If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you might know that we’re massive fans of Umbraco, the open-source, friendly CMS! We love Umbraco for its fully customizable website design & user experience, simple content management system tailored to the editor, and its low-weight solution that can be easily scaled to accommodate complex enterprise-level websites.

After postponing the Umbraco US Festival in 2020 due to the pandemic, the 2021 Umbraco US Festival happened last week on April 15. Our team attended the all-day virtual experience to learn more about what’s in store from Umbraco and to learn from the amazing community of experts.

Here are 6 key takeaways that our team is most excited about:

1. Umbraco continues to adopt a cloud-first mindset

At the beginning of Q3 2021, the US is getting its own data centers for cloud hosting! Umbraco is also strengthening its partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare to provide a safer, faster hosting experience for all their websites. We’re fans of both Azure and Cloudflare and Umbraco’s partnerships closely align with how we already develop sites for our clients.

2. The applications of Umbraco’s powerful CMS are endless

The ways in which Umbraco can be used to transform brands from all over the world is truly endless! We loved sitting in on sessions that show off how Umbraco can provide a simple content management experience, enable sales teams, merge two brands together into a unified experience, and more. These not only give us great ideas on how to help our clients but also opens our minds to the many creative ways that Umbraco can be applied to our clients’ unique brands!

3. Umbraco is migrating to .NET (core) with V9

Umbraco is currently built on Microsoft's .NET framework, and while Microsoft is still supporting the framework, they are replacing it with the .NET Core framework soon.  With .NET Core, Umbraco will be more flexible than ever, with new options for hosting and configuration, better performance, and more.  While updating their code, Umbraco is also taking the time to clean up things, creating a cleaner architecture pattern, better naming conversions, and providing new best practices that align with Microsoft's .NET Core. Most of these changes are behind the scenes - the database and most client-side code isn't changing - for end users, they will still be given the same Umbraco that they know and love. Umbraco V9 is scheduled to release in Q3 and we look forward to seeing what we can do with it.

4. Umbraco provides a flexible content editing experience through components

Having the ability to build pages out of reusable content components gives editors the flexibility they need to make a great site, but also can ensure that their site follows standards and website best practices, such as SEO and accessibility. Umbraco has many options to build reusable components based on your needs. Some are part of core Umbraco, such as Nested Content and Block Editor, while others are part of community-developed packages, such as Perplex or Bento. Whichever approach you choose, you can rest assured that you’ll be getting an even better content management experience.

5. Umbraco can build and support your marketing strategy

Marketing strategies are becoming increasingly complex, and the list of solutions is always growing. Third-party CRMs like HubSpot can be easily integrated into your existing Umbraco site for analytics and tracking. There are also Umbraco packages like uMarketingSuite, which can add powerful marketing features like personalization, A/B testing, and segmentation to help you reach your customers better than before. No matter what marketing tools you’re using, Umbraco’s easy platform for integrations

6. Everybody loves Umbraco!

The festival featured a few fun video drop-ins from David Hasselhoff, Tony Hawk, Mick Foley, Jodie Sweetin, Penn Jillette, Jaleel White, Mark McGrath, Kate Flannery, Danny Trejo and Jerry Springer, where they all gave Umbraco a shout-out. Everyone loves Umbraco (or at least now know that it exists)! :)

Interested in learning more about why we love Umbraco? Contact our team today to discuss your next website development project.