Demo script: five-minute overview
This page is for creators who want a short "what is Exponential" video or a five-minute segment in a stream. It adapts the five-minute presales script of Demo scripts for an audience you do not know. Every click name comes from A tour of the administration and The layouts editor; every sentence you say has a source in the table at the end.
Before you start: a demo installation with invented content, signed in as a demo editor or administrator (Setting up a demo installation).
Contents
Goal and audience
Goal: the viewer sees that editors work in drafts, see a page before it goes live, can arrange pages themselves, and find help inside the product. Audience: people who have never seen Exponential. Version: say it at 0:00. The admin4 design and the current layouts editor belong to the 6.0.15 line.
The script
| Time | On screen | Click | Say |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | Your face or a title card | Disclosure line, then: "This is Exponential, a free and open source content management system written in PHP. I'm showing <version> on my own test installation." | |
| 0:15 | The dashboard | "After sign-in you land on the dashboard: quick actions, numbers about the content, publishing over the last 14 days, and your own drafts and pending items." | |
| 0:45 | The tree in the left column | Open a folder | "Everything is a content item in a tree, like folders on a computer." |
| 1:00 | The folder's page | Edit | "Every edit starts a draft. The site keeps showing the published version until I publish." |
| 1:20 | The edit form | Change Short name; press Preview | "Before publishing I can see the page." |
| 1:40 | The preview | The phone width button | "At phone, tablet and desktop width." |
| 2:00 | The preview | Back to edit, Send for publishing | "Publishing keeps the earlier version, so I can always go back." |
| 2:30 | The Layouts tab | Layouts, Open on a layout | "Pages built with Exponential Layouts are arranged here: zones, and blocks inside them." |
| 3:05 | The layouts editor | Click a block | "Its settings are on the right, in two tabs: Content, what it shows, and Design, how it looks." |
| 3:35 | The layouts editor | Discard, confirm | "I was working on a draft of the layout. Discarding it leaves the published page as it was." |
| 4:05 | Any page | The Help button in the header | "The help is built in: this button opens the page that belongs to the screen I'm on." |
| 4:35 | Title card | "It is free software under the GNU GPL, and you can host it yourself. The links to everything I showed are below." |
Rehearse it once with a timer. If you run long, cut the layouts part, not the disclosure.
What not to say
| Tempting line | Why not | Say instead |
|---|---|---|
| "Thousands of sites run on it." | The sources do not count installations | Leave it out |
| "It's the fastest CMS." | No published comparison | Leave it out, or use the Velocity script with its sources |
| "It's the successor of eZ Publish, endorsed by Ibexa." | Not associated with eZ Systems or Ibexa | "It continues the code base of eZ Publish, a product its creator discontinued after almost 18 years." |
| "The next version comes out next month." | No release date is announced before a tag | Name only versions whose tag exists, with the tag's date. |
| "The AI publishes for you." | It writes drafts only | See the Exponential Intelligence script |
More: Claims you must not make.
Sources for the description
| What you said | Source |
|---|---|
| Free and open source, PHP, GNU GPL | Who is 7x?, Open source licenses |
| Dashboard contents | A tour of the administration, The dashboard |
| Drafts, preview, publish, versions | In action: editing a folder |
| Layouts, zones, blocks, Content and Design tabs | In action: the layouts editor |
| The Help button opens the page for the screen | The help system |
| The history in one sentence | Who is 7x?, In short |
DESCRIPTION BLOCK
Shows Exponential <version> on my own test installation, with invented content.
<disclosure line>
Getting started: <link to "Getting started">
Tour of the administration: <link to "A tour of the administration">
The layouts editor: <link to "The layouts editor">
Exponential is free software under the GNU GPL. Project site: https://exponential.earth/Related pages
- Demo script: editor tour
- Demo scripts
- Short-form video
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
Become an Exponential Partner
Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster.