If you’ve never been to a conference of any type before, you possibly think you already know the important areas of your profession and can find out any developments from your colleagues or the internet. At least that’s what I thought prior to attending Pixel Pioneers 2022.

Which option sounds more appealing to you? Pick up extra skills on occasion, or go to a conference and absorb a mega-dose of industry knowledge, make connections and enjoy exploring fresh surroundings? Luckily at SoBold we have the opportunity to do both.

The conference covered both ends of the telescope – from broad topics such as energy consumption, to a fifty minute talk about the brief three milliseconds your screen goes blank in between webpage loads. How the visually impaired experience the internet, to technical developments in styling / fonts.

My personal hero was Chris How – his mantra of valuing your customer’s time and giving them small moments of delight strongly resonated with me. In accordance, I want to guide you through the content of the conference, with links to the core material that will best replicate what the SoBold team saw, whilst valuing your precious time.

GAVIN STRANGE : Less Thinkering, More Tinkering

A must watch to boost your levels of creativity. Gavin shares his personal and professional projects with Aardman Studios. Lots of useful insights into reaching the pinnacle of creativity. Highly engaging delivery, visuals and plenty of ‘further reading’ material. Definitely worth watching in entirety. Gavin Strange website – will give you a sense of his creative flair and influences. https://www.jam-factory.com/

“It’s better to beg for forgiveness, than ask for permission.”

Gavin Strange

BIANCA BERNING : Variable Fonts – WTF?

From a technical and design standpoint, learning about variable fonts is incredibly useful. Towards the end Bianca veers into the potential application of variable fonts – imagine a world where your computer mutates its content to fit the viewer’s specific needs. If you’re looking for new avenues for unique artistic features for your website – this talk is for you. Everyone should have a play with variable fonts – try it here https://v-fonts.com/

CHRIS HOW : You Got to Fight for the Right to Delight

Chris’s choice of examples and commentary is intentionally entertaining and eclectic. His approach to design changes your criteria for success and also would decisively influence your next project. Essential viewing. Whether you’re a seasoned designer or developer short of a design, this talk will give you a guiding direction. Information on the Kano product roadmap here. https://www.productplan.com/glossary/kano-model/

LÉONIE WATSON : Accessibility: The Land That Time to Interactive Forgot

Visually impaired people experience the internet through screen readers – the internet described in words. Léonie’s valuable insight will definitely re-balance your priorities and appreciation for how websites should function. Some of the technical history she overviews was a bit lost on the audience but the switch in mindset is valuable. Important to dip into, especially for gleaming a deeper understanding of how a web document is compiled and loaded. It might sound ‘techy’ but it’s like understanding how our lungs work – illuminating. If you haven’t viewed any of your own websites using a screen reader – you definitely should. For a great sense of how the net is best experienced for visually impaired users – just check out her website – tink.uk

LUKE MURPHY : Lightning Talk: Design Tokens – Searching for a Source of Truth

Design Tokens act as a very useful tool for blending the boundaries of where design and development meet, in fact, they act as a technical element that affect design and development in equal measures. If you have no idea what a design token is – this talk could unlock a tonne of structure for your product. Here’s an overview article on design tokens 

HANNAH SMITH : How to Make Digital Services More Sustainable

Hannah Smith’s talk invited us to critique our energy consumption and make changes to our habits as both consumers and producers of digital content. She makes the case that space travel is a waste of resources, and that using less lays the path to fulfilment. See if her arguments resonate with you.  Hannah’s book recommendation – Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth

JHEY TOMPKINS : Supercharge Your Skills with Creative Coding

A mad professor of CSS and JavaScript – Jhey has a mixture of technical tricks and interesting libraries for speech recognition. Deadpan yet full of colourful examples, Jhey clumsily demonstrates his collection of magical creations and challenges you, the developer, to break out of your ‘siloed’ mentality for visual  presentation. Check out his catalogue of wondrous CSS/JS creations here

STUART LANGRIDGE : You Really Don’t Need All That JavaScript, I Promise

Painting with the broad brushes down to the nat-hair infinitesimally small details, Stuart reminds us of the importance of returning to the basics in order to best utilise the web. Unfortunately some of the libraries he suggests do not have extensive compatibility and thus aren’t for mainstream production… yet. His insight does provide a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the tools we use, although the message is quite drawn out. Example of the shared transitions js library https://codepen.io/drenther/pen/NjzeOO

RACHEL ANDREW : What’s New in CSS?

