I am a computer science student who recently just got an internship with a local software development company. I am still in early stages of learning about development but have truly enjoyed it already and look forward to learning more and more.
My new boss gave me a project to work on this summer. We currently are a small SASS company that is growing on a daily basis. What my boss has asked me to do is find the best way to incorporate Content Management into our web site.
What he would like to do is incorporate a log in for our new marketing employee to give her access to change our website with out having to code in html, c#, and asp.net, what we currently use.
If we were to use Umbraco is this something we could do?
I've been researching today and trying to find helpful likes as to what Umbraco does and so far it seems amazing in the possibilities, however I'm unsure if it'll meet our Developers needs.
Along with our marketing person being able to update the theme and pictures on the page, we'd like to also incorporate a blog that would alow her to upload load new blogs without having to get into our source code in Microsoft Studio.
From your description above I would in short simply say: Yes, Umbraco is right for you.
WIth Umbraco your developers get a framework to build their solution upon so to speak. Umbraco takes care of handling content, media etc. - But your developers can structure document types for content, and add logic in so called macroes to render the web pages and your frontend developers will have full control over the markup in templates etc.
So it's up to your developers to make sure the editor gets a good experience with editing the content of your website in Umbraco. The editors can bet setup with their own individual credentials and accessible areas of the website so they only see the pages that they need to manage etc.
Umbraco does not limit the possibilities your developers has since it can be integrated with whatever system you need to integrate it with etc.
Hope this helps - Otherwise feel free to ask further questions :)
Would you be able to give different access to different users.
Example give access to a Writer to post blogs but not edit anything, then give access to marketing person to edit page but not be able to touch the header or footer? How much control does it give us?
Yes that would indeed be possible. It's also possible to have some editors not be able to publish anything but instead "send to publish" so a webmaster gets a notification and can review before publishing a page/document.
Unfortunately the editor documentation that does exists is not up to date with the new UI in Umbraco 7. And it only describes basic things in handling Content and Media. There is no manual on the more webmaster oriented topics like creating user types and giving them different access rights etc.
However once you're up and running I think that is fairly easy to figure out. And if you have any doubts about it then you can always ask a question about it in here.
When you're starting out from scratch I think that the best option is to buy access to umbraco.tv to get a head start. There also is some documentation but it's currently lacking information of v7 and if you do a search you might run into documentation for earlier releases like Umbraco 4 and 6.
In terms of getting up and running and giving Umbraco a spin you can see documentation on installing Umbraco here http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Installation/ - Since you're just getting started I recommend that you use the Webmatrix approach since it makes sure that all prerequisites are in place before trying to install Umbraco.
Thanks again Jan, I have one more question about the functionality. Again I apologize for being a complete noob at this, but I'm trying to get a good idea of how any CMS works and I think Umbraco is perfect for what we need.
If we currently have a site that allows clients to log in and view various things but I'd like to use a CMS to allow that user to upload their own videos, pdf's and training material for their employees to access. Is This something Umbraco could do? If we use this service commercially does Umcraco require licensing or proceeds since we're using it commercially? I noticed a lot of commercial sites using Umcraco, is this something that they pay for?
No need to appologize - The more you ask the more you find out :)
Yes this can be handled with Umbraco where the different trainers can be assigned access to their own part of the content tree and their own folder in the media section as well. It just requires a user type of for instance "Trainer" to be setup and then the different trainers can be created inheriting from this type and then their individual access to content can be setup.
It's also possible to create an extranet/login part of the website on the frontend where this can be done using the Umbraco API and where the different employee groups can get access to the material.
So to sum it up - If you download Umbraco and build your website on it...it's 100% free. If you need support you can buy one of the different license types mentioned above. Doing so will support the project and could perhaps be worth the money if you need bugfixing in the core or something like that.
Is Umbraco right for what I need?
I am a computer science student who recently just got an internship with a local software development company. I am still in early stages of learning about development but have truly enjoyed it already and look forward to learning more and more.
My new boss gave me a project to work on this summer. We currently are a small SASS company that is growing on a daily basis. What my boss has asked me to do is find the best way to incorporate Content Management into our web site.
What he would like to do is incorporate a log in for our new marketing employee to give her access to change our website with out having to code in html, c#, and asp.net, what we currently use.
