A faster, code-owned Umbraco 17 site for 63Digital
Our own site, upgraded from Umbraco 13 to 17 LTS in one jump and rebuilt on code-owned templates: faster, free of a third-party theme, and built to be found in search and AI answers.
Everything we recommend to clients is running here: a direct Umbraco 13 to 17 upgrade, templates we own, per-template critical CSS, structured data, and guides written from real jobs. If it didn't work on our own site, we wouldn't sell it.
Our own website ran on Umbraco 13 with a commercial theme: uSkinned Site Builder and its Kilda theme. It worked, but Umbraco 13 reaches end of life in December 2026, every upgrade had to wait for the theme vendor's releases, and more than a thousand vendor-managed files lived in the project. It also didn't show the depth of platform work we actually do.
So we did to our own site what we'd recommend to a client. We upgraded it directly from Umbraco 13 to 17 LTS, replaced the theme with code-owned templates on a bespoke Tailwind design system, and rebuilt the performance and search foundations by hand: per-template critical CSS, self-hosted fonts, responsive WebP images, structured data and generated share images. Then we added platform hubs and task guides written from real jobs, built to be found in search and cited in AI answers.
A multi-stage approach.
Prepare on 13
Moved to the latest Umbraco 13, removed code built on APIs that v17 drops, deleted legacy media pickers and dead uSync folders, and checked every package for a v17 release.
Jump to 17
Moved to .NET 10 and Umbraco 17.4, let the migrations run on first boot, and fixed what broke. The site was booting on 17 twelve days after the first preparation commit.
Replace the theme
Rebuilt the front end as code-owned templates on a bespoke Tailwind design system, with a lean content model synced through uSync and no third-party theme.
Make it fast
Per-template critical CSS, self-hosted fonts with Early Hints preload, responsive WebP images, compression, cache headers and Cloudflare purge on publish.
Make it findable
Hand-rolled head meta, JSON-LD, generated share images, sitemap and RSS, then platform hubs and task guides for search and AI answers.
Fast, found, and ours.
Every page is a template we own, with its own critical CSS, structured data and share image, from the home page to the platform guides.
What changed.
Upgraded and future-proofed
A direct jump from Umbraco 13.13 to 17 LTS on .NET 10, then the obsolete navigation APIs replaced ahead of Umbraco 18, so the next upgrade won't be a rewrite.
Free of a third-party theme
The commercial theme and its thousand-plus vendor files are gone. Every template is ours, so no vendor release can hold up an upgrade again.
Fast by construction
Critical CSS inlined per template, self-hosted fonts preloaded with Early Hints, responsive WebP images, Brotli compression and long-lived caching, with the CDN cache purged on publish.
Built to be found and cited
Head meta, JSON-LD, sitemap, RSS and per-page share images, plus platform hubs and task guides written from real jobs for search and AI answers.
Guides from this project
Platforms: Umbraco
Want the same for your site?
Whether you're stuck on Umbraco 13 or tied to a theme you can't upgrade, we'll plan the move to a faster site you own.