Municipal government permit management run on Orchard Core - GovTech company case study

Governments use Orchard Core too! Even in this blog, we've seen how Lombiq worked with the municipal government of Santa Monica and with the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, which is an agency of the US federal government. But did you know that apart from flashy websites, Orchard can also provide important services for citizens behind the scenes? The multi-tenant case management platform of a GovTech company we worked with does exactly that: If you live in a US city, you may have dealt with your permit or other license via the platform! And as you may have guessed, we're working with the company as Orchard Core experts.

We've been helping the company since late 2022 with a variety of Orchard Core consulting, troubleshooting, and development tasks. This started with a general review of the GovTech app, and how it's hosted in Azure, to find areas of improvement or potential issues. Since Lombiq has run Orchard, then Orchard Core projects, and hosted apps in Azure for a decade now, we can always pinpoint things we recommend changing.

They also asked us to deliver some specific development tasks that improve the UX of the permit management platform or help the development team. Here's a quick overview of some of these:

  • Setting up automated QA tools. For these, we utilized our Orchard Core-optimized projects: Lombiq UI Testing Toolbox for automated UI testing, Lombiq .NET Analyzers for checking the code for any possible issues, and Lombiq GitHub Actions to provide full-featured CI builds and Azure deployments. These all help keep the platform working well, improving the development team's productivity.
  • A WYSIWYG editor for the Orchard Core admin area, utilizing the user-friendly Froala editor. Users of the platform weren't fully satisfied with Orchard's built-in editor, so this was a welcome improvement.
  • Chunked file uploads: Hosting environments commonly have some restrictions on the size of an HTTP request. So, if you want to allow users to upload larger files, the app needs to upload them in multiple chunks (parts). This was important for them since files related to permit management can routinely grow beyond the usual size limits. So, we've implemented chunked file uploads both in the platform and as a contribution to Orchard Core. Since we at Lombiq are really focused on open-source, it's always great to work with clients who understand how the open-source ecosystem works and that you also have to contribute back.

This is what their CTO & Co-founder says about us working together:

Lombiq excels in SaaS technology development, particularly in the context of Orchard Core. Their distinctive expertise and capabilities enabled us to expedite the expansion of our platform. They were consistently responsive, delivered high-quality code, smoothly transitioned each project to our development team, and assumed full responsibility for their tasks. I highly recommend collaborating with them for any SaaS related project.

Do you also work with government clients and want to make sure your Orchard Core app runs smoothly? Get in touch with us and let the Orchard Core experts help you!

zoltan.lehoczky Case study Azure Orchard Core Government GovTech USA Code audit

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Integrate Microsoft login into your ASP.NET Core or Orchard Core application with ease

Why create separate accounts in different systems when you can use a single, trusted source for all of them?

Instead of asking people to create yet another account, you can let them sign in with the Microsoft account they already use at work. This can be a Microsoft 365 account or an account managed through Microsoft Entra ID.

For users, this feels familiar. For administrators, it keeps account management closer to the systems they already use every day.

