We have been doing Umbraco Development and here are some tips on how you can improve your Umbraco Development. Please do contact us to share your experience or queries.
1.
Razor Script is going to make things much easier for Umbraco Developers. I feel it’s much easier for .NET developers to understand it instead of XSLT. This will be significant leap for Umbraco popularity as their community will grow. So, I think one should start using Razor in new/ongoing development. There is a learning curve but it’s worth a call.
2.
Standard Template:- Most of the sites require a standard template which can include Left Panel, Centre Panel, Right Panel. Each Panel can have further various sections in them. Sections can be a List items, featured image, left navigation, polls, weather panel, calculation panel, etc. We would suggest that one should create a Standard Template with Settings Tab that has option to show/hide each sections.
Based on active sections, we can show Panels on the pages. This gives user a standard template that can be used across many pages but ensuring one don’t need to create lot of templates based on the subtle changes on the pages. One of the ways to controlling development cost while building CMS.
3.
Use of AJAX: Accessing Restful API’s is quite easy and they will dramatically increase the performance where partial page loading is an option. Again initial configuration may take time as you need .NET 4.0 framework atleast and need to use API of Umbraco but once we understand configuration steps then for a .NET developer it’s just another C# code.
4.
USE DEAD LINKS: “DEAD LINKS” can really bring excellent SEO Optimisation technique to your site. These links will allow you to collaborate more content and therefore increasing the SEO for your site.
Example, a News Page can have Sections and News Items and by default Umbraco generates links for each of them. If these sections and News Items do not have their own templates then redirect them to News Page. Now, when these sections/news items links are accessed then it will redirect to News Template but with errors. Developers should write News Template in such a way that if pages are accessed using sections/News Items links then they scroll to that section/news item area using Anchor Name Tag.
5.
.NET User Controls: .NET User Controls can share user entered information from site map using Macro properties. This is a good approach on how User Controls can listen to user information and accordingly apply logic to it.
6.
Rich Text Editor: When I copy from Notepad then sometimes text appears in tag. These things can be configured from tinyMceConfig.config files. We would also suggest to use Dummy stylesheet for Related stylesheets rather than using your original stylesheet file.
One can add the relevant Dummy new styles back to your original stylesheet. It will avoid any background issues with your RichTextEditor.
