4 Umbraco Features to Help You Manage Content More Effectively

Lisa Hilleren
23 July 2025

Selecting your content management system (CMS) for your digital brand is a major decision. It will set the stage for the next several years of managing your digital experience. Whether you’re new to the platform, considering a move, or a long-time user, I hope to orient you to some of my favorite Umbraco tools for managing content a streamlined and collaborative process. As an Umbraco super fan, it is my pleasure to introduce you to some of my favorite tools to help you become an Umbraco super user.  

User Management 

As the adage goes, “many hands make light work.” Umbraco helps you manage the risk of unwanted changes making it to production during regular updates, while also creating a focused experience for users who are hoping to get in, make their edits, and move on with other responsibilities. Umbraco’s user group configurations are a fantastic tool for inviting additional content editors to manage their own content areas of your website.  

How to configure: 

Groups are managed on the “Users” tab. To assign a user to a group, you will need to have first configured that group.  To configure a group, click on the “Groups” tab inside of the “Users” tab. You can then create a new group or edit an existing group. 

From the edit/create screen, assign a name to your new group and then begin configuring permissions.

 

 

When assigning permissions, we recommend that you grant as few change rights as possible to limit other users from editing content that does not pertain to their department. In the example video above, members of this group are able to access all media items for the website, but they will only see the “Blocks” folder and its child items when viewing the content tab. Users are able to send items for publication, but they cannot publish or unpublish content without approval. Use the process that matches your business needs. 

Recommended best practices

While you can also edit permissions for individual users, configuring a group allows you to assign multiple users the same suite of permissions to allow for seamless transitioning of permissions as staffing changes. You may create as many groups as needed for your business practices.

Media Management 

Having a striking visual presence can draw users in and help keep them when they have landed on your website. Umbraco’s Media Library comes with out-of-the-box tools to limit the need to upload several crops of the same image to use across your website, reducing both the size of your database and the amount of time your team will need to spend optimizing images for the website.  

How to configure: 

The media tab will allow you to view each image crop in use across your website and manage the focal point for the image and how it gets cropped for the various page and component types in use across your website. This will greatly extend your ability to use a single uploaded image across a wide variety of elements.


Recommended best practices:  

For best performance, we recommend uploading images below 5MB in size. In the recording above, we configured an alt text field to be populated on a per image basis, which enhances your website’s accessibility while reducing the number of instances where you would need to populate the same content.  

Ask your digital partner:  

Ask your digital partner to provide both crop size information and which templates and blocks across the site use that in the image editor view. This can help quickly answer questions as new team members begin providing imagery or making edits within your website.

 

Content Templates 

Creating a consistent web experience can help anchor your users as they explore content across your website and also take some of the guesswork out of content creation for less frequent editors. Umbraco’s content template tool is an important part of your digital toolbox. 

How to configure:


 

Any existing page can be used to create a content template. Any time a user creates a new page of that type going forward, they will be able to start from a stored content page template or a blank version of that page type.  

Recommended best practices: 

Content templates are most useful for elements that should be repeated across your site. Any content that you’ve pre-populated will be populated on the new pages you create from that template. If you only need a few iterations of a given page or component, consider using the copy to clipboard function for blocks and copy page function instead of saving a new content template.  

Ask your digital partner: 

Work with your digital partner to identify if any repeated elements should be included in a new page template or if additional elements may help with the visual identification of a given area of your website.

 

Schedule Publish/Unpublish 

From season announcements to new product line announcements, to annual conferences, your next major launch is both a critical part of your business and a huge digital undertaking with a need for coordinated release. Umbraco’s scheduled publish and unpublish tool takes the stress out of your next major launch.  

How to configure: 

Start at the highest level of the content node you would like to publish. This will allow you to bulk publish or unpublish an entire content sequence in one action. 

Select the arrow next to the “Save and publish” button.  

The schedule function will allow you to set a date for that page to be published and available as well as an optional date for the content to become unavailable. Unpublishing a parent item in a particular node will also unpublish any child items.  

The publish with descendants function will publish the given node item and all its child content at once.  

The unpublish function unpublishes the page and no longer allows website end users to view its content. The content is preserved for backoffice users in the event you wish to reference the content in the future.


 

Recommended best practices:

Use schedule publish for individual content items such as on-sales, registration opening, or product announcements. For launches with a variety of elements, group them below a parent page or folder so you can quickly publish with descendants on the day of your launch. Use the unpublish function to retain archival content that you do not wish the public to continue to access that can aid your internal teams in campaign creation for future launches. 

Ask your digital partner: 

While page level publication scheduling is supported out of the box in Umbraco, you may wish to add scheduled unpublishing of block content. While you can save a version of your page with that content removed and schedule that for publication to get around the issue, your web partner can also develop a per block expiration time if needed. 

 

Ready to get more from Umbraco? 

Whether you're building new templates, organizing user roles, or prepping for your next big content launch, the right tools and partners make all the difference. Contact us to discuss how we can help you get the most out of your Umbraco implementation. Let's simplify what's next together. 

Lisa Hilleren



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