Simpla

The modular content system for frontend developers

7 followers

The modular content system for frontend developers

7 followers

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Website builders

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Content Management Systems

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Headless CMS software

Simpla is a modular frontend content framework built on Web Components. Create dynamic content with HTML, edit it inline, and manipulate it over a JSON API.

Launch tags:Web App•API•Developer Tools

Launch Team

Relive your 2014 » 2003

Nice tool! @seaneking how does it compare with tools like teletext.io (@centrical @marcelpanse) ? The end results look similar, but from a tech perspective Simpla seems to require still quite some extra markup to have it up and running while teletext sounds more unobtrusive (especially for existing websites) - am I missing something? We're looking for a multi-language (no-)cms solution for our platform, so I'm really interested on the topic. Thanks

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@stefanocutello Teletext is very cool. Similar editing experience, but I think goals and implementation are quite different. At a high level Teletext seems (@centrical @marcelpanse feel free to correct me) to be focussed on adding editing capabilities to existing content, like a more powerful and developer-friendly PageCloud. Simpla can do that, but we're more focussed on replacing the CMS in new projects, hence new HTML elements (more powerful) vs. data attributes (easier to retrofit). Baking dynamic content into new HTML elements has lots of advantages: - Editing is sandboxed inside Simpla elements, so it's seamless and can't interfere with your code. - We can structure data on-the-fly (see simpla-block), which opens up awesome opportunities (eg: frontend blog in 10 lines of HTML + js) - Individual elements vs. full WYSIWYG editors means more structured, semantic content - Can easily create custom content types - lists, repeaters, datetime - every static HTML element could have a dynamic equivalent in Simpla, so you could build as you would with HTML, but have it all seamlessly dynamic. We're working on the flexibility angle, for example we'll soon be making simpla-img extend a native img (ie: <`img is="simpla-img" /`>). Hope that helps!

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10yr ago

Instant Content Management

@stefanocutello @seaneking @centrical Simpla and Teletext.io are both trying to solve the same content editing problem. Our background is a bit different, we were building SPA's with ReactJs and in these component based languages you might not control the actual HTML output (like with ReactJs you might use bootstrap or react-mdl as a abstraction layer on the html), so you cannot implement something like simpla on it (unless you fork the component libraries). So we needed something that would work on any HTML output, as unobtrusive as possible. It is just a slightly different approach. It seems Simpla is focussing more on new websites, since you need to implement the custom tags and we are focussing more on existing websites - to easily add content management to it. Anyway, this is a huge market and it is good that multiple companies are working on the same thing, it just validates there is an actual problem and a need to solve it. There is plenty of room in this space for multiple competitors. Kudos to the simpla team and keep up the good work -- so will we :-)

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10yr ago

Instant Content Management

@stefanocutello @seaneking @marcelpanse I agree with both Sean and Marcel. When we heard about Simpla, we instantly liked it very much and reached out to Sean and his team to tell them so ;-) The differences between Simpla and Teletext.io have to do with the use case. As Marcel pointed out, Teletext.io primarily aims at helping out developers who are part of an ongoing product development cycle. Sometimes, these products are already quite mature and have a lot of traffic. This is why we try to avoid requiring a lot of mark-up changes. For the same reasons, there are differences in feature set, the API structure and the architecture of the underlying system. Anyway, we think Simpla does a great job - let's both conquer the world!

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@stefanocutello @marcelpanse Hear hear!

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10yr ago

Relive your 2014 » 2003

@centrical @seaneking @marcelpanse I strongly believe you guys are solving a very annoying problem that's there since a very long time. Content Management, without the System. Love it! Keep up the good work & thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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10yr ago

Hi, I work myself for a CMS company. Our cms platform can also personalize and do ab testing, has marketing tools etc. Do you think you could integrate this into a existing cms? I'm not technical, sorry. We also have frontend editing, but more in modules that you can edit. All the content has an item id, and can we used over and over on different places... I'm not sure if I can mention where I work. Looks really nice btw!

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@paul_engelbertink Yep you could very easily integrate Simpla into an existing CMS. Without knowing the CMS couldn't give exact advice, but depending on how deep you want the integration you could just plug Simpla in and go. We have a similar setup re: item IDs. Every Simpla element has an ID, and you can use a 'global ID' in multiple places for repeated content. We also have a thing called simpla-block, which lets you structure and manipulate your content straight in HTML.

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

Hi @paul_engelbertink, thanks! Just going on what @seaneking said, it really depends on how deep tied you want it to be with your CMS. Feel free to DM me on twitter https://twitter.com/bedeoverend if you're uncomfortable talking more about it here :)

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10yr ago

@seaneking The company I work for is Sitecore I feel perfectly fine talking here, I wasn't sure if it is against PD rules to mention names..

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10yr ago

@seaneking It's great that it works with IDs too, on that basis we also personalize the pages. example: When user comes from fb, show fb register. When user comes from twitter, show twitter reg. box. Interesting to see where cms is going, I think you are heading the right way. From an Enterprise perspective, do you use workflow within simpla?

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@paul_engelbertink ah, awesome! That's actually one of our showcase examples of how to use Simpla for dynamic websites - personalising user experiences (check out the code snippet on the home page, under 'Dynamic content done right'). Same principle applies to localisation, responsive content, etc. And how do you mean, use a workflow within Simpla?

