umBristol, the dedicated Bristol Umbraco User Group, convened at Wattle HQ for April's meet up. We had a fantastic line-up of talks from Umbraco Experts ranging from how to leverage the latest Astro JS to building block list and grid based layouts.
Established way back in 2010, umBristol is a dedicated user group for Bristol's thriving Umbraco Developer community. Umbraco experts from local agencies, software development houses, and companies meet up on a monthly basis to discuss the latest news and developments on the Umbraco scene, and collaborate and innovate together. If your interested in getting involved in the community get in touch on X here or via Meetup here.
Following a light introduction and news recap from our Umbraco MVP Nurhak Kaya and Head of Delivery Katie Molloy we had a fantastic line-up of talks from local Umbraco Experts.
We kicked off discussing Astro’s next-gen front-end architecture, used by some of the best developers around the world at organisations like Google and Microsoft, and how the web framework could be leveraged in an Umbraco environment for content-driven websites. We then moved on to the specific approaches and guiding principles for building block list and grid based layouts for large websites.
Richard Jackson covered collaborative documentation for Umbraco and Astro JS - the web framework for content-driven websites.
Astro JS has been a hot topic at recent Umbraco events, yet official Astro documentation has yet to include a specific guide for Umbraco usage. Seeing a gap in the market Richard decided to spend part of his time at the recent Umbraco Spark Hackathon looking into writing the documentation. That idea has escalated somewhat and has been a genuinely fascinating experience, which Richard shared with the umBristol community.
Callum Whyte, Chief Bumpster at Bump Digital, explored his specific approach to building block list (list editing property editor) and grid based layouts for larger websites.
He outlined the key principles to follow for a great content editor experience, plus some interesting hacks and extensions to make the developer experience awesome.
Ready to talk?
If any of this sounds like where your own organisation is, we're happy to talk it through - no pitch required.
Reflections from MemberWise Digital Excellence 2026 on why membership organisations are moving beyond basic portal self-service and focusing instead on more connected, personalised, and engaging digital member experiences.
Choosing a membership platform is something most people do once. These are the questions worth asking every supplier — including us — and what a good answer sounds like.
Wattle are delighted to be attending the latest MemberWise Membership Solutions Day on Thursday 11th June 2026 in London - the data-driven decisions edition.
