carbonsixdigital

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What happens when… I don't clearly define the audience for my Umbraco site

When commissioning a new website built using Umbraco, or any CMS for that matter, it’s critical to have a clear understanding of your audience.  This should be done at the very start of a project and forms a fundamental step in the initial scoping of the new website.

Having a clear audience definition that clearly states what their goals are can make it very easy for an agency to understand what you're trying to achieve.  The audience statement supports the production of a content specification, and during the design stages of the project can help designers and User Experience experts to define the user journeys from which to produce a visual design.  Later in the project, these audience personas can support the testing process to ensure that all audience type needs have been met. In other words - understanding your target audience will enable you to design, build, and promote a successful website that achieves your goals.

Some organisations have very clear audience personas enabling them to be razor sharp in their focus of user needs.  A great example are Transport for London who have highly detailed personas for the different types of Traveller who have different goals on the TfL website.

It's not always necessary to consider your audience in quite such detail, but the more effort you invest in audience analysis the greater you mitigate against key risks.  The biggest impact of a failure to focus on audience needs is that fundamentally your new website fails to meet the needs of the audience you're targeting. Taken to extremes this won't be fully understood until the site goes live at which point correcting mistakes can be hugely costly.  Poor audience focus can also have an impact on testing meaning that it becomes patchy and incomplete.

Lastly, if your website is suffering from the impact of a poorly targeted Umbraco Site, you might want to consider using our Health Check service to get things back under control. More details can be found here

[carbonsixdigital]

The King is Dead.  Long live the King.

Today saw the release of Umbraco 8 - a long-awaited update to the CMS we know and love.  We've been using Umbraco since version 3 way back in 2008 when Kung Fu Panda was released and the charts were chock full of X Factor stars.   Umbraco 7 has been arguably the most stable, successful and long-running version of the CMS. But the world has moved on, and with version 8, so has Umbraco.

Things we’re most looking forward to in this release are the new Content Apps, the improved performance and the new editing experience - Infinite Editing.

Content Apps are a new approach to integrating functionality into the editing experience of Umbraco to have features on a Page in the back end that aren’t content in and of themselves.  Content Apps add richness to the editing experience by enabling app developers to produce plugins to Umbraco enabling Editors to preview their page for SEO compliance or to review grammar structure with tools like Grammarly.  We’re really excited about the opportunity that Content Apps offer, and will be talking about it at the upcoming Umbraco Spark conference.

Performance in Umbraco 8 is significantly improved.  The system that caches content in Umbraco has been rewritten, nicknamed NuCache.  Unless you’re a web performance nerd, this probably means very little to you.  But what most people will understand is that testing has shown a 2x improvement in website performance with NuCache on Umbraco 8.  Pages will serve faster with the same hardware so you can get better performance out of cheaper hardware. What’s not to love about that?

The last significant feature for Editors is the new Infinite Editing interface.  This makes the exercise of editing content easier and simpler, with less need to jump between Content and Media sections of the Umbraco Backend.

There’s loads more goodies besides, including Multilingual Variants and a new API for developers that puts Umbraco 8 in a fit state for future development.  But we’re also eagerly awaiting developments due in the next few weeks that will enable us to upgrade Umbraco 7 sites to Umbraco 8.

The world of Umbraco has made a huge leap today, and if you’re using a site on early versions of Umbraco 7, or dare I say even earlier still, then you’re missing out on a treat.  While it’s not currently possible to upgrade an existing site to Umbraco 8, there is much that can be done to get ready for the move.  Our Rapid Response Health Check will do a quick assessment of the common vulnerabilities and issues facing older Umbraco sites giving actionable insights and costings to bring your site up to date and fit for version 8.

[carbonsixdigital]

Why do we love Umbraco?

“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 none, you never let us down,

Nothing ever gets in the way, your flexibility is key, You're a cheap date and cost nothing, you’re absolutely free,

You have lots of great friends, 221,745 to be precise, I love them all and we get on so well, they’re all really nice,

You’re really fun and we do lots of great things, these are some of the best, Codegarden, DUUG, Meetups, and of course the UK Fest,

You are really so friendly, and cause us no stress, Unlike all the others, especially WordP…..

Everything is so seamless, when I am with you, You make everyone smile, content editors too,

Umbraco you’re truly brilliant, something really fine, Umbraco say you love us too, and that you’ll be my Valentine.

