Hi Greg,

Well, like you, I am a professional developer looking for a great platform to use for client websites...

In order to "evaluate" umbraco myself, I have been doing a "pro bono" project for a non profit using it. Since it's free for them, they aren't as pushy about deadlines. If you have some time you might do something similar, or do up a personal site for yourself using it, to become familar with it.

My experience so far:

1. It's WAY more flexible than other CMSs I've looked at. (I'm a database fiend, so being able to create the equivalent of my own database tables within the standard framework is great.)

2. I also had no experience with XML/XSLT prior to my foray into umbraco. At first I was having BIG challenges, banging my head against the computer, so to speak, but have now gotten a grasp on the basic way to grab nodes and use loops/conditions to format the content the way I want to.

Regarding your concerns:
-If you do go ahead with an install, I'd be happy to share what I've learned in terms of the XSLT with you.

-In terms of integration with other apps, as far as I can tell, if you're a .Net wiz you shouldn't have too many problems with that. It's built to allow integration of custom user controls and other things. If you need specific help with that stuff, install some of the "packages" already developed by others and take a look at how they work. At the very least, if your app can run in a sub-folder as a separate application, I'm sure it would "play nice" with umbraco.

-I'm not exactly sure about integration with Community server (having no experience with that myself), but I bet you could post a direct question in the "extending umbraco" category with a subject line like "Integrating Community Server with umbraco?" and you might get some knowledgeable bits...

If you have more specific questions, let everyone know :-)

Heather

Ps. Though the documentation is a bit dis-organized right now, there is a lot out there. I've tried to compile useful links here: <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/umbraco"> http://www.squidoo.com/umbraco </a>

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Whole Web Impact | Floyd Innovations LLC | Heather Floyd's Blog

Thanks heaps for the words and advice Heather... yeah I've installed Umbraco on a test server and been playing with it for about a week (in spare time etc)... its going quite well actually, but i've been spending more time reading and researching than actually trying to use it, so haven't really hit any snags just yet.

I think the toughest learning curve for me will be the XSLT. Do you, or anybody else out there, have a 'cheat sheet' with XSLT syntax that's common in Umbraco... something that could help get me over most hurdles i'm likely to encounter when creating document types etc?

I actually have a client site to work on.. its my cousin, and i've created a static site for him, so he's happy to wait until i've sussed Umbraco out before I do his CMS.. so i'll use his site as a test site to get to know Umbraco. His is a pretty simple site which is probably good as i'll learn the basics, then move onto the more advanced stuff after (eg: my portal site, potentially my work's website which is quite huge too).

thanks again
Greg

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Wishes he could work with Umbraco all the time.

This is great Heather! Your link to your resources. I have definately bookmarked that. Thx for sharing! :o)

@Jesper: Oh, did you mean the RSS was coming from the Yahoo groups? I changed that to the Forum RSS feed. Thanks.

@Greg: Well, my site is in a shambles right now and I'm looking to reinstall it once its back up I'll show you what I was doing with the menu and blurbs...

@Tanja: Glad you like! Let me know if I'm missing anything great and I'll add it.

Heather

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Whole Web Impact | Floyd Innovations LLC | Heather Floyd's Blog