Rachel Andrew – new css features either in or emerging from or newly arrived from CSS-land. Truly at the coalface of emerging CSS features. For a frontend developer it was akin to being shown new letters in the alphabet that were being proposed. A summary of similar information can be found here – https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/03/new-css-features-2022/

Bristol itself is well worth a visit – a centre for nightlife, hedonism and youthful idealism. Simply walking around the harbour area in the daytime will refresh your appreciation for one-of-a-kind shops and overflowing street art. Make sure you have plenty of free space in your phone for all the photos. The SoBold team had a very enriching experience and bonded even tighter as a team. I hope to see you at the next one!

Links to the conference videos will be available via the Pixel Pioneers website.

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When you’re tasked with selecting a content management system (CMS) for your business, you’ll likely appreciate that the number of viable options available can make things complicated. From Drupal, to Umbraco, to WordPress, there are plenty of quality technology platforms to choose from. 

But finding the CMS that’s most suitable for your specific business is an important process that requires careful consideration and a lot of research. Of course, devoting sufficient time to this can be difficult when you have dozens of other priorities on your mind. 

To ease this challenge for you, this article will make the process of choosing between two popular CMSs much simpler. In this new content series, we’re providing direct, objective comparisons between some of the leading options for CMSs today. 

This second article of the series will look at the comparison between Umbraco and WordPress, and you can find links to the rest of the articles in this series at the bottom of this page. 

The Platforms

A CMS is a software-based technology platform upon which you can build and manage websites and applications. While most CMSs are similar in terms of their fundamental functionality, they each have varying levels of complexity and development requirements. 

Umbraco 

It’s important to start by noting that Umbraco is a platform intended specifically for developers with a certain level of technical proficiency. 

When you first set up Umbraco, it won’t be approachable for the average marketing manager or any other non-technical users. Initially, much of the key functionality expected from a CMS will be missing. The purpose of this is to encourage you to spend time and money developing the platform. Often, this has been known to rule out Umbraco as a viable option for a lot of businesses.

To get full value out of Umbraco, you’ll almost certainly need to hire someone – either an agency partner or an in-house developer – to help you get things up and running. 

Having said that, no matter which CMS you choose, you’ll be significantly better off working with a platform-specific web development agency supporting you. For most businesses, an agency plays a crucial role in helping you implement your new system and develop your site (but more on that later).

WordPress 

WordPress is the polar opposite of Umbraco, in the sense that it’s designed so that anyone – even if you have no previous content management experience – can use it easily. That’s why it’s the most popular CMS available today, with around 45% of all websites on the Internet built using the platform.

Almost everything you need to manage the day-to-day responsibilities of your website comes readily available in the software, making it much more suitable for a wider range of businesses.

This allows you to begin building immediately and facilitates a quick time-to-market for your websites and applications. WordPress’s rich, dynamic features that come pre-existing with the platform “out-of-the-box” are to thank for that. 

Content Management and Usability 

You should consider ease-of-use as a key indication of whether or not you want to invest in a CMS. If a CMS doesn’t offer simple, intuitive usability, you’re probably better off avoiding it.

Umbraco’s Usability 

As mentioned above, in its initial state, Umbraco can be very difficult to work with for the average user. It’s mostly intended for more technical users who have coding skills or some development experience to build the infrastructure. 