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

Hey everyone, and thanks for the hunt @chrismessina! I'm Sean, one of the cofounders of Simpla along with @bedeoverend. We built Simpla out of frustration with the CMS. It's a collection of new HTML elements that you use to create dynamic content directly in your code. Simpla doesn't have admin areas or forms, you edit content inline (without the risk of breaking things). And it all runs of the frontend, so you can mix beautiful dynamic content into anything. The editing experience looks like this:

We've been thinking about this problem for a long time, and the maturity of the Web Components spec last year was the lightbulb moment for us. We think putting dynamic content into HTML itself is the way forward for the web. Can't wait to hear your feedback! We'll be around to answer questions :-)

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10yr ago

@seaneking @chrismessina @bedeoverend As someone that's been following Simpla along since the early days, it's super exciting to see you guys kicking goals! Simpla makes the web fun. Looking forward to never having to use a CMS again! ;- )

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@kane_rogers Thanks!

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10yr ago

Playable Video

@seaneking @chrismessina @bedeoverend Nice work team. I've been impressed by how this team have built a useful product with their avid customers over the past six months.

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10yr ago

@seaneking @chrismessina @bedeoverend Amazing concept guys! Solves a huge problem for web designers. Every time I deliver a client's wordpress website I have to also send them tutorial videos and most of them don't have the time or the inclination to learn their way around a new software. So I end up updating their content every time there is a change. It's a total pain in the ass. I have some elderly clients and they sometimes email me because they want a change in their website tagline! It doesn't seem like a big deal but when you have to dig up the passwords for websites you delivered a year ago it becomes tedious. That's why I loved Simpla and decided to give it a try right away. Here is some feedback - 1. I was a bit confused after signing up as to what I had to do to get started. I figured it out eventually and felt stupid because it was so simple. But a nice visual guide to help new users get started would help. 2. I'm planning to use Simpla primarily for my clients. And since I could create multiple projects with one account I thought 29 bucks a month was fair. But when I tried to edit my website I was asked for my login credentials so I guess I'll have to create one account for each client so that I wouldn't have to share my password with them if they want to edit their site themselves. In that case, $29/month becomes quite costly. Because they'll also need to purchase a hosting account and 29/month just to be able to edit their website inline wouldn't go down very well with any of my clients (or any web designer's clients actually). It would be great if you could provide one login for each project. But overall its a cool product with great UI (UX has scope for improvement) that solves a real pain point. Thanks for making Simpla!

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@thepankazz Thanks so much for the awesome feedback! Glad you like the concept, to your points: 1. So sorry you felt that! We are painfully aware that onboarding needs work. It's our highest priority (along with multi-user, below). We're planning on implementing an optional step-by-step setup guide on the dashboard when you first sign up. Do you think that would have helped? 2. Mutli-user support is the most requested feature on our roadmap (http://simpla.link/public-roadmap), we're starting work on it ASAP. Though pricing would still be per-project. We'd want to keep the per-project option for flexibility (eg: devs who would want to pass on a project's cost to a client). We're always iterating on pricing though. The current price points are pegged to industry standards (Contentful, Firebase, etc). We'll keep testing though! Thanks again for the feedback :-)

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10yr ago

@seaneking Nice job on this! I see a lot of great use cases to bridge the gap between technical folks and non-technical ones who need to maintain the content of a page. A few questions: 1) For people who aren't ready to completely leap out of a CMS driven system, is there an API method to pull data from Simpla and inject it into the CMS (say after a period of time). For example, if someone was to edit the Title of a Wordpress Post using Simpla, could I have a daemon that will pull the Simpla content and replace it in the Wordpress post? And, subsequent views of that page is then served by Wordpress? Effectively, I'm just using the rich experience of Simpla but still maintaining the integrity of the content within Wordpress. 2) How does Simpla (or more specifically Web Components or Polymer) handle indexing and crawlability by Search engines for SEO?

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@webjoe Thanks! To answer your q's: 1) Yep. As long as you knew the Simpla ID of the content, you can just run Simpla.get('my-id') with Javascript to fetch that content straight from our API. 2) As of 2015, no problems. Google and other major search engines allow Javascript to execute on a page before crawling it (eg: for loading in Simpla content). So there's no difference between Simpla and static content SEO-wise. EDIT: Seems to be a few intermittent bugs w/ SEO. See this Github issue for more: https://github.com/simplaio/simp...

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10yr ago

The Outsider: Invest in America

Eating your own dog food is gross. Letting someone edit your home page as a way to demo your new CMS-free system? Brilliant.

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

Certainly ain't, thanks @jamie_mci! Glad you like our demo :)

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10yr ago

TreeExchange

Hey! Love the execution. Quick question, say I wanted to have 10+ sites with you - is that cost per site? Also - have you thought about a 'blog/repeat' module.

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

Thanks @pwheslop! Yes - right now we just have per project breakdown of pricing, but feel free to contact us if you're buying a bulk number and this model doesn't suit. Re: 'blog/repeat' - yes definitely, I'm actually working on this as we speak. Also take a look at https://simpla.link/public-roadmap which shows the current features we're working on, any any upcoming ones - feel free to vote on them too :)

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10yr ago

Very very cool. Love the demo feature on home page - even worked seamlessly on my phone. I’ve often hacked simple versions of a CMS like this for small internal enterprise sites that didn’t need a full CMS. Nice to see this done so well as a complete package. Will likely try out soon with a side project. Couple notes and questions: - There seems to be no visual cue that an element is editable - is this intentional? - How is the per-project pricing and API limit determined: by unique domain? - How do you handle (or plan on handling) versioning?

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10yr ago

Simpla

Maker

@onedurr thanks! - Visual cues: so we want to keep Simpla as unobtrusive as possible, so if we were going to do it, we'd probably make it optional. One way to do this would be to give Simpla elements an attribute while in edit mode so the developer could style it how they want. - API / Project Pricing: It's just tied to the unique Project ID, it doesn't check against the domain. - Versioning: Do you mean versioning of content? Don't have this is place right now, however it's definitely on the roadmap! Appreciate the feedback, let me know if you have any more questions :)

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10yr ago

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