Working with Umbraco involves much more than knowing the Backoffice or creating Document Types. As projects grow, teams quickly encounter questions around architecture, performance, deployment, search, and integration with external services.

These were exactly the areas we focused on during a two-day Umbraco workshop delivered by Piotr Kłys and Bartosz Dudek.

The goal was not simply to go through another list of CMS features. We wanted to strengthen the team’s knowledge and help its members deal more effectively with the challenges they encounter in their day-to-day work.

From the fundamentals to advanced development

We started the first day by establishing a solid foundation.

We covered Umbraco installation and project structure, the Backoffice, and uSync before moving on to good practices for building applications with the platform.

The exercises then gradually expanded a sample project. Topics included:

• layouts and model binding,
• media and the Image Cropper,
• dynamic navigation,
• dynamic content,
• Block Grid and Block List,
• the Rich Text Editor,
• custom flows and extended uSync scenarios.

This meant that individual topics were not presented as isolated features. Participants could see how the different parts of Umbraco fit together when building an actual application.

Two-day Umbraco workshop delivered by Piotr Kłys and Bartosz Dudek.

Day two: challenges from production projects

On the second day, we moved on to more advanced topics.

We discussed load balancing, Composers, Content Apps, Blob Storage, external login providers, and Examine.

We also covered areas relevant to modern application architecture, including:

• caching,
• multilingual websites,
• headless solutions,
• designing an Umbraco content structure,
• gathering business requirements,
• migrations to newer CMS versions.

The final topics were particularly important to us.

In commercial projects, the difficult question is rarely simply “how do I create a Document Type?”. More often, developers need to decide how to design a solution that will still be maintainable and safe to extend two years from now.

That is why the workshop also included problems and architectural decisions based on situations we encounter in real-world Umbraco implementations.

A workshop rather than a presentation

We approach this type of training primarily as a technical workshop.

The agenda provides structure, but it should not restrict the discussion.

If a conversation about Examine reveals a search problem in the team’s current project, it is worth exploring it. If load balancing leads to questions about a particular infrastructure setup, discussing that architecture can be more valuable than simply moving on to the next slide.

This allows the training to address the team’s current technical challenges, rather than focusing exclusively on how the CMS works.

Knowledge that can be applied to the next task

After two days, participants had a broader view of Umbraco – from basic content modelling to application architecture and the maintenance of production systems.

The most important result, however, was not completing every item on the agenda.

The goal was to provide knowledge that the team could apply directly in its everyday work: understanding existing solutions more clearly, making better-informed technical decisions, and solving problems more efficiently as the project evolves.

We provide Umbraco training for development teams

The workshop programme can be adapted to the team’s experience and the project they are currently working on.

It can serve as an introduction for developers who are new to Umbraco, or as an advanced workshop focused on specific areas such as architecture, Backoffice extensions, performance, Examine, headless development, deployment, or migrations between Umbraco versions.

If your team already works with Umbraco, the workshop can also be built around the problems and technical decisions they are currently facing in a real project.

At that point, it becomes more than CMS training. It becomes an opportunity to review the project together and improve the way the team works with Umbraco.