Umbraco 10 has landed: What this means for the future of Umbraco

The long awaited Umbraco 10 was released in June 2022, signalling an exciting new era for the CMS.

New Release Cadence

In 2020 Umbraco released their plan for their new release cadence and Long-Term Support (LTS) model starting from Umbraco 10.

This involved:

• More regular major releases
• A formalised LTS strategy
• Alignment with Microsoft’s own LTS release strategy going forward with .NET
• A formalised roadmap, which aligns with their overall release strategy

This exciting release allows developers and agencies, such as us here at Calico, to plan ahead and gives us the ability to provide a clearer roadmap for our clients moving forward.

 

What’s New?

Most Umbraco users won’t notice much difference between Umbraco 9 and 10. However, those users taking the leap from Umbraco 7 or 8 will notice some huge improvements.

Composable DXP

Umbraco 10's Composable DXP is more than just a new feature - it's a philosophy that provides greater flexibility and cost-effectiveness to website builds.

When deciding on a CMS, there is often a daunting array of choices, including full-fledged Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) like Sitecore or Optimizely. While these platforms promise a host of marketing capabilities, organisations often end up using only a small fraction of the features they pay for (like a Ferrari that remains parked in a garage).

Enter Composable DXP - a concept that enables organisations to pick and choose the best tools available and integrate them using Umbraco as the backbone. It's like building a custom car with the best available parts, rather than buying an expensive luxury car with features that may never be used.

This development is particularly exciting for marketers, and we anticipate seeing how Umbraco continues to enhance this offering.

Speed & Performance Enhancements

Umbraco 10 offers a significant boost in speed and performance, thanks to the platform's adoption of .NET 6, which maximises the use of server hardware and delivers enhanced performance capabilities.

According to Umbraco's testing, the platform has recorded an impressive increase in performance, ranging from hundreds to thousands of percentage points. While these figures may seem too good to be true, our testing supports some of these claims, and we are excited to witness the benefits of these enhancements.

With Umbraco 10, users can enjoy faster load times, more efficient resource utilisation, and better overall performance, leading to a smoother and more enjoyable user experience. This upgrade is undoubtedly an exciting development, and we look forward to seeing how it can benefit our clients' websites.

Easier updates in the future

Migrating to Umbraco 10 may be a significant effort for those upgrading from versions earlier than Umbraco 9. However, this upgrade offers a future-proof solution that will make future updates much more manageable.

According to Umbraco, many future upgrades will simply require upgrading a NuGet package and making some minor syntax changes. This streamlined process means that keeping your site up to date with the latest version of Umbraco will be easier and less costly in the long-run.

Incremental upgrades will be the norm, eliminating the need for a massive, expensive overhaul to stay up to date. Instead, updates will be more frequent, smaller in scope, and easier to implement. This is great news for website owners who want to ensure their site is always running on the latest version of Umbraco, with all the benefits that come with it.

.NET 6

Developers are eagerly anticipating the benefits of .NET 6, which offers a host of performance improvements, optimization, language features, and cross-platform support. Additionally, Microsoft provides LTS for .NET 6, ensuring its longevity as part of the Umbraco platform.

For those upgrading from Umbraco 7 or 8, .NET 6 represents the evolution of .NET Core and provides developers with new superpowers, including native access to Razor TagHelpers, Dependency Injection, and View Components. Compared to previous versions, .NET 6 is incredibly fast and works seamlessly across platforms, making it more versatile than ever.

One of the most exciting features of .NET 6 is the ability to develop on Mac OS. This is great news for Calico's developers, as it allows them to work on their operating system of choice, rather than being restricted to Windows. This flexibility provides a more personalised and efficient development experience, resulting in better outcomes for our clients.

WebP Support

Umbraco 10 introduces native support for WebP, the gold standard for high-performance web-based images. This is made possible by ImageSharp, a powerful image processing library that drives key features like image cropping and resizing. With this new feature, expect lightning-fast image support that enhances your website's overall performance.

Cross Platform, Baby

With the introduction of .NET 6 and SQLite, Umbraco 10 is now a cross-platform CMS. Being able to host Umbraco on Window or Unix based systems is quite exciting, and we look forward to trying this out in the near future.

Umbraco 10 is a huge leap forward for the platform, and with so many new features and tools to work with, we can’t wait to see how these changes improve our development builds, as well as deliverables and results for our clients.

 

What’s Next?

Umbraco 11 was released in December 2022 and introduces some new features & improvements that we are very excited about.