Cogblog:
The official Cogworks blog. A place for news, thoughts and insights on strategy, design and build.
- Strategy
Redefining Outsourcing: Canopius' Voyage to a Paperless Insurance Platform
Outsourcing has a new look. Here's how Canopius borrowed our cohesive Cogworks team to build and ensure total ownership of a pioneering digital product for the Marine Insurance sector!
Read blog - Build
Data Visualisation: Behind Bestinvest’s Grow My Money tool
Here’s how we transformed a complex financial data set into a fast, responsive, accessible graph that helps users make the next smart move with their finances.
Read blog - Build
Cloud scalability: Azure’s new cost-saving features explained
We recently attended an Azure Meetup where we chatted about an interesting autoscaling feature that could help to cost-effectively manage fluctuations in user demands.
Read blog - Build
How to Publish Npm Packages with GitHub
Creating packages is fun...but sometimes we need help to manage them! In part one of the GitHub series, Cogworks Dev, Adrian Ochmann, takes us through a step-by-step set-up of GitHub packages and gives us the low-down on all the benefits.
Read blog - News
The Carbon Neutral CMS: Umbraco’s Endeavor to Create a Better Planet
Following Umbraco’s first-ever impact report, we think every one of our clients should hear about their efforts to create a better planet.
Read blog - Build
7 Most Common Accessibility Issues (And How to Fix Them)
We have a duty to be responsible and inclusive with accessibility. Mateusz reveals the top 7 mistakes and what to do about them :)
Read blog - News
What We Know About Umbraco Following Codegarden 2023
Among other stuff, we're talking Umbraco V12, headless, improvements in Umbraco cloud, sustainability, web components, MACH, debugging and the Royal Navy!
Read blog - Build
Mach Architecture. Buzzwords, Trends and Benefits
In this 5-min read, digital experts Cogworks put techs' latest buzzword in the hot seat.
Read blog - Strategy
Cypress vs Playwright. A QA Teams Quest to Find the Best Tool
Come and be a warmly welcome fly-on-the-wall at our weekly QA leadership meeting!
Read blog - Strategy
We’ve Revamped Our Internal Hackathon and Teams Are Embracing It
Our side-project day is being embraced with open arms. Let’s have a look at our latest and greatest creations.
Read blog - News
What it Means to be an Umbraco Gold Partner
Explore our contributions to the Umbraco project and learn about being one of the original Gold Partners...
Read blog - Strategy
Is AI Calm and Stable? Unpacking the Hype Cycle
The Hype Cycle isn't a crystal ball but a good place to start.
Read blog - Strategy
6 Tips for Better Software Documentation in Agile Teams
Sure, we get that software documentation is crucial for project success, but how do you ensure your docs aren't putting everyone to sleep? PM Kas has some quick tips to spice up your documentation game.
Read blog - Build
Content and Personalisation. What Can Be AI-Powered?
Now is the perfect time to embrace AI and introduce AI-powered features into your solutions.
Read blog - Strategy
A World Without Software Documentation
Have you ever taken something for granted and only realized its value when it's gone? Here's what'd happen if Apple, Walmart and our banking system lost access to software documentation.
Read blog - Strategy
How to Declutter Your Workflows With Trello
Here's how a digital spring clean changed our project workflow with just a few simple changes to Trello 💮
Read blog - Strategy
Why Documentation Is the Key to Happier Clients and Teams
Writing and contributing to documentation is the key to happier clients and teams.
Read blog - Build
How to Set up a Private Nuget Feed With Azure or Any Service Provider
A new way to set up a NuGet feed with Azure, Docker or any service provider.
Read blog - Build
Meet Cogworks .Net Software Developer Adrian
We're talking tips for software developers; Britians got Talent and Artificial Intelligence!
Read blog - Build
How to Test Accessibility With Axe in Cypress
Aga, a QA professional at Cogworks, discusses the significance of web accessibility in software development testing and suggests the ideal tools to commence with.
Read blog - Build
From Manual to Automated Testing With Cypress - Our Story
Automating processes doesn't happen overnight. It's a journey, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Discover our story...
Read blog - News
PCUK Win Two Drum Awards for Its 30s Risk Checker Challenge
The award-winning, innovative Risk Checker is just one of the many impactful tools on the PCUK website. This feature has received endorsement from NHS England and has saved thousands of lives. Find out why.
Read blog - News
Mateusz Joins the Cogworks Quality Assurance Team!
As per usual, we enjoy getting to know each other! This is what we discovered when we temporarily took Mateusz away from project work for 5 minutes
Read blog - Build
14-Point DevOps Best Practice Checklist for High-Performance Teams
Level up DevOps best practices in your development team in 14 easy steps.
Read blog - Strategy
How to Run An Agile Client Retrospective
What should be done when errors occur? Conduct a client retro. And when things go smoothly? Client retro!
Read blog - Build
The CTOs Guide to Modernising Legacy Systems
This straightforward guide on modernizing legacy systems can assist you in determining your current setup and what steps to take next.
