By looking behind the scenes of the DotNest site rebuild, you’ll see how a website redesign can become a broader modernization project: improving how landing pages are structured, introducing Tailwind 4 into an Orchard Core front-end workflow, simplifying asset handling, and using AI-assisted tools in a practical way while keeping developers in control.

Why the rebuild mattered

The previous site served its purpose, but it no longer matched what we envisioned for DotNest. Beyond a more modern design, we needed clearer messaging, and a content management structure that would be easier to maintain as the site evolved.

This was especially important because DotNest is more than a marketing website. It also reflects how we approach building maintainable Orchard Core platforms. If the site itself is hard to update, every future improvement becomes slower and more expensive than it should be.

So we treated the rebuild as more than a visual refresh. It became a chance to rethink the site’s structure, front-end workflow, and development process in a way we can reuse on future Orchard Core projects.

Building landing pages around reusable sections

One of the main changes was how landing pages are structured in Orchard Core.

Previously, the DotNest pages used simple Liquid widgets for page sections. This was quick and flexible while most changes were made directly by developers, but it also meant that the page structure was less explicit and harder to evolve consistently over time.

Around the same time, the Orchard Core community was also moving toward more reusable “Blocks”-style page structures, which aligned closely with the direction we already wanted to take for DotNest. The rebuild became a good opportunity to apply a similar pattern in practice.

For the new site, each landing page section now has its own content type, and the sections are composed on the landing page through Orchard Core’s BagPart. This keeps the flexibility of section-based pages while giving each section a clearer structure and purpose.

The result is a landing page system that is easier to understand, easier to extend, and less dependent on ad-hoc template changes. At the same time, the reusable section-based approach gives content editors flexibility within clear guardrails, making it much harder to accidentally break layouts or page structure. For a marketing site that will keep evolving, that maintainability matters as much as the initial design.

Modernizing the front-end workflow

The rebuild was also the point where we introduced Tailwind 4 into our internal front-end workflow for Orchard Core projects.

Previously, we used a BEM-style approach with custom CSS files. While this worked well for years, it also created more manual structure and coordination as the site evolved. With Tailwind 4, we could build UI components faster, keep styling closer to the markup, and work more consistently with our design system.

As part of the rebuild, we removed the old Node.js-based asset pipeline and integrated Tailwind directly into the .NET build workflow. That led to Lombiq Tailwind Targets, our open-source MSBuild integration for Tailwind CSS.

With Lombiq Tailwind Targets, Tailwind compilation runs as part of the .NET build process, making the front-end workflow feel like a natural part of the Orchard Core application instead of a separate toolchain to maintain.

This also aligned with a broader direction we had already started exploring at Lombiq: simplifying front-end tooling and moving away from Node.js-based workflows where they add unnecessary maintenance overhead. We wrote earlier about this approach in Step away from that Node.js.

Using AI where it helps, with developers still in control

AI-assisted tools became part of the rebuild mainly in the UI and front-end workflow.

We used Magic Patterns to explore UI directions and generate Tailwind-based starting points from our design system. Since the generated code was not always aligned with Tailwind 4 or the final Orchard Core implementation, we still reviewed and refactored it before integrating it into the site.

To support this workflow, we also created two open-source repositories: Tailwind Agent Skills and Orchard Core Agent Skills. These agent skill collections give AI tools more project-specific context around Tailwind 4, Orchard Core theming, content modeling, shapes, and recipes, making the output far more useful than generic prompting alone.

The goal was not to automate development away, but to make AI-assisted work more practical and reviewable for real Orchard Core projects. AI helped speed up repetitive and exploratory tasks, while developers still made the architectural and implementation decisions needed to keep the final result maintainable.

What we gained from the project

One of the biggest takeaways was how much easier Orchard Core landing pages become to manage once reusable sections and clearer content structures are introduced. The previous setup had gradually accumulated friction over time, while the new approach already feels easier to extend and work with.

The rebuild was also our first larger Tailwind 4 project, and it significantly changed how quickly we can build and adjust UI components. That experience directly led to Lombiq Tailwind Targets and helped shape how we want to handle front-end workflows in future Orchard Core projects.

We also learned a lot about practical AI-assisted development. Working on a real-world project made it much clearer where AI tools actually help and where developer oversight still matters. That experience ultimately led to the Tailwind Agent Skills and Orchard Core Agent Skills repositories.

Most importantly, we validated different development approaches for future Orchard Core websites.

If you’re planning an Orchard Core website, a redesign, or a modernization project, reach out to us. We’re always happy to help teams build Orchard Core solutions that remain easy to evolve as requirements grow over time.

To address this, we built a marketing module at Lombiq for Orchard Core that makes analytics more resilient without adding complexity.

Orchard Core is an open-source .NET-based platform for building and running websites and digital applications with full control and flexibility. It allows teams to shape how their systems behave, integrate with other tools, and evolve over time without being constrained by rigid platforms.

The marketing module works with short URLs, UTM parameters and analytics in a way that helps preserve attribution even when parameters are removed or tracking is limited. This results in a more complete picture of user journeys. In practice, this means fewer blind spots in your analytics and more confidence in your marketing data.

Clean links with accurate attribution

Marketing teams also face a practical challenge. Long, parameter-heavy URLs are difficult to use in newsletters, social media, and campaigns where presentation matters.

The built-in URL shortener solves this while doing more than just improving appearance. It keeps links clean and user-friendly. It allows you to define UTM parameters for your campaigns. It redirects users to a clean destination URL without exposing those parameters.

Privacy-conscious analytics without losing insight

We built this on top of Pirsch Analytics, a lightweight and privacy-friendly analytics platform.

Our approach with Pirsch Analytics avoids cookie tracking setups, reduces the chance of being blocked compared to traditional tools, and simplifies compliance for teams operating in regulated environments.

Combined with our module, this gives you a setup that is more reliable than standard analytics and easier to operate for your team.

Getting started in minutes

Setting up the module is straightforward and follows the standard Orchard Core workflow.

At a high level, the process looks like this:

1. Enable the Pirsch Analytics feature from the Orchard admin
2. Paste your Pirsch tracking snippet into the Pirsch Marketing settings
3. Set the Automatic Rendering Zone input field, so the tracking script is rendered in every page in that specific Orchard Core Zone.
4. Add a client secret to enable server-side tracking for short URLs

Once this is in place, your analytics starts collecting data immediately.

Creating trackable short links

With analytics configured, you can start creating short URLs for campaigns.

• Define a short, clean URL for your campaign
• Set the destination page
• Add UTM parameters for attribution

When a user opens the short link, the analytics is triggered with UTM parameters, and the user is redirected to the destination URL without visible UTM parameters.

Built for real marketing workflows

This module is designed for teams who need reliable insights without adding operational overhead.

It is especially useful when:

• You run campaigns across multiple channels and need consistent attribution
• You rely on analytics for budget or performance decisions
• You want clean, user-friendly links without sacrificing tracking
• You operate in environments where privacy and compliance matter

Interested in using this or have questions? Dive into the full documentation to explore implementation details, configuration options, and advanced scenarios. Or use it right away on a free site you can create with a few clicks on our Orchard Core SaaS DotNest.

If you are considering using this module or want to understand how it would fit into your current setup, we are happy to help. Whether it is about implementation, analytics strategy, or adapting it to your marketing workflows, feel free to reach out and discuss your scenario with us.

We asked our colleague Gábor Domonkos, who has led the collaboration for years, to walk us through how the course started, how it works today, and what students usually take away from it.

– How did this collaboration start?

At first, the university had a Hungarian, non-developer course focused on Orchard CMS and DotNest, Lombiq’s hosted Orchard platform. Students built sites through the admin UI, which was a good introduction to content management. But once Orchard Core arrived, we saw a chance to create something more ambitious: a developer-focused subject where students could also write code and go beyond the basics.

– What changed with Orchard Core?

Orchard Core made the course much more flexible. Students can now learn not just how to use a CMS, but how to extend it, customize it, and build on top of it. That meant more room for customization and coding. It also gives them a much more realistic picture of what it means to develop with a modern CMS on ASP.NET Core.

– How is the course structured?

The semester is built around a few milestones. Early on, students choose their project topic and define the basic idea. Midway through the semester, they should already have a working site with real content. By the end, the project should be close to final, both in structure and content.

The later stages are mostly about making sure students stay on track. If they need help, they can share a short update so we can spot problems early and steer them in the right direction. Some students also choose to demo their project before the official deadline.

– What do students usually build? Any favorites?

That depends on which version of the course they take. In the non-developer version, students often build sites with forms, search, taxonomies, and content workflows. In the developer-focused version, they go further and build custom modules, themes, and more advanced functionality.

One project that stands out was a volunteer platform. Organizations could publish volunteer opportunities, and users could browse, apply, and track their enrollments. It was a nice example of how Orchard Core can support a real, practical use case without adding unnecessary complexity.

– Has this led to anything beyond the course?

Yes, some students later became our colleagues at Lombiq. By the time they finish the course, they already know the basics of Orchard Core and have built something real with it. More importantly, they have seen what it’s like to work with a real open-source ecosystem, not just with a classroom demo.

– Where should someone start if they want to learn Orchard Core today?

If someone wants to learn Orchard Core today, Lombiq has a few good starting points. Dojo Course 3 is a full video course on YouTube that walks through Orchard Core for both users and developers. We also maintain the Lombiq Training Demo for Orchard Core on GitHub, which is a functional module with heavily commented code to help developers understand how Orchard Core works in practice. And beyond that, Orchard Dojo regularly publishes tutorials, tips, and other learning resources for the Orchard community.

For us, that is the best proof that the collaboration works. Students gain practical experience, the university gets a more hands-on subject, and the industry gets people who are better prepared for real projects. We believe more universities could benefit from this kind of collaboration, whether with Orchard Core or other open-source technologies. And if you are exploring something similar, we are always happy to share what has worked for us so far.

