What is Umbraco?
What is Umbraco? Quite simply it is the most fantastic Content Management system there is! It’s open source, easy to use and powers some of the biggest and most popular websites in the world. It differs from a lot of other CMSs: there’s very little to see, it doesn’t come pre-configured with blog packages or news feeds. To the untrained eye, it seems very spartan indeed. This is a not a negative, however, it is Umbraco’s greatest strength. The structure allows us to build websites incredibly quickly from scratch, just the way we want them. Blogs and News modules can be tailored to the exact requirements of the client, whereas we would argue that trying to do the same with prebuilt modules in a CMS, is significantly more labour-intensive.
Umbraco’s XML-based content storage is as fast as lightening, so pages can be served with minimal server resources, even with large volumes of traffic to your site. Logical content storage and rich API, combined with a super-clean markup storage mechanism mean that what you get out of Umbraco is exactly what you want – no extras, no bloating, just clean, elegant code. Not only is Umbraco one of the best open source content management systems available, it’s one of the best content management systems available, period.
Umbraco is a fully-featured open source content management system with the flexibility to run anything from small campaign or brochure sites right through to complex applications for Fortune 500’s and some of the largest media sites in the world.
Umbraco is easy to learn and use, making it perfect for web designers, developers and content creators alike.
You can be up and running in just a few minutes with our simple installer. Either apply one of the included starter kits or seamlessly integrate your own design.
Umbraco is strongly supported by both an active and welcoming community of users around the world, and backed up by a rock-solid commercial organization providing professional support and tools. Umbraco can be used in its free, open-source format with the additional option of professional tools and support if required.
Umbraco CMS is now running .NET 7 with all the features and improvements the new framework brings. On top of that, you get a brand Block Grid Editor, that is sure to delight developers and content editors alike. With a new marketplace for packages and integrations, overhauled documentation, and updates for both Umbraco Forms and Deploy, there’s plenty to be excited about for Umbraco 11 and beyond.
Umbraco 11 – not just a CMS release
Another milestone can be checked off the list with today’s release of Umbraco 11. Numerous updates, improvements, and new features for developers and editors alike help make this another solid major release for Umbraco.
This time it’s not just the CMS that is getting updates though. Along with version 11, you also get a shiny new Umbraco Marketplace, for browsing packages, integrations, and Tech Partners, directly from the backoffice or the new website. Documentation for Umbraco 11 is also found a new home, with much-improved discoverability, search, and more.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, first up is a look at the new features and improvements in Umbraco 11.
On the latest version of .NET
Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s release of .NET 7, Umbraco CMS is ready with full support for the new version of the framework. And there are plenty of things to be excited about.
By starting new projects, or upgrading existing ones to Umbraco 11, everyone gets to enjoy the benefits of the new version.
Powerful improvements for developers
Both .NET 7 and ASP.NET Core 7 contain a long list of new features and improvements that make development easier and faster, and – just like with Umbraco 10 – you get access to the latest C# version. C#11 adds many new features, not least new functionality for working with raw string literals, meaning you can write much cleaner and more readable code, without having to escape special characters.
What’s new in Umbraco 11
New Property Editor: Block Grid Editor
The Block Grid Editor is a new Property Editor focusing on bringing better layout and content structure capabilities to editors. Taking a cue from the popular Grid Layout editor that has been delivering layout capabilities for content editors since Umbraco 7, the Block Grid Editor is built on modern and future-proof technology and provides a vastly improved developer experience on top.
Building Blocks
As you might have guessed from the name – Block Grid Editor – everything is now based on Blocks (Element Types) which allows developers to craft tailored editing experiences and content structures using known conventions. If you’re at all familiar with the Block List Editor (or Nested) you’ll be right at home.
Using Blocks and Element Types allows you to configure content and settings in a much easier way than with the old Grid Layout editor. You can now use Property Editors to create the Blocks. This means you have many more options and tools available out-of-the-box to tailor the editing experience.
Laying out a Grid
There are two different ways of controlling the layout in the Block Grid Editor. Size Options for individual Blocks, and Areas that create predefined content areas, essentially allowing you to nest your grids and control the functionality of these nested grids. This is done to give flexibility in how you work with layout and allow for varying degrees of freedom and creativity.
You can use predefined layouts or a more free-form layout experience where you can resize individual elements.
And you of course get all the features you’re used to from the Block List Editor such as adding Settings, drag and drop re-ordering, copy/paste blocks, and Property Actions, all in a familiar editing interface.