Read blog - Build
Keeping Up With Digital Transformation
Is Digital Transformation ever complete? To understand, we take a look at trends that have come, gone and firmly stuck.
Read blog - Build
Delivering Days Out With The Kids
Discover how our health check operates and how it aided in enhancing the user experience for both content editors and users on the UK's largest website for family attractions.
Read blog - Strategy
Getting Days Out Guide Back on Track With an Umbraco Health Check
Days Out Guide, owned by National Rail, provides 2-for-1 tickets for various major attractions throughout the UK when traveling by train. Learn how we brought their website back on track.
Read blog - Strategy
3 Ways to Win Consumer Trust With Your Website
Our team of strategy, design, and build experts has assembled the top 3 ideas to help you sustain trust in your digital services!
Read blog - Strategy
Why Side Projects Are Part of Our Process
We have been adding side projects to our process for many years to improve our knowledge and become better at what we love. These projects can be personal or with others, and having the choice to pick leads to lots of new ideas!
Read blog - Build
Why Integrate your Document Management System With Azure and Umbraco?
Find out how we joined Umbraco and the DotApprove Document Management System to improve compliance for Canada Life!
Read blog - Build
Website Security Checklist: The 4 Basics
These crucial tips should cover the basics for in-house monitoring of solutions to prevent any pesky issues!
Read blog - Strategy
Powerful Content Automation Solutions for Better Web Editing
Content automation has the potential to resolve numerous publishing difficulties, but it doesn't need to lack personal touch!
Read blog - Strategy
Managing Our Minds at Work
To mark #WorldMentalHealthDay, our team share how they find calm in between looming deadlines and working from home.
Read blog - Build
Could Website Downtime Be Prevented?
Cogworks CTO, talks about three common ways development teams are protecting companies from digital disruption.
Read blog - Strategy
No Search Is Better Than Bad Search
Here's why the recipe for a great overall user experience is 1 part Azure Cognitive Search and 1 part Implementation!
Read blog - Build
A Frontend Developers Perspective on Headless Architecture
Is headless really that straightforward? Let’s take a look at some pros and cons of headless or decoupled approach from the frontend perspective
Read blog - Build
How to Automate Performance Testing in 5 Hours
Learn about the inspiration and tech stack behind Wojciech's creation, Performeter; a tool for performance testing.
Read blog - Build
How to Setup a Private NuGet Feed in Azure DevOps Pipelines
Developer, Greg shares his 4-step process on how to set-up a private NuGet feed in Azure Devops Pipelines
Read blog - Build
Quick Guide to Running Sub-Workflows With GitHub Actions
Automation wizard and Cogworks developer Adrian Ochmann talks about two strategies that can help you run effective sub-workflows using GitHub actions.
Read blog - Build
How to Use Google Chrome Lighthouse for Better Web Performance
Performance is always crucial. Fortunately, there's Google Chrome Lighthouse!
Read blog - Build
Should Developers Embrace Low-Code and No-Code Technology?
Are there any good reasons to embrace low-code and no-code development?
Read blog - Build
Creating a Dynamic ecommerce Website With Umbraco and Vendr
Here’s what happened when we united Umbraco and its customisable ecommerce counterpart, Vendr.
Read blog - Build
The Importance of Modern Web Performance Testing
Cogworks CTO, Marcin explains why performance testing is so important in a project and how we can apply best practice.
Read blog - Build
How to Publish NuGet Packages with GitHub
In part two of the GitHub series, Developer Adrian shows us how to publish a NuGet package.
Read blog - Build
The Quick Guide to Visual Regression Testing With Cypress
A quick guide to visual regression testing with the popular end to end testing platform, Cypress.
Read blog - Strategy
6 Reasons Why Your Business Should Migrate to The Cloud
Cogworks CEO & co-founder Adam explains the business benefits of migrating to cloud hosting.
Read blog - Build
Getting started with visual regression testing and WebdriverIO
Improve your visual regression testing using Webdriver with these tutorials, tips, and tricks from front-end developer, Arek.
Read blog - Strategy
5 Tools for Effective Communication in Remote Teams
Our top 5 apps that get you talking...
Read blog - Build
Integrate Netlify With Cypress: A Quick Guide
Developer Grzegorz whizzes through a quick way to integrate Netlify with Cypress so you can power-up modern automation testing in your projects.
Read blog - Strategy
5 Ways to Ensure Your Financial Services Website Stays Ahead in 2021
Remaining at the forefront of the competition requires being responsive to shifts in customer behavior. The following are five tactics that financial services companies can employ to communicate effectively with first-time and returning customers via their website for a sustained impact.
Read blog - Build
How to Use Tailwind With BEM
Merge the King of Utility with the best of Modular CSS to create a brilliant combination for your projects.
Read blog - Build
Using TeamCity for continuous integration with NodeJS and Grunt
Warren Buckley documented what we currently use for our front-end build processes and takes us through how to install all those crazy tools!
Read blog - Build
Reasons to Replatform
A replatforming project for your website should consider every one of your users for years to come; that’s content editors, stakeholders and browsers of your site.
