Umbraco, is it just me or is it really hard to use?

Looking for some feedback on those of you who have evaluated umbraco lately.

I've been on a quest for the 'best' cms that balances ease of use/extendability/customization etc. to use as a base for a new vertical product I am in the planning stages on, so for the past month or so I have been downloading, installing, reading source code and creating test sites in every asp.net cms I can get my hands on - and so far I have pulled down GraffitCMS, MojoPortal, Oxite, Orchard, Kuboo and maybe a couple of others that I am not remembering of the top of my head.

For each of those, except Umbraco, I have been up and running in less than a couple of hours, including adding pages, customizing templates, and in some cases (especially Graffiti), writing drop in widgets in C# in a matter of just a few hours....

But with Umbraco, after wrestling it for almost 2 days just getting it to run, and now another morning watching videos, and then building pages etc, I am still unable to even get even a simple site operational, and even the pages I have gotten working crash routinely (not to mention being a dog)...

So, the question is: Am I doing it wrong? or is it really that hard to work with? and more importantly, if I continue to push forward, will it be worth it? or do I cut my losses and move on?

Edit: asp.net with SQL Server support are requirements of anything I pick.

UPDATE ONE YEAR LATER (Feb/2011): My initial impressions are still accurate, Umbraco is different than most of the other CMS's that I have used in the past, and for me took a bit longer than usual to 'get it', but now that I have, I have to say I have a much better appreciation of the product, what it does, and how it does it - and to top it all of, it really performs really well - especially with the latest release of 4.6.1. So call me a convert - I am glad I stuck it out and then took another look. I only update this post now, over one year later so as not to leave my initial negative 'review' here for posterity.

The learning curve for umbraco is short but steep. Once it all 'clicks' then you'll be up and running in short order.

It's different from other CMS platforms in that you doesn't give you anything out of the box - just a blank canvas to work with. Other cms systems will set you up with a default template and allow you to drop in pre-built functionality. Umbraco is, by design, not like that at all. You only get out what you put in, it doesn't generate anything for you.

This is ideal for developers and designers who want 100% control over their code/markup.

Version 4.7 (currently in release candidate) introduces the Razor syntax for creating macros. This does away with needing XSLT+XPath which I think was a big stumbling block for a lot of people. Even if you're not familiar with Razor, it is much intuitive to learn than the XML based offerings.

The videos have been mentioned by other posters below. $20 is a small price to pay to get up and running quickly.

Does it matter? What I mean is, if you find it hard to use, and there are other alternatives available, why persist? If it's non-intuitive to you, then you're going to find it hard to use. If it doesn't have some killer feature you (think you) need, dump it and move on. You don't need the hassle of trying to wrap your head around some oddly-designed (to you) product, and the product's developers don't need the hassle of trying to support people who think their product should work in some way it wasn't designed to.

None of this is intended to be harsh, just practical. You have the freedom to choose, so choose what works best for you. This sounds like it isn't working, so move on. My brother-in-law wanted to buy a Volvo, but found the controls and dashboard totally confusing, so he wound up with a BMW instead. Nothing wrong with the Volvo, nothing wrong with my brother-in-law, just cognitive dissonance. Don't worry about it.

As a grizzled CMS veteran I can say that Umbraco is no harder to set up and use than many other CMS solutions.

However much of whether you find it hard or easy depends largely on your previous experience with CMS and your expectations for what a CMS should provide out of the box.

I've worked mostly with larger CMSs:

• Microsoft CMS
• Immediacy
• Obtree
• Reef (anyone remember that one!)
• etc....

Against those it is no harder to use and is probably easier as it tends to get out of your way and lets you get on with building the functionality you require.

However if your expectations are more based around things like Wordpress, i.e. install and go but with more limited options, then it can be hard to start with (if you just fire it up without installing a website starter kit).

My recommendation is that if you are building a small site you take a look at the Creative website starter kit at our.umbraco.org. There are also many packages that you can install to make things easier or add specific functionality (including pre-built navigation controls and full blog solutions).

Also take a look at the Wiki on our.umbraco.org and ask questions in the forum, the community is helpful and friendly.

I've been building sites with Umbraco for something like 5 years now, and I don't recognize your description of Umbraco as a very difficult CMS, but I'll try to provide a few pointers here to help you if you're still considering Umbraco:

1. Go to http://our.umbraco.org, read the Wiki-pages, and post any questions in the forums there, it's a really friendly community.
2. Always use Microsofts Web Platform Installer when installing Umbraco, It'll help you create your site, and set up your database. Just be sure not to install Umbraco in a sub/virtual directory, since Umbraco can't handle a setup like that.
3. If possible, do your install on a development machine with IIS7 and SQL Server Express, it'll work for sure, and deployment of a finished site can be done with a xcopy transfer and a restore of a database backup.
4. Don't start a new Umbraco site, before you've coded the HTML you'll be using for the site, or at least have a really clear idea about the page types, and html content you'll need.

I hope I'll be seeing you on the Umbraco forums.

Regards Jesper Hauge

Umbraco is a bit different than other CMSs like Sitefinity, DNN, or Drupal. It does compare well to Sitecore.

Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve. I think the XSLT can cause that, but more likely its just the fact that you have to understand how Umbraco is structured. There are very few "modules" out of the box that you have to arrange and style. Rather, it allows you to easily create your own structure and markup that doesn't force you into a box that is hard to get out of.

I've used Drupal, Sitefinity, WordPress, Sitecore, and some others and frankly Umbraco is my favorite. If you know how to develop great web sites and you don't want limits on your design, markup, or client experience then Umbraco is a great choice. If you aren't really building a site but just want to put pieces together and get "something" working, then it may not be worth your time. If you build lots of sites or want your end users to edit content easily (not just a big rich text editor), then it may be worth overcoming the learning curve.

