Codegarden 2022: A virtually great time for Umbraco developers

Codegarden 2022 came and went earlier this year, and I was one of the lucky ones to experience Codegarden’s first ever Hybrid iteration from the comfort of my desk chair halfway across the globe. As one of the only digital agencies in Melbourne who are Umbraco Gold Partners, the team at Calico look forward to Codegarden every year, and 2022 did not disappoint.

It’s always an incredible feeling seeing so many people that are as passionate and knowledgeable about something in one place, and Codegarden is no exception. With so many dedicated and reputable faces showing up, it was just as much a learning experience as it was a celebration of all things Umbraco.

Codegarden is the biggest and only official Umbraco conference in the world. Hosted over three days in Odense, Denmark, Codegarden is an opportunity for creatives, business owners, project managers and developers to deep-dive into all things Umbraco web development, Cloud, Community, Business, Partnership, and industry.

Umbraco LTS, and Upgrading

Upgrading between major versions of Umbraco (e.g. Umbraco 7>8) has always been a large undertaking, and even some minor version releases have completely changed the way parts of the site work (i.e. breaking changes).  

That all changes as of Umbraco 9 & 10. Moving forward, upgrading major versions of Umbraco (V9 > V10 > V11) should be much more streamlined. In some cases, it becomes as easy for the developer as upgrading a NuGet package, and then making minor tweaks to syntax changes.

Umbraco has also outlined its approach to both End of Life and Long Term Support for current, and future, Umbraco versions. Full screenshot below, with some key headlines underneath

Image courtesy of umbraco.com

• Umbraco 10.0 is LTS and supports .NET 6 LTS.
• The next LTS will be Umbraco 13.0 and will support .NET 8 LTS.
• Umbraco 9 is in Support phase until September 2022 with an additional 3 months of security phase ending in December 2022.
• Umbraco 8.18 will be the final minor version of Umbraco 8 and was released on February 24th, 2022. This version will be supported for 2 full years + an additional year of the Security phase. EOL for Umbraco 8 is February 2025.
• Umbraco 7 EOL is September 2023

Umbraco 10

Umbraco has finally hit the double digits! To go along with its shiny new number, it also brings in some very exciting new features, for developers and general users alike:

• SQLite support
  Enabling cross-platform embedded databases, making it easy to get started on Windows, as well as Mac and Linux
• NET 6
  Running on Microsoft’s latest iteration of the .NET framework allows Umbraco to access some of the latest and greatest technical features .NET has to offer. Not only do we get access to the most recent and up to date APIs by running C#10, but Umbraco is now truly cross platform and even has official UNIX support!
• Nullable reference types
  Nullable reference types refer to a group of features introduced in C# 8+ that you can use to minimize the likelihood that your code causes the runtime to throw System.NullReferenceException. Umbraco now uses this for its APIs. 

Integrated oAuth with External login suppliers

This feature was also rolled out to Umbraco 9, and it’s something that a lot of organisations have been wanting for a while. This truly fits into the Composable DXP approach that Umbraco are taking, as it allows your members and your membership provider to be a separate service.

Composable DXP

“Composable DXP” was a buzzword thrown around a lot during Codegarden. Translating this term from jargon to proper English, we find that “a digital experience platform (DXP) is an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualised digital experiences.” - Gartner.com

In essence, a Composable DXP is a series of applications that are integrated together in a silo-esque way, so that if you need to you can swap one out by replacing it with another product. This ensures that your entire business stack has no single point of failure, as you are leveraging various suites of software in order to achieve the desired outcomes.

Umbraco fits into this structure by doing what a lot of other CMS’s struggle with, being easy to integrate and work with. Not only is Umbraco completely customizable, so you can chop and change parts of the backoffice as you require, but you can also integrate virtually any third party piece of software into Umbraco. Whether it be linking Umbraco up to trigger a Zapier call whenever a user updates a blog article, or creating a form that subscribes people directly to your Mailchimp subscribers list, Umbraco can do it all. 

And much, much more

There were so many topics and talks given at Codegarden this year, it was impossible to digest it all at once. While the items I’ve discussed were, for me, the standouts, there were some other fantastic talks that I wanted to give a shoutout to:

• Headless Umbraco – now and in the future by Morten Christensen​
• Open Source Work is Work by Per Ploug
• 10 Umbraco features you forgot existed by Callum Whyte​
• Umbraco Packages – These are a few of my favourite things by Paul Seal​
• Introduction to Blazor and Umbraco 9 by Corne Hoskam​
• What is next in C#? by Mads Torgersen

A big thanks to the team at Umbraco for putting on such a memorable and loaded event, and if you’re looking for a digital agency in Melbourne to work with you on your next Umbraco web development, let’s chat!