uProfile: Nathan Woulfe
Working at: University of the Sunshine Coast (USC)
Role: Web Architect
Time working with Umbraco: closing in on 6 years – we launched USC’s Umbraco site in May 2013, following a proof of concept starting in July 2012.
Favourite Umbraco achievement?
Getting the university on board with moving to Umbraco. We spent a few months building a proof of concept site (POC), to prove that this little open source CMS could not just match, but outperform, its larger, more mature competition. That POC was the start of a beautiful relationship.
What in your Umbraco career are you most proud of?
Being able to respond to feature requests with “not a problem, expect it in the next release”, because I’m confident I’ll be able to leverage Umbraco to deliver an effective solution. As Umbraco matures, that becomes even easier.
What about Umbraco keeps you coming back for more?
Umbraco is literally my day job – I’m using it as a developer or a content editor or site administrator every day. It’s important that the experience in each role is an enjoyable one. If a CMS is great for developers, but provides a horrible user experience, or vice versa, no one will want to use it, and it won’t succeed.
There are boxes on a whole lot of levels that need to be ticked, and I believe Umbraco does so incredibly well. Simply, I really enjoy using it, in all capacities.
What are you currently working on?
I should be working on the slide deck for my presentation at the upcoming Umbraco Down Under Festival, where I’m talking about my workflow package Plumber, and the thinking behind why I built it. Instead, I’m fiddling with Plumber, and addressing obscure edge case issues that are turning up as sites start using it.
At USC, we’ve scheduled an upgrade to the latest v7 release. We’re sitting on a backlog with a few dozen requests and issues, and (because we like to be busy) have just kicked off a website strategy project to investigate and improve the user journey through the site, which will no doubt result in new tasks jumping to the top of the backlog.
Nathan’s top 3 tips for an Umbraco newbie:
- Create an account on our.umbraco.org, and get involved. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, someone has probably solved a similar problem and will happily share their experience.
- Keep up with patch releases – a stitch in time saves nine, as they say in the classics.
- Get granular with your document types – makes for more predictable data in your views/templates, and an easier experience for content editors.
Any aspirations for your future?
I haven’t contributed a PR to the core, it’s time to change that.
Depending on how terrified I am before/during/after my UDUF presentation, more presentations could be on the agenda.
What is on your desk at work?
Not a lot – I work at a standing desk and space is a bit limited. Laptop, dock, keyboard, mouse and a pair of monitors. Coffee, too, more often than not.
Do you have a hidden talent?
I’ve played guitar for the last 25 or so years and am unashamedly a metal head.
What’s playing on repeat on your headset at the moment?
I’m writing this on Australia Day, and am patriotically listening to Jimmy Barnes and Darryl Braithwaite, a couple of Australian music icons.
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A massive H5YR to Nathan! If you’d like to connect with Nathan, you can find him on twitter: @nathanwoulfe and LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/nathanwoulfe - or, show up for the uDuf on the 23rd of February and meet him in person 😀