Here at Lake Solutions, we only recently wrote a blog about the introduction of Umbraco 13, which featured the integration of .NET 8 and Blocks in the Rich Text Editor. Now, Umbraco has shared news of the imminent release of Umbraco 14. In this update, while the front end will look familiar for content editors, behind the scenes, in the backoffice, there have been quite a few changes.
Put simply, this is a technology heavy update, which will be of interest to developers, while marketing teams and content editors probably won’t notice much change. Umbraco has utilised TypeScript to produce Javascript more consistently and Umbraco 14 encompasses a new architecture with new APIs - a purpose-built Extension API and corresponding Management API, which allows you to control ‘everything’. The Management API has introduced controllers for creating and managing content in Umbraco; while the Extension API means you can register extensions which are then loaded into the user interface.
This ‘Extension First Strategy’ will see extensions implemented in the same way and all the built with tools being available to developers. This means that most parts of the backoffice experience is now an extension, resulting in it being more flexible and offering a more tailormade approach, which can be adapted to suit your needs.
Lasse Fredslund from Umbraco explains: “The backoffice is just one client - and you can (in theory) create your own backoffice. You probably don’t want to build a client for everything, but if you have a scenario where information from one system should be transferred to Umbraco, or if you have a specific use case where an editor should be able to do something in Umbraco from within another application, that can now be done.”
Umbraco has also decided that it’s time for a spring clean with some of the ‘deadwood’ being removed from the system and legacy functions that few were using anymore being dropped. As part of this, macros have been removed, which have caused some maintenance issues over the years.
In addition, AngularJS – the free and open-source JavaScript-based web framework for developing single page applications – has gone. It has become less secure over time and, as it’s been discontinued anyway, it makes sense that Umbraco has removed it.
Lasse Fredslund says: “If you are an existing package developer, and maybe even learned AngularJS to be able to implement packages for Umbraco - it might feel a bit annoying to now learn something new.”
He adds that ‘luckily, you are not alone in learning that ‘something new’ and confirms that there is a lot of support out there to help.
Instead, there’s a new implementation of the backoffice using TypeScript, Web Components, LIT and the Umbraco UI Library. Umbraco wants to be as ‘technology agnostic’ as possible and give ‘developers, agencies and end-clients all the tools they need to succeed’.
With the Umbraco UI Library, the organisation has ‘ensured consistency in the UI across the backoffice’ making it easier to align and implement the same approachable user experience Umbraco is known for.
While this all sounds great, upgrading to Umbraco 14 will potentially involve some work to upgrade your existing Umbraco website onto Umbraco 14. For example, if your site is currently using third party plug-ins or your CMS has been customised in any way or extended, then you will probably need help, as any customisations will most probably need to be rebuilt for the new backoffice. It really will be a case of having a good sort out before upgrading to Umbraco 14. If you need support with that process, do get in touch with us at Lake Solutions.
As we write this blog, Umbraco 14 is not feature complete yet and it does have some known issues. However, it has been scheduled for release on 30 May 2024 by which time, hopefully any potential bugs will have been fixed.
If you’d like to talk further about what you need to do to upgrade to Umbraco 14, call us at Lake Solutions on: 020 3397 3222.