Perch Demo Sites

It might be hard to believe, but we launched Perch without any demo. The first demo was something we quickly put together based on demand, and we revisited that later to launch a more complete demo experience which we then updated for Perch 2.

From the start we have always given each person trying the demo their own installation of Perch to play with. We feel that giving everyone login details to the same system, where several people could be playing around at once, would not enable customers to try out the product and to show things to their clients or team members easily.

However the demo only showed Perch Core. There was no way to get a feel for the admin experience and ability to customize our official apps. As these free add-ons are used by many Perch sites, we really needed to be able to show them off and allow you to demonstrate them to potential customers prior to developing a site. To do this – while still offering a demo experience that shows only Perch Core – we have launched today not one, but three new demo sites. In addition we have put the template and page code for each site onto GitHub so you can use these sites as an implementation example.

The default demo site is a stripped down and simple site, showing Perch Core and with content that explains some of the key concepts in Perch. If you want to see what a basic install looks like, this is the demo for you. Read more about the default site and check out the code on GitHub.

The Swift Migrations site is an example of a corporate website. It includes Perch Core, along with the Blog and Forms add ons. This site has also been used as the basis for our new video tutorial, so you can see step by step how it was developed. The Swift Migrations site takes a simple approach to developing a site with Perch, starting with a set of HTML pages that you want to add Perch to. Read more about the Swift site and take a look at the code on GitHub.

The final demo includes a large number of apps and is an example of a much more complex site. The Nest Running Club site shows how you can use Perch for much more than simple brochure sites. In addition to including several apps, Nest takes a more streamlined approach to development, tidying mark-up away using Perch Layouts. The Nest code on GitHub can help you see how to take your Perch development a step further, we also have some additional notes about this site in the documentation.

Even if you already use Perch, we hope you will find these demo sites interesting and useful. Try a demo (or three!) and don’t forget to let us know what you think.