Following the migration of lombiq.com, Git-hg Mirror, Hastlayer, and Orchard Dojo from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core (and also the redesign of lombiq.com and Orchard Dojo), we had only one site remaining that was still running on Orchard 1: DotNest.com. While you could create Orchard Core sites on DotNest for years, until now, the DotNest website itself still ran on Orchard 1.This marks the end of an era. Now all of our sites are running on Orchard Core, which offers better performance, modularity, and development experience than Orchard 1.Furthermore, we fixed some web accessibility problems on the site and added UI tests to make sure nothing breaks and affects you as a user.We utilized many of our open-source modules, including Lombiq Privacy, Lombiq Helpful Extensions, and utility modules like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions. For the themes, we built upon the Lombiq Base Theme. Lombiq Helpful Extensions played a crucial role in this project (and in the other ones too), as there was a significant amount of content to migrate. Leveraging the Orchard 1 Recipe Migration feature, we transferred Orchard 1 content items—such as blog posts, pages, and even users—to Orchard Core. Additionally, we retained the search functionality on the Knowledge Base page, now powered by Elasticsearch and the commenting on blog posts with Giscus. Of course, while working with these modules we always make sure that any enhancement that comes to mind is added to them and any bug that we find is patched. So, the wider Orchard Core community benefits from each of these projects too.This is a migration, where if you notice nothing it’s great because we migrated a lot of backend code and the goal was to keep the functionalities of DotNest, without breaking or changing anything.Migrating to Orchard Core not only brought performance increases but also added quality of life and security features, like two-factor authentication. The new foundation of the site opened new possibilities for us to bring you a better version of DotNest.With DotNest now running on Orchard Core, we’ve completed our journey of modernizing all our sites. This migration wasn’t just about keeping up with technology—it was about ensuring a smoother, more secure, and future-proof experience for our users. Although most of the changes were behind the scenes, the result is a faster, more reliable DotNest that preserves all the features you rely on while setting the stage for future enhancements.Are you still running Orchard 1 apps? Contact us to see how we can help you migrate it to Orchard Core too.

We migrated yet another Lombiq site from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core: Our Orchard learning website Orchard Dojo now runs on the latest version of Orchard. For a case study on how we completed this migration project, check out the case study on Orchard Dojo.

With a strong background in migrating websites to Orchard Core, we embarked on a journey to revamp hastlayer.com, the home of our cutting-edge .NET hardware acceleration project Hastlayer. This transformation was not merely a migration from the older Orchard 1 CMS; it was an opportunity to embrace Orchard Core's superior performance, modularity, and development experience. However, this migration was more than just a technical upgrade. It was a chance to refresh our website's appearance and align it with contemporary design trends. Hastlayer’s website was due for a facelift, its design needed a modern touch to resonate with current web aesthetics. Leveraging our expertise and experience, we utilized several of our own open-source projects developed over the years. Key Orchard Core modules such as Lombiq Privacy and Lombiq Helpful Extensions, along with utilities like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions, played a pivotal role. The Lombiq Base Theme as well as the theme of our company website served as the foundation for our theme, providing a robust starting point for customization. A distinctive aspect of this project was the creative process of reimagining hastlayer.com. Unlike client projects where we respond to external requirements and feedback, this was an internal endeavor. Collaborative brainstorming sessions shaped the vision and identity we wanted to communicate to our audience. We aimed to maintain a visual coherence with lombiq.com’s design, simultaneously, we aspired to inject a sense of uniqueness and distinction into hastlayer.com. To maintain simplicity, we reused numerous design elements and built upon them. Aligning the team's diverse perspectives required several iterations, but it ultimately led to a cohesive design that represented Hastlayer's ethos. The result is a revamped site that we are immensely proud of. It reflects our identity and the services we provide. We invite you to explore the new hastlayer.com and experience the innovation that defines us. As we revel in the success of this project, we look forward to future opportunities to renew and refine our digital footprint. Stay tuned for more exciting updates from Hastlayer, and more Orchard Core migration projects!

