Tom Dyson, an expert in Wagtail CMS and a member of the Wagtail Core Team, discusses the creation and popularity of Wagtail, the significance of Wagtail CMS in image handling and design, enhancing the editor experience with image recognition and third-party plugins, challenges of discoverability and maintaining curated repositories in the Django ecosystem, and the challenges and future of Wagtail CMS.
Wagtail CMS focuses on providing a user-friendly interface and features like stream fields and image handling for content creation.
Simplifying the deployment process and improving the initial user experience are ongoing goals for Wagtail CMS.
Deep dives
Wagtail Overview
Wagtail is a content management system built upon Django. It aims to provide a user-friendly interface for managing and creating websites. The team behind Wagtail has focused on creating a beautiful and thoughtful user experience, with a strong emphasis on supporting the needs of content editors. The CMS offers features like stream fields, which allow for flexible and structured content creation, and powerful image handling functionality, such as focal point selection and automatic thumbnails. Additionally, Wagtail has an experimental A/B testing framework, which allows users to create different variants of content and measure their impact. In the future, the team aims to improve Wagtail's support for headless CMS architectures and enhance the first 30-minute experience for new users.
The Challenge of Deployment
Deployment remains a challenge for Django projects, and Wagtail is no exception. Simplifying the deployment process is an ongoing goal, with the aim of providing users with a straightforward way to get their websites up and running. This includes potential improvements like a hosted solution or a simple deployment mechanism that accounts for beginner developers. The team wants Wagtale to offer an attractive option for any user, regardless of their previous experience with Django or web development.
The Future of Wagtail
The future of Wagtail lies in two main directions. The first is to make Wagtale an attractive choice for users who are not necessarily Django developers. This involves improving the initial user experience and making it easier for beginners to get started with the CMS. The second direction is to enhance Wagtale's support for headless CMS architectures, making it a top choice for open source headless content management. Both of these directions aim to expand the reach and usability of Wagtail, making it accessible and valuable to a broad range of users.