Our initial task involved the transformation of data migrations from the simpler recipe-based paradigm to a more structured code-based approach. This transition aimed to enhance the traceability of modifications the development team applied. Simultaneously, a suite of UI tests was integrated into the workflow to uphold continuous code quality assurance. Leveraging the flexibility of Orchard Core's migration API, we executed this pivotal migration process without it negatively affecting users.

Since then, we've delivered a lot to meet various user requirements, including event ticketing, integrating with a GDPR compliance API, and launching the site for another brand of the end client. One particularly interesting task was the implementation of QR code-based entry management, which we also supplemented with UI tests using the Lombiq UI Testing Toolbox. We've also implemented a feature to let the app use a fake video feed during tests, what we also demoed during the weekly Orchard Core podcast.

From our other open-source projects, we also utilized Lombiq Helpful Extensions, as well as Lombiq Hosting - Azure Application Insights, since the app is hosted in Azure.

This is what Steve Taylor, CTO and Founder of Avastec says about our joint work:

Working with this team has been a genuinely positive experience from day one. They quickly understood the complexities of our existing Orchard Core setup and delivered improvements without disrupting a live, high-traffic platform. Their ability to balance rapid feature delivery with long-term maintainability and performance has been particularly valuable. The introduction of structured migrations, robust UI testing, and innovative solutions like QR-based entry management significantly elevated the quality of the system. They’ve consistently demonstrated technical expertise, reliability, and a proactive mindset, making them a trusted partner in the ongoing evolution of our platform.

Thanks to Orchard Core, UI testing, and innovative feature implementations, we effectively addressed Avastec’s challenges and delivered a significantly improved event management backend. It continues to serve the end client, with us working on improvements to this day.

Do you want to launch and event management platform on Orchard Core? We have actually built several more too, get in touch with us!

The problem: Homepage widgets showing outdated content

The news, press releases, and blog post widgets on the homepage weren’t consistently showing the latest items. Immediately after publishing, everything looked fine. But over time, older items would start appearing again.

For an organization communicating important industry updates, this was more than a minor inconvenience. It affected publishing reliability and trust.

Understanding the architecture

Since a different developer built the system originally, our first task was to understand and reproduce the environment. The application consists of:

• Orchard Core running as a headless backend.
• A separate Vue-based frontend.
• Lucene search indexing powering the homepage content widgets.

Getting the frontend running locally required recreating an older Node.js environment. Node Version Manager for Windows made this possible by allowing us to install and switch between Node versions easily.

The root cause

The homepage widgets relied on data fetched from a Lucene index. Over time, the index became inconsistent with the database, resulting in outdated content appearing on the homepage.

While fixing the indexing would have been possible, we stepped back and asked a simpler question: does this feature even require Lucene? It turned out it didn’t.

The fix: Simplify, don’t patch

Instead of investing in a lengthy Lucene investigation, we removed the unnecessary dependency and modified the widgets to fetch content directly via SQL queries.

This:

• Eliminated a moving part,
• Reduced architectural complexity, and
• Resolved the inconsistency issue at its root.

Sometimes the best fix is not making a system more robust, but making it simpler.

Leaving the system healthier

While working on the issue, we also enabled Orchard Core’s Audit Trail feature, allowing precise tracking of content changes. This improves governance and operational safety, particularly important for organizations publishing public information.

We also performed smaller cleanups to ensure the application was in a better state than when we first examined it. That’s a principle we follow in every project.

Collaboration

We worked closely with Chris Ohan, IT Lead, and Grant Cameron, Senior Director of Public Affairs at RESCON. Since Grant manages much of the website’s content, his rapid feedback helped validate improvements quickly and ensure the publishing experience was restored. This is what Grant told about working with us:

Lombiq stepped in to fix a problem with several widgets on our homepage. We met virtually, explained the problem and their experts went to work quickly and identified the issue. They explained the problem to us and corrected the issue. The team at Lombiq was efficient and professional. They got our site up and running and tweaked the Orchard Core setup to improve functionality. We were more than pleased with the result.

Need help with an Orchard Core issue?

If your Orchard Core application behaves unpredictably, whether it’s publishing inconsistencies, performance issues, or architectural drift over time, we can help diagnose and stabilize it.

Get in touch and let’s take a look.

Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the U.S. national museum system — a digital home for musical traditions from across the globe. When their team first needed a scalable, flexible platform, Toby Dodds, Director of Technology, was referred to Lombiq by a fellow Orchard community member to help build it.

We talked to Toby about how their platform evolved over the years, what made Orchard the right long-term choice, and what others might learn from building and running something this complex and essential.

– Toby, can you give us a quick overview of what Folkways does, and why managing the platform is such a complex technical challenge?

Toby: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is a record label based within the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

It was founded in 1987 when the Smithsonian acquired Folkways Records, with a promise to keep the entire catalog in print in perpetuity. It had over 2,000 titles back then.