If we were to use Umbraco is this something we could do?
I've been researching today and trying to find helpful likes as to what Umbraco does and so far it seems amazing in the possibilities, however I'm unsure if it'll meet our Developers needs.
Along with our marketing person being able to update the theme and pictures on the page, we'd like to also incorporate a blog that would alow her to upload load new blogs without having to get into our source code in Microsoft Studio.
Thanks!
Hi Jesse and welcome to our :)
From your description above I would in short simply say: Yes, Umbraco is right for you.
WIth Umbraco your developers get a framework to build their solution upon so to speak. Umbraco takes care of handling content, media etc. - But your developers can structure document types for content, and add logic in so called macroes to render the web pages and your frontend developers will have full control over the markup in templates etc.
So it's up to your developers to make sure the editor gets a good experience with editing the content of your website in Umbraco. The editors can bet setup with their own individual credentials and accessible areas of the website so they only see the pages that they need to manage etc.
Umbraco does not limit the possibilities your developers has since it can be integrated with whatever system you need to integrate it with etc.
Hope this helps - Otherwise feel free to ask further questions :)
/Jan
Thank you for the welcome and helping me out.
This is exactly what I was looking for.
Would you be able to give different access to different users.
Example give access to a Writer to post blogs but not edit anything, then give access to marketing person to edit page but not be able to touch the header or footer? How much control does it give us?
Hi Jesse
Yes that would indeed be possible. It's also possible to have some editors not be able to publish anything but instead "send to publish" so a webmaster gets a notification and can review before publishing a page/document.
Hope this helps.
/Jan
Yeah. This is absolutely perfect.
Do you have any links or suggestions on tutorials or videos or demos of this in action that I can review?
Where and how do I start learning how to implement something like this?
Hi Jesse
Unfortunately the editor documentation that does exists is not up to date with the new UI in Umbraco 7. And it only describes basic things in handling Content and Media. There is no manual on the more webmaster oriented topics like creating user types and giving them different access rights etc.
However once you're up and running I think that is fairly easy to figure out. And if you have any doubts about it then you can always ask a question about it in here.
When you're starting out from scratch I think that the best option is to buy access to umbraco.tv to get a head start. There also is some documentation but it's currently lacking information of v7 and if you do a search you might run into documentation for earlier releases like Umbraco 4 and 6.
In terms of getting up and running and giving Umbraco a spin you can see documentation on installing Umbraco here http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Installation/ - Since you're just getting started I recommend that you use the Webmatrix approach since it makes sure that all prerequisites are in place before trying to install Umbraco.
I hope this helps.
/Jan
Thanks again Jan, I have one more question about the functionality. Again I apologize for being a complete noob at this, but I'm trying to get a good idea of how any CMS works and I think Umbraco is perfect for what we need.
If we currently have a site that allows clients to log in and view various things but I'd like to use a CMS to allow that user to upload their own videos, pdf's and training material for their employees to access. Is This something Umbraco could do? If we use this service commercially does Umcraco require licensing or proceeds since we're using it commercially? I noticed a lot of commercial sites using Umcraco, is this something that they pay for?
Thanks again.
Hi Jesse
No need to appologize - The more you ask the more you find out :)
Yes this can be handled with Umbraco where the different trainers can be assigned access to their own part of the content tree and their own folder in the media section as well. It just requires a user type of for instance "Trainer" to be setup and then the different trainers can be created inheriting from this type and then their individual access to content can be setup.
It's also possible to create an extranet/login part of the website on the frontend where this can be done using the Umbraco API and where the different employee groups can get access to the material.
The Umbraco core product is 100% free you can read the license here https://umbraco.com/products/license.aspx - However it's possible to buy different levels of support, which you can read more about here http://umbraco.com/products.aspx - Read where it says "Confidence" and "Complete".
Depending how big your company is another option could be becoming a gold partner, which you can read more about here http://umbraco.com/certified-partners/partner-status.aspx
So to sum it up - If you download Umbraco and build your website on it...it's 100% free. If you need support you can buy one of the different license types mentioned above. Doing so will support the project and could perhaps be worth the money if you need bugfixing in the core or something like that.
Hope this helps.
/Jan
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