[carbonsixdigital]

Producing a Prioritised Requirements List

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 those features and requirements that are most important. For Agile Projects where the feature list flexes but the budget is fixed - prioritisation is critical to ensure that the budget is spent only on those features that really matter. We tend to use the MoSCoW prioritisation mnemonic (Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have) to reach a common understanding with stakeholders on the importance they place on the delivery of each requirement.

It's also useful to capture those requirements which are subsequently agreed as out of scope, so we record the conversation and rationale behind de-scoping the feature.

Once the Prioritised Requirements part of the document is complete you're ready to commission the work to be built. This is where the Traceability Matrix becomes useful as a means of demonstrating control over the project and will be the subject of our next blog post.

Next time you commission a new website make sure you contact us to find out more about how we capture and control the requirements of Umbraco projects in a way that keeps things transparent and accessible for all involved.

Lastly, if you're in the throws of having made bad buying decisions last time you bought an Umbraco Site perhaps because the requirements weren't well controlled you might want to consider using our full-site Health Check service to get things back under control. We carry out a comprehensive review of your cloud-based website’s technical architecture, its hosting and the Umbraco CMS itself as well as any external system integrations. Once this has been completed, we provide you with a detailed report explaining our findings highlighting the urgency of any issues found and the steps needed to improve your Umbraco site.

[carbonsixdigital]

What happens when…I ask for a website to be migrated to Umbraco

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 X to platform y”. This can lead to difficulties of scope, testing, quality and even price later.

The risks can be mitigated by working on a time and materials type contract.  In this scenario, the scope and cost per day are agreed in advance with an estimate of the cost to be completed. The actual cost finally paid isn't fixed.  This kind of contract often turns out to be the cheapest as the buyer takes the risk should the project overrun.  Because of this, there is often a need for a high level of trust between agency and buyer, in addition to solid plans and efficient communication in order to mitigate the risk of running out of budget before the site is built.

Where buyers need a fixed price contract, a more detailed specification of the features and functionality of the site is essential to providing a quote. Where a requirements spec doesn't exist on the client side, this will fall to the agency or the buyer adding an additional cost.

At Carbon Six Digital we would typically spend up to two days producing a detailed specification for a complex site with a high level of functionality and perhaps a password protected area. This can take longer for very complex web apps.  Whilst this time will be chargeable it’s cost-effective as it enables us to produce a detailed project brief. Our approach is to use our Initial Project Brief Document as well as a Prioritised Requirements List, both of which are used throughout a project to ensure that the client gets exactly what they specified at the outset.

Next time you commission a new website contact Carbon Six Digital to find out how we produce a Project Brief and Requirements List for a Migration Project.

Lastly, if you're in the throws of having made bad buying decisions when you bought an Umbraco Site Migration you might want to consider using our Health Check service to get things back under control.

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What happens when...my Umbraco agency is a sole developer?

Those in the market for a 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 a sole developer can bring great opportunities, but there are some risks that need to be well understood by buyers.

On several occasions, Carbon Six Digital have been asked to pick up a website or project that was developed by a sole developer. Despite having lower overheads than a large agency, and thus charging at lower rates, this can come with a catch or two.

Firstly the obvious, what happens when they're sick, on holiday, away from their desk or busy on another project? Of course, even large agencies can struggle to resource urgent requests, but the problem is more acute where the work depends on a single person.  Some sole developers solve this by partnering up with other sole developers to cover leave.  As a buyer, you should be aware of these arrangements before work starts of informed if this happens during the course of your project.

Secondly, over time there is sometimes a tendency for sole developers to become isolated resulting in slippage in best practice and the development of bad habits. This is less likely in large agencies where developers work in teams with others and therefore hold each other to account.  

The impact of these little bad habits can be insidious, slowly creeping up on you, weighing down your system and making it hard to change the site or resulting in mounting costs when it comes to moving to a different agency.

Fortunately, in the Umbraco world, there are ways to mitigate these issue. Look for Certified Developers or Certified Partners. Neither is a cast iron guarantee that your solution will be well built, but they are evidence that the developer or agency has been trained in best practice techniques.  For more complex projects where the solution is unusual, you may like to consider working with an Umbraco Gold Partner. These top-level Partners take an active part and interest in the development of Umbraco and can call on the architectural advice service from Umbraco HQ.

