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E-commerce is a critical part of many websites, but it’s not something that is served by the Umbraco core, instead Umbraco HQ have focussed developer resources on building the CMS product, and developing cloud and headless options. Vendr from Outfield Digital is a new e-commerce package for Umbraco, and we've chosen it for our next major e-commerce project for Nextbase. In a new article for Skrift Paul and Gareth introduce Vendr, compare it against the key competition, and then demonstrate how to build a simple webshop using Vendr.…

Fine grained management of Users’ permissions isn’t an exciting subject for a blog post, but for websites managed by anything more than one or two people, knowing who does what can be critical. We’ve worked on a number of websites and content management systems where Editors bemoan how locked down the system is, and as a result everyone uses the same super-user login. But with a little thought and effort, tweaking the permissions settings in Umbraco can mean that the right people can do their job with the minimum of effort, and still remain compliant with security best practice. Permission…

If only I had a penny for every time I’ve heard an editor say “I’ve no idea how those changes got there”.  Helpfully, this is the point at which I get to demo the awesome power of the Umbraco Audit Log and Rollback features. Umbraco keeps track of every single action that’s applied by a user in it’s Audit Log, including when a page was changed, saved and published.  So there really shouldn’t be any surprise for Editors when a change has occurred that they weren’t expecting. Jump straight into the Audit Log and see who was making changes. The…

Users are less intimidated by shorter, more meaningful URLs that consist of words (not lots of numbers and codes), and while Google is good at indexing even complex URL structures they consider it to be best practice to choose page URLs that are more human friendly. That means using a web CMS which enables editors to choose their own URL, such as Umbraco, and then choosing names that are short and meaningful, and not stuffed with keywords in a vain attempt to game the Google indexing bot. Read more about good URLs in the Google SEO starter guide. At Carbon…

Reasons Why We Love Umbraco  it’s open source meaning there are no licence fees and so offers a considerable cost saving to clients in comparison to Umbraco’s competitors such as EpiServer and Sitecore that can cost tens of thousands of pounds per year; it offers a solution to fit your exact needs - giving you the freedom to build your websites, Apps or other solutions exactly the way you want;  it’s flexible - providing a perfect framework for any type of project whether big or small, complex or simple, private or public; its integration possibilities make it simple to build…

Umbraco is a tool designed to make website editing simple and logical, meaning that Editors can keep their sites fresh and up to date without too much time input. But like any comprehensive piece of software it can be a little daunting for new users to learn the platform. Editors that are new to Umbraco can benefit from a number of great learning resources to fast track them to productive editing. The Umbraco Editors Guide is a great PDF which has a great depth of instructional content about using the core of the Umbraco CMS. Umbraco.tv has a number of…

TL;DR Almost certainly yes. Umbraco is an Open Source Content Management System (CMS), and is free for anyone to download and use for any purpose. It's designed for use on Windows Servers and compared to other leading Windows CMS's such as Episerver, Sitecore and Kentico, which are all proprietary, meaning that a substantial saving can be made in license fees. That doesn't mean it doesn't cost money to build an Umbraco site. There are costs including hosting, development and third party plugins, but these fees are no cheaper on the proprietary platforms and so in almost all cases Umbraco will…

Onsite or internal search is often a poor relation to other sexier features of a site such as the primary navigation or rich integrations with external systems such as CRM. On average 30% of users will do an onsite search, and doing so is a strong predictor of likelihood to convert (see Moz).  Onsite search is challenging though, internal search engines can never rival Google for quality and accuracy of results - because they can't rely on the many ranking factors that Google uses.  However, the Lucene search engine which forms part of the core of Umbraco does provide a…

Being an Umbraco Gold Partner means more than just a logo - its a guarantee that you’re working with a team well-versed and technically experienced to work efficiently with Umbraco. What does Gold Partner Status Mean?  Gold Partner status is an independent measure of the knowledge acquired by a Partner. All Gold Partners are required to employ at least two staff with a minimum of 400 certification points. Our Umbraco web developer team at Carbon Six Digital includes Certified Umbraco Masters - the highest level of expertise - as well as Umbraco Developers. We’re constantly investing in skills development through…

Becoming an Umbraco Gold Partner is a big commitment for many agencies. While it's a costly and time consuming investment, we believe that it offers many great benefits. Becoming a Gold Partner in 2013 for us was a demonstration of our commitment to the Umbraco product. Potential customers could see we had invested in training and gone all-in on the product. Being a Gold Partner has been an important part of our sales process, differentiating ourselves from other Umbraco development agencies that aren't partners, as we know more about the platform's roadmap, are able to offer better support, and have…