Today, it features closer to 4,000 releases with around 75,000 tracks of audio. The recordings in the collection are historic and diverse, with a strong emphasis on musical traditions from around the world.

Keeping this catalog of high-value material in print — both physically and digitally — requires a powerful website and a capable CMS to support it.

– So back when you were first planning the site, what made you go with Orchard? What were you looking for that led you there?

Toby: To meet our mission of keeping our catalog in print, we knew we needed a website capable of giving users access to our catalog with working search and many thousands of pages that feature rich media.

We also knew we would have to store complex metadata to make the website and our operation function.

When CMS technologies were emerging, we reviewed many projects but concluded that the Orchard CMS would best fit our needs.

Building on ASP.NET has always felt like a steady and reliable option for us — it allowed us to do powerful things without too much cost and on a reasonable upgrade path.

We liked the transparency and size of the Orchard community because it gave us easy access to it. Fundamentally though, Orchard was best because we would be able to design our own architecture within it without painful compromises.

– You’ve been on Orchard for a long time now. What made you stick with it when moving to Orchard Core, instead of switching to something else?

Toby: Preserving control over our collection, and executing our mission, superseded any other concerns about platform selections we’ve faced.

Our website is unique in its requirements, and we couldn’t be happier with our choice of Orchard Core.

Our CMS is not just a web-publishing platform — it’s evolved to become our collection manager. From content management to collection management — which for a museum-based organization is an important distinction.

Our ability to house collection records securely within Orchard and immediately make them available to the public via our website hits a very sweet spot for us.

– What were the biggest improvements or benefits you noticed after moving to Orchard Core?

Toby: Speed was the biggest upgrade we felt in transition to Core.

But along the way we solved a slew of big problems and were able to roll out new capabilities — including offering streaming of our catalog directly to our users.

We were also able to massively improve our search and browsing interfaces by leveraging the indexing architecture at the core of Core.

– And how did the new system change the way your team works day to day?

Toby: Working step-by-step, we have continued to add new capabilities to our Orchard Core implementation and are strengthening the role it plays in our organization.

Recently we added Audit Trail capabilities, for example, to make it possible to safely share the collection management project with a wider group.

– Sounds like it’s really grown into more than just a CMS. What kind of role does it play today?

Toby: We have branded our Orchard Core implementation with the name FCM, which stands for Folkways Collection Manager, and it is our system of truth for our collection.

It is at the center of nearly everything we do related to maintaining our catalog as a business and as an educational archival project.

We interact with it in too many ways to list, but there is no limit to the powerful things we feel we can do through programming in ASP.NET and Orchard.

– So where do you feel Orchard Core really shines? What makes it stand out for you after all these years?

Toby: We see Orchard Core as highly flexible, powerful, affordable, and fast.

We feel that extending its features through custom module development in ASP.NET allows us to do anything we can dream up.

We also like the fact that version changes are easier to accommodate, as Microsoft tends to respect the need to support legacy technologies for a longer period than the alternative PHP-centric projects.

We hope to be using Orchard Core as our platform for a good five to ten years — maybe more!

– If you could change or improve one thing in Orchard Core based on your experience, what would it be?

Toby: Getting the development environment up and running is tricky at times, and I’ve gotten quite stuck just getting going.

There’s a learning curve — but that’s true for any platform — and Orchard concepts align closely to ASP.NET ones, so finding help is never difficult.

Thankfully, Lombiq has been there to hold our hands for years now.

There’s no question that to use Orchard Core you need to have a good amount of experience with ASP.NET and/or access to developers like Lombiq to help you — ideally both.

– You’ve been part of the Orchard Core community for a while now. What’s your experience been like with it over the years?

I honestly feel guilty that I haven’t made more of the regular meetings. I’d like to feel more connected to it.

I appreciate Lombiq’s help organizing and connecting people within the community as well. It’s such amazing technology — it sells itself really — but I get the sense it could use more evangelists.

– You’ve worked with Lombiq for quite a while now. What made us the right fit back then — and what’s kept you coming back all these years?

Toby: Lombiq has for some time now been the strongest vendor in the Orchard space.

We are loyal to the quality of the work they do and happily recommend them to others.

They are very passionate and kind people — a pleasure to work with.

– What would you tell other organizations that are considering Orchard Core or thinking about working with Lombiq?

Toby: If you are passionate about your work and determined to deploy technologies that cater specifically to your vision without compromise, then you must invest in design and technologies that are flexible and robust.

Orchard Core development on the ASP.NET platform is a safe and sound investment that aims you in the direction of success at a manageable cost and with the promise of nothing being impossible.

Smithsonian Folkways is considered one of the great folk music record labels, and that success is driven by our ability to share our recordings in our own unique way.

Orchard Core empowers us to achieve our goals — supporting our website while providing the backend capabilities we need to succeed in our business.

Thanks to Toby for sharing this behind-the-scenes look at how Smithsonian Folkways built and evolved a platform that does so much more than power a website.

His story is a reminder that with the right tools — and the right team — Orchard Core can become a core part of how organizations work, grow, and deliver on their mission.

