How ButterCMS Enabled Rapid Blog Posting for CertifyndABA

CertifyndABA is a new company and platform connecting ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) therapists with job opportunities anonymously. The platform vets and certifies candidates, allowing companies to find & connect directly with qualified individuals, and candidates to remain anonymous until they choose to accept a request from a company.

John Pribesh, Co-Founder and CTO of CertifyndABA, fully architected & developed the CertifyndABA app. As one of his first major projects, as CTO, he was tasked with supporting the company’s goal of increasing its web presence by improving its SEO reputation through content creation.  His primary mode for accomplishing this goal was through the publishing of blog posts, but in order to keep up with rapid content generation, he soon realized that he needed a more robust CMS that would reduce manual work.

While ButterCMS was always on CertifyndABA’s radar, it wasn’t until rocky experimentations with other CMS platforms that they saw the power of ButterCMS’s smooth and seamless integration. Before using ButterCMS, it would take an hour to create and publish the blog post. After ButterCMS implementation, it now takes CertifyndABA a mere 10 minutes.

With their blog up and running through ButterCMS, the team can rapidly publish SEO-focused blogs for seamless content display. Looking to the future, as CertifyndABA builds out its marketing team, it will be crucial for non-tech-savvy members to post content quickly. Since ButterCMS can run without the help of a developer and boasts an intuitive interface and user-friendly accessibility, CertifyndABA anticipates a seamless onboarding process for marketers.

As CertifyndABA was beginning to build its blog engine, Pribesh realized that at the pace they were manually importing, it was not feasible to keep up with the DIY approach. “Obviously, being the technology guy, I don't want to have to write a new page every time we want to add a blog article, input it manually into the database.” 

Pribesh set out to evaluate CMS platforms that would achieve three main goals:

1. Simplify the content management process with ease of use

2. Bolster its SEO through pre-configured SEO fields

3. Use front-end libraries for seamless content display

CertifyndABA was looking for a CMS that would also be simple to use for non-tech-savvy team members moving forward.

Before landing on ButterCMS, Pribesh extensively evaluated five to 10 other content management systems, including experimenting with different solutions like Strapi. He found that most of the platforms involved unnecessary steps, contained flashy but unneeded features, and that front-end integration failed to display content effectively.  

“Some of my issues with the other CMSs were actually showing the content properly once it had been put in. Most of the other CMSs out there want you to configure a million different things. They want you to build a whole site using their CMS. That's just not what I was looking for. I just need the blog post,” says Pribesh.

During his initial tool exploration phase, Pribesh initially set up Strapi for CertifyndABA’s CEO to test. Although the tool worked, it lacked the smoothness they desired. ButterCMS was among the tools he had considered, but concerns about pricing led him to initially set it aside. 

However, the challenges he faced with Strapi prompted him to reassess ButterCMS with a fresher perspective. 

Upon closer examination of Butter’s interface and front-end functionality, he successfully convinced the CEO that ButterCMS was the long-term solution they needed. He emphasized the anticipated long-term savings compared to the challenges and expenses associated with maintaining and troubleshooting a self-hosted Strapi deployment, especially when relying on a software engineer to do the job.

“After he checked it out, I got him logged in and everything we ended up deciding to go this way, especially when I kind of broke it down to him. We're easily going to save money in the long term just using ButterCMS,” recalls Pribesh.

There were three key advantages that ButterCMS ultimately provided CertifyndABA over any other CMS:

1. Seamless integration on both the front and back end

2. Supporting content management for blog posts

3. Time savings in comparison with other CMSs that required static coding

“The biggest thing for me was the ease of use in [Butter’s] UI. What I really liked is I could come in, I could create a blog post, and I could get the headless API working very quickly without having to jump through hoops.”  

Pribesh adds that the content migration was quick and efficient, as it preserved the formatting seamlessly compared to other CMS platforms that struggled to recognize and maintain the correct formatting, oftentimes requiring him to make manual adjustments. ButterCMS’s ability to handle HTML settings consistently outshone the competition.

“Integrating the front end part of it, that was, what really made the decision, because that's where it became more of a hiccup with everything else. Everyone had a different format of how they were returning it, and I just wanted an HTML string that I could just kind of inject in there, which is how [Butter] is working,” says Pribesh.

The entire process of setting up ButterCMS for CertifyndABA’s blog took less than an hour.  

“That's what sold it…The fact that I did get it done and it was working, I was like, okay, well, it was easy. It works a lot smoother,” he adds.

Supporting Angular

One of the most distinct advantages for CertifyndABA is Butter’s availability of an Angular front-end library that supported their tech stack. Pribesh says few CMS companies support Angular. “That’s what our application is written in. Being able to get in and make it useful very quickly was the biggest thing for me.” 

User Experience and Efficiency Gains

Since moving to ButterCMS, Pribesh appreciates its intuitive interface and its accessibility for anyone to pick up and understand. As CertifyndABA builds out its marketing team and expands its business outreach, it will be crucial for non-tech-savvy members to pick up quickly. “Anybody can kind of jump in here and look at something and understand how to use it, especially with the blog post being separate,” says Pribesh.

He also appreciates the time savings in getting things set up, including understanding the UI and not having to restart the whole server when changing fields, which was a point of friction while using Strapi. “Doing it statically, I have to take plain text and format it manually into HTML, so that may take an hour. Whereas now it might take 10 minutes to write the blog post, fill out the SEO stuff and get it published. So being able to actually create the blog post template and everything, there's a lot of time savings there.”

With the help of ButterCMS, CertifyndABA can now effectively build its web presence and SEO reputation while simultaneously allowing non-tech-savvy team members to create and publish content without the help of a developer. 

Observing ButterCMS’s intuitive interface and seamless front and back end integration, CertifyndABA intends to use ButterCMS for its landing pages, especially as it builds out its marketing team.

Pribesh sees a wealth of opportunity because the present state of building out landing pages is statically coded, with the text in the code. A simple spelling error or change would typically require a whole deployment of the site. With the help of ButterCMS, landing pages can be up and running efficiently with less manual work. 

“From a development standpoint, if I don't have to change the code when somebody wants to reword something on the home page, that's a bonus,” says Pribesh.