Umbraco 9 is the latest version of open-source CMS, Umbraco. Released in September 2021, this major version update sees an entire migration of the Umbraco codebase from ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core.

To be expected with any major update, Umbraco 9 brings a variety of change, most of which is ‘under the hood’. All the editor-friendly features that many enjoy with Umbraco 8 are still available in Umbraco 9. This means content editors familiar with Umbraco 8 will still enjoy a similar user experience.

The biggest change? Making the move from .NET framework over to .NET Core/.NET 5. As Microsoft is no longer working on the older technology of .NET framework, an upgrade was imminent. The Umbraco development team have been working alongside their expansive Unicore community to bring the codebase up to date. In doing so, Umbraco is a future-proofed and more attractive CMS choice.

Let’s take a look at what improvements Umbraco 9 brings.

New technology

For the first time, and as one of the few CMS’ on the market, Umbraco is now fully on the new technology of .NET 5 and ASP.NET Core.

A customisable and editor-friendly open-source CMS, Umbraco 9’s underlying framework has been updated to the latest version of Microsoft’s .NET framework. However, Umbraco’s developers have maintained focus on making the new version of the CMS editor friendly with the overarching goal of making content management easier.

This gives developers the opportunity to take full advantage of all the improvements and performance enhancements delivered by Microsoft ASP.NET Core. They will also benefit from access to new technology such as Razor TagHelpers, Microsoft Dependency Injection, and View Components.

Improved performance and scalability

Much work had been completed on Umbraco 8 to improve performance and scalability and this has all been carried over to Umbraco 9 but, in addition, the new version also boasts even more power.

With the entire codebase moved to .NET Core, the better underlying technology stack has created new performance gains. .NET 5 is built with performance in mind and leverages new hardware and software architecture in a way that older frameworks don’t, as a result, new Umbraco projects will reap the benefits of these gains, to be even faster, less resource-intensive and more scalable.

Support for the upcoming .NET 6 has also been ensured.

Cross-platform compatibility

The most common benefit associated with .NET Core is cross-platform compatibility. As Umbraco 9 is on .NET 5, Umbraco is now cross-platform compatible not just with the Microsoft Windows platform but with all platforms that work with .NET such as macOS and Linux. This makes the CMS accessible for more developers who will be able to do their work in Umbraco on their preferred platform, running Umbraco 9 natively on their computer.

A future-proofed solution

With the improvements Umbraco 9 brings, the CMS is easier to control and maintain than ever before. It’s also much more flexible and developer-friendly with improvements to familiar APIs and services as well as new .NET 5 specific elements.

Umbraco 9 is here

The much-anticipated version 9 is here and we’re enjoying getting to know it better. If you want to know more about Umbraco 9 or would like to speak to us to discuss upgrading, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. In the meantime, if you want more information, these FAQs from Umbraco will help