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Moving a Musical Institution to uSkinned

The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra needed a site that was simple, easy to update, and affordable, so it turned to Blend and uSkinned for a site refresh and migration.

Client

  • South Dakota Symphony Orchestra

Great musicians live beyond New York or London. They’re everywhere, across every continent and within every state. They’re even right here in South Dakota.

Of course, we know this — after all, we’ve been working alongside the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO) for over a decade, and we were excited to get to work with them again on the reimagining of their WordPress site using Umbraco’s web-focused offering — uSkinned.

Due to our longstanding relationship with SDSO, we understand that a symphony performance is more than just a recital — it’s a world-class performance that must be heard to be believed. Our goal with the site was to create something manageable and recognizable while showcasing some of our own world-class performances.

We began by extending and rethinking SDSO’s current web branding and theme. Shifting from the original WordPress site, Blend built a site that backed up SDSO’s model of seeing is believing, with big, bold images and clear messaging that helped users both understand the full scope of the Symphony Orchestra and visualize themselves in the thick of the action.

Blend built the site with three major content components in mind: the event and event calendar, membership options, and features for all SDSO musicians. Because uSkinned is built on the bones of one of the most user-friendly content management systems, Blend could template and group content in the same way we might for a standard Umbraco install, but without the need for the full suite of CMS tools.

From here, Blend helped SDSO understand the ins and outs of uSkinned. As a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) offering, uSkinned balances the power of a complete content management system with the speed and flexibility of more commercial offerings like Squarespace or Wix. This leads to a shift in thinking from how a team might manage a CMS like WordPress, where Blend used its expertise in both Umbraco and CMS, in general, to help guide the site’s future.

Ultimately, Blend and SDSO honed the Umbraco uSkinned instance into something easy to update, flexible, and affordable. This helped a lean marketing team keep up with the demands of an annual membership cycle while highlighting one of the state’s most important cultural institutions.

Project results.

  • Organized and redesigned a site focused on selling tickets and maintaining memberships
  • Implemented the site in uSkinned, Umbraco’s SaaS offering
  • Fully trained SDSO on the basics and best practices of uSkinned

Umbraco

The friendly, open-source CMS that supports your workflows, empowers your editors, and takes your website’s performance to new heights.

A deep history of work.

Blend has been working with Umbraco since 2013, and has developed sites in numerous verticals.

2024 Platinum Partner.

Blend is a Platinum Solution Partner with five Umbraco certified developers on staff.

Contributing Partner

In addition to being a Gold partner, Blend is one of 2023's Contributing Gold Partners, given to agencies that go above and beyond to contribute to Umbraco's open-source project and community.