Umbraco, the little guy who hits a home run every time!

Imagine watching a baseball game, with the players all well kempt and suddenly you notice among them a little kid who is just too small, out of the ordinary, has a running nose and then you notice that crowd is actually cheering for that small guy, whilst the rest of big guys on the field, in spite their cool looks reserved attitude are begrudgingly acknowledging the little kids as he runs along towards them, stands in their league….

That little kid could be what Umbraco is among the big names like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

Well, going back to the scenario involving the little kid….

Let’s say you are watching a baseball game unwind and you watch him drag a bat bigger than his height and standing coyly at the batting position… you are amused, smiling and wondering how on earth did they allow him to play and why would the rest of the guys looking more physically adept just seated on their places and not looking too excited at something funny that’s going to happen… you are almost expecting some goof up by the little kid as he goes to bat…. the pitchers throw the ball and next thing you know…

That slimy faced little kid knocks the ball out of the stadium, a clean homerun…. Your jaws dropping and the kids running, the whole crowd goes wild and you are among them cheering…

You watch the match unwind and you notice that every other player is good, but this crony little kid hit a homerun every time he bats… then you turn to someone and ask for someone the name of the kid and they say…

Oh! That’s Umbraco for you! He is small, but he is really good at hitting homeruns.

Umbraco is a small, yet very much of a hard hitter in spite its size and outward appearance. It belongs to the league of top CMS in the worldand has kept a low profile, not something they seem to be particularly mindful about.

They deliver, i.e. the CMS works really well, the one key difference is the technology it is made in i.e..NET Framework instead of PHP.

But still is open source and free!

Factors that help boost the little guy Umbraco on the CMS arena include:

• Being Free and Small
• Being just an effective CMS
• Landing the favour of the crowd, some being end user and some being programmers, Umbraco too attracts its fan followings
• Templates, Plugins or Extensions you name it, it will be available even for Umbraco just as it is available with WordPress or Joomla or Drupal
• It hits it hard, knocks the ball out of the stadium is a statement to express that its use and purpose are very well defined, lacks any form of clutter and makes good use of functionalities
• Stable, Robust and Everything Nice can be described just as much as it can be for any other top CMS of its league
• It really is smooth operator, easy to be trained on and easier to operate
• Business of all size adapt Umbraco and has Marketing friendly features that you can use and depend on
• Never had problem on field, being a.NET based CMS is perhaps more secure at the code level than most other open source CMS frameworks
• Has been around for long and looks like it is here to stay

So, the little guy… you just could not figure out…. What he was doing with the other players… now you know. He is good, he is nice and he knows his place and skills.

No one bothers him, people cheer for him and before you know it, you are also among those cheering for him.

That’s the Umbraco effect. It will make a fan out of you!

Sahil Patel is an engineer and project manager at Elegant MicroWeb, involved with project management and services delivery. An excellent problem solver with architectural and hands on programming skills on Microsoft platforms, Linux, PHP frameworks,