3 Fundamental Technologies of High-Performing, Global Websites

Adopting a well thought out digital strategy to help position your enterprise online is a primary determinant of success. As larger organizations flourish and grow, they are often surprised at the difficulty of taking their website strategy to an international level. How do you plan a website ensuring you’ll end up with a reliably effective tool that you can expand as your business advances?

There are many aspects of your website to consider when operating in global markets, we’ve identified three fundamental features which are critical to launching and managing a successful website with a content management system (CMS).

1.Multi-language support: a must-have

Want to reach a global market? Your website has to speak their language with their localized information. You won’t get away with a one-time translation either. To meet demands of up-to-date content you need language management and translation workflows to maintain the content across multiple websites. That means multilingual across multiple websites. It’s important that:

• the frontend of your website can be displayed in the needed target language(s)

• the backend (website administration) has the tools needed to support multilingual publishing

Localization refers to software preparedness for global distribution, with particular emphasis on the technology and processes required to deliver multilingual information. It’s the process by which a product or application is adapted to meet language requirements. It includes translation, and goes beyond it. If you’re doing business around the world, localization provides a key to international success.

Once considered a nice-to-have feature, localization has meanwhile become a basic requirement for any business website and provides a central competitive advantage.

TYPO3 CMS has 15+ years of experience in handling multilingual sites and comes with built-in localization.

2. Multisite functionality: in the hot seat

Managing multiple sites can be frustrating if you don't have the right tools. There's a growing demand for the ability to manage multiple websites on a single platform. Multisite functionality is becoming more and more of a critical differentiation criterion for software solutions as it lets you handle your number of sites, your features, your layouts, user roles, and so on, on one single installation.

Multisite management capability can tip the scales in favor of economic and time saving software solutions...like TYPO3 CMS. :-)

A multisite network is a collection of websites that share a single software installation. By creating a network of websites with multisite management, you can easily organize all your sites and content. Your entire team gets a single, standalone interface to manage everything, offering a convenient way to handle content. You can share content across all sites and use it as a basis to quickly launch new sites, microsites, landing pages or other pages. Multisite functionality also lets you quickly modify content to make all your sites contextually relevant to a global audience, while maintaining consistency and brand identity.

3. Extensions: self-contained pieces of software that add specific functions

Today, open source software (OSS) is at the heart of many successful enterprises. As the source code is freely available, OSS allows you to customize the software and add additional features with relative ease. It lets you create highly personalized websites tailored to unique business needs. In TYPO3, functions can be added to the TYPO3 core by installing so-called extensions to expand its functionality and to fine-tune website implementations to perfectly meet specific requirements. While the TYPO3 core itself is a powerful enterprise solution, the TYPO3 extensions–which can be added or removed dynamically–help keep the TYPO3 installation lean, unbloated and performant.

Extension is a fancy word for a simple concept. Think of TYPO3 extensions as units that extend the TYPO3 core, each one adding an extra function to the software.

TYPO3’s power as an enterprise development platform arises from this highly customizable architecture, and subsequent contribution by the TYPO3 community. Extensions are created by individual developers or agencies in the TYPO3 community, many of whom make their code freely available for use via the TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER) on TYPO3.org. You can download them from there (for free) and install them via the Extension Manager in your TYPO3 backend.

The reason TYPO3 has become such a popular CMS solution–more than 500,000 sites run on TYPO3–for so many enterprises is because it offers these three fundamental technologies and lots, lots more. It’s flexible, highly scalable and has the power it takes to create truly stunning solutions.

The TYPO3 community crafts the CMS with an eye to specific business needs.

TYPO3 is great for sites that will need features such as blogs, online shops, news, forums, product displays, etc. in different languages that necessitate complex content creation and management. TYPO3 can manage this complexity with the leanest possible backend. Also, TYPO3 has a long standing history as a quality product and is in wide use globally. It’s backed by both by its developer and service provider communities, as well as a commercial entity, TYPO3 GmbH, which backs the CMS with further special services.

TYPO3 GmbH isn’t in the business of building websites; that’s what the professional TYPO3 agencies and freelancers do. Whether you are launching your first TYPO3 website, updating an existing site or relaunching an older site, we can assist you in finding a trusted development partner for your TYPO3 web project that covers all of the aspects that are relevant to you.

Our commitment to quality means that our TYPO3 partners are counted among the best in the industry, making our TYPO3 Partner Program a place where customers can find the quality and performance they need. Our TYPO3 partners specialize in development, migration, maintenance and support services. They’re experienced contributors to the TYPO3 community who have completed high profile TYPO3 projects. To ensure high quality standards our partners employ certified and audited professionals.

With TYPO3 CMS you have choices, ones that help you maximize your return on investment (ROI). TYPO3 has gained a reputation for being flexible, powerful and robust in creating complex websites. With TYPO3, you can create everything...just about. :-)

Get in touch with us if you want to know more.