Umbraco, a highly popular CMS platform, is used by hundreds of thousands of web developers, designers and content managers around the world. This CMS is appreciated for its ease of use, flexibility and more.
Today, we’re going to take a look at the most recent Umbraco release—Umbraco 8 (released in February 2019)—and some of its key features.
Language Variants
In Umbraco 8, you’ll find management of language variants is now an essential part of the package. The CMS includes new features such as:
- Side-by-side editing view
- Makes it easy to switch between languages while in preview mode (for easy comparisons)
- Easily set up mandatory and fallback languages
These features make it easier to manage content in several languages, all within Umbraco 8.
Speed
The update has extended and cleaned up the platform’s codebase, all based on input from contributors and use of the previous versions of Umbraco, making version 8 even faster than past versions.
Infinite Editing
Umbraco 8 offers infinite editing, which gives you the means to edit media and content without losing your place. This results in less time spent jumping between tabs and menus, hunting to find content, etc. You can now do it all from one place. There’s no need to go to a media library in order to create/edit site assets.
Content Apps
These are one of the most innovative parts of the Umbraco 8—they’ve introduced “Content Apps,” which give you a new way to edit, publish and update your content with ease.
Examples of Content Apps in use include:
- Google Analytics
- Information from 3rd party apps that relate to content
- Workflow support tools to make it easy to use processes for both content creation and review
In addition, it’s now possible for developers to build their own apps, then make ghdm available within Umbraco as an extension.
Segmentation: User Roles and Permissions
With Umbraco 8, you’ll be able to change a site’s content based on the current user. It’s also possible to optimise content for users. The CMS offers flexibility when it comes to assigning user permissions & roles and makes it easy to manage privileges.
What does this mean for users? Content can be optimised for mobile or desktop users, based on their location, or even how they navigated the site on that specific date. It’s easy to see who was doing what on any specific date within the CMS.
Forms
Umbraco 8 makes it easier than ever to create a form that’s easy to use and is completely integrated into workflows (here, think of email receipts, email templates, CRM integrations, and more).
In addition, you can also easily export data from the forms, making it easy to do analysis on third-party packages, for instance, Google and Excel spreadsheets).
Membership
These are different than user roles and permissions—membership involves those who will use the site. Members can be segregated, assigned roles, etc. You’re able to allow or deny access to certain areas on the site, pages or even content.
Workflow
Workflows can be set up through the application of user roles and permissions. For instance, a publishing workflow can be created allowing users to create and update content; however, they may not be allowed to publish content. The CMS can be set up to send a notification to other users on the platform who are given the ability to publish.
Workflows makes it easy to set rules for who can and cannot publish content on the site. Only those people given the publishing permission will be allowed to publish.
Content Search
The CMS uses Examine, which is a highly popular Indexer/Searcher API. Examine makes is easy to query and index content very quickly. On a site, Examine makes it easy to create search engine for the front-end.
Media and Document Management
If you have a site heavy with images and documents, Umbraco 8 makes it easy to manage it all with the media library. You can easily create folders and hierarchies, just as you can on your PC or other device.
Content Tags
You’ll find the CMS makes it easier to tag content when it comes to group content (for ex. Content within blogs).
Taxonomy
Developers will find it easy to make use of the simple tagging and hierarchy to create taxonomy.
Content Versioning & Rollback
Umbraco makes it easy to track content versioning and to rollback content when needed. In fact, you’ll find the differences are highlighted in the preview, and you’ll have the option to rollback if desired.
Analytics & SEO
You’ll find it easy to install Google Tag Manager on the site through the CMS, even though you can also choose to use the content apps that come with the platform.
Open Source
Umbraco is an open source CMS platform, which is licensed with the MIT license. As a result, any developer is free to use and customise the CMS as desired/needed. The platform is free of charge to use.
In addition, the platform uses the Microsoft.NET Framework, making this a highly secure platform to use. You’ll find the platform performs checks and balances to make sure malware and malicious code don’t make it onto your server.
No Design Constraints
This CMS makes it easy to developers and designers to create sites with features they need and want. Umbraco gives developers and designers full control of the front-end.
Headless
You may be wondering what does “headless” refer to in the Umbraco CMS. All this means is that all content management takes place in the “back office-only.” This CMS focuses on the administrative interface for content creators, etc.
Expandable & Extensible
The CMS provides many packages that make it easy to expand the platform and add the functionality you need and want.
As you can see, Umbraco 8 CMS offers many new capabilities and features that will make building websites a pleasure and a breeze. Umbraco 8 works across browsers and platforms, making this a versatile option for web developers and designers across the web.