Git-hg Mirror is a site of our own, that was previously built on Orchard 1 and was migrated to Orchard Core. The site is a simple-to-use (at least this is the intention) web application to automatically keep a Git and a Mercurial repository or two Mercurial or two Git repositories in sync. This allows you to create mirrors of repositories in the other version control system. The site’s FAQ page provides more information about the site’s purpose and functionality. This case study delves into the intricate journey of transforming Git-hg Mirror from its original Orchard 1 roots to the contemporary Orchard Core, highlighting the technical challenges and solutions that made this transition possible. Migrating a site from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core is beneficial because it allows you to take advantage of the latest features, improved performance and a more modern architecture, ensuring your website remains up-to-date and competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. As usual, we leveraged many of our own open-source modules that we've built and refined over time, such as Lombiq Helpful Extensions, utility modules like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions, Lombiq Base Theme as a base for the themes, Lombiq Hosting Tenants for tenant management, and Lombiq Helpful Libraries, as the name suggests, for generally useful libraries. The migration needed some work with User accounts (mainly a converter from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core and depersonalization maintenance, which is responsible for replacing the registered user's sensitive data like email address, the repository URLs or access tokens with randomly generated data for privacy reasons) thus this resulted in new additions to our open-source modules. Feel free to check these out, the User converter is now part of the Orchard 1 Recipe Migration feature and the depersonalization maintenance is included in the Lombiq Hosting Tenants project. Because of the user account migrations, the previously registered users will just have to reset their password the first time they try to log in, but they will get a notification about it and once they have done it, they will be good to go, nothing else has changed. We are happy with the results and the additions to our open-source modules and stay tuned, as we keep the migrations rolling.

We have a fair amount of experience with migrating different sites from Orchard 1 to Orchard Core. For example, we migrated Folkways. Now we had a chance and time to use our knowledge on our main site, lombiq.com. There was a good reason to migrate: Orchard Core offers better performance, modularity, and development experience than Orchard 1. But wait there is more!Besides migrating, we also modernized our site’s look. Let’s be honest, a renewal was overdue for our site. The site was created back in 2013! It was simple, clean, and functional, but it didn’t age well with upcoming trends and looks of modern websites. But now we can showcase our expertise and services in a more modern and user-friendly way. For this project, we used a lot of our own open-source modules that we developed over the years. These include Lombiq Privacy and Lombiq Helpful Extensions, utility modules like Lombiq NodeJs Extensions, and Lombiq Base Theme as a base for the themes. These modules add various features and functionalities to Orchard Core that make it more powerful and versatile. As we were using these modules, we also encountered and fixed some bugs and issues in them. We learned that some modules can behave differently or unexpectedly depending on the context or situation they are used in. This can be challenging to detect and resolve, but it also helps us improve the quality and reliability of our modules.One of the most rewarding and innovative aspects of this project was brainstorming about the site and thinking about how we wanted to communicate our vision and identity as a company to our audience. It was a new and different experience, compared to working on client projects where we had to follow their feedback, vision, and goals. In our own project, we had to provide these ourselves and ensure they were aligned with our work and Lombiq. It was exciting, but also demanding. We all had slightly different views and thoughts about what our work and Lombiq stand for. But after several sessions of collaboration and feedback, we reached a consensus on the designs and key features that would best fit our new site.Our new site turned out great and we are very happy with it. It represents who we are and what we do as a company. We hope you like it too! And who knows which of our own sites we will renew next…

We are proud to announce that Lombiq Technologies Ltd. celebrates its first "birthday" today! It all started on the 27th of May in 2013, with Benedek and Zoltán signing the foundation documents of Lombiq and embarking on a successful journey. We've been striving to provide high-value services, useful advices and high-quality code to our customers and we'll continue to do so for many more years to come! We'd like say thanks to our supportive families and our awesome colleagues in the Lombiq team!