As an Umbraco Gold Partner Carbon Six Digital rigorously manage issues with resourcing like holidays and sickness to deliver a consistent service and ensure that every project we deliver is overseen by an Umbraco Certified Master meaning that best practice is followed throughout from project development to delivery.

Does your Umbraco website need an MOT? Maybe it’s misbehaving, seems buggy or is just simply not performing as expected? Fear not, help is at hand. Carbon Six Digital offer a full-site Health Check that goes under the hood to audit every aspect of your Umbraco site, reporting back on what’s right and what’s not. For more information click here 

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What happens when… I don't keep my Umbraco site patched and up to date?

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 support’s policy is regarding applying updates.

If your new site is hosted on Umbraco Cloud (UCloud), then it's very simple, as patch releases are applied to sites automatically.  Job done. Minor updates, however, are semi-automatic, which means they require some human intervention from your developers to complete.  But it's important to understand that you're obligated to maintain your UCloud site on the latest version, and failure to do so will stop the automatic patching feature working.

If you’re hosting your own site, or doing it through your suppliers, your patching options are more varied.  At one extreme, you could make no updates at all, and at the other you could apply every single update that is released as it comes out.  

But both of these approaches present risks.  Apply no updates and you risk running with a dangerously exposed version of Umbraco that doesn't contain fixes to known security vulnerabilities. On the other hand, if you apply every single patch immediately, you could be investing significant costs in testing and deployment which may not yield any significant business benefit.

We take an approach somewhere between the two.  We always apply security-related patches released by Umbraco, to ensure the system is secure. We also apply patches to fix problems that impact any given site.  But over and above that, we recommend installing other upgrades at a time when substantial other work is being done to your site, which spreads the cost of testing.

Ultimately, while upgrades can appear to be a technical decision, they are often in fact a business decision where the costs, benefits and risks need to be carefully considered.

Next time you commission a new website, be sure to contact us to find out how we manage patching and updating sites that we host, as well as those we manage on client-hosted systems.

Lastly, if you're suffering from a poorly-patched Umbraco Site, or you're nervous because you don't know what version you're on, you might want to consider using our Health Check service to get things back under control.

[carbonsixdigital]

What happens when...my Umbraco agency doesn't practice good code craft?

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 that developers write.  They're important because they provide a safe and reliable place to access the source code of the website when you want things changed.

Of course, many buyers of websites and apps aren't specialists in software development, so don't necessarily know about things like source control.  We understand that, so we’re here to help.

There are three things we would always recommend asking any developer you’re thinking of working with to get an idea of how robust their procedures - and thus your code / site - will be:

Do you use a source control system? If they say no, then steer clear;

How often do you save code into the system? Anything less than daily is a warning sign;

Tell me about the branching and merging strategy you use. If they don't have one, or can't tell you clearly what they do, then that's also a warning sign.

Of course, life isn't simple.  Developers don't have to use a source control system, as they can get by with Zip file backups of the site code.

But if as a buyer you don't have access to the source code of your website, or you can't rely on the code that your developers provide you with because they have poor development practices, then the impact on your business can be significant.

In an extreme example, we've seen agencies with poor coding practices and no effective copy of an Umbraco site’s source code become completely paralysed. They were unable to make any changes to their site without investing tens of thousands of pounds in testing to either establish the source code or rebuild the entire application.

So next time you commission a new website, make sure you contact us. We’d love to show you how we always follow Umbraco best practice when delivering new sites, as well as all the other brilliant things we can do for you.

Finally, if you're suffering the effects of bad buying decisions from a previous Umbraco site purchase, using our Health Check service could help you get things back on track.

[carbonsixdigital]

How to acceptance test an Umbraco project

When you're commissioning a new Umbraco site, it can be useful to start planning for the task of testing what has been delivered by your developers.  A planned and thoughtful approach to User Acceptance Testing can reduce the time taken and ensure better coverage of the system as well as one that is ultimately better at the end.

During the early product planning stages, it's worth discussing acceptance testing to understand the agency’s standard approach.  Will they develop the system in an iterative way and expect you to contribute to acceptance testing during the project, or will they instead wait until the system is complete and expect Acceptance Testing of the whole system?  It's also useful to understand what testing environment they'll provide, and what data will be loaded into the system.  Another useful discussion point is whether the testing environment is for your exclusive use or if it's used for other testing or development activities.

You should also agree what your strategy for Acceptance Testing will be.  What areas of the application you'll be testing, and how tolerant of errors you can be. For example, you may allow the site to go live with a small number of failed tests, but some failures could be much more critical - and potential showstoppers.

