South of Scotland Enterprise: Umbraco 7 End of Life Website Rebuild

South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE): Umbraco 7 Website Rebuild

Umbraco 7 reached end of life on 30^th September 2023. Earlier in the year, I-Finity started planning with SOSE to rebuild their version 7 website on Umbraco 12 – the current major release at the time of project.

To avoid any security vulnerabilities, it was essential that SOSE not be on an unsupported version. Rebuild was the only viable option as the code bases between Umbraco versions 7 and 12 are fundamentally different, with no possible upgrade path available.

SOSE works across Dumfries & Galloway and the Scottish Borders, providing a range of services to support businesses and communities. Set up to establish the South as a centre of opportunity and innovation, its main aim is to drive inclusive growth, increase competitiveness, and tackle inequality within the region.

The rebuild of any site is a significant piece of work. However, by taking a carefully planned approach, tracking all moving parts and implementing robust testing, I-Finity delivered a smooth transition from Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 12.

During the rebuild planning phase, we also incorporated a few front-end website enhancements with a more significant update for content editors. This provides an improved user experience and back-office content implementation.

Umbraco 7 End of Life: Why does it matter?

• An Unsupported Version will not receive any future security updates. This leaves a platform vulnerable and at risk of security issues.
• Remaining on a legacy version will lead to the inability to resolve any new support issues that may arise. This could impact the availability or the operational element of a website and therefore impact customer experience.
• Updated versions offer an opportunity to capitalise on new functionality, website performance gains, and back-office UI and UX improvements. This can greatly improve the experience for both content editors and end customers.

Security is essential for SOSE to keep their website visitors safe online; the risks of being on an unsupported version of Umbraco were too great.

The benefits of moving to a supported version also aligned with SOSE’s commitment to keeping their services accessible, secure, and reliable for businesses and communities.

Umbraco’s improved Content Editor experience

• The way we can implement content architecture has greatly improved since Umbraco version 7. This leads to an improved content editing experience and often delivers performance benefits by making the website work faster.
• In Umbraco 7, content was often multiple clicks away and hidden across multiple tabs, with folder structures made up of many components. The new version has greatly improved on this, making content more accessible for editing and providing a more streamlined approach to content management.
• Seamless content entry in the newer versions of Umbraco have a significantly improved user interface (UI) and user experience (UX).

What our Umbraco Rebuild delivered for SOSE:

• Improved content architecture: making it easier for SOSE to access content areas. In particular, the improved implementation of News has made it easier to manage news items.
• Significant back-office improvements in terms of UI and UX for the content editing team.
• I-Finity migrated all content and multi-media assets to the newly built Umbraco 12 website. SOSE were able to validate content within the staging environment prior to go live.
• We included all the updated functionality and capabilities from their previously restructured SOSE Umbraco website, whilst also delivering further security benefits by using latest technologies, frameworks and tools.
• All existing integrations were transferred to the new site. This included the API integrations with newsletter sign ups, CRM for form submissions, and the API to push news articles to the SOSE mobile app.
• We implemented all technical elements on the new website, including the sitemap, redirects, cookies, GA4 tracking, and the retention of existing SEO.

Results

• I-Finity managed a successful rebuild of the SOSE website to Umbraco version 12. During the build, SOSE’s version 7 website remained fully operational.
• The deployment and transition to the new site was successful and removed the risk of any security vulnerabilities arising from Umbraco 7 end of life.
• By using the current major release of Umbraco CMS with the latest technology frameworks and tools, SOSE remains secure and compliant.
• The improved back-office implementation has created a more efficient workflow for managing content.

Needing a rebuild away from Umbraco Version 7  or a new website contact us to talk through your requirements.

Testimonial from SOSE

“We have been working with I-Finity since early 2022 when they initially restructured our website and they’re fantastic - we can’t fault any aspect of their service. We have now appointed I-Finity to host and support our website and they have seamlessly moved our website from Umbraco 7 to 12. We never doubted they would deliver this to the highest quality. We are delighted with the outcome, as we now have a site with improved functionality and crucially, a more user-friendly back-end which for a busy communications team is a dream!

“We consider I-Finity to be our website ‘partners’ because they truly do work with us in partnership. They care about SOSE, our website, our brand, our clients and our reputation. They take ownership of projects and tasks; they recommend technical solutions to meet our needs, and nothing is too much trouble even at short notice. We have complete faith in the I-Finity team now because they’re always accessible, extremely efficient, and real experts.

“We are proud to have I-Finity as our partners and we’d highly recommend the team to anyone looking for high-quality expertise in website and software development. They are friendly, approachable, and simply excellent at what they do.”

Tracey Graham, Marketing and Communications Manager, South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE)