RBA was a sponsor at the recent Umbraco US Festival in Chicago. Umbraco is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which is a popular solution and great fit for many client website projects. Umbraco is an international company expanding in the US, and the festival was an opportunity to learn more about the latest with Umbraco, as well as connect with others using the CMS around the world. While a lot of people attended this festival, as a Business Analyst what stood out to me was the user friendly back end of the CMS.
Multi-sites and Umbraco
Umbraco can be a great fit for a multi-site project. In a case study presented during the festival, a non-profit client with five sites and a very small budget needed to replace an existing custom-developed site. They were distrustful of WordPress and wanted to decrease the reliance on developers to publish content.
Umbraco was recommended as the solution to this project because of its ability to handle multi-sites, autonomy for non-technical admins and customizable forms.
A big part of the multi-site project included the following work:
- Obtained buy in from all parties
- Created the sitemap
- Identified common patterns within all five sites
- Created wireframes with shared patterns
- Designed Style Guides
- Applied styles to high fidelity designs
Content Migration was also addressed in the case study, noting that it was valuable to ensure the client really understood how large of an effort content migration can be, especially for a multi-site project. For this project, the partner chose to use tools such as Bynder, Airtable and Content Snare to help keep track of all digital assets, migrations, assignments, etc.
The lessons learned that made this a drama-free project:
- Leverage Umbraco documentation
- Establish naming conventions
- Allow room for custom patterns
- Minimize content migration
- Create strong style guides
Umbraco V8 End of Life February 24, 2025
During the conference we learned that Umbraco V8 is an older version of Umbraco that is coming to an end in February of 2025.
After this date, no more updates or security patches will be available, potentially leaving your site vulnerable.
Using software that has reached its EOL can have serious implications, including:
- Security Vulnerabilities
- Compliance Risk
- Operational Instability
- Lack of Support
Options to consider moving forward:
Festival Key Takeaways
It was great to attend the Umbraco US Festival. I found it refreshing that many of the top Umbraco leaders were very approachable. With a smaller US presence, the festival allowed for longer conversations with other agencies. It was awesome to share and learn about the approaches that others have taken with Umbraco.