However, once you’ve invested sufficient time and money into tailoring the platform to your own preferences, it becomes a great tool for publishing and editing content on a website. Umbraco has a wealth of features that allow you to create high quality websites and dynamic web pages.

On a side note, if you’re a Microsoft user, you’ll be pleased to see some similarities in the structure of Umbraco’s user interface (UI).

WordPress’s Usability

WordPress is far more straightforward when it comes to usability. It provides you with a convenient, efficient user interface (UI) that allows seamless publishing, management, and editing of content on your sites.

It’s simple editing content on a page-by-page basis in WordPress, which saves you valuable time, with a handy block-based design.

The ease-of-use makes it possible to share responsibilities across your team, even if some of you don’t have any previous experience with a CMS, unlike the more technical Umbraco platform.

Customisation

Customisation with Umbraco 

Umbraco is known for being highly customisable and flexible. It’s best used as a clean slate for developers to tailor to the business’s requirements. However, this isn’t easy to do for the average user. 

As mentioned earlier, Umbraco isn’t suitable for the average CMS user in its initial state. Unlike most CMSs, you’re required to spend some time customising Umbraco in order to make it into a platform that’s approachable and easy-to-use. Once you’ve done that, however, Umbraco can become an excellent CMS with great content editing capabilities.

Customisation with WordPress 

WordPress allows you to customise it to your own liking as well. The difference here is that you don’t need to change much about WordPress’s set of tools and features before you can begin using it comfortably. 

This allows you to create quality content from day one, with the freedom and flexibility to make adjustments to the platform as and when you require. WordPress is also an easier platform to upgrade with custom features due to the quality of its community-sourced plugins.

How Secure is Each Platform?

Cyber security is becoming a greater concern each day for businesses. Choosing a platform that delivers robust security should be a top priority, so you can have full confidence in the protection of your data. 

Umbraco’s Security 

Umbraco comes with a high level of in-built security. The software is based on Microsoft’s .NET platform, which gives it support from Code Access Security (CAS). Working alongside that CAS, Umbraco provides identity-based security, and that makes it considerably more secure than the average CMS. 

Having said that, you shouldn’t let this act as an excuse for your agency partner to take security for granted. Every web development project should be approached with security at the core, no matter what in-built protection the platform has. 

It’s also important to note that Umbraco is an open-source platform, meaning a community of developers regularly creates updates and new features within the software. This means that any new additions should be tested carefully for security in case they create new vulnerabilities. 

WordPress’s Security 

While it is generally very secure, WordPress is another open-source platform backed by an active developer community. It’s important to be cautious of the raft of new features, updates, and plugins that are regularly released. 

From a security perspective, be mindful of plugins, both in terms of where they come from and ensuring they’re correctly tested, maintained, and updated. For any CMS, these issues are best left to an experienced agency partner who has the expertise to minimise these risks for you. 

Aside from that, WordPress does offer enterprise-grade security, with organisations like globally renowned pharmaceutical company Hutch Med and leading venture capitalist firm Balderton Capital using it today.

How Scalable is Each Platform? 

Scalability should be another important part of your criteria when selecting a CMS. Fast, agile expansion is crucial for the platform, just as they are for your business as it grows.

Therefore, you need your digital infrastructure to be able to scale cost-effectively with more pages, additional functionality, and perhaps even more sites.

Scalability with Umbraco 

Umbraco’s scalability is one of its strengths. With Umbraco, your site can seamlessly evolve as your business grows and your requirements change. 

It’s especially useful for teams that need to manage a high volume of pages simultaneously, making it very suitable for large businesses. 

Scalability with WordPress

In the past, WordPress mistakenly had a reputation among some for being most suitable for smaller businesses. However, its excellent scalability proves that to be nothing more than a myth. 

Just like Umbraco, WordPress is agile and scalable enough to grow alongside your business and adapt to your changing requirements. 

