Unify by Unit Interactive
Getting into the realm of CMS (Content Management System) is a standard today in most websites, allowing the client to edit their own content. Over the past while, I’ve been looking into various different systems for editing content (well what am I doing right now?), and to be honest there’s a lot of stuff out there for designers and developers, or people with a good knowledge of web technologies and the internet, but not for your average consumer.
There is still a large percentage of people unsure of how to get their updated wording from their piece of paper to the main page of their site. Many systems not only let you edit the text / images, but also allow for the addition of pages, blogs, forums, email newsletters, right through to changing the style guides the designer has worked so hard at to set up. What happened to simplicity? If the websites I design primarily focus on small–medium sized businesses, is it necessary to have that extra stuff?
On my venture I had a vision of finding something that a user can securely log into, easily navigate around their own site and make changes to text, images, links etc while having the website’s styles all locked in place. Then I found Unify.
I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the Unify Beta test recently, it’s not a full blown CMS, but more a simple, well designed user friendly editor, allowing even the most webphobic of people to get to grips with it easily. You can edit text in your browser, with your webpage literally showing each edit as it is made. The closest thing I’ve seen so far to What you see is what you get.
The team behind this sweet little application is Unit Interactive, and it’s interesting watching Unify evolve. Upon its release, I’m pretty sure I will be getting it involved with my website designs where needed, as a powerful tool for clients, and a great option as a designer.
Andy
Tags: Application, Unify, Unit Interactive
Hi Andy,
Great, I had heard of Unify, but I see it’s now well out of beta. Similar to CushyCMS and Surreal if you’ve seen those. But this is pretty nice and as you say very simple.
I assume you can host it yourself which is a major bonus for the client and the designer.
Cheers,
B
Hey Brockdin,
Yeah Unify is now well in use, I’ve got number of clients using it—they love it. And yes, you host it yourself. The team at Unit Interactive are great to deal with.
Cheers!
Hello,
I did use unify for a while, there were some issues such as, it wont let me add my/my client branding, it always have the Unify Logo plus there is no solid file manager.
Now I have switch to Veolay, http://www.veolay.com/
Veolay allows me the change branding completely, its less that $10.00 plus it comes with a great backup and versions controller.
Cheers
En.
Hey Enrique, Yeolay looks nice. There seems to be an abundance of these content editors popping up now. I still like Unify not only for the great support I’ve experienced, but also for their ongoing development on it, it just keeps getting better as time goes on. Regarding the branding, it doesn’t bother me at all that I can’t re-brand it as mine. Simple fact is, it’s not.