication settings and cookie protection. The Web Security Module is a tight line of defense against diverse types of attacks, including cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking, code injection, stealing or modifying data in transit and content sniffing. Read more: Sitefinity and Cross-site Cookies.

What You See Is What You Get refers to the specific capabilities of content editing software that lets you edit text and other content as it will appear when published. A handy solution for content editors with limited or no programmatic experience to edit the presentation instead of the source code. The wide set of tools in the Sitefinity WYSIWYG rich-text editor let you format and structure text and layout, build and insert tables, embed media and links to both internal and external content. HTML source editing is available too, complete with validation, syntax highlighting, and IntelliSense. Discover the new Sitefinity content editing experience.