This year, Bento turns four years old. During its lifetime, the web site building tool from PBS Digital has seen a great deal of changes and improvements from the introduction of responsive templates to the Bentomatic content plug-in feature.
To help guide the next stage of Bento development, PBS Digital’s Web Services team went straight to station and producer communities to collect their insights and suggestions. One of the key findings of their research: Bento serves the system well by providing a free, easy-to-use web platform that has seamless integration with PBS content. At the same time, they also learned there are some essential features missing from the current product offering. Some of the features mentioned were small and easy to implement, while other features were more involved than the request suggested.
This presented an interesting opportunity, a chance to take Bento to a new level in terms of site creation, structure, and design.
Get to Know Bento 3.0
As with the current version of Bento, Bento 3.0 will continue to offer stations and producers a robust website management tool that is integrated with other PBS Digital products and services such as COVE, Merlin and TV Schedules.
Bento 3.0 Goals:
Bento Admin: Develop a user-friendly, layout-based admin interface to make web site building and management easier
Component Library: Streamline the PBS-provided components to make them more flexible and manageable
The Web Services team will be building the component library post launch by focusing on new features and components. A full list of product features will be available in the coming weeks and shared out via the SPI team’s communications channels.
What’s Next?
PBS Digital will be working with a small group of stations who will be part of the alpha group for Bento 3.0. This group will begin meeting this summer and will be testing and reporting out on the new platform.
After feedback from the alpha group, rollout of Bento 3.0 will be multi-pronged. The SPI team will be reaching out to Bento stations directly to guide migration and PBS Digital will work directly with users via a cohort program to migrate sites to the new platform. More details about the migration and onboarding phases will be shared out in the coming weeks!
If you have any questions regarding Bento 3.0 take a look at the FAQ and talk to your Digital rep.
Interested in participating in the Bento 3.0 alpha group, or testing out new Bento features? Email your Digital rep or the SPI team to learn how you can participate!
Amy Lust | Assistant Director, SPI
Jen Carter Hinders | Product Manager, Web Services