Want to build something like this? Contact us to talk through how we can help.

Bryan, our main contact, picked Lombiq based on our deep expertise with Orchard Core, our track record of delivering high-quality work on time and on budget, and his previous positive experience working with us at other companies (see our previous case study about one of these).

While we typically work on more complex platforms and portals, this project was a great opportunity to put Orchard Core’s CMS capabilities to use in a simple but design-focused way. For us, it was a chance to show how Orchard Core can be used not just for enterprise-level platforms but also for clean, lightweight sites that don’t compromise on flexibility or maintainability.

Even with a smaller scope, the UI came with some unique challenges: for example, a “hero” section where the background remains fixed, and the content scrolls upward until it locks into place, then the page continues. Another challenge was the dual-slider carousel, where images and text move independently but stay visually in sync. This was implemented using synced Slick sliders, backed by our own reusable UI components. Beyond those, we built several custom widgets to make content editing easier for the client: team member cards with popup bios, call-to-action buttons, and media blocks that can be quickly reused or reconfigured in the CMS.

To support the build, we relied heavily on our open-source modules, including:

• Lombiq Helpful Extensions – for common content types like Pages and AdditionalStylingPart to inject utility CSS classes to widgets.
• Lombiq Helpful Libraries – for various extension methods and helper utilities used throughout the codebase.
• Lombiq Node.js Extensions – for automating compiling .scss assets to CSS.
• Lombiq Base Theme – as the base theme for the site.
• Lombiq UI Kit – used for the carousel component based on Slick.
• Lombiq GitHub Actions – used to build and test the codebase in CI and manage deployment workflows.
• Lombiq UI Testing Toolbox – for automated UI testing, HTML validation, accessibility checks, and backend/frontend log inspection.

Bryan also took part in the development. We laid the groundwork and implemented the initial set of widgets. After that, Bryan began adding new ones, learning our development approach along the way. Once we completed our scope, he continued building out the site further.

We also closely supported the client during the production rollout. Based on our experience managing Azure-based Orchard Core deployments, we helped configure their hosting environment, assisted with domain setup, and set up Cloudflare, including its origin certificate, proxy settings, and DNS rules. We also ensured that the application’s production slot was correctly mapped, availability tests were in place to alert if anything goes wrong in production, and everything was ready for launch. This hands-on support made it easier for Bryan and his team to take over confidently after the handoff.

“The Flamingo Marine website is now the third time I will have had the joy of working with Lombiq. When it comes to site build-outs, effectiveness, and efficiency Lombiq is always my first choice. I knew going in that we would be using Orchard Core as our base, mainly due to its flexibility and ease of development, and wanted to build a site that not only was a solid and entertaining front end experience but was easy for our internal teams to update quickly. I knew from experience that we could benefit greatly from the platform knowledge and understanding of customers that the Lombiq team is highly effective at. And what can I say, Lombiq definitely delivered.”

Bryan also demoed the website at the Orchard Core community meeting. You can check it out here.

Need a CMS that’s flexible, easy to maintain, and won’t slow you down when your site grows? Get in touch with us.

This marks the end of an era. Now all of our sites are running on Orchard Core, which offers better performance, modularity, and development experience than Orchard 1.

Furthermore, we fixed some web accessibility problems on the site and added UI tests to make sure nothing breaks and affects you as a user.

We utilized many of our open-source modules, including Lombiq Privacy, Lombiq Helpful Extensions, and utility modules like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions. For the themes, we built upon the Lombiq Base Theme. Lombiq Helpful Extensions played a crucial role in this project (and in the other ones too), as there was a significant amount of content to migrate. Leveraging the Orchard 1 Recipe Migration feature, we transferred Orchard 1 content items—such as blog posts, pages, and even users—to Orchard Core. Additionally, we retained the search functionality on the Knowledge Base page, now powered by Elasticsearch and the commenting on blog posts with Giscus. Of course, while working with these modules we always make sure that any enhancement that comes to mind is added to them and any bug that we find is patched. So, the wider Orchard Core community benefits from each of these projects too.

This is a migration, where if you notice nothing it’s great because we migrated a lot of backend code and the goal was to keep the functionalities of DotNest, without breaking or changing anything.

Migrating to Orchard Core not only brought performance increases but also added quality of life and security features, like two-factor authentication. The new foundation of the site opened new possibilities for us to bring you a better version of DotNest.

With DotNest now running on Orchard Core, we’ve completed our journey of modernizing all our sites. This migration wasn’t just about keeping up with technology—it was about ensuring a smoother, more secure, and future-proof experience for our users. Although most of the changes were behind the scenes, the result is a faster, more reliable DotNest that preserves all the features you rely on while setting the stage for future enhancements.

Are you still running Orchard 1 apps? Contact us to see how we can help you migrate it to Orchard Core too.

