Why Umbraco is our favourite CMS
Our choice of content management system is called Umbraco. It powers some of the most well known websites on the internet today including; Microsoft, Fox, Vogue and even Take That's official site.
Limitless Design
It's fully customisable for us developers, so we can build it into brilliant designs. We create the document types and templates for the site and fit it to the sitemap. Once this structure is in place, then it's easy to log in and add new pages where desired.
Some examples of our Umbraco sites are:
- Arbour Foods
- Arc Hospitality
- Bibby Maritime
- EasiTech
- And not forgetting our very own website!
Macro's & XSLT
Xslt is used (up to version 5) to pull in dynamic content. XSLT is an XML-based language and we use it for anything from a main navigation with drop down menus to latest news feeds and showcase galleries.
Macro's are where the custom side of Umbraco comes in. Umbraco is built around the Microsoft asp.NET framework so we build custom .NET controls to fit with a website specification.
Content Management
The majority of content is editable in rich text editors, with the familiar TinyMce controls allowing for different font styles, hyperlinks, inserting images etc. Other content can be edited in simple text-string and multi-line textboxes. There is also a whole section for media called the media library. Here the media (images, documents, videos) can be organised into folders to make them more accessible and easy to find.
Our favourite plug ins
uBlogsy - This is the best blog we've found for Umbraco. It is built by 'AnthonyDotNet'. This is the blog we've used on the Ph site, so you are using it right now! The blog sits within the site, rather than beingexternal. All of the macroscripts are written in razor, which is a feature in the new Umbraco V5.
Xslt Search - We use this search plug in for all of our sites. It allows us to specify what fields should be searched and previewed.
Twitter for Umbraco - A simple xslt Twitter integration. Just type in a Twitter username and it will pull the latest tweets through.
What are your favourite Umbraco plug-ins? Or do you use a different CMS? Leave your comments below.
For me CUBE (www.cubecms.org) is definitely the best open source CMS.
Using Razor scripts with good old C# is supported in versions prior to Umbraco 5 - you can use them in 4.7.1.1, for instance (and perhaps, though I'm not sure, some earlier builds).
Thanks for you comment Grant, we use razor in our blog which is running on Umbraco V4.7 :)