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. 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 in place to manage…

In our experience, it’s common for website buyers to treat hosting as a commodity - a bit like electricity and gas supply, website hosting is all the same really, the only difference is the price?  Wrong! There's a big difference in the hosting services on offer, and as a buyer, it’s crucial to understand what you need and what you're getting for your money. Hosting an Umbraco site calls for a number of minimum requirements: you must have Windows-based hosting, it needs to be in Full Trust Mode, and you may (probably) need a SQL server database. That precludes the…

“There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved. (And finding the perfect CMS)” – George Sand, Author. Have you ever met someone and just known that they are the one? We first met Umbraco 10 years ago, and have never looked back since. After finding Umbraco, we’ve never felt the need to use another CMS. With over 443K active installs it’s the most frequently used .NET CMS. We love Umbraco…here’s why it’s been our Valentine for the past 10 years. Umbraco I really do love you, you never make me frown,Your reliability is second to…

When starting out on a new Umbraco Project it’s really important to know and communicate your requirements and your desired features. There are many ways of communicating these, but here at Carbon Six Digital, we use a spreadsheet called the Prioritised Requirements and Traceability Matrix. Long name, but easy idea. First the requirements list. This is a methodical list of all the features the new system must incorporate alongside other factors such as security and performance requirements. The functional requirements are often best articulated as a “User Story”. The list should be Prioritised so that the developers focus attention on…

The UK Government Digital Service Standards require all new source code to be released as open source code. Point 12: Make all new source code open and reusable, and publish it under appropriate licences. When we developed a new website for UK Central Government we were required to release our code as Open Source.  This presented challenges we've not faced before, such as how to preserve private information such passwords and access keys. In this article written for 24Days.in our Technical Director, Paul Marden, talks about how to develop websites as open source.…

A website saddled with a bad Content Management System can often really impact the site from being developed to meet your needs. As Umbraco specialists, we’re often approached by potential clients asking for their current site to be migrated to Umbraco. What we’ve learnt is that the impact of failing to properly brief an agency during a migration project can make a huge difference to the quality, timescales, and budgets of what’s being delivered. It can be very difficult for an agency to provide an accurate or effective quote if presented with a brief of “move my site from platform…

Those in the market for an Umbraco website are presented with an often mind-boggling number of options when shopping around for providers: the most common being sole developers and large agencies. Each comes with its own pros and cons, so it’s essential that those looking to source services have the inside track on what to look for and the right questions to ask at the procurement stage. There are plenty of great sole developers out there, in fact, some of the highest profile and most competent Umbraco Developers in the community fall into that category. We think that working with…

Like any piece of modern, evolving software, Umbraco - and its users - benefit from regular release updates.  These could be new patches for specific issues, which come out on a weekly or monthly basis, minor version updates which are released anywhere between a monthly and quarterly basis, or major version releases, which come out every few years. But each release, no matter how major or minor, is always an improvement on what existed before. So when commissioning a new site, it’s crucial to understand what your prospective agency's support policy is regarding applying updates. If your new site is…

As specialist Umbraco developers, we often get called into projects when they hit a crisis. Either something has gone badly wrong, the relationship had gone sour, or there’s no single issue to point the finger at, but a million small cuts. So we’ve got a lot of experience in what can go wrong on a project. And one of the things we see time and time again is websites and webapps built by agencies that don’t follow best practice like using source control systems. Why does this matter? Source control systems like Git and Subversion are databases for the code…

Many people will know that the 25th May 2018 is GDPR Day, and the team at Umbraco HQ are busy getting ready.  The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new regulation that intends to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU). At this weeks Gold Partner Webinar Niels and Anders gave a briefing to the Partners to explain the plans currently in place for the toolkit.   The team at HQ has undertaken a detail analysis of the impact of GDPR. Obviously GDPR mainly affects processes for managing data, but HQ are keen…