Developer Journey

A look back at the milestones along the way

21 September 2026 (upcoming)

Attending the Umbraco Kent Meetup: Contentment

Planning to attend Lee Kelleher's talk on Contentment at the Umbraco Kent Meetup.

  • Umbraco
22 August 2026

Umbraco 18 support for AF.Umbraco.S3.Media.Storage

Had a pull request merged adding Umbraco 18 support to the AWS S3 media storage provider for Umbraco.

  • Umbraco
18 August 2026

Attended the US Umbraco Automate meetup

Joined "Diving into Umbraco Automate", the US Umbraco meetup group's session on Umbraco Automate, contributing input from the floor.

  • Umbraco
17 August 2026

Impromptu talk on Umbraco Automate at the Umbraco Kent Meetup

Gave an impromptu presentation at the Umbraco Kent Meetup showcasing the Umbraco.Automate plugins built this year — Brickset, Pushover, Clockify, ntfy and more.

  • Umbraco
10 August 2026

Mentioned in a Paul Seal video on the official Umbraco channel

Named in a Paul Seal video about automating the Clean Starter Kit's package workflow with Umbraco 17's Management API, for contributing to the Clean Starter Kit.

  • Umbraco
10 August 2026

Umbraco Developer, Webreality

Started an Umbraco developer contract with Webreality, based in Jersey.

  • Umbraco
5–9 August 2026

Built the Brickset connector for Umbraco.Automate

Released a connector that pulls LEGO set data from the Brickset API straight into an Umbraco.Automate workflow, including a "Save Set To Content" action.

  • Umbraco
5–6 August 2026

Built the Clockify connector for Umbraco.Automate

Released a connector bringing Clockify time-tracking actions and connection validation into Umbraco.Automate.

  • Umbraco
29 July–9 August 2026

Built the QR code connector for Umbraco.Automate

Released a QR code generation connector for Umbraco.Automate, later extended with vCard QR code support.

  • Umbraco
20 July 2026

baachart used in an official government report

The baachart data visualisation project was used in an official government report on sheep methane emissions.

  • Next.js
  • API Integration
20 July 2026

Attended the Umbraco Kent Meetup: Umbraco MCP server

Watched Luke Brown talk about the Umbraco MCP server at the Umbraco Kent Meetup.

  • Umbraco
10 July 2026

UI update for the LinkedIn Umbraco.Automate connector

Had a pull request merged enhancing the UI for sending a post on the LinkedIn connector for Umbraco.Automate.

  • Umbraco
9 July 2026

Featured on the official Umbraco Automate blog

Named in Umbraco's "Launching Umbraco Automate" blog post for building the Pushover connector, which lets Umbraco Automate send instant push notifications straight to your phone.

  • Umbraco
3 July 2026

UI update for the Bluesky Umbraco.Automate connector

Had a pull request merged updating the UI and README for Umbraco 18 on the Bluesky connector for Umbraco.Automate.

  • Umbraco
29 June 2026

Reported an Umbraco CMS bug, fixed in 18.1

Reported that the Delivery API wasn't exposing the Element Name in its OpenAPI model — a gap found while working on headless projects. Fixed by the Umbraco core team in the 18.1.0 release.

  • Umbraco
  • Next.js
24 June 2026

Reported an Umbraco.Automate beta issue

Identified that trigger.cultures was returning an empty array in templates during Umbraco.Automate's beta. Resolved via a merged fix.

  • Umbraco
23 June–11 July 2026

Built the WeatherAPI connector for Umbraco.Automate

Released a connector pulling live weather data from WeatherAPI.com straight into Umbraco.Automate workflows.

  • Umbraco
22 June–11 July 2026

Built the ntfy connector for Umbraco.Automate

Released a connector adding self-hosted push notification support to Umbraco.Automate via ntfy.

  • Umbraco
June 2026

Credited on Owain Williams' Umbraco Automate blog

Named in Owain Williams' "Umbraco Automate Workflows" post on owain.codes, thanked (alongside Mike Chambers and Warren Buckley) for helping talk through a no-code fix for a duplicate-publish workflow bug on the Umbraco Discord.

  • Umbraco
22 June 2026

Documentation fix for UmbracoDocs

Had a pull request merged correcting the official Umbraco documentation's instructions for creating an automation, which incorrectly said to right-click.

  • Umbraco
21 June–11 July 2026

Built the Pushover connector for Umbraco.Automate

Released a connector letting editors trigger Pushover push notifications straight from the Umbraco back office.