Cost and TCO 

A CMS is a big investment, and should be considered a long-term one. In order to ensure you’re achieving a strong return on investment (ROI), it’s helpful to find a platform that offers good value and a low total cost of ownership (TCO). 

When assessing this, it’s important to factor in costs such as hosting, licenses, agency fees, maintenance, bespoke development, and more.

Umbraco’s Up-Front Work and Ongoing Costs 

Because it’s open-source, Umbraco can be free-to-use. 

However, as mentioned earlier, it’s a platform that requires a great deal of technical expertise and initial development work. That will typically involve longer timelines with your agency than other CMSs, which inevitably mean high costs. Because it’s a complex platform, you’ll also face higher costs whenever you need to develop new functionality or work on integrations.

WordPress Value and TCO 

WordPress comes with a far lower TCO than most other CMS options. Its ease-of-use and flexibility out-of-the-box make it a very cost-effective platform. 

WordPress licenses are free, so your implementation costs would be limited to just hosting, agency fees, and post-deployment support. 

Any plugins or extensions you want to apply to the platform will be licensed and paid for separately, but it’s unlikely you’ll need to add many new capabilities because it’s such a feature-rich platform by itself.

Developer Communities 

If a technology platform is supported by a strong community of developers, that will be highly beneficial to your business. Dedicated users from around the world work hard to continuously create improvements, additions, and updates to help the software become the best it can be.

Umbraco’s Community 

Umbraco has been around since the year 2000, making it one of the oldest CMSs. That means it’s had a long time for a large, skilled community of developers to grow around it. 

As touched on earlier, Umbraco is built on a Microsoft-based infrastructure, using a C# framework, and is the most popular platform of this kind.

However, it’s important to note that Umbraco is facing some decline. More popular platforms, like WordPress, gaining widespread adoption have seen developments with Umbraco slow down in recent years.

WordPress’s Community 

WordPress has a healthy global community devoted to constantly improving the platform. 

WordPress developers are renowned for their creativity, producing a wealth of innovative new themes and plugins that can be used by any business with ease.

The WordPress community also regularly holds free events to help people learn more about how to use the platform. For instance, WordCamp is a non-profit event that has been running since 2006 across several continents.

The Important Role of an Agency 

As touched on throughout this article, another factor which will influence the success of any projects with your chosen CMS is a development agency.

When finding the right CMS is such a challenge by itself, many businesses underestimate the importance of finding the right agency partner to support you with your CMS. 

But as mentioned earlier, how well you handle critical aspects of the platform like security, testing, usability, and even your TCO are often determined by your agency. 

With Umbraco, all the platform’s functionality has to be custom coded, which makes development time in the back-end longer than most businesses expect. This also makes Umbraco difficult to work with internally, as well as for any maintenance and updates. When working with an agency, this will see your costs increase when compared to WordPress technology. 

Whichever CMS you pick, they’re all considerably easier to use, and to achieve healthy ROI, with a specialist partner supporting you. Finding an agency with the right experience and expertise to help you unlock the full potential of your platform should be another important part of your overall decision. 

Making Your Decision 

So, how do you take all these comparisons and decide which CMS is right for your business? 

In all honesty, both Umbraco and WordPress are both good options that would work well for most businesses. Although, it is generally accepted that Umbraco is a less approachable platform than WordPress unless you have technical skills within your team.

In order to determine which one will be more suitable, it’s useful to look at each of the characteristics listed in this article in relation to your unique requirements and business needs.

Remember that every business, and every web development project, is different. Think carefully about your specific strategic objectives, budget, users, technical specifications, and any other important factors. That should make it clear which CMS is the better choice to deliver what you’re looking for. 

If you need more help in your evaluation of the various CMS options: 

• Read our comparison between Sitecore and WordPress here. 
• Read our comparison between Drupal and WordPress here.

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SoBold Limited (SoBold), a leading digital and web marketing consultancy, is delighted to announce that SoBold has been selected to work with Transport for London (TfL) to build, manage and support a bespoke Cookie Consent Management Tool for use across TfL’s portfolio of websites.

