The Future of Digital Experience Platforms


The Gist

  • Extension-first design. Umbraco 14 introduces an extension-first approach, enhancing flexibility and customization for digital experiences.
  • Seamless upgrade process. Upgrading to Umbraco 14 is straightforward, reducing the typical stress and testing burden on IT and marketing teams.
  • APIs boost flexibility. New management and extension APIs in Umbraco 14 support more robust and versatile platform integrations.

Over the past two to three years, Umbraco has really upped its game in establishing a product that can compete with other content management systems (CMSs) and digital experience platforms (DXPs). This has been achieved through a mix of different elements: establishing a more stable and regular release cadence, moving in step with other platforms to support headless publishing and a composable future and buying small niche providers to support additional capabilities.

Let’s take a look at the new Umbraco release.

Arguably, Umbraco HQ has been able to pull this off without sacrificing two of its strongest attributes — a global professional community of developers who remain passionate and loyal to Umbraco and an ease of use that makes it a popular platform with business users.

The latest major platform release is Umbraco 14. This is now in beta, but according to the Umbraco roadmap, is currently scheduled for Q2 2024, while the release notes settle on a target date of May 30. Whatever the final date, it is due to drop relatively soon.

This is a major and important release and marks another step in Umbraco’s evolution. In this article, I’m going to explore the major elements of Umbraco 14 and what teams need to consider.

This release marks another step forward for Umbraco’s roadmap, keeping pace with competitors by offering headless and composable support.Maksym Dykha on Adobe Stock Photos

Enter the New Backoffice With Umbraco Release

At the heart of Umbraco 14 is a completely new backoffice. Given that Umbraco’s reputation for being easy to administerand edit has become one of the platform’s unique selling points, it is crucial to maintain this standard. The work behind the scenes on the new backoffice, given the codename Bellissima, has been detailed on Umbraco’s blog over the past 18 months or so.

Despite the promise of a potential change, there is little difference in terms of the user interface (UI), so everything remains familiar for admins and business users. According to Umbraco, most of the changes are “under the hood,” with all the fundamental code having been replaced. The previous AngularJS is now gone and has been completely replaced with web components, TypescriptLit and the open-sourced Umbraco UI Library.

Andy Butland, senior developer and head of DXP at Umbraco, has previously said on his own personal blog that the upgrade to Umbraco 14 reminds him a little of the previous upgrade to Umbraco 9, when the platform was rebuilt in .NET Core, another fundamental release, that ultimately delivers value in the long-term.

Related Article: What Can We Expect From Umbraco in 2024?

Going Extension-First

The new backoffice, which forms the backbone of Umbraco 14, takes a new “extension-first” approach. This means that more or less every part of the backoffice experience is actually an extension and is implemented as such — for example, in the sidebar where there are now a number of different sidebar apps. The extensibility extends to the “Editor” view, which has now been renