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The California Consumers Privacy Act (CCPA), is a landmark privacy for Californian citizens due to come into force in January 2020. Somewhat akin to the EU’s General Data Protection Legislation, the new Act will provides Californian citizens with: a right to be informed what types of data are being collected by an organisation and what it will be used for (a notice at collection);  the right to request a copy of the exact data collected about them in the last twelve months (a Request to Know - similar to a Subject Access Request); the right to request deletion of that…

This is the million-dollar question for many businesses that use older versions of the Umbraco CMS.  There are substantial business benefits to Umbraco 8: specifically around improvements to editing features for Multilingual sites; and improvements in site speed introduced by Nucache.  And of course Umbraco 8 has a longer shelf life - the retirement of Umbraco has been announced, so while Umbraco 7 continues to be patched for security reasons it isn’t benefiting from future product developments. However, there is a cost to upgrading a site to Umbraco 8.  Umbraco 8 is a substantial breaking change (hence the major version…

TL;DR For most scenarios yes.  #YMMV Umbraco 8 was launched with much fanfair in Feburary 2019, and as with most software there were some initial teething troubles which were quickly fixed.  But with 6 months passing, we began to wonder was Umbraco 8 ready for use in production environments. After much research and testing, including a practical Proof of Concept, we feel that without a doubt the core CMS is ready for use for most production scenarios.  However, there are some scenarios where you should be cautious before continuing, and some where Umbraco 8 is not production ready. One area…

An Umbraco Gold Partner is a business that typically provides website design, development and support services for the Umbraco CMS. Umbraco Gold Partners have been certified by Umbraco HQ as being knowledgeable about the Umbraco platform and how to install, build, configure and extend the product  All Umbraco Gold Partners have to employ at least two staff who are Umbraco Certified Developers who have achieved at least 400 Certification Points which are earned by attending a training course and passing end of module exams.…

This is a real "piece of string" question.  There are many factors that influence the cost of building a website, and the fact that the project is built using Umbraco makes little difference. Factors That May Affect the Cost of Umbraco Site  The key factors that we aim to understand during the early Discovery phase of a project are the size and complexity of the proposed website.  The complexity of functionality and volume of work have the greatest influence on project cost.   The key questions we use to understand this complexity factor are: How many types of pages will be…

The core Umbraco CMS is free to download and use for any website, it is free and Open Source. There are also many hundreds of add-on packages that have been written by the community which extend the functionality of Umbraco. Umbraco are completely committed to the Open Source model for the core Content Management System, and have always maintain that the CMS will remain free forever. This means that a large proportion of the Total Cost of Ownership of a website is substantially reduced, making it a tool well suited to business, academia and the not-for-profit sector. Alongside the free…

Umbraco is a Content Management System, a tool to make it easier for Website Editors to update and maintain their website by enabling then to change the written copy and images and video without having to understand complex programming languages. Is Umbraco Open Source? Yes. Umbraco is called Open Source software because the underlying program code is free and open for everyone to download and change.  This makes it possible for anyone to build features and fix bugs in Umbraco, which improves the safety and security of the platform immensely.  That being said, the Umbraco CMS is developed and supported…

When starting out on a new Umbraco Project it's really important to know and communicate what features and other requirements you have.   There are many ways of communicating these requirements, but here at Carbon Six Digital, we use a spreadsheet called the Prioritised Requirements and Traceability Matrix.  Long name, but easy idea. We’ve previously talked about producing a Prioritised Requirements List, which is a crucial first step in commissioning a new Umbraco site.  In this post, we look at the other side of this template, the Traceability Matrix. The purpose of this side of the template is to track the…

Most business projects involve some element of risk - negative events that may impact the project budget, quality or timescale. Web-based Umbraco projects are no different - their success often depends on how well the team manage and resolve risks so that their effects on project delivery are minimal. At Carbon Six Digital we use a pretty simple process of risk management. Our Risk Management Process  Risk management of web projects, like any other, is just the methodical identification of events that might occur to impact the project, assessment of how big the risk actually is and then putting plans…

This month sees the start of our 7th year as an Umbraco Gold Partner.  We've been committed to Umbraco since Founder Paul Marden, went all in with Umbraco launching Carbon Six Digital in 2009.  Seeing the benefits to the agency, our clients and the Umbraco we joined the Gold Partner program in 2013. A Look Back at the Last 6 Years  In that time we've seen releases of Umbraco 4, 6 and 7 mature to become the world's most popular .NET based Content management system. Tools like Umbraco Forms, SEO Checker, Merchello, and Personalisation Groups have produced a technology platform…