Umbraco User's Guide

UMBRACO BUILDING BLOCKS

Umbraco consists of several different sections that, together, make up the comprehensive tool that Umbraco is. The following section discusses what each one of these does and how to appropriately assign them to users.

Understanding the semantic and functional split between these sections is important to you as a developer and implementer of the CMS. You can think of it like the process of building a house where each phase of the project has dedicated roles and responsibilities. Much like it is up to the mason to build a strong and lasting foundation, your job is to do the same with templates, layouts, document types, and styles for the editor to leverage for saving and publishing content.

RESTRICTING ACCESS IS BOTH IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY

I have found in numerous projects that keeping non-technical editors and writers away from the more advanced sections within the Umbraco backoffice is important. Providing access to templates and document types to someone who “knows enough to be dangerous” inevitably leads to a disaster because it allows them to make real-time changes to the website's infrastructure and integrity. How to restrict access should be part of your training phase when deploying your implementation at the client site.

To paint a picture, imagine in the earlier house building analogy that you, as the homeowner, were allowed to mix the concrete for the foundation. Unless you're an expert at concrete, chances are your foundation might crumble with ...