Advanced Configuration
With the features listed above, you can create a flexible content editing experience focusing on freedom and creativity or predefined layout structures – or maybe even a combination of both.
There are Advanced configuration options that allow you to add custom views and stylesheets, control the size of the overlay for a Block, and hide the content edit button if you’re creating an inline editing experience or pulling in data that can’t be edited. These are useful tools but not necessary for creating a good editing experience. Still, they can help make a highly customized editing experience that makes your editors happy, and more easily achievable than ever before.
Making a Beautiful Frontend
Having good configuration and a great editing experience is not the full job though – it also needs to translate into something great on the front end. As with all things Umbraco, you have full control over markup and CSS.
There are helper methods to render Block Grid content. You can either use the example rendering that ships with Umbraco or create your own custom renderer. You can also create partial views for your custom Blocks and it all comes with full support for Models Builder so as a developer you can with strongly typed models with the Block Grid Editor.
Getting Started with the Block Grid editor
First, there is extensive documentation for the Block Grid Editor covering all the topics mentioned above.
When you add a new Block Grid Editor to your installation, you get the option to add a sample configuration that adds a few simple blocks such as Headline and Rich Text, and you can start from there. This is very similar to the default configuration that shipped with the old Grid Layout editor but now it is optional.
We’ve also published a Block Grid Example Site showing how a more advanced setup can be achieved with the Block Grid Editor. It has a pre-configured Block Grid with custom views for the backoffice, clever use of Areas, and more. Ready to be installed into a new Umbraco 11 project straight from NuGet:
dotnet add package Umbraco.BlockGrid.Example.Website
In the coming weeks, we will publish a series of deep-dive blog posts for the Block Grid Editor that will go into detail on all the areas along with examples of both configuration, code, and implementation. If you want a quick visual introduction, Kenn Jacobsen from Umbraco HQ did a talk at the recent Umbraco Together event that will help get you off to a good start.
It is worth noting that the Block Grid Editor will be added to Umbraco 10 (10.4) in an upcoming release, to make sure this new powerful Property Editor is available in the LTS version as well.
Umbraco Marketplace in the Package Section
If you go to the Package Section of the Umbraco 11 backoffice you will notice that things have changed quite a bit. Along with Umbraco 11, we have launched a new home for Umbraco packages.
The new marketplace is not only available from the backoffice, but it is also browsable directly on marketplace.umbraco.com. It contains Umbraco packages for Umbraco 8+ as well as integrations and profiles for the growing Tech Partners eco-system. It is the place to go to see what is possible in terms of extending Umbraco and integrating 3rd-party services.
The “old” package listing at our.umbraco.com/packages will still be there for older versions of Umbraco.
Clean(er) Architecture
In this release, we have further abstracted some of the tightly coupled dependencies that existed in Umbraco 9 and 10. Even though the last couple of major releases have made big strides in this area and a lot of work went into creating cleaner architecture, it could still be difficult to upgrade some dependencies or indeed swap them out entirely.
This is now easier with improvements to the architecture and how these dependencies are referenced. For most, the changes here will not be noticeable. Should you encounter one of these situations, the path forward is more straightforward.
Updated dependencies
One of the huge benefits of having a fast major release cadence (every 6 months) is that we get to keep Umbraco up-to-date with all the fantastic work that is being done in both the underlying framework, as mentioned above, but also all the other dependencies used in Umbraco CMS. This means more secure and performant installations, with all the latest functionality.
TinyMCE
Aside from the obvious and beneficial upgrade to .NET 7, there are a number of updates, both big and small. Especially worth mentioning is the upgrade of TinyMCE, the JS framework used for Rich Text editing in the backoffice. Upgrading from version 4 to version 6 of TinyMCE is a big step with an improved user and developer experience, enhanced performance, and more.
How to Choose Top and Reliable Umbraco 11 Hosting?
How to choose a top and reliable web host for Umbraco 11? Choosing a top and reliable web host for Umbraco 11 is not a simple task especially with low price offers. You need to take a large number of factors into consideration, including the Umbraco 11 compatibility, usability, features, speed, reliability, price, company reputation, etc. Therefore, we have established this Umbraco 11 review site, which is designed to help you find the best Umbraco 11 host within minutes, based on our specialized editors’ Umbraco 11 hosting experience and real customers’ feedback.
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