Following the migration of lombiq.com, Git-hg Mirror, Hastlayer, and Orchard Dojo from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core (and also the redesign of lombiq.com and Orchard Dojo), we had only one site remaining that was still running on Orchard 1: DotNest.com. While you could create Orchard Core sites on DotNest for years, until now, the DotNest website itself still ran on Orchard 1.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.

Our Orchard CMS SaaS DotNest got a new look and feel! The old theme was a bit clunky, but now it looks as it should. Check out DotNest where you can create Orchard sites for free, without having to think about hosting!

You may already know that Zoltán and Benedek were among the presenters at this year's Orchard Harvest conference in Seattle too. At the beginning of the session we announced the results of the Spring Harvest Challenge and then we continued with our talk about how we built and maintain DotNest, the Orchard CMS SaaS: 0:00:00 - 0:18:30 : Spring Harvest Challenge announcement 0:18:30 - 0:37:15 : Capabilities and features of DotNest by Zoltán 0:37:15 - 1:05:26 : Deployment and maintenance of DotNest by Benedek

We are happy to announce the second developer competition in Orchard's history, the Orchard Spring Harvest Challenge! Orchard 1.8 was released recently and we'd like to give the developer community some boost to support this awesome new version, that's why the 1.8-compatibility is in the center of this competition: you can apply with a completely new module that is compatible with 1.8 or update your old module for the new version. For more information please visit the event's website (hosted on DotNest, of course).

Orchard CMS lacked a software as a service provider until now: precisely a week ago we opened our first software service, DotNest. DotNest gives users the ability to set up any number of Orchard websites after registration, without having to worry about development, hosting, deployment and maintenance. Hosted sites can customized in a variety of ways, including the usage of recipes and complete control over styling. DotNest is currently in preview and thus completely free, including the premium features. Why don't you give it a try? Sign up and create your Orchard website!