We've been helping the company since late 2022 with a variety of Orchard Core consulting, troubleshooting, and development tasks. This started with a general review of the GovTech app, and how it's hosted in Azure, to find areas of improvement or potential issues. Since Lombiq has run Orchard, then Orchard Core projects, and hosted apps in Azure for a decade now, we can always pinpoint things we recommend changing.

They also asked us to deliver some specific development tasks that improve the UX of the permit management platform or help the development team. Here's a quick overview of some of these:

• Setting up automated QA tools. For these, we utilized our Orchard Core-optimized projects: Lombiq UI Testing Toolbox for automated UI testing, Lombiq .NET Analyzers for checking the code for any possible issues, and Lombiq GitHub Actions to provide full-featured CI builds and Azure deployments. These all help keep the platform working well, improving the development team's productivity.
• A WYSIWYG editor for the Orchard Core admin area, utilizing the user-friendly Froala editor. Users of the platform weren't fully satisfied with Orchard's built-in editor, so this was a welcome improvement.
• Chunked file uploads: Hosting environments commonly have some restrictions on the size of an HTTP request. So, if you want to allow users to upload larger files, the app needs to upload them in multiple chunks (parts). This was important for them since files related to permit management can routinely grow beyond the usual size limits. So, we've implemented chunked file uploads both in the platform and as a contribution to Orchard Core. Since we at Lombiq are really focused on open-source, it's always great to work with clients who understand how the open-source ecosystem works and that you also have to contribute back.

This is what their CTO & Co-founder says about us working together:

Lombiq excels in SaaS technology development, particularly in the context of Orchard Core. Their distinctive expertise and capabilities enabled us to expedite the expansion of our platform. They were consistently responsive, delivered high-quality code, smoothly transitioned each project to our development team, and assumed full responsibility for their tasks. I highly recommend collaborating with them for any SaaS related project.

Do you also work with government clients and want to make sure your Orchard Core app runs smoothly? Get in touch with us and let the Orchard Core experts help you!

However, this migration was more than just a technical upgrade. It was a chance to refresh our website's appearance and align it with contemporary design trends. Hastlayer’s website was due for a facelift, its design needed a modern touch to resonate with current web aesthetics.

Leveraging our expertise and experience, we utilized several of our own open-source projects developed over the years. Key Orchard Core modules such as Lombiq Privacy and Lombiq Helpful Extensions, along with utilities like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions, played a pivotal role. The Lombiq Base Theme as well as the theme of our company website served as the foundation for our theme, providing a robust starting point for customization.

A distinctive aspect of this project was the creative process of reimagining hastlayer.com. Unlike client projects where we respond to external requirements and feedback, this was an internal endeavor. Collaborative brainstorming sessions shaped the vision and identity we wanted to communicate to our audience. We aimed to maintain a visual coherence with lombiq.com’s design, simultaneously, we aspired to inject a sense of uniqueness and distinction into hastlayer.com. To maintain simplicity, we reused numerous design elements and built upon them. Aligning the team's diverse perspectives required several iterations, but it ultimately led to a cohesive design that represented Hastlayer's ethos.

The result is a revamped site that we are immensely proud of. It reflects our identity and the services we provide. We invite you to explore the new hastlayer.com and experience the innovation that defines us.

As we revel in the success of this project, we look forward to future opportunities to renew and refine our digital footprint. Stay tuned for more exciting updates from Hastlayer, and more Orchard Core migration projects!

Git-hg Mirror is a site of our own, that was previously built on Orchard 1 and was migrated to Orchard Core. The site is a simple-to-use (at least this is the intention) web application to automatically keep a Git and a Mercurial repository or two Mercurial or two Git repositories in sync. This allows you to create mirrors of repositories in the other version control system. The site’s FAQ page provides more information about the site’s purpose and functionality.

This case study delves into the intricate journey of transforming Git-hg Mirror from its original Orchard 1 roots to the contemporary Orchard Core, highlighting the technical challenges and solutions that made this transition possible. Migrating a site from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core is beneficial because it allows you to take advantage of the latest features, improved performance and a more modern architecture, ensuring your website remains up-to-date and competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. 

As usual, we leveraged many of our own open-source modules that we've built and refined over time, such as Lombiq Helpful Extensions, utility modules like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions, Lombiq Base Theme as a base for the themes, Lombiq Hosting Tenants for tenant management, and Lombiq Helpful Libraries, as the name suggests, for generally useful libraries.

The migration needed some work with User accounts (mainly a converter from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core and depersonalization maintenance, which is responsible for replacing the registered user's sensitive data like email address, the repository URLs or access tokens with randomly generated data for privacy reasons) thus this resulted in new additions to our open-source modules. Feel free to check these out, the User converter is now part of the Orchard 1 Recipe Migration feature and the depersonalization maintenance is included in the Lombiq Hosting Tenants project.

Because of the user account migrations, the previously registered users will just have to reset their password the first time they try to log in, but they will get a notification about it and once they have done it, they will be good to go, nothing else has changed.

We are happy with the results and the additions to our open-source modules and stay tuned, as we keep the migrations rolling.

