Do you have a simple static website that you want to spice up with proper content management? Orchard Core is a CMS that you can quickly migrate to, and DotNest can host it with two clicks. This is what we did for Xero4PowerBI too!

This is a post by Krisztián Németh, software engineer at Lombiq and project leader of DotNest.

Introduction

Xero is an excellent financial management system; however, providing access to your Xero data is difficult. Xero4PowerBI, developed by Paradigm BI, a boutique business intelligence studio, offers a cost-effective multiplatform reporting system that enables fast-paced reporting on your financial status.

Paradigm BI specializes in creating insightful business intelligence tailored to your needs, making your Power BI dashboards and paginated reports work for you. Xero4PowerBI is Paradigm BI's tool that facilitates sharing financial information across your organization using bookmarks and alerts on desktop and mobile devices, creating datasets that Excel users can easily use in pivot tables and charts.

The Challenge

The original website of Xero4PowerBI was a simple 4-page HTML site that needed to be migrated to DotNest and Orchard Core. The goal was to create a modern, flexible, and easy-to-maintain website while preserving the existing design and functionality.

The Solution

Our team at Lombiq migrated the website to Orchard Core by creating the pages and templates, maintaining the original design while slightly modifying it to fit the new Orchard Core Media Theme. This allowed for a better and easier structure of zones, and we also added a simple footer.

The site now can be viewed at https://xero4powerbi.com/. We set it up using the Blank Orchard Core recipe and enabled various features that were needed for the site using a predefined recipe. Mainly Lombiq Helpful Extensions were utilized for creating the Page content type, consisting of a Title Part, Autoroute Part, and Flow Part. We also used the Lombiq Helpful Extensions - Helpful Widgets feature for Liquid Widget and Html Widget functionalities.

In addition to the existing site, we implemented a blog using the Orchard Core The Blog Theme as a template for blog-related content definitions. The Media Theme was exported via a zip file, created by the Media Theme deployer dotnet tool.

The Media Theme, a feature developed by Lombiq, allows developers to host their themes in the Orchard Core Media Library, including templates and assets. This feature is especially useful in SaaS scenarios where full Orchard theming cannot be provided to every user, yet the theming experience must remain available. Thus, this was our go-to solution for creating a custom theme and hosting the site on our Orchard Core SaaS DotNest.

The Results

The successful migration to DotNest Orchard Core provided Xero4PowerBI with a modern, easy-to-use website that met their requirements. The site now offers improved functionality, flexibility, and maintainability.

Mike Allen, Principal Consultant at Paradigm BI, shared his positive experience working with Lombiq for the migration:

In the past I have used WordPress, Blog Engine, and hybrid .NET Razor and Blog Engine. I selected Orchard Core as my new CMS as I wanted a modern .NET platform that incorporated a blog. Creating a theme seemed difficult, so I asked Lombiq for some help, and as they say, the rest is history. I wanted a mixture of different types of widgets so that I could do HTML or Markup and the flexibility to add new features to the website.

Mike Allen Services trades as Paradigm BI, a registered business name in Australia. Paradigm BI has developed Xero4PowerBI and initially had an Azure Static website. Paradigm BI is a boutique business intelligence ISV located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Are you considering migrating your website to Orchard Core or looking to enhance your site's features? Don't hesitate to get in touch with us and let our expertise work for you!

2 Comments

• Riya said 6 months ago

  Thank you so much for this awesome content here.

• CREATIVEP said 4 months ago

  Very good website. Thanks for this news.