SoBold’s rapid growth over the previous 12 months has seen them become a leading player in the digital and web marketing space. SoBold’s core offerings are now used by over 200 customers worldwide and we anticipate this customer base to continue to grow considerably over the next 12 months and beyond.

SoBold has been an authorised Reseller of Cookiebot since the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into place on 24 May 2018. Cookiebot’s tool consists of three main features: cookie consent, cookie monitoring and cookie control and SoBold work with their clients helping them manage, build and integrate these solutions onto their websites. SoBold now manage Cookie Consent Management for clients across numerous different industries.

Transport for London has completed a formal tendering process to procure a new Cookie Consent Management Tool for their tfl.gov.uk website domains. By procuring the tool, Transport for London is best able to align their approach to cookie management with the requirements of data protection legislation. SoBold will work with Transport for London, for a minimum of 12 months with the option of extending the contract for a further 24 months.

SoBold Founder and Managing Director Will Newland, commented:

“We are absolutely delighted to work with Transport for London. This gives SoBold the opportunity to work with a large, well known, corporation and we have no doubt we can play a big part in ensuring Transport for London’s customers can feel safe and confident when sharing information about themselves on the TfL website. This further strengthens SoBold’s position as a leading player in the Cookie Consent Management space.”

SoBold Lead Developer Sam Phillips, commented:

“This is a fantastic opportunity for SoBold to showcase our experience in the delivery of bespoke Cookie Consent Management solutions across a portfolio of websites with millions of visitors per month. The contract with TfL cements our position as a leading CookieBot reseller in the United Kingdom.”

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SoBold, the High-Performance WordPress design and development agency, has delivered an industry-first portal for Rede Partners, a private equity fundraising advisory firm that provides fundraising services to PE funds across Europe, North America and the APAC region. 

This bespoke portal, built on the WordPress platform, allows institutional investors to navigate upcoming funds advised by the placement agent.

Rede approached SoBold wanting to create a better user experience and improve fundraising outcomes for its customers. Rede wanted to achieve this by replacing its ‘Current Fund Offering’ mailout and PDF with an interactive, personalised, and secure online portal. Rede and SoBold worked in close collaboration to devise a simple, bespoke solution capable of delivering on a complex set of requirements, and that online portal soon became RedeWire.

RedeWire was fully integrated with Rede’s CRM system, Dealcloud, passing back data on user interactions and page views, allowing the team to follow up with interested clients.

RedeWire has been built fully personalisable for users, meaning that limited Partners are able to set all their preferences on first login, and through their account, allowing them to tailor the funds they see on their fund offering dashboard. 

As part of the RedeWire platform, SoBold also designed and developed a bespoke front-end editing and approval interface to digitalise their offline fund approval process. This process has enabled Rede Partners and their clients to send out live previews of how a fund will appear on RedeWire, gather real-time comments, or make fully audited edits to a page’s content before submitting it for approval and publication on the RedeWire portal.

RedeWire has now launched to Rede’s full customer base and initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The platform has already seen a high number of account activations and interactions within its first full week of use.

SoBold and Rede will continue to work together to develop RedeWire’s capabilities further and improve the portal’s user experience. SoBold will provide ongoing support to manage the platform and deliver enhancements on a monthly basis.

You can read more on our working relationship with Rede Partners here.

Gabrielle Joseph, Head of Due Diligence and Client Development for Rede Partners said,

“The SoBold team has been a real pleasure to work with and has successfully made our vision a reality. Originally conceived as a game-changer within our industry, we are thrilled with the outcome of RedeWire and have had several clients highlight how intuitive and easy-to-use the platform is.” 

“Throughout the project, SoBold clearly understood our vision and provided thoughtful solutions to our needs. Choosing to partner with this team was one of the best decisions we’ve made, and we couldn’t be happier. We look forward to continuing to work with the team as the site evolves.”

