Riding the wave of interest in no-code and low-code solutions, Microsoft announced Power Pages, a stand-alone product for creating business websites that is part of the company's Power Platform line.
Using low-code development tools, your organization can streamline business processes and make it easy to automate workflows.
Microsoft Power Pages is a secure, enterprise-level, low-code software as a service (SaaS) platform for making, hosting, and managing modern business websites that are visible to the outside world. Whether you are a low-code maker or a professional developer, Power Pages lets you quickly design, configure, and publish websites that work well on all web browsers and devices.
Power Pages makes it easier for organizations to quickly create and manage websites that look great and can be changed in a lot of ways, even without help from IT. It gives organizations rich, customizable templates, a fluid visual experience through a reimagined design studio, and a new, integrated learning hub so they can quickly build sites that meet their unique business needs.
Power Pages improves the portal experience even more by making page creation much more powerful with a visual, low-code model that doesn't require any coding skills at all. This makes it easy for employees or customers to build their own pages, or for IT professionals to customize applications on behalf of their organization. It also has built-in security features, modern design tools, and other customizations that larger organizations need.
Using low-code, customizable templates, Power Pages can be used to make a site in a web browser. For more advanced needs, Visual Studio can be used instead. The wizard-like interface starts out very simply, but like most website builders, it lets you choose a template that works for your business.
The tool then gives you a URL (you can also use a custom domain), and it can set up a trial Power Apps environment or use the one you already have. After the site is up and running for a few minutes, you're in the design studio, which looks like many other site builders and is where you choose pages, change layouts, and add navigation and other features. Another wizard is here to help people who don't know how to code through the process. You can look through a large number of business-specific templates, such as detailed options for making appointments or signing up for classes.
Then, you can add data from your Dataverse and use a QR code to preview the site on your computer or on your phone. Sites that are generated use responsive design, so they look good on both mobile and desktop.
The sites made with Power Pages do look very professional. You can manage more than one site from a dashboard, just like with Wix and other site builders. There are a lot of ways to learn, from how to design to how to change things with code.
Using a CMS to build a website has drawbacks, such as the need for plugins and widgets and hidden costs.
Users have to rely on plugins and widgets for most of their features, and it costs money to use all of the features.
The page speed of a web page designed using a CMS is considerably slow compared to many other custom development options.
It takes a lot of work to keep a CMS site running, from customizing the settings and plugins to installing themes, configuring the site, and adding security updates.
When there are too many software systems and data sources to handle, CMS may not work well with the workflow of the larger ecosystem, so it is important to have a good system in place. Most systems can sustain a limited number of users, once content and traffic increases you will need to customize the CMS system or switch to something more robust.
A CMS system won't be able to keep up with your functional needs if you have a large project with many processes, workflows, and stakeholders.
Since back-end functionalities are not available, API endpoints cannot be exposed. The data and the platform can't be used in mobile apps because of this.
If you want to make changes to your website often, a content management system might make sense. At first, it will take time to learn how the system works. You will also need the plan to make sure that you or your staff keep the site up-to-date regularly. This is because even though publishing the content might only take a couple of minutes, someone has to write, proofread, and resize the images first, which takes time. Many companies choose a CMS system but rarely use it because they don't plan for updates or set aside enough staff.
If you don't plan to change your website often, it will be easier to keep up and host a static site.
Now that you know some of the pros and cons of a CMS system, you can decide if it's right for you. So, the best choice will depend on the needs of your business.
Definity First can help! Leverage our expertise with Power Pages or learn more about personalized static design to improve productivity, UX and UI, and responsive functionalities.