Do we have to migrate content out of Contentful to use Croct?
Does adopting Croct mean moving our entries out of Contentful? Asking bluntly because I want a blunt answer.
I read that Croct is a component CMS and my first assumption was that using it for A/B testing means it becomes the CMS, i.e. content migration project. We have 4 years of entries in Contentful and zero appetite for moving them
If they coexist, what exactly lives where? Trying to figure out if I misread the "component CMS" part or if there are two modes or something.
1 answer
No. No content migration is required, and coexisting with an existing CMS is the normal setup, not a special mode.
What lives where:
- Contentful: all your entries, exactly as they are. Your app keeps fetching them the way it does today, and they serve as the default content.
- Your app code: the mapping. You map the components that render Contentful content to Croct slots via the framework SDK, passing the Contentful data as the fallback. This is the only integration work, and you do it per component, only for sections you actually want to test or personalize.
- Croct: the experiences, experiments, audiences, and analytics, plus the variant content for those experiences. Variants are the only content authored in Croct.
The "component CMS" description is accurate in that Croct can manage component content, but nothing forces you to use it that way. When paired with Contentful, it manages only the variants layered on top, and everything else stays put. A section with no matching experience just renders your Contentful default.
Got it, so "component CMS" is a capability, not an obligation. The variants-only split answers my question fully.