Perch Runway has landed!

Perch Runway maintains the clean admin UI, templating and underlying principles of Perch with a few big changes in terms of architecture and additional features suited to larger sites.

You can read more about Runway features on the product page and see what Perch Runway offers over regular Perch on the features listing.

What did our beta testers say?

Some Perchers were involved in testing the beta version of Runway. Here are some of their thoughts.

“Perch is the perfect CMS to help editors focus on their content instead of fighting with the software. Runway will extend Perch’s field of application to larger, data-driven websites of all kinds. So more opportunities for us to work with Perch – which is always fun and rewarding.” – Urs Bräm

“Congrats to you both on the most AWESOME thing to happen to Perch, the addition of Runway. Besides my Beta converted License, I have already purchased 1 upgrade with another very soon while they are discounted.” – Robert Ketter, via the Perch Forum

“As my business grew there were times I knew that I would need to use another CMS, I always tried to use Perch but after a really large and difficult site, I knew I had no choice. Guess what, I no longer need to, with Runway all the issues that Perch had with large sites or even smaller sites that had many list and detail pages are gone. With Runway, if you can picture it in your mind, you can build it. It is Perch as you know it but on steroids.” – Brett Warne

What is in Runway?

A front-controller – no more physical files

Much of the simplicity and ease of retrofitting in Perch is due to the decision to make Perch based on physical files. If you or your client creates a file in Perch you get a new file on disk. This works fine for smaller sites but for larger ones using a front-controller and storing “page” information in the database makes far more sense.

Store your images and files in the Cloud

Perch Runway supports Rackspace Cloud Files and Openstack, you can move resource buckets onto cloud storage and also serve those assets via the CDN. This should make your site even faster but also makes for easy development and staging of sites. With your resources being served from a CDN just load up your latest database into your development site and the images will all load as normal. Read more about this feature and watch a video.

Backup to Dropbox or to your Cloud Storage

Perch Runway has integral backup that supports not only backing up to a selected cloud bucket but also to Dropbox. Relax knowing that your latest database and assets are all accessible from your Dropbox account.

Collections of non-page Content

Not all content in a larger site is tied to a page. You might have products, job listings, real estate listings and so on. Content that may be used around the site in different ways but not have a single page it is listed on. The Perch Runway Collections feature allows the creation of this content in the same structured way as page-based content. You can then expose that for editing in a way that makes sense to editors – either attaching it to a page or adding it to the site menu as a top level area of content to edit.

Simple upgrade of regular Perch sites

Perch Runway ensures your site has somewhere to grow. If a client is concerned about using a “small CMS” you can assure them that if their requirements change they can stick with the admin UI they and other staff are used to.

Perch Runway documentation and support

Perch Runway documentation is now live. Reading this information should give you a good introduction to how Perch Runway works. There are extensive notes on how to move a site from Perch to Perch Runway.

As always we are here to help in the forums if you need some advice on moving any part of your site over to Perch Runway.