The lowdown

The release day for Umbraco 9 is finally here!

 

We won’t go into too much detail on this article as Umbraco have done a great job explaining what’s new here and here. We can now take advantage of the full feature set of .NET 5 and the clean up of legacy code, so Umbraco is a platform for a sustainable future in line with the plans for Microsoft .NET releases.

 

It also opens exciting possibilities for the new features in Umbraco like the (currently WIP) overhaul of the back office using web components.

 

New Umbraco, new SteadyGo

 

We’ve had plans for our new website in the pipeline for a while now but the release of Umbraco 9 gave us the perfect opportunity to test it out! We jumped the gun a little and built and released our new site (the one you are currently reading) on Umbraco 9 release candidate 2. We haven’t spotted any major bugs yet but are excited to update to V9.0.0 today!

 

What are the new features in Umbraco 9?

 

The editing experience is the Umbraco that we know and love. The developer perspective is where all the new and exciting things are happening.  

 

• .NET 5 environment-based configuration – Gone are the days of cumbersome web config transforms, the new JSON based config files make it very easy to override settings based on environments making configuration easier than ever

 

• Unified Umbraco config – All Umbraco and plugin config should now be in one file as well as the .NET configuration which means no more hunting around for settings!

 

• The Umbraco backoffice is the same as before – which is is a good thing! It means editors have the same great experience and don’t need to re-learn how to manage a site making upgrades from 8 > 9 much simpler

 

• View Components – Although SteadyGo used HTML helper actions to achieve this functionality, having formalised view components make organisation of functionality and building component driven UI’s much easier

 

Keep an eye on our insights to hear more about Umbraco 9 features as we test them out and find new ways to build even better sites.

 

Top Tips for Umbraco 9

 

• As with all new releases, however well tested, there will be bugs. Umbraco have a rapid release cadence so they should be fixed very quickly as they are discovered but it’s something to watch out for! One way to help is by reporting any bugs you do find to Umbraco

 

• Documentation has historically been one of the most frustrating things about developing with Umbraco in our opinion, but it has improved massively with the addition of a dedicated content team, but there still may be things missing!

 

• Redirects used to be handled in the web.config which was OK…once you got them right. NET 5 lets you add them to the application configuration which allows for much greater control, debuggability and flexibility.

 

Final thoughts (so far!)

 

This is a very impressive start for the new era of Umbraco. Due to more regular releases in the schedule, we’re looking forward to a much smoother upgrade process to access new features and fixes compared to previous versioning from 7 > 8 > 9 which requires significant development work. 

 

We believe this will really benefit our clients, so they can maximise budgets on new features, instead of upgrades, and stretch the lifespan of their website even further.

 

We look forward to seeing what the future holds for Umbraco! If you want to get started with your Umbraco 9 project, get in touch.