This portal, targeted towards insurance companies, was intended to be a replacement for an old portal used to download on-premises software & license keys, raise support tickets, and read knowledge base articles. WTW chose us to be partners on this project because we are large contributors to the open-source community, and found us to be knowledgeable and experienced based on our previous work. Our flexibility during the initial conversations was also a huge factor in their decision. With this opportunity, we got the chance to improve our experience in developing a user-friendly portal with a modern front-end framework and how it can be integrated into Orchard Core’s content management capabilities.

The Client Portal, which was designed to be used by the customers, is just one crucial component of an overarching system architecture. The rest of the systems were responsible for managing software and license keys by administrator users. WTW specifically chose Orchard Core for this portal because of its robust content management capabilities. Content manager users now create announcements, external training materials, manage the product and services catalog, and arrange different widgets throughout the webpages using the Admin UI. Other components on the platform pull in information like product download links or license keys from other parts of the WTW system using web APIs.

Given that it's a customer-facing portal, user experience was a priority. While it’s always a good idea to rely on Orchard Core’s display management the only way to use that is with page reloads during navigation between pages or filtering. Paginations are filters on the pages that should always be asynchronous, so we had to come up with a solution that uses modern front-end technology along with Orchard Core’s great features. During the course of this project, we’ve developed an open-source Vue.js module for Orchard Core to make user interactions smoother while still maintaining the built-in display management capabilities, such as widget and menu functionality. For quality code and maintainability, we utilized Lombiq's .NET Analyzers, Gulp Extensions, Helpful Libraries, Helpful Extensions, and NPM MSBuild Targets. Stability was critical, so we implemented several UI tests using the UI Testing Toolbox, ensuring they were executed before introducing a new feature using our reusable GitHub Actions.

It was an exciting project and we delivered it on time. While the final steps on the rest of the architecture are being completed the whole portal is gradually being rolled out to users during the summer of 2023.

If you're thinking about integrating a powerful CMS like Orchard Core into your architecture, we're here to help. We can either do the work for you or guide you through it in our consulting calls, just get in touch with us!

Construction works better digitally.

Earlier this year, the Topcon Integration Services development team approached us at Lombiq to contribute to several key features on the Aptix platform. Over the course of several months, the two teams worked diligently on the platform to ensure Topcon meets their site functionality goals in time for their important platform demo at this year's ConExpo event.

The Topcon Integration Services team at ConExpo.

Our team primarily worked on the platform's integrations and workflows features, the former of which allows integrating various third-party construction-related apps, while the latter is built on top of the underlying framework with additional improvements. These tasks primarily included working with JavaScript front-end technologies and CSS theming tools to make the project more efficient. Joining a project with its own conventions and distinct technologies is always a challenge, but it's one we were happy to take on.

While our involvement with the platform's development was relatively brief, it was also exceedingly productive, and the collaboration allowed the Topcon team to meet vital deadlines leading up to their presentation at ConExpo. Here's how Arra Derderian, Senior Director at Topcon Aptix, experienced our collaboration:

The Lombiq team was able to ramp up quickly and help us meet a tight release deadline. The developers were knowledgeable and able to take instruction without a lot of overhead from our team. We appreciate the help they gave us to meet our milestone.

Our expertise is available for both long-term and shorter projects. Should the opportunity interest you, here is where you can learn more about how we can help you work more efficiently and effectively.

Besides migrating, we also modernized our site’s look. Let’s be honest, a renewal was overdue for our site. The site was created back in 2013! It was simple, clean, and functional, but it didn’t age well with upcoming trends and looks of modern websites. But now we can showcase our expertise and services in a more modern and user-friendly way. 

For this project, we used a lot of our own open-source modules that we developed over the years. These include Lombiq Privacy and Lombiq Helpful Extensions, utility modules like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions, and Lombiq Base Theme as a base for the themes. These modules add various features and functionalities to Orchard Core that make it more powerful and versatile. As we were using these modules, we also encountered and fixed some bugs and issues in them. We learned that some modules can behave differently or unexpectedly depending on the context or situation they are used in. This can be challenging to detect and resolve, but it also helps us improve the quality and reliability of our modules.

One of the most rewarding and innovative aspects of this project was brainstorming about the site and thinking about how we wanted to communicate our vision and identity as a company to our audience. It was a new and different experience, compared to working on client projects where we had to follow their feedback, vision, and goals. In our own project, we had to provide these ourselves and ensure they were aligned with our work and Lombiq. It was exciting, but also demanding. We all had slightly different views and thoughts about what our work and Lombiq stand for. But after several sessions of collaboration and feedback, we reached a consensus on the designs and key features that would best fit our new site.

Our new site turned out great and we are very happy with it. It represents who we are and what we do as a company. We hope you like it too! And who knows which of our own sites we will renew next…

We again collaborated with the artisan clothing small business Borsika Portéka: They manufactured the 300 polar blankets at cost price, and we purchased them. The Malteses will use these blankets to take care of homeless people during the winter, which starts to get pretty chilly here in Hungary.