Once the strategy is agreed it's worth planning the actual tests that will be executed.  The more planning that can be done in advance, the simpler life becomes when the rubber hits the road during testing.  We use our Test Planning template to support clients working through Acceptance Testing.  The approach we recommend is to methodically work through the Prioritised Requirements List (PRL) and Traceability Matrix to identify the key requirements of the system and then identify tests that evaluate if each feature within this has been implemented as expected.

Start with positive tests, ones that check that if the user follows the expected behaviour, the system responds in the way defined in the PRL.  

You should end up with at least one test for each requirement in the PRL - more if your requirements defined multiple options or journeys.  You may also have multiple tests for the same requirement if a feature is available to different classes of user, or if there are different types of data involved. For example, when testing our PulseMove fitness system for Pulse Fitness recently, we had a requirement for fitness equipment users to record an individual exercise. This evolved into two different tests for Cardio equipment versus Strength equipment as they are quite different types of data.

Once all the positive tests have been planned, you can think about negative testing, which is testing to make sure that the system can deal with users misbehaving.  You will more than likely end up with many more negative than positive tests - this makes sense as there's usually many more ways for users to get things wrong than to follow the right path.

When planning out all of your tests you should aim to describe the scenario you are testing - e.g. add new cardio exercise to workout, then describe in as much detail as you can how you'll do this.  

If you've been especially diligent and planned your acceptance testing right after writing your PRL in the first flushes of a project, you're unlikely to be able to describe the actual test steps in detail.  That can be done later, but don't skip this step as if you describe the test steps in sufficient detail you should be able to delegate your testing.  

It's also important when writing the tests to plan all the data you're going to need.  If you're upgrading an existing site full of user data then you might want to have access to that for testing - remembering that you probably need to arrange for your developers to cleanse the data of any personally identifiable information unless system testing is allowed under your GDPR privacy notice.  You should also plan on a test-by-test basis for which individual data items you'll use during testing, e.g. test adding exercises on User 1234 on 12-Aug-2018 using exercise type Static Bike.

Lastly, for the planning phase, make sure you describe in detail what the expected behaviour is for the test.  For positive tests, you'll be describing the planned outcome of your scenario, e.g New exercise appears on User’s timeline in website and mobile app, plus summary activity info for user and their gym is updated.  For negative tests the expected behaviour will be how you expect the site to deal with the site - e.g. if user doesn't have a medical certificate on file in the Webapps, an error will be generated preventing further use of the equipment.

We find it helpful to update the Traceability Matrix with the user acceptance testing, so that we know the system has been comprehensively tested by us and the client.

Finally, after all this planning you can get on with actually executing tests.  Use the test plan to track the progress of testing.  If a test exactly follows the expected behaviour in the test plan then it is a pass, otherwise, it's a fail. All fails should be tracked on the plan, with the issue reference or bug reference your devs give to you.  

Of course, sometimes you'll execute a test and while it does match the expected behaviour, you may realise that the test was wrong. Here, it is worth having a conversation with your team, updating the expected behaviour and executing the test again.

We provide our clients with a copy of our test plan template to enable them to plan and track their user acceptance testing.  We like to use Google Sheets but are open to other options.

Next time you commission a new website make sure you contact us to find out more about how we capture and control the testing of Umbraco projects. And be sure to take a look at our ‘What happens when…my Umbraco agency doesn't have good testing processes?’ blog post for more on this as well.

Lastly, if you're in the throws of having made bad buying decisions last time you bought an Umbraco Site perhaps because the testing wasn't well controlled you might want to consider using our Health Check service to get things back under control.

[carbonsixdigital]

What happens when…my Umbraco agency doesn't have good testing processes?

If you're going to build a website or app you need to face facts: it's going to have bugs.  Bugs have existed in software since Grace Murray Hopper found her punch card program failed because a moth got trapped in the reader.  

Bugs are a fact of software life, because humans are fallible. We make mistakes, we misunderstand specs, we write algorithms incorrectly, or we use the wrong variable.  We believe that instead of trying to write perfect code, we should spend as much time trying to write a good trap.  Testing, therefore, is the saviour of poorly-written code.

But there is a huge difference in the approaches agencies take to testing. These range from highly-formalised processes to a more laissez-faire approach.

