Development of the website with Umbraco [0]: Preface

An impossible task has recently been challenged:

More than 20 layouts, hundreds of sub-pages, thousands of detailed page production plus CMS system integration development, in 10 days to complete.

Mood ups and downs, sometimes irritable, sometimes depressed, sometimes desperate, facing the new party to the young man to give the big leader credit, continuous modification and modification, in the completion of the day before the continued to make some changes, but ultimately rely on a strong ability to execute, anti-pressure capacity, The companions still kept the project in their company.

The front-end part, the second attempt to use Grunt to build the project, perform grammar check, JS file syntax check and compression, CSS file compression;

The project Management Section, five people-dependent code Cloud (git.oschina.net) provides GIT services for management, compared to github.com. More in line with people's habits, the key is that free users can also support the creation of private projects, while GitHub only supports paid users to create private projects;

CMS part, once again used the personal favorite Umbraco7.4.3 system development, in the development work again and again, to Umbraco also more and more understand, more and more love, hope in know its further in the ambition why, and then use better, so want to learn work in about Umbraco of the parts, collated records down.

It may be superfluous, but it's a good idea to ask yourself a few questions before starting a new study.

I. Why use an integrated CMS

CMS, literally, is the shorthand for the Content Manage system, which means that CMS actually refers to a technology collectively, not a specific software. So it can be said that all the content management as the main function of the system, can be called CMS. For example, a website, a company's internal use of the encyclopedia, a staff to query the information of the FAQ.

There are many well-known public popular systems, such as: the PHP platform of Drupal, Joomla, dedephp, weaving dream, etc... Net platform Sitecore, DNN, Orchard, EPiServer, Umbraco, Java platform AEM and so on.

In fact, many years ago, I was also very resistant to such systems, the reasons are common: security is not transparent, stability is not known, slow performance, the development of cumbersome constraints, the user is not accustomed to the audience.

Of course, there is a common problem in the minds of all programmers, always feel that they do something better, with such things will inevitably be questioned: the XXX system has been used, then what did you do?

Haha, this is certainly a cognitive problem. In terms of reality:

1. Security: Because of the use of domestic and foreign well-known products, which the loopholes, insecurity, is by tens of thousands of or even hundreds of thousands of of practitioners to verify, far more than a few people's small team of research results to reliable security, found that the security problems, will be resolved in a short time;
2. Stability: The same as before, there are countless users with you to test, withstand the test;
3. Performance: This may be a problem a few years ago, but on the one hand the improvement of the bottom language efficiency, as well as the improvement of hardware performance, as long as not two times the development of too bad, there is no performance problems. After all, most of the expendable resources have been video, files, pictures and other static resources, which can now be solved by CDN or other cloud storage solutions;
4. Development cumbersome: Just as no one thinks that the browser restricts the Web page to the system hardware call is wrong, under a certain system platform, open Interface, service class enough to achieve the vast majority of business applications, and then step back, most systems provide open source code, theoretically can be any development;
5. User audience: This is much more needless to say.

But the integration system brings a lot of convenience, but is the traditional customization can not solve the problem:

1. The rapid development of agility, it is well known that before why everyone to modify the demand is so disgusted, to the news to add a click of the button statistics, it is necessary to change the DB structure, and then change the Model, and then change the DAO, change the front end of the business change. And most of the integrated class system, as long as a simple configuration, you can achieve any number of content changes;
2. Unified normative, traditional development technology in the multi-person cooperation, a number of companies have a serious transition problem, occasionally using some private unknown components, and no documentation, will make the work worse, and general-purpose systems, basic all the structure, components, documents are standard and universal, Even in the absence of any transfer of the premise, it can be relatively fast and smooth transition;

Technology itself should be a tool, not an end, and when we indulge in the elegance, refinement, and focus of technology, it is often easy to overlook the essence of technology to provide better service and application scenarios.