We hope that this donation will make the situation of many unfortunate people a bit more bearable. If you can, we encourage you to donate to the Malteses too!

Update 06.03.2023: In the meantime, we've donated a further 200 (actually 196) blankets to the Malteses.

Update 03.04.2023: And we've donated another 240 blankets!

With Orchard Core offering an ever-growing number of benefits over its predecessor, including various performance improvements and a more user-friendly UI, the time to upgrade from Orchard 1 drew near by the end of 2021. Due to our long history with the Institution, we had the opportunity to participate in this project too.

Lombiq took a major part in the migration process that was ongoing earlier this year. This included updating the existing codebase to modern standards using the latest C# language features, re-implementing our Content Editors module to make it Orchard Core compatible, as well as adding UI testing to easily spot regressions. The application also makes use of several of our open-source projects such as Helpful Libraries, Helpful Extensions, Gulp Extensions, and NPM MSBuild Targets.

The new Folkways site launched in July and can be found on our showcase website Show Orchard as well.

This is what Toby Dodds, Technology Director at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, had to say regarding our collaboration:

During the past year we’ve had the pleasure of working collaboratively with Lombiq to upgrade our backend CMS from Orchard’s 1.x to its more modern 2.x version Orchard Core – based on Microsoft’s Dot.Net Core. This was a complex and difficult project, but essential as well, and once again we feel lucky to have been able to work through it with Lombiq. Anyone who works around Web or IT systems knows that they are not static and always grow and expand in complexity. Collections of data grow as do the number of fields. Our collection database, which is now 20 years old is at the core of our whole enterprise and represents millions of pieces of information. Years ago, we determined that we could leverage Microsoft technologies and Orchard’s CMS to manage that data while simultaneously supporting our website. This strategy has paid off and we have been able to thrive as a business, generating revenue through sales on our website, licensing opportunities, in-kind donations, and through the distribution of our catalog to outside digital music services. All this business is data-centric and working with Orchard has given us total control of our data landscape.

A big challenge, and a breakthrough, of Orchard Core is that data is accessed in a code-based way which results in better performance but required us to complete a complex migration of our data from our 1.x database held in MS SQL Server. Thankfully Lombiq was ready to take this on, helping us build a data migration process that worked like a charm and was a bridge between the old and the new. We were also able to retain access to our data in SQL, allowing us to keep our existing integrations, and the ability to query our data directly when necessary. Because data is managed within the application layer now, we have also leaned on Lombiq to develop a set of tools to Import, Export, and Update our collection using Excel spreadsheets. Our data life has gotten easier as a result and we are now better prepared to acquire, process, and distribute recordings and collections moving forward. Orchard Core represents not only a step forward for our website but also for our collection management work as well.

Specifically on the website we have also been able to take advantage of Orchard Core’s improved speed to produce new tools for browsing the collection.  Being able to browse and filter thousands of releases in a nanosecond is cool, no matter how you slice it. Additionally, this new speed on our website is opening a door for us to introduce a streaming audio player that depends on AJAX to maintain a persistent audio listening experience while browsing the site. This only works well if pages load quickly and do they ever! Getting to streaming is a key priority for us and now we expect to make that available to the public next year.

In summary, this has been an innovative and productive period for Folkways and now that we are in Orchard Core, we are looking forward to all the benefits that will come from this hard-fought upgrade. Our success here is thanks to Lombiq who’ve had the skill, vision, and patience to work with us to overcome big challenges and get the job done.

You can also check out a demo video of the app and our experiences developing it here.

As Orchard Core grows in popularity, so does our experience with it. If you too would like to enjoy the various improvements the platform offers, don't hesitate to reach out to us here.

At Lombiq, we already had hands-on experience with SurveyJS from a previous project, and we were looking forward to getting to know Form.io this time. Integrating and extending it to the special needs of our client was a fun challenge. As with any complex system, MasterCare+ required us to dive deep into its architecture to be able to enhance the system with the desired form-building functionality. Providing a smooth user experience was just as important as a flawless integration with business logic and data persistence, all the while adhering to Global Health's and our own high coding standards. A few of our other open-source projects proved very helpful in achieving the above, like Lombiq .NET Analyzers, Helpful Libraries, Gulp Extensions, and NPM MSBuild Targets.

Working with the Global Health team was a pleasure. Here's what Damon Groenveld, Head of R&D at Global Health, has to say about our cooperation:

Lombiq has gone above and beyond to ensure that the work done in our engagement with them not only met our expectations but also surpassed them.

Are you looking for a competent partner to integrate a special tool into your complex system architecture? Get in touch—we at Lombiq are ready to take it on.

Just like the blankets (and the reusable/washable textile masks during the COVID-19 pandemic), these hats were produced at manufacturing cost by the artisan clothing small business Borsika Portéka, and fully sponsored by Lombiq. The Malteses also published an article about our donation here.

We still encourage you to support important causes and reliable organizations in these extraordinary times - we at Lombiq (as individuals as well as a company) will continue to do so and we are proud to give back!