Some agencies follow a practice called Test Driven Development (TDD), where developers write tests before they write any code. This makes testing a very formal part of the development process.  

Automated testing, where developers write code to test the system automatically, is often an important part of TDD, but can be used in more traditional testing regimes too. Examples include Unit testing which exercises all the individual parts of a system, as well as performance testing.  The great advantages of automated testing are that it is so cheap to run, and can test automatically every time your software is built.  Unfortunately, the flip side is that developing these tests can be costly.

At the loosest end of the spectrum, devs are given free reign to undertake testing without any clear test plans or evidence of testing completed.  This can reduce the upfront development costs of a project, but brings with it the risk of incomplete or patchy testing, or a tested system that goes live with bugs remaining.

Testing is an important aspect of software development, and as a buyer, you should ensure that you understand how your agency carries this out.  As with all procurement decisions, you're balancing risk against cost - thorough cross-browser testing of every browser that's ever existed may be beneficial in an ideal world, for example, but you may simply not have the budget for this.

At Carbon Six Digital, we tend to follow a very formal testing process where test strategy is agreed at the start of a project. Detailed test plans are produced in advance which can be then be cross-referenced back to the customer requirements in our Traceability Matrix, with testing logs updated as testing progresses.  This enables us to be in control of all aspects of testing, ensuring that we have good testing coverage, as well as giving us a tool to effectively measure progress and track any issues that arise.

Next time you commission a new website, talk to us about how we manage testing on Umbraco and Mobile App projects to ensure that only a quality system goes live. And take a look at our ‘How to acceptance test an Umbraco project’ blog for more on this, too.

Lastly, if you are suffering the impact of a poorly-tested Umbraco site, don’t despair - our Health Check service can help you quickly get things back under control.

[carbonsixdigital]

What I'm looking forward to at Code Garden 18

This morning I read a post from a Dev Evangelist at Oracle, who wrote about all the talks he is looking forward to at Oracle Code.  It was a great post, but it got me to thinking, there's so much more to look forward to about Code Garden than just the talks. So here's the things I'm gong to enjoy at my CG18 experience.

My first Gold Partner Summit

The summit is the opportunity for all the Gold Partners worldwide to get together to learn about the roadmap for the next year, to discuss issues and opportunities and to influence the direction of HQ.  Although Carbon Six has been a Gold Partner for 5 years, the summit is fairly new, so this is an exciting time for me. The Gold Partner Programme has grown over the last 18 months so it'll be great to meet some new Partners.

The Pre-Party

Code Garden has outgrown Umbraco HQ as a venue, so the pre-party will be our only opportunity to see Unicorn Square. This is another first for me, so I'm really excited about that.

The Key Note

Every Code Garden Niels, the Chief Unicorn (Umbraco's CEO), gives the Key Note Address on day one.  Niels always gives a great speech - usually a proper rabble rouser - but the key note is our chance to celebrate the achievements of HQ and the community, to see how much the platform has grown, to honour those that contribute most, and to crystal ball gaze about what is next on the road map.

The Food

The team organising Code Garden always put on a great spread.  Great salad lunch's and BBQ short ribs are some of my favorites. But I could happily live the rest of my life with it eating the pickled fish in a tin that was served at Umbraco Bingo a few years ago.

Meeting up with old friends

The Umbraco community is hugely supportive, and through meetups, conferences and online forum's I've built a network of great friends, and Code Garden is a time to get together to catch up on work, family and life. But it's not just a jolly, it's a time to reconnect old bonds which oftenlead to new ideas and opportunities.

Getting a new profile photo

There's always loads of great amateur photographers at Code Garden, chief among them being the redoubtable Doug Robar.  If you're lucky one of these great photographers will catch a reportage shot of your in mid conversation, those make great profile shots.

Learning new stuff

This is a conference right, you'd think this was the most important thing.  Not quite for me, but it is important. I'm only at Code Garden for the first two days, but that still means I'll be there for some great looking talks on Headless Umbraco, AI and Bots, Building Umbraco sites in big teams.

Practicing my public speaking

After listening to a talk by Pete Duncanson about how we all have a responsibility to give back to the community, I've spent the last 18 months building up my public speaking skills at Umbraco conferences in Poland and USA, and this year I have my first slot to talk at Code Garden.  I won't lie, I'm properly nervous, but I'm among friends taking about my team's achievements so I'll be fine, and if not there'll be a bar nearby.