Read blog - Strategy
Contribution Is King
You may already know we're an Umbraco Contributing Gold Partner...but we're part of a much bigger community too; open source.
Read blog - Strategy
Working with an Agile Driven Agency
What to expect from working with Certified Scrum Professionals and Certified Scrum Product Owners
Read blog - Build
Generate Free SSL Certificates and Bind It to Azure Webapp With Devops
A mini Cogtutorial for those who have multiple Azure Web Apps with custom domains and would like to automatically bind SSL certificates to their Web Apps domains (for free).
Read blog - Build
How to Simplify Azure Search Implementations
If you have ever struggled with implementing Azure Search on your projects then you’re not alone. Find out how we solved this with a simple package, the Cogworks.AzureSearch.
Read blog - Strategy
5 Ways our Support Plan Can Help Your Umbraco Website Grow
An Umbraco support plan should work around the clock to keep your website safe...
Read blog - Build
How to Build a Desktop Application With Electron and Vue
Front-end Developer Wojciech works with American actor, Chuck Norris, to demonstrate how easy it is to create a desktop app with Electron and Vue.
Read blog - Build
Umbraco v8: How to Pick a Block Style Editor
An in-depth review and quick comparison of the currently available block style (grid-based) editors for Umbraco v8.
Read blog - Strategy
6 Reasons Why Manual QA Testing Is Here to Stay
Cogworks QA Testers, Kasia and Marcin, share why they think manual QA testing is sure to be sticking around for years to come.
Read blog - Build
7 Front-End Tools For Productivity
When you’re repeating similar front-end tasks daily, let tools be your friend. Here are seven essential front-end development tools that are time-saving and a pleasure to use. Cogworks have even created one from scratch.
Read blog - Build
7 Tips for More Effective Code Reviews
Developer, Marcin, reveals his top tips for effective code reviews and explains how you can apply them to your working environment.
Read blog - Strategy
5 Tips to Keep Your Zoom Call Secure
As a Cyber Essentials Plus partner, our priority is to protect our organisation online. These 5 tips will help to keep your Zoom conversations safe and secure.
Read blog - Build
Updating Cogworks Umbraco Find and Replace: V7 to V8
I Initially thought it would not be too hard a task, unfortunately I was wrong...
Read blog - Build
Introducing Nuxt.js: Why We Love This Framework
Wojciech and the front-end development team share their experience of using Nuxt.js in a recent web project and share some handy tips they found along the way.
Read blog - Build
Avoiding Inherited Project Horrors
Ever taken on a project from someone else and uncovered some unwanted skeletons in the closet along the way? We share our top tips on avoiding this nightmare!
Read blog - News
5 Inspiring Companies That Use Digital Solutions to Save the Planet
It's #EarthDay2020 today. We’re celebrating with a round-up of brilliant, environmentally conscious work being carried out in digital right now!
Read blog - Build
Umbraco VS Wordpress: Which is the winning camp?
They are both easy to use CMSs, they are both Open Source and are both used by millions of people and businesses across the globe. So, which one is the best – pound for pound?
Read blog - Strategy
Top 6 Apps and Tools for Productive Remote Working
Cogworks team share their top 6 apps and tools for distributed teams and home working.
Read blog - Build
How We Overcame Multilingual Struggles in Umbraco v8
Umbraco v8 introduced a new way of managing multilingual content and at first glance everything looked great...but the devil was in the details.
Read blog - Strategy
Process Mapping & I, a love story
This is a short story about how I became enamoured with translating almost every aspect of my job into a ‘structured series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end’.
Read blog - Design
Umbraco Festival Design Evolution
We delve into the depths of our design archives to revisit the Umbraco UK Fest designs over the past 7 years.
Read blog - Design
UX Design Through Creative Sprints
The point of UX design is its dedication to listening to other people.
Read blog - Build
Showcase: Storm's Social Reach Feature
As #LFW fills up our social media feeds, we’re taking a look at our most fashionable project yet.
Read blog - Build
Time for an Umbraco Upgrade?
Cogworks’ give you the lowdown on why you should be updating your installation of Umbraco.
Read blog - Build
Introducing the Meganav Package
A flexible, draggable link picker for constructing site navigation menus in Umbraco 7
Read blog - Strategy
Top 3 Reasons to Involve Your Content Team Early
Here's why you should get your content team involved early on in a project.
Read blog - Build
One Media Indexer to Rule Them All
A reboot of the CogUmbracoExamineMediaIndexer package.
Read blog - Strategy
Running Agile Retrospectives
Cogworks favourite Scrum meeting - the retrospective.
Read blog - Strategy
Umbraco, CMS of Choice for Content Editors
The best content editing features in the Umbraco CMS.
Read blog - Strategy
Five Umbraco Sites Making the World a Better Place
Take a look at Umbraco users who are making a real difference with the World's friendliest CMS.
Read blog - Build
How Umbraco Changed My Life
Have you ever stopped to imagine the way the software we use could change a life?
Read blog
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