The videos are totally worth the $20 to watch BTW. They are far better than any documentation you can find and after maybe 5-6 videos you should be "getting it". Just buy one month and cancel after that.

The community is awesome too. If you're struggling, head over to the http://our.umbraco.org forums and get some help. There's lots of it over there.

Also, try installing the Creative Web Starter Kit package or the Blog 4 Umbraco package to get a head start. Those will be more familiar to those coming from a Sitefinity or Drupal background and may help the learning curve flatten out.

Good luck!

As a senior .NET programmer naturally I gravitate to .NET based solutions, and Umbraco seems to be a solid CMS. So I installed it and tried to gain some knowledge and getting it going and these are my findings:

• Videos are ridiculously thin on content. The first introductory video talks of a runway. What on earth is a runway??? No jargon please, I'm a first time user.
• You have to pay for the most advanced videos. No wonder it hasn't taken off as a mainstream .NET based CMS.
• Out of the box demos are non functional (I chose the business theme an the menus don't work)
• Admin area very non-intuative
• Installation forces Web-Matrix installatiuon.. I have IIS7 and so do our production systems... I DON"T WANT WebMatrix!!! Finding documentation on this is also not easy.

All in all EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING to use and put me off Umbraco totally.

So I've picked up on Wordpress in the mean time and find it extremely easy to extend the admin interface. Documetnation and community support is superb. Just a pity its PHP bases because that won't fly in my company that has invested heavily in .NET developers :-(

Opinions aside, this all depends on your background. I'm a software engineer not a webmaster. So, I think like a software engineer and not like a webmaster.

Umbraco was VERY frustrating for me to install simply because there was no easily found TEXT documentation. Once I finally found that, it was a breeze to install.

The problem for many web designers is that they are not software engineers. Nothing bad about web designers who aren't also software engineers, it's just a different way of seeing the world. I have worked a lot with web designers who needed to interface with my C++ and C# back ends; they have a completely different perspective of almost everything.

Once I got past the goofy implied install process (which is bad, bad, bad -- you should never require another product JUST to install your own!) I found Umbraco to be simple and intuitive. Even my (non-programmer) girlfriend found it to be much more logical than some of the other CMS's we had been playing around with. Drupal, for example, was simple to install, but isn't really designed for a Windows development (ASP.NET/SQL Server) environment and I hate PHP, so I eventually abandoned that. MojoPortal was really nice and simple, but... it was... well... simple. Too simple.

I like Orchard, but the last time I looked at that there was so little in terms of what to start with that I decided that it would be a problem in the immediate future. I wanted a web content management system, not a web development platform. I kept thinking Orchard is a lot like *nix: "A nice place to live, but ya wouldn't wanna visit there."

Umbraco for me is a nice medium place, extremely flexible and easy to extend. It tries very hard to not get in your way. If you want to extend it you would probably do best to either learn C# (or {cringe} VB) or co-opt someone to write the CodeBehind for you. But, using it is extremely simple and straight forward.

I can't say whether it's just hard to use in general - but I came to much of the same conclusion as you did. I was especially disappointed by the lack of useful documentation - all the potentially useful video resources at their website are for pay $$$ only - what's up with that??

Also, the few intro videos I saw never quite clicked with me. They presented lots of concepts, but really never explained them much.

I also had tried Graffiti, but that never quite worked, either - and with its future less than sure, I gave up on that. Others seemed overly complicated for my requirements (Kentico, CommunityServer, and others).

In the end, based on a tip by a fellow on superuser.com, I went with BlogEngine.NET for my club's web site, and so far, I haven't looked back at all. It's pure ASP.NET which appeals to me, it's easily extensible, has a fairly large community with extensions and themes and stuff. From my personal experience, I can only recommend you check it out, if you have a mostly (blog) post based site in mind.

Strange. It takes me 5 minutes to install new Umbraco site, in 2 hours i managed to create standard portfolio website (well, when I've already got used to XSLT). It's very easy to create, modify, add custom controls, add smth to administration section, etc.

What was hard to understand (took me half an hour) that I don't have to write any SQL or C# code until I need some additional data model that's above Documents concept or Umbraco capabilities. Such samples: auto-resizing pictures, invoking some web-service, etc. - anything that comes from business logic layer that can't be covered by CMS model.

In most cases Umbraco is so easy to use that even that little bit of documentation is enough. There's pretty thin and easy API provided by Umbraco, but there's a good tech. level needed from developer, and that's XML 1st of all: XQuery and XPath to use maximum of XSLT.

And once more about installation: I just followed each step of installation guide and that's all.

The problem with Umbraco is that the UI is awkward and it's not immediately apparent how to use it and where to find things. There are several section buttons at the bottom of the page and when you click on one, you're presented with a tree view where you drill down to what you want. This is bad UI 101: no mystery meat. All functions should be organized and visible to the user. Dropdowns with submenus would have been a better approach.

The UI element names are ambiguous. For instance, there's a Members and a Users section, a Developer and a Settings section, a Content and a Media section. Isn't Media supposed to be Content? Aren't Members also Users? Aren't Settings something a Developer would do? You get my drift.

With the release of version 5, none of these issues have been addressed. The best thing they did was to kill XSLT/Classic ASP.NET and replace it with MVC and Razor. This makes getting your head around the product much easier from a developer's standpoint, despite a lack of adequate documentation for version 5. From a content creation standpoint, it's still lacking, however.

If you want to see a great UI, look no further than SiteFinity. Even though the new design isn't as good as SiteFinity 3 versions, it's content editing is the best I've seen on the market. It's too bad it doesn't support MVC and it's controls are cumbersome to modify and style.

what i wish i would have known!

Umbraco - Before you start