Why is Umbraco CMS so rubbish?

You may have used it before, or you may be using it now and the thought might go through your head "Why is Umbraco so rubbish" or other words to that effect.

There might be bugs that you've found, or ways in which it works which make you dislike it. You probably moan to your colleagues about it, or even slate it on social media.

Have you ever stopped to think "What can I do about it?"

What can you do about it?

If you notice a bug, why not tell the people who maintain it? Too many times people create work-arounds for bugs, accept them, or just put it down to the software being rubbish.

Umbraco is an Open Source project, you are in a position to improve it.

How do I report a bug?

First of all, if you find what you think is a bug, go to the issue tracker, search to see if it has been raised and if it hasn't, raise it yourself.

Be sure to write details about what you did, what you expected to happen and what actually happened.

Last week I noticed a bug and decided to create an issue for it, here.

I included the relevant details and even an animated gif to show what was happening. See this post for the free software I use for creating gifs.

The issue was assessed, and assigned to a developer. In a matter of days it was fixed and included in the next build. This fix has since been released and I'm proud that I influenced it. Even though I didn't write any code, I was able to make a difference just by bringing it to their attention. See the release with my issue being fixed.

Conclusion

So next time you think Umbraco is rubbish, or any other open source project for that matter, have a think how you can help improve it.