Hi and welcome. My name's Will, and I'm here to
give you a brief introduction to Contentful. Contentful is all about
powering digital experiences. So if you think of it as the
infrastructure for your content where you store and
manage the components that make up your
website or application. I'm not just talking
about mobile applications. Contentful can deliver content
to any device, screen, gadget, appliance, smart watch app. Anywhere the content
is played or displayed, Contentful delivers. And so how does that differ
from content management systems of old? Well, the legacy CMS,
as we like to call it, was created for a different
time and a different internet. It was built to serve
content to web pages. And as much as it
developed over time, it has never escaped its
page centric foundations. The world has
changed since then, and content is now delivered
to screens and devices of all different
shapes and sizes. This requires a new approach
to content management. Yet many developers
who are trying to meet these new and
complex content demands are still doing so
with old school tools. So what's the new approach? With Contentful, your
content is organized into modular
flexible pieces so it can be arranged in
endless different ways for different screen
sizes and devices. This makes your content
flexible, adaptable, and reusable, and it makes
your developers happy. Not only is your
content now suitable for any existing
platform or device, but it will also be ready for
whatever invention disrupts the digital space next. In other words, Contentful
makes your content future proof and future friendly. So let's have a quick
look at the nuts and bolts of the platform. Where is your data stored? Contentful is
Cloud native, which means you're content
is stored in the Cloud. In Contentful's case, that's
Amazon Web Services or AWS. Whereas the old CMS forced you
to take care of the plumbing yourself, Contentful takes
care of storage and security and makes your content
available from anywhere. Of course, all of
this is continuously optimized by our 140-strong
team based in Berlin and San Francisco. So how does it work? Contentful is
built on four APIs. APIs allow software systems to
communicate with one another, and our four APIs are number
one, the Content Management API or CMA which is used
to manage your content. The Contentful web app is a
content creator and editor interface, and it
sits on the CMA. While non-developers work
on content in the web app, developers can interact
directly with the management API, which is especially useful
for automating bulk actions. Number two, the Content
Delivery API, or CDA, which is used to
deliver your content. While the CMA is read write
to allow complex management queries, the CDA is read
only, so its sole purpose is to send out content in
its published state fast. Number three, the
Content Preview API, which allows you to see your
content in its draft state. If you think of your content
infrastructure as two distinct buckets,
one for management and one for delivery, the
preview API pulls your content from the management bucket. Draft content will remain
in the management bucket until you publish or
update it, at which point it moves into the
delivery bucket. The preview API typically
serves content to a preview environment for display
so you can visualize it as it would appear
in its end state. Finally, number
four, the images API, is specifically for handling-- surprise, surprise-- images. I should also add that
the web app, which sits on the management
API, is extensible. You can extend the interface
with your own widgets while ready made features
like localization and roles and permissions are available
to help you build a custom editorial workflow. So if my content is
stored in one place, how can it get to the other
side of the world in time? Well, we use multiple
CDNs, or content delivery networks,
which together span the entire planet. Not only does this mean
new content is delivered more rapidly to consumers
in distant locations, but a copy of that content
is then saved or cached across this network. So the second person from Sydney
who clicks on that same article will get it even more
quickly, as if it were being delivered from a local server. On top of that, to make
delivery as speedy and reliable as possible, there
are multiple layers of caching throughout the
Contentful infrastructure, including on the data
servers themselves. We also value
transparency, so you can check out our
historical API performance at contentfulstatus.com. I hope that gives you a good
idea of what Contentful is and what it allows you to do. In brief, Contentful
gives your developers more freedom to work in a
flexible and adaptable way and deliver content
reliably and quickly to multiple different
screens and devices of all different sorts. If you'd like to learn
more, you should check out contentful.com,
where you will find loads of learning materials
and documentation to help you along your journey. Or better yet, sign up for free. Our free plan is
very comprehensive and is even enough
for most developers to build a full personal
project long term. Or you can sign up for
a 14-day free trial on one of our bigger plans. So either way, I hope
this video was instructive and a little bit helpful. And we'll see you soon.
