The annual Umbraco conference Codegarden takes place in Denmark and always features a strong mixture of updates about the platform, sessions from both Umbraco HQ and implementation partners and case studies. Unfortunately, this year at 3Chillies we were too busy to attend, but some of us were able to access the sessions remotely. Umbraco HQ have also published a useful post detailing the key product updates. In this article we’re going to cover five significant and interesting updates from Codegarden and what they mean for Umbraco.   ...

How many digital marketing and website teams do you know that don’t seem too busy and have time to spare? We’re guessing that the answer is somewhere between “none” and “zero”. Virtually every digital marketing or web team we know are often maxxed out, frequently firefighting and can find it hard to work on projects, as new demands and initiatives can happen quickly and are hard to predict. The inevitable consequence of this is that there are often few opportunities to get those things done that are perhaps less pressing, but still ...

Law firms and other professional services firms (PSFs) provide services and advice that are based on the professional expertise and know-how of partners and staff. Therefore, establishing the credibility, experience and qualifications of the people that make up a law or PSF firm is one of the critical jobs for a law firm or PSF website. Websites do this in various ways – through communications, updates, reports and overviews about different practice areas. However, a law firm website is not just about getting the right message across ...

Content governance is one of those areas that while not the most glamorous aspect of providing digital experience for customers, is extremely important in ensuring your website content is accurate, up to date and compliant.Governance is an essential ingredient of your content strategy, and should be a core focus for your digital marketing or website team. But it can also be quite fiddly and is not always easy to maintain, particularly for very busy teams who are often maxxed out with urgent content requests and everyday operational ...

Images, videos and other media assets such as infographics and PDF reports are a critical website ingredient that help lift the overall web experience, define your brand and provide valuable content to attract users. Despite this, images and other assets don’t always receive the attention they should do in terms of ongoing management and governance. For example, we frequently find that the media library within a Content Management System (CMS) is full of files that shouldn’t be there or is chaotically structured with duplicated folders. ...

Digital accessibility is an area that is very important but not always fully understood by digital teams. Ensuring a website meets the AA level of the WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines is often a standard objective for a website project. However, in practise this is not always reached or maintained. It's also an area where we are often asked by digital teams how they can ensure their website is more accessible. Accessibility is a complex area that can be quite technical and requires a list of different tactics and approaches. People have ...

Website teams have a variety of different task and activities they need to carry out to properly deploy and manage a website. If you’re a small team this can mean you end up having to familiarise yourself with a number of different topics and practices, including areas that perhaps seem unfamiliar.Cookie management is critical from a compliance and user perspective, but for some it remains a bit of a dark art. It’s not always straightforward and can be a specialist area, but overall there are approaches that can help, such as letting a ...

This year Sitecore’s flagship conference Sitecore Symposium has been replaced by a series of regional one day events, with the full in-person Symposium moving to an alternative year schedule. However, this hasn’t stopped Sitecore using their latest one-day event in Minneapolis to announce key some product updates.In this post we’re going to explore three of the latest Sitecore roadmap announcements and what they mean for the broader Sitecore platform.Sitecore Accelerator speeds the journey to the composable DXPOver the past two years ...

Occasionally as a marketing and IT team you’re going to change digital agencies. It doesn’t happen often – perhaps only every few years – but it can be quite a significant change to make.There are lots of reasons why you’re working with a new supplier. It might be that the relationship with your old agency has run its course, and you want a fresh approach and perspective. It might be triggered by the need to re-platform and you need another agency with more technical expertise. It could even be triggered by a change in leadership within ...

If you’ve been following the market for content management systems (CMS) and digital experience platforms (DXPs) like Umbraco and Sitecore you’ll likely to have come across the concept of the “composable DXP” – the ability to get different solutions that cover various aspects of digital experience to work together in one system. Theoretically, this means you can build up a portfolio of best-of-breed solutions that make up a coherent whole, delivering benefits such as improved flexibility and agility compared to a more traditional, ...