  • Umbraco
19 June 2026

Reported another Umbraco.Automate beta issue

Identified that Umbraco.Automate wouldn't run any triggers without an explicit UmbracoApplicationUrl set in config, and reported it during the product's beta. Resolved.

  • Umbraco
17 June 2026

Fixed navigation and refactored CSS for High Five You Rock

Had pull requests merged fixing a mobile navigation z-index bug and refactoring the CSS for H5YR, the Umbraco community's peer-recognition platform.

  • Umbraco
  • CSS
25 May–2 July 2026

Upgraded the Clean Starter Kit for Umbraco to v18

Had a series of pull requests merged upgrading Phil Whittaker's headless implementation of the Clean Starter Kit for Umbraco to Umbraco 18 — including mobile navigation fixes, image and cache handling improvements, a sitemap update, and dependency upgrades. Made a joint collaborator on the repo off the back of the volume of merged fixes.

  • Umbraco
  • CSS
  • Next.js
28 May–2 July 2026

Contributed to the base Clean Starter Kit for Umbraco

Had pull requests merged on Paul Seal's original Clean Starter Kit for Umbraco, fixing the Delivery API setup documentation, updating the API controllers and OpenAPI config, and improving cache revalidation on trash/delete in the headless Next.js integration.

  • Umbraco
  • Next.js
18 May 2026

Attended the Umbraco Kent Meetup: building packages

Watched Markus Johansson talk about building packages for Umbraco at the Umbraco Kent Meetup.

  • Umbraco
7–13 May 2026

Built baachart

Created baachart, a data visualisation project built with Next.js, pulling in external data via API.

  • Next.js
  • API Integration
21 April–12 May 2026

Built csswind

Created csswind, a terminal-styled quiz app for learning CSS and Tailwind — ten rapid-fire questions per round, translating between CSS properties and their Tailwind classes.

  • CSS
20 April 2026

Attended the Umbraco Kent Meetup: hosting & AI back office

Watched Aaron Sadler talk about UmbHost GreenStack web hosting, and Dean Leigh demo an AI back office extension he built with Claude, at the Umbraco Kent Meetup.

  • Umbraco
September 2025

Joined the GSAP Creative Coding Club

Became a member of the Creative Coding Club, a training membership dedicated to GSAP animation.

  • GSAP
4 August 2025

Joined Digital Gambit as an Umbraco developer

Started a new role as an Umbraco developer at Digital Gambit.

  • Umbraco
May 2025

Built Beanie Friends

Delivered Beanie Friends, an Umbraco site with Vue.js components, live at beaniefriends.com.

  • Umbraco
  • Vue.js
October 2022

Contribution to Umbraco Hacktoberfest, t-shirt awarded

Contributed to Umbraco's Hacktoberfest 2022 and received the event t-shirt for it.

  • Umbraco
April 2020

Umbraco 10 training: Load Balancing

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training on load balancing for Umbraco 10.

  • Umbraco
December 2019

Umbraco 8 training: backoffice & integration

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training covering extending the backoffice, application integration, and searching and indexing for Umbraco 8.

  • Umbraco
November 2019

Umbraco 8 training: fundamentals & MVC

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training covering fundamentals and MVC/Visual Studio for Umbraco 8.

  • Umbraco
September 2019

Umbraco training: security & cloud development

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training in Umbraco 8 security, and Umbraco 7 Cloud Developer training.

  • Umbraco
September 2018

Umbraco 7 training: Content Management

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training in content management for Umbraco 7.

  • Umbraco
10 May 2017

First pull request merged into Umbraco CMS

Had a pull request merged into the core umbraco/Umbraco-CMS repository, fixing a typo ("automaticly" → "automatically").

  • Umbraco
March 2017

Umbraco 7 training: MVC, integration & search

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training covering MVC/Visual Studio, application integration, and searching and indexing for Umbraco 7.

  • Umbraco
January 2017

Umbraco 7 training: Fundamentals

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training in the fundamentals of Umbraco 7.

  • Umbraco
September 2012

Umbraco 4 training: Levels 1 & 2

Completed official Umbraco Certified Training, levels 1 and 2, for Umbraco 4.

  • Umbraco

Everything else before this

25+ years building websites and 15+ years specialising in Umbraco CMS, including earning the Umbraco Certified Master accreditation and racking up 275+ posts and 702+ karma points helping others on the Our Umbraco community forum. Full milestone-by-milestone history coming soon.

  • Umbraco
Back Home