Managed CMS Hosting Now Available in the Microsoft Marketplace — Powered by DotNest
Microsoft customers worldwide can now discover and use DotNest, a fully managed website hosting platform, through Microsoft Marketplace, accessing trusted solutions that accelerate innovation and business transformation with unified integration across Microsoft productsBudapest, Hungary — June 23, 2026 — Lombiq Technologies today announced the availability of DotNest, a fully managed content management and website hosting platform, in the Microsoft Marketplace, the unified online destination for customers to buy trusted cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet their business needs. DotNest customers can now discover and deploy trusted solutions through Microsoft Marketplace, with smooth integration and streamlined management across Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft products.DotNest is the only fully managed hosting service for Orchard Core, the open-source, modular content management system (CMS) framework built on ASP.NET Core. Built and operated by Lombiq Technologies, a major contributor to the Orchard project for more than a decade, DotNest brings enterprise-grade Orchard Core hosting to organizations without the complexity of running their own infrastructure. Today, DotNest powers more than 6,000 websites worldwide.DotNest delivers Orchard Core as a fully managed SaaS on Microsoft Azure, removing the infrastructure burden of server management, security patching, and version upgrades. Now available in the Microsoft Marketplace, organizations can procure DotNest directly through their existing Azure subscription and manage their websites from the Azure Portal alongside their other cloud resources. Key capabilities include:Zero technical maintenance: Hosting, monitoring, and platform updates are handled automatically so teams can focus on building, not operating.Native Azure integration: Sites are provisioned and managed from the Azure Portal, backed by Azure security, point-in-time backups, HTTPS, and geo-redundant storage.Complete design freedom: Full Orchard Core customization is preserved, with automatic theme deployment from source control and support for custom content types and modules.Built-in ecommerce: Organizations can launch online stores using the integrated Orchard Core Commerce suite without additional platform setup.Enterprise performance: Optimized infrastructure with CDN, caching, Elasticsearch, and email delivery requires no infrastructure configuration from the customer.GDPR compliance: DotNest is compliant out of the box with privacy-focused defaults suited for EU organizations.The offering is designed for IT teams looking to reduce infrastructure overhead, marketing teams that want to launch and update web properties without depending on development cycles, and digital agencies that prefer to focus on customization rather than operations. "Bringing DotNest to the Microsoft Marketplace is a natural step for us,” said Zoltán Lehóczky, Co-Founder and managing director of Lombiq Technologies. “We have spent over ten years building DotNest and contributing to Orchard Core itself. Listing in the Microsoft Marketplace means any Microsoft customer can now provision a fully managed Orchard Core site in minutes, using the same Azure subscription they already rely on for everything else, no separate procurement, no infrastructure work, and no compromise on the flexibility of the open-source platform.” “Microsoft Marketplace helps organizations and partners move faster, work smarter, and grow by connecting them with the right solutions—all in one trusted place,” said Cyril Belikoff, vice president, Microsoft Azure Product Marketing. “We’re happy to welcome Lombiq Technologies’ DotNest solution to the growing Microsoft Marketplace ecosystem.” Microsoft Marketplace is a single destination to find, try, and buy trusted cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business objectives. Choose from a growing collection of solutions tailored to your unique needs, available both in Marketplace and directly within Microsoft products. DotNest is available now in the Microsoft Marketplace at https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/saas/lombiq.dotnest-production. To learn more about DotNest, visit https://dotnest.com. Lombiq Technologies is a software, training, and services company focused on web development with open Microsoft technologies, predominantly the Orchard Core content management system. With more than a decade of contributions to the Orchard Core ecosystem, Lombiq provides custom development, training, consulting, and hosting services to clients worldwide. The company is the team behind DotNest, the only Orchard Core SaaS. Learn more at https://lombiq.com. For more information, press only: Lombiq Crew, Lombiq Technologies, [email protected]

Long-term Orchard Core maintenance for the City of Santa Monica

Back in 2021, we wrote about helping the City of Santa Monica move santamonica.gov from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core. Since then, we have continued working with the City's team.

In the last couple of years, much of that work has been maintenance: upgrading Orchard Core, improving tests, making local development easier, cleaning up the codebase, and fixing performance issues.

The Orchard Core upgrade was an important part of this. Keeping the CMS version current helps the site stay on a safer and better-supported foundation. It also brings in fixes from Orchard Core itself, including fixes for issues that could otherwise affect users, editors, or developers.

The other changes support the same kind of work. Automated tests help catch problems before deployment. Auto Setup makes local development more predictable. Static analyzers, codespell, and Renovate make the codebase easier to maintain. 

Most of this is not visible from the outside, but it is important for keeping a long-running website working well.

Rebuilding DotNest.com: Orchard Core, Tailwind 4, and a more maintainable workflow
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The rebuild became a good opportunity to apply a similar pattern in practice. For the new site, each landing page section now has its own content type, and the sections are composed on the landing page through Orchard Core’s BagPart. This keeps the flexibility of section-based pages while giving each section a clearer structure and purpose. The result is a landing page system that is easier to understand, easier to extend, and less dependent on ad-hoc template changes. At the same time, the reusable section-based approach gives content editors flexibility within clear guardrails, making it much harder to accidentally break layouts or page structure. For a marketing site that will keep evolving, that maintainability matters as much as the initial design. Modernizing the front-end workflow The rebuild was also the point where we introduced Tailwind 4 into our internal front-end workflow for Orchard Core projects. Previously, we used a BEM-style approach with custom CSS files. While this worked well for years, it also created more manual structure and coordination as the site evolved. With Tailwind 4, we could build UI components faster, keep styling closer to the markup, and work more consistently with our design system. As part of the rebuild, we removed the old Node.js-based asset pipeline and integrated Tailwind directly into the .NET build workflow. That led to Lombiq Tailwind Targets, our open-source MSBuild integration for Tailwind CSS. With Lombiq Tailwind Targets, Tailwind compilation runs as part of the .NET build process, making the front-end workflow feel like a natural part of the Orchard Core application instead of a separate toolchain to maintain. This also aligned with a broader direction we had already started exploring at Lombiq: simplifying front-end tooling and moving away from Node.js-based workflows where they add unnecessary maintenance overhead. We wrote earlier about this approach in Step away from that Node.js. 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