We’ve updated our localgov starter kit to work with the latest version of the Umbraco content management system, and along the way we’ve given it a fresh new look, and some new features.
The starter kit is an umbraco package that you download and install on your Umbraco website. Once you install the starter kit you will have a skeleton website, with lots of the the elements you might need when making a localgov site.
Download the starterkit from our.umbraco.org
Features
The starter kit has a number of features that while not unique to localgov sites, are certainly things you might want to use. these include:
Site Sections: Splitting a site into sections ‘can’ make it easier for people to navigate around your site. We have worked with a number of people where splitting the site into sections such as residents, businesses and council has worked well. While you may not split your site in that way, having the ability to do it is always useful. site sections can have a different look and feel while still being part of the main site.
Landing Pages: Landing pages are nice clean structure pages that help users navigate around an area of the website. When helping people understand their websites, we find many sites have pages and pages of content filler, when all people want it the navigation. So landing pages put the navigation in the middle of the page
Venues:
All councils have buildings, they might be libraries, leisure centres, car parks or offices - but you will need to tell people where they are and when they open - the venue pages allow you to put maps and opening times onto a page so people can tell where you are and when you open.
Gubbins: things you have and sometimes you can’t tell why, like sitemaps, search and a to zs
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Building with the kit
The kit is only an introduction; We hope it gives you the basic starting point to build your own site. In-order to make it easy to understand we haven’t gone to town on the code and the features, they work and they are simple. You will probably want to play with them and make them more feature rich.
Not everyone has developers and time and if you need help making the starter kit or your Umbraco site into something more why not contact us (kevin@jumoo.co.uk) and see if we can help?
Giving back
If you do build on the starter kit and you think the features you add would benefit others, then please do contribute to the project - We will be updating our github project in the coming days(we want to make sure we make it easy to check out the whole site), and you can always contact us and we will help you get code into the kit.
update: the starter kit is now on github
So what are you waiting for ? Go download the Localgov starter kit and Have fun.