Visiting with Umbraco

I’ve been a WordPress guy for 15 years now, but recently I was invited to attend an event for a very different CMS, Umbraco. Umbraco is an Open Source CMS written in .NET, a framework created by Microsoft in the mid-2000’s. Those of you familiar with my history with Windows are probably asking “WHAT?!?” about now. For those unfamiliar, I’ve spent most of my career being anti-Windows, pro-Linux, so this was certainly a step outside my norm. But I was intrigued by the idea of an open source CMS on Windows, so I went with interest.

The event I attended was the the Umbraco U.S. Festival. For the WordPressers in the crowd, this would be like WordCamp U.S. What I found there was a friendly, vibrant, and passionate community. I’ve attended nearly 80 WordCamps, and the Umbraco Festival felt very much like that. People were sharing ideas, processes, and helping each other succeed. I heard career stories very much like my own, and others similar to many stories on HeroPress. It reinforced something I’ve known in my heart for a long time.

Am I going to switch? Not at the moment. Umbraco is written in a language I don’t know (C#) on a platform I don’t own (Windows), and WordPress is doing a great job paying my bills. That said, I have a great respect for Umbraco, the skills of those who leverage it, and quality of the community around it.

If you’re looking for a new web dev adventure, I recommend trying Umbraco.

Now look at my cool pictures.