Having used Umbraco now for nearly 2 years, I tend to take for granted my core understanding of how the system really works. It’s only when helping out others do I realize that it’s not always that easy to grasp for someone new to the platform. My usual stock answers when someone asks how to get started is to point them to the training courses, the umbraco videos or just to get involved in the forums.
Today however, I was helping out a newcomer to Umbraco who asked what to me was a very fundamental question:
@mcDarke is there like a diagram that shows the architecture of umbraco..?
What a great question. Pretty much every Umbraco developer will have asked that question at some point, but yet the answer to his question was “no”. Rather than just just saying no though, and risking the loss of another potential member of the already awesome community, I thought I’d quickly draw one myself, so here it is, the anatomy of an Umbraco page.
Needless to say, it was exactly what he needed.
@mcDarke that is what I wanted basically…lol….THANKS….Umbraco guys are cool
It was only after it got retweeted several times though that I truly realized just how helpful the diagram is, so instead of just letting it get lost in the twittersphere, I thought it would be a good idea to create a blog post around it so that others might find it as they join the community.
I hope this goes some ways to explaining to newcomers what us Umbraco veterans take for granted. And if not, by all means leave a comment and I’ll see if I can improve it.
Update – April 7th, 2011 14:07
If you are after a diagram of the Umbraco database structure, then be sure to checkout Hendy Racher’s posts on the subject:
http://blog.hendyracher.co.uk/umbraco-database-part-1/
http://blog.hendyracher.co.uk/umbraco-database-part-2/
And there is also a really detailed database diagram by the guys at Sniper Systems over here:
http://snipersystems.co.nz/community/umbracodb.png
Update – April 8th, 2011 04:40
Whilst the aim of my diagram was to sum up the core concept of Umbraco as simply as possible, Jesper Hauge has done a nice job of creating a more thorough diagram of all the parts that make up a Document. So if you find my diagram lacking in any way, you may want to head over to his blog and take a look at his version. Nice work Jesper.
Update – June 7th, 2011 07:35
Thanks to Adam Shallcross over at The Cogworks, another version of my diagram has been made available. This one is available in .EPS & .PDF formats, and is a little more presentation friendly. You can grab a copy right here.
