UMBRACO CMS. Building Scalable Websites. Matthew Brumpton UK Data Archive 17 April 2014

UMBRACO CMS

Building Scalable Websites

Matthew Brumpton

UK Data Archive

17 April 2014

Overview of today’s talk

2

• UK Data Archive and UK Data Service • What is Umbraco?

• UKDA Umbraco websites

• Responsive design

• What is a scalable website? • When to scale?

• Using Umbraco to scale your website • Know your limits!

UK Data Archive

3

• based at the University of Essex since 1967

• curator of the UK’s largest collection of digital data in the social sciences • currently holds nearly 6,000 data collections for research and teaching, both

quantitative and qualitative

• certified to ISO 27001, the international information security standard • makes these available via the new UK Data Service

UK Data Service

4

• the UK Data Service indexes all data collections in the Archive

– all catalogued at thematic level – many indexed at variable level • also harvests metadata from other

sources

• all are available for download via Discover search-and-browse

catalogue:

UK Data Service

5

• led by experts at University of Essex along with colleagues at Manchester, Leeds, Southampton, Edinburgh and UCL

• also provides access to UK Census data (1971 to 2011)

• source of guidance, training, and support for data users in UK and around the world

• currently serve approx. 24,000 registered users

• newly funded to coordinate the Administrative Data Research Network, part of UK’s Big Data strategy

What is Umbraco?

6

• Open source CMS

• .NET 4.5 Web Application written in C# and SQL

• 10+ years old with a large active community

• Over 110,000 active installations

• Current version is 7.1 – MVC / AngularJS support

• Benefits:

 Built on Microsoft technologies

 Large community – 55,000+ registered users and developers

 Active release cycle (Major release every 2-3 months)

 User friendly management interface (The Back Office)

 API for developers

 No licensing costs (Paid support if required)

 Easy to setup - http://umbraco.codeplex.com/ (IIS) , Visual Studio (NuGet)

 Transparent development process

• Challenges:

 Open source (Version 5)

Our Umbraco Websites

7 UK Data Archive  http://data-archive.ac.uk/  http://relu.data-archive.ac.uk/ UK Data Service  Site launched 2013  1000+ pages  60,000+ visits a month  Version 6.1.6  35+ Content authors  http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/  http://census.ukdataservice.ac.uk/  http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/  http://blog.ukdataservice.ac.uk/  http://elsst.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

Administrative Resource Network

 Launched planned May 27th ₂₀₁₄

Responsive design

8

Supports a wide range of browsers and devices

• Twitter Bootstrap - Grid system and responsive design

• Modernizer - Feature detection

How to test:

• Chrome – responsive view

• Firefox – responsive view

• Opera Mobile emulator Warning!

• Responsive design only hides content

What is a scalable website?

9

• “Scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of

work in a capable manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability

• Measures of website scalability

• Load – Concurrent users

• Content – Pages

• Functional –Forms, Data feeds, Search Interfaces, etc…

• Administration – Increased number of organisations or users • Examples of Umbraco sites that have scaled

• Redball Stratos (14 October 2012) – Over 9 million people watched live

When to Scale - Increased visitors

10

 Pages take a long time to load

 Server errors (500)

 Users create load

 Google analytics for real time reporting and usage stats

 How many simultaneous users can my site handle?

 Load UI / JMeter

When to Scale - Increased content

11

 Users cannot find relevant content

 Broken links (404 errors)

 Content going live before it is ready

 Information Architecture (Taxonomy, Sitemap, User Stories)

 Content approval workflow

Scaling content in Umbraco

12 • 35 Content authors

• 5 Content approvers

• Custom content workflow

• Dedicated content server

• Content templates

Scaling functionality in Umbraco

13

• Application Separation • Reusable code

• Use the clients CPU to reduce server load • Automated testing (Selenium, Total Validator) • Load balancing

Knowing Umbraco’s limits

14

• An Umbraco installation can hold 100’s of websites

• Decouple applications to allow them to individually grow • Remove single point of failure

• Try to avoid multiple brands in a single Umbraco instance

discover. census. ellst. hasset. Relu. Ugeo. Icem.

?

What’s next?

15

• Umbraco 7

• New backoffice (Reduced number of clicks)

• AngularJS (MVVM)

Thank you for listening

16

Find Out More

17

Find out more

 Data Archive – data-archive.ac.uk

 UK Data Service – ukdataservice.ac.uk

Contact Information • Matthew Brumpton • UK Data Archive

• Wivenhoe Park, University of Essex • Colchester CO4 3SQ