Meeting new people

Now here's the kicker: CodeGarden is an opportunity to meet new people.  As a business owner this is gold dust so it's my number one reason to be at Code Garden. I've met so many talented people at Umbraco events over the years that I've never needed to use a recruiter to secure contract developer resource.

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't come naturally to me.  I hate the last 5 seconds BEFORE I talk to someone new at a networking event of any sort - it makes me sick to my stomach.  If I let it, then avoiding that feeling will completely paralyse me for the hour running up to that 5 seconds.

But I love it once I've started the conversation. I love finding out about what people do, why they’re at the event and what they're hoping to get out of it. If I'm lucky then I conquer the fear, but sometimes not. So don't be put off if you see me sticking with my colleagues or my friends, sometimes that's just a security blanket, I still want to meet new people so come over and say hi.

This year we're on the look out for a technical lead / lead developer, as well as contractor developers. So come on over, you never know where the conversation will lead.

[carbonsixdigital]

This is an old, old, old article.  But still completely relevant today.  You see, human perception hasn’t evolved substantially since 1993, and so neither have our expectations of the response time of the systems we interact with.  Those systems my have substantially evolved as the web became mainstream, and then smartphone apps became ubiquitous.  But our expectations remain the same.  If the system responds to a users action in under 1 second, then the users flow of thought remains unaffected.

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Umbraco & GDPR Preparedness

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 to ensure that Umbraco makes it easy for Editors and Developers to ensure compliance with the regulations.  

The main focus has been on areas of the Umbraco toolkit that have the potential for storing personally identifiable information.  Specifically this is the core of Umbraco CMS, including Members, as well as paid add-ons such as Umbraco Forms.

Their analysis is currently in review with the HQ legal team, and more information will follow in the coming weeks. The goal at HQ is to ensure that the Umbraco ecosystem including the CMS, the Partners and Customers are ready for GDPR day on 25 May 2018 in the UK.

[carbonsixdigital]

Financial services marketing site performance issues

When poor performance and a lack of scalability impacted the delivery of a marketing led digital campaign for a major financial services client their agency turned to Carbon Six Digital for help.

Carbon Six Digital’s intervention stabilised the project preventing further delays to the project, and ensured that the final system met the end-client’s quality criteria and passed all security penetration testing.

The code developed as part of this project has since gone on to be used on a number of future projects where the client agency were engaged by the financial services client, which has reduced the cost of development, increased consistency and consequently improved supportability of the sites.

For more information read our case study on performance enhancing an Umbraco powered financial services site.

[carbonsixdigital]

Migrating a web and mobile application for use in China

To open up access to new markets in China and across Asia, Carbon Six Digital localised a leading UK fitness equipment manufacturer’s fitness technology platform using Umbraco and Amazon Web Services.

The last few months at Carbon Six HQ have been pretty busy, as we've been putting the finishing touches to really important project for our clients Pulse Fitness. When Pulse decided to expand into the fast growing fitness market in China, we support them by localising PulseMove, their cloud based connected fitness platform of web- and mobile-apps.

The project had to launch at the ChinaFit exhibition in Beijing on June 26, 2017, be fast to use and also be localised for Simplified Chinese - all within our existing budget for ongoing WebApp and mobile development.

In just 8 weeks from project inception, our team, in collaboration with Pulse and their distributors in China, delivered highly performant, localised versions of PulseMove for use in China - with apps available for Download from iTunes in China in time for the ChinaFit show, within our original Agile Development Budget. We were then able to support Pulse shortly after with the fitout of their first gym in China.

For more information read our case study about localising PulseMove for China.

[carbonsixdigital]

Office share in Farnham

We're looking to share office space in #Farnham.  We’ve found the perfect office, but it’s just a little too big for our current needs.  The office comprises 3 offices off of a shared central office.  We’re happy to share one of the three rooms, which could accommodate 3 or 4 desks.  Located just off Downing Street, it’s a 1st floor office, with a dedicated kitchen area and toilets.

Large office for 4 people

We’d really like to share with a creative agency or tech biz preferred as we think there would be lots of opportunity to collaborate on work. But we’re open minded, anyone could work.

Smaller office for 2-3 people

We’re offering a flexible license agreement on the space, to enable a suitable office-mate to exit with 1 months notice.  The decor isn’t to our taste at the moment, if you’d like to redecorate the walls to match then you’ll be welcome to.

We’re looking to move in September.

