Frontastic in a Nutshell
Frontastic is a Frontend-as-a-Service!
What is a Frontend?
It’s the forefront of a system. As a matter of fact, the part closest to the customer.
What does “as a Service” mean?
That we are not on-premise software that you have to buy, install, operate and maintain for a lot of money, but an easy-to-use service that you consume over an Internet connection.
Why do you need a Frontend-as-a-Service?
I’ll have to go a little further: In the past you had to buy software as a licence (and additionally pay for the further development – called maintenance). You installed the software somewhere and had to make sure that everything was always up to date and running. This software was usually a single large program. The manufacturers of these programs have always tried to do everything well and correctly and above all to keep up with the further development on all fronts.
Then came the Internet and with it the cloud services. Over the years, a whole new genre of software has emerged: Software-as-a-Service with API First approach. On closer inspection, Salesforce is an example: Salesforce builds on force.com. Force.com an API-First software service.
Companies have increasingly focused on their respective core competencies and left the rest to the APIs (programming interfaces). APIs have been around for a long time, of course. But they used to be quite complicated to use. Today, it is very easy to combine the individual APIs of different software services in the cloud. The result is the Cloud Economy. For example, if I need image recognition and categorisation, it’s no longer a tedious, expensive project. Instead, I use the corresponding service from Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc. And if there is a better service tomorrow, I use the.
Summarised: Everything is moving in the direction of service, which can be consumed easily via the cloud and can be smoothly integrated via simple interfaces.
What does Headless or API-First mean?
The need for Multi-Channel or Omni-Channel solutions was added. Simply said, it is no longer the web browser on the desktop that is the sole target of a web page or a shop, but that the content must be played into other output channels in many cases today. Together with the focus mentioned above, this has led many manufacturers to concentrate completely on data storage and provision and to completely omit the topic of data display.
Instead, applications are individually programmed for the different output channels. These applications “talk” to the eCommerce or Content Management System via the public API (naturally via a password-protected, encrypted channel).
Frontastic: The Head for a Headless World
This is where Frontastic comes in.
Frontastic is designed to finally offer the frontend – what the customer sees – as a comfortable, high-performance service.
for editors
For the editor, the one responsible for the virtual counter, Frontastic is the editorial system. Frontastic is Software-as-a-Service. The editor accesses Frontastic via a beautiful, easy-to-use web interface. Here, they can configure the page tree and the menus, design individual pages and more. Ultimately, this is exactly what they used to do in the monolith of On Premise software. Only with two essential differences: 1) Our focus is to provide the editor with a very easy to use, super cool interface. 2) Frontastic is not only a shop or only a CMS, but we connect with different shop and Content Management Systems and the editor can compose the pages on the basis of all systems.
for Developers
For the developer, Frontastic is a development environment, a platform, and a React library. In addition to the finished VMs/docker images, we also provide a continuous integration process and other processes that standardise the work of the development teams – without being restrictive. And for frontend work, they receive a library of components (called tastics) that he can use as a basis for the customer-specific project.
for customers
For the customer and visitor, Frontastic is the virtual counter, what the visitor sees in the browser. Most of the information displayed to the visitor is not stored in Frontastic, but is retrieved by Frontastic from the Content Management or eCommerce systems (see graphic).
What is the difference to shop kits?
What’s the difference to site builders, shop building blocks or SaaS eCommerce platforms with frontend, such as Shopify?
Simple: We are Enterprise Ready. Some of the younger shop kits from the cloud look good at first glance. And for small (hobby) projects it is certainly a sensible solution. But if I’m planning a larger eCommerce platform with hundreds or thousands of products and good content, then I need a system that helps me do it in a way that scales and performs despite high visitor numbers. A WYSIWYG editor, for example, is certainly a great thing. But in a professional enterprise environment I want a fixed layout grid in which the editor can move freely. And I need to be able to change these layouts and graphical specifications for the entire project in one go, without having to touch each page individually.
This is where the advantages of Frontastic come into play: The design options available to the editor can be precisely defined in advance. Basically, however – and this is very important to us – the editor can do their daily work very easily without training and above all without programming and without the help of a developer. And we do not only offer a real enterprise product in the direction of the frontend editor. We also offer practically everything you need in this environment in terms of flexibility.
That’s Frontastic, the Frontend-as-a-Service, in a Nutshell!
Single Page Application
for customers
Software-as-a-Service
for online editors
eCommerce Platform-as-a-Service
for developers
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