Just as the pursuit of the ultimate speed of the car, may be infinitely close to aircraft, missiles and even aircraft, but if the car is used for human ride, transport, convenient transportation, the premise is a bit of a illusion.

Currently in the global use of the CMS, about 2000 varieties, and this number over time is still increasing, I hope in this ocean, can meet their favorite, for it indulge.

Second, why Choose Umbraco

Say a bunch of sentimental things, to some rational, actually find out why choose Umbraco reason. I do not intend to provoke such as XX is the best programming language such a war of words, only personal experience, say I understand the integrated CMS and understanding.

1,umbraco very lightweight, he is really very lightweight, installation files only less than 30M, running fast, will not have any bloated feeling;

2,umbraco to the bottom of the package is good, theoretically any people who do not have the experience of. NET platform development, can also carry out Umbraco development;

3,umbraco support MVC and Webform two kinds of data, recommend the use of MVC, the basic can be completely separated, division of labor work not tired;

4, support multi-site, theoretically a set of applications, support unlimited number of multi-site;

5, does not support inner edit editing mode, which is of course a matter of the beholder, benevolent see, at least from the behavior or the use and management separation;

6, to provide a rich API, in theory, through the API to achieve the Umbraco of all the content of the programmatic operation;

7, support search, to achieve a true sense of the full-site searching;

8, the interface beautiful, compact, rich texture;

9, backstage management, using ANGULARJS technology, theoretically can support any functional expansion;

10,umbraco is completely free, also provides source code, only the video tutorial is the charge, the official document is barely considered complete. Although the community is not as good as Drupal or joomla! due to descent And so active, but to solve the daily work is not a problem;

If you have many advantages, you can always impress something. ^_^

Third, Umbraco is suitable for doing what, not suitable for doing what

It is a kind of bullying behavior to say good, not to say bad.

Next, to smooth out the shortcomings of Umbraco, and it seems that in the short term is unlikely to change.

1. Multiple languages are not supported. Umbraco only support the multi-language settings in the background, for the site front-end but there is no good multi-lingual support, but through the multi-site to achieve, this is really not comparable to the fee-based software Sitecore and EPiServer;

2, multi-terminal automatic recognition is not supported. If it is a standard responsive layout, this is not a problem, a set of front-end can solve the problem. But for the non-responsive layout, still can only be achieved through the multi-site approach;

3, relative to the PHP platform, the document is still too small, encountered problems, it may be difficult to solve.

Umbraco is suitable for the content management of the site production, such as: Official website, wiki, e-commerce of the merchandise display management part, etc., is not suitable for doing, mainly has applied the business-oriented website, the changeable business model, is not suitable for this kind of system to carry on the management.

However, this is not just a matter of Umbraco, but the problem that all inherited class systems have.

Iv. preparatory work

Before you prepare for learning and development, you need to prepare a responsive work environment.

Operating environment, please see the official information for the latest release requirements: https://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Getting-Started/Setup/Requirements/

Development environment, it is strongly recommended to install VS for the development of the template, really will do more.

In addition to the above official requirements, we offer some personal experience:

1, the server installation is sure to give the Web user set higher permissions, because during the transfer to the site root directory and a number of sub-directories to write configuration files, etc., if insufficient permissions, will prompt failure;

2, DB installation, support SQL Server Express version, and Mysql, but if you install SQL Server, but be sure! Must! Must! , do not choose to be case-sensitive, or the installation and subsequent use will often error, specific analysis, is a core get method, the case is wrong, resulting in if the case is differentiated, the table will not find the fields. Once this mistake, troubled me for a week;

3, you can develop locally, deploy tests, but it is important to be careful not to use the usual way to attach IIS to VS for debugging, it is best to specify a separate directory for IIS, and then publish the project files in. The reason for this is that Umbraco's template management will have some unpredictable problems with the. csproj file that changes the VS management file.

4, as described in the second paragraph, to set the Umbraco IIS application pool to Integrated mode, all requests are referred to Umbraco processing.

Development of the website with Umbraco [0]: Preface