If you want any more info then email info@carbonsix.digital or call us on 01276 817465.

[carbonsixdigital]

Six things to consider when choosing an Umbraco development partner

Over recent weeks we've heard a familiar story; several new clients issuing a cry for help with their Umbraco site. “We worked with an agency who seemed great at first, but it turns out they didn't really know Umbraco. Now our site is broken / dangerously unstable / inaccessible (delete as applicable) and we need help so that we can make changes to our site without everything breaking”.

Unfortunately we've heard this story before - many times, in fact. It's the single biggest reason why we don't try to be experts in WordPress or Drupal or Sitecore or Episerver. You can't be a jack of all trades at our level. It works for really big networked global agencies with many different technical teams - but those guys have pretty big overheads, and charge out rates to match.

So, instead we’ve made ourselves experts in our chosen field; we are knowledgeable, skilled and experienced in the development of Umbraco-based websites, and native mobile apps built around an Umbraco Core.

Now I don't want to cannibalise a perfectly healthy stream of work that comes from disgruntled ex-clients of agencies that don't understand Umbraco. But in the spirit of being helpful and doing the right thing, it strikes me that there are a few questions that clients should be asking during the procurement process to establish the bona fides of a prospective development partner.

Obviously we have strong credentials in these areas, as will the many other reputable Umbraco agencies I've had the pleasure to work with (and compete against). But these are always the key things to check:

1. Do they have demonstrable experience of working on Umbraco projects?

Let's face it, building a website isn't rocket science, but the road to Umbraco nirvana is paved with agencies that have looked and thought, “it's only a website, how hard can it be?”.

In experienced hands it's a powerful toolkit, but in the wrong hands it'll become a nightmare of poor performance and poor usability. In my experience, the first time someone uses a toolkit like Umbraco then they can easily stray from the well worn path of best practice, and end up building a monster.

2. Do they understand what can go wrong with an Umbraco project?

Closely related to my previous point. When you’ve worked with Umbraco often enough, you know what can go wrong. No software is perfect, especially when it’s in the hands of developers that don’t know better. An experienced agency will know what the pitfalls are. They’ll understand that performance can suck if you don’t understand what you’re doing when you turn off XML caching, and they’ll understand how to structure content to make it easier for editors to manage their content.

3. Do they have certifications to demonstrate they understand Umbraco best practice?

The Umbraco Certified Developer pathway is a great opportunity for new developers to learn the basic knowledge to build an Umbraco site. The coaches are all experienced developers who decorate the course material with their own knowledge. Umbraco Certification isn't a guarantee of a good result, but it is demonstrable evidence that someone has taken the time and effort to sit in a room and listen to how it should be done.

4. Do they have a close relationship with HQ?

The great thing about Open Source software is that if it's broken you can fix it yourself. Better still there's a great community of dedicated developers around the world who can offer advice and guidance.

But what if you're about to go live and the site falls on its backside? If you're working with a Gold Partner, or have invested in a paid support package, then you can ask the HQ team for help.

We've rarely used the support system, but when a site of ours fell on its arse, on the morning of go live, we made the call and Shannon came to help and quickly diagnosed the problem as a Windows update, which had deployed automatically. One quick rollback of the update and we were up and running with no significant delay. Phew - and well worth the money.

5. Do they have a toolkit of commonly used packages?

Agencies that deliver Umbraco sites on a regular basis will know and understand the best packages that improve the functionality of Umbraco for end-users or editors, many of which will be free and open source, but some of which are paid-for.

All Gold Partners have access to the paid-for Umbraco products such as Umbraco Forms and Courier. We also have site licences that enable us to install great packages from Soetemen Software such as CMS Import, SEO Checker and Member Protect. All of these reduce the cost of development for our customers, and improve the experience for users.

6. Do they understand how to support you scaling your site?

Clients rarely commission a website with the intention of serving the same small group of users for the long term. Clients want to grow their business, and they want their website to be the engine of that growth. If your prospective agency don’t understand what the impact of growth will be on the site, then they can make dangerously short sighted decisions as to how to build, configure or host it.

This is just six of the things we think are important when considering working with an agency on an Umbraco project. In essence, experience and depth of knowledge of the Umbraco ecosystem is a critical success factor for any project with Umbraco at its core.

If you’d like to find out more about how Carbon Six Digital can help with your Umbraco needs, then give us a call on +44 (0) 1276 817465 or go to carbonsix.digital.