From our point of view, TYPO3 is currently the most universal and powerful open source CMS on the market and ideally suited for content and service-oriented websites of institutions, foundations and companies.

TYPO3 is actively supported by a well-established organization and a broad developer community. Thousands of free TYPO3 extensions for all areas of application are available via the TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER) (e.g. news, calendars, picture galleries, forms, newsletters, SEO, blogs, shops, etc.). TYPO3 pursues a sustainable release management: The current TYPO3 LongTermSupport version 11 will be supported with bug fixes and security updates until October 2024.

As a Berlin TYPO3 agency, cosmoblonde has many years of experience with this CMS and is a certified TYPO3 integrator.

Advantages for the editorial office

The administration area of ​​TYPO3 combines a page tree-oriented approach, which clearly reflects the website structure, with content pools of dynamic content that can be specifically distributed to the pages.

This makes it easier for editors to find their way around the site and enables the content and user-friendly structuring and individualization of the pages, which with other CMS such as Wordpress becomes difficult and confusing as the content increases. At the same time, content such as news that is to be presented in different ways (teasers, lists, detail pages) can be managed centrally and clearly in pools. TYPO3 offers the editor complex functions for autonomous content maintenance with a manageable training effort.

Using a granulated rights and role structure, TYPO3 can be used to implement multi-level workflows with graduated rights (e.g. author, editor, editor-in-chief) with global access or access restricted to areas. Editors only ever see the areas, pages and content elements that they need. A WYSIWYG preview is a matter of course, as is working in so-called workspaces outside of the live view.

Contents can be faded in and out, published time-controlled and restored. Direct front-end editing is also possible.

The powerful TYPO3 media management with metadata also supports the integration of external sources such as content delivery networks for access-optimized media distribution. Images are automatically scaled to the correct size and thus offered in a bandwidth-saving manner.

Multilingual sites can be managed with TYPO3 in a page tree (each page can have several language versions) or in separate page trees.

Thanks to the TYPO3 multi-client capability, several independent sites can also be managed in a common TYPO3 instance.

For website visitors, personalized service offers with login functions can be made available very easily with the TYPO3 front-end user concept.

Administration benefits

Like other OpenSource CMS (Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla), TYPO3 runs in a classic LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP), which is available from almost all providers. The TYPO3 Extension Management can be used to update extensions directly from the CMS - a direct update of the TYPO3 core from the administration backend is also possible. Alternatively, a command line-based automation of installation and updates can be implemented using the Composer tool. System cleanups, status reports, link validations, etc. can be carried out using automated tasks and automatic notifications can be generated if problems should arise. The service effort required is therefore within manageable limits.

The TYPO3 caching framework supports the high-performance delivery of the websites. With the help of further optimizations of the web server (Apache or Nginx), very good performance values ​​can also be achieved in smaller hosting environments.

TYPO3 pursues a long-term support strategy and thus guarantees updates and support for many years. Larger version jumps, e.g. between versions 9.5, 10.4 and 11.5, can be implemented relatively easily using the upgrade wizard and compatibility modes, but require careful planning, especially with regard to the extensions used.

Programming benefits

Since version 6, TYPO3 has been completely object-oriented based on PHP 5 (or 7 for TYPO3 8.7 and 9.5). The design pattern MVC (Model / View / Controller), which is widely used as a programming paradigm and is familiar to almost every programmer, is used. The business logic, control and design of the website are completely separated from each other, which facilitates teamwork in development. The object-oriented framework for TYPO3 programming is called Extbase, the template language Fluid. In addition, there is a configuration layer in TYPO3 that is implemented using Typoscript. With the help of the TYPO3 Extension Builder, the basic model of an extension can be visually configured in just a few steps.

The use of clear MVC programming standards ensures that TYPO3 in-house developments do not lead to obscure spaghetti code. For the customer this means, in turn, that the decision for TYPO3 cannot lead to a vendor lock-in through proprietary code.

Selected TYPO3 projects from cosmoblonde