Widgets, widgets, widgets! Of course there are many other arguments for using it, such as Designed for the cloud 100% Ruby-based platform designed and built for rapid web development Easy updates because the SDK is a versioned Ruby gem No back-end maintenance: software as a service (SaaS) Native CDN support On-demand scalability (you won’t run into a brick wall later) Cloud-based search indexing (built-in) No up-front investments: pay as you go But, just like the old adage, that three things are critical for a successful (brick and mortar) store: location, location, location, Scrivito has widgets. To be precise, drag and drop widgets, which make in-place editing possible, and in-place editing is a web designer's dream, and web designers and editors are your users. So, even without Scrivito's cool Rails integration, even if it were really hard, you would still want it, because your customers want the WYSIWYG that widgets make possible, and that Scrivito delivers. Once they've experienced dragging and dropping, they are not going back to: edit, click, oh no, click, edit. Developers do this, designers do not (want to). Leveraging widgets allows a new approach to web design. Widgets are reusable: write once, use over and over. Scrivito comes with a set of basic widgets, and many more, pre-built open source widgets are readily available. They can be used however you want, to create the functionality you need. It’s all Ruby, after all. And, of course, any widget can be tweaked. It’s not even hard. As a developer, widgets are power at your fingertips. And let’s be honest. Do you want to hassle with the edit-click-!*#% paradigm, or would you rather do a quick and dirty drag and drop, and spend the time gained tweaking Ruby code? Speaking of changing paradigms, this is how the demands on websites have evolved over the years: Structure Data Content Business Originally simple static document-based nice-to-have Now complex dynamic app response mission-critical Most content management systems, whether commercial or open source, have not changed their underlying structure at all. Some have added layer after layer of kludges onto a no-longer-relevant model. A well-known phenomenon in the IT world… They are locked in for various reasons: customers, technologies, sales channels, target groups, legacy code. To a guy with a hammer in his hand, any problem looks like a nail. Old vendors cannot transform, unless they reinvent themselves. Scrivito, on the other hand, is exactly that: a reinvention, a next generation content management system. The problems have evolved from nails to screws, and it’s time to lay down the hammer and pick up a screwdriver. Scrivito’s content model (a description of the data structures saved by a widget to Scrivito) can be changed or extended any time during development without time consuming database or content migrations. The widgets are designed to make everything you do easier and smoother. You can implement any function for a website or application with a Scrivito widget. A widget consists mainly of a view (a definition of how to render it) and a content model. All data persistence of widgets is handled by Scrivito in the cloud. Once you get your head around Scrivito’s widget concept, you’ll find that the sky is the limit.