Will Newland, Managing Director, SoBold said,

“We’re delighted to see such high early adoption of the new platform. The user feedback has been excellent so far, and this is the first of its kind in the private equity space, creating a personalised experience. We’re continuing to roll out enhancements on a monthly basis and can’t wait to grow the platform further.”

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If you’re responsible for marketing, you’ll be well aware of the importance of a great content management system (CMS) for digital products like your website, mobile apps, staff portals, and so on. You may even need to create bespoke digital processes or systems unique to your business, such as internal training platforms or communications channels.

WordPress is the most popular CMS available today, powering almost 45% of the world’s websites. That popularity is on the rise, too, as more and more businesses realise the vast potential of the platform and the benefits it can deliver.

However, there’s still a misconception that WordPress isn’t suitable for large businesses. That’s no more than a myth, though. In fact, some of the biggest companies in the world use WordPress for their CMS.

But what are the specific reasons why that popularity has spread into the enterprise market over the past decade or so? To answer that question, let’s take a detailed look at the benefits and advantages WordPress offers large businesses:

1 – Scalability and Agility

WordPress is famous for its high level of scalability. However large your company, or the size and complexity of your site – as well as the amount of traffic passing through it – WordPress won’t have any problem managing that load.

Scalability is one of its most prominent advantages for large businesses, because it’s also agile enough to easily evolve and grow alongside your changing requirements.

The platform is more robust than most realise as well, with enterprise-grade performance and speed. This great performance also means user adoption and retention will always be high, helping you drive strong return on investment (ROI) on all the digital products you build.

2 – Flexibility and Customisation

WordPress is equally renowned for its flexibility and customisation, which are particularly useful for complex or bespoke development projects. You can use its flexibility to build bespoke features and functionality into your website or create an entirely unique system from scratch.

In large organisations where company-specific processes and workflows are common within your sites, this makes WordPress a highly beneficial option.

3 – Fast Time-to-Market

Thanks to its simplicity and intuitive usability, WordPress is a very efficient platform to build with. That gives you the advantage of delivering development projects with a very fast time-to-market. This is a significant benefit of any CMS, as it helps you save time, reduce costs, and provides more opportunity to test, iterate, and innovate.

4 – Integration

WordPress is very easy to integrate with other systems. Because most large enterprises have a lot of legacy technology to consider when implementing new systems, this is a huge benefit WordPress has over more cumbersome CMSs.

WordPress also integrates very well with back-end systems that are vital to your daily operations, such as HubSpot, Salesforce, PowerBi, and so on. This minimises disruption to your business while integrating WordPress into your existing tech stack.

5 – Low TCO and Strong ROI 

WordPress comes with a very low total cost of ownership (TCO) when compared to other options. Unlike most CMSs, you won’t need to invest heavily in adding new features or capabilities, and you won’t need to worry about expensive extra work to manage upgrades or updates from the platform.

Because WordPress is so agile and rich with dynamic capabilities and features, it’s also proven to deliver strong ROI in both the short and long-term.

From a long-term value perspective, your initial projects won’t just stop at initial implementation, either. As your project or requirements evolve and your business grows, WordPress can seamlessly adapt and grow with you.  

Other Points to Consider

It’s important to remember that every business, and every project, is different. While the benefits listed here do make WordPress an excellent CMS, you should still carefully evaluate how well it aligns with your specific objectives, requirements, budget, and other needs.

It’s also important to understand that most businesses will need the support of an agency with platform-specific skills and expertise to help you leverage a CMS to its full potential. As is the case with all platforms, it will be vastly easier to achieve your objectives and gain greater ROI, if you have the support of an experienced specialist partner to guide you.

If you’d like to learn more about WordPress, or need help deciding whether it’s a suitable option for your own requirements, we have a comprehensive guide to evaluating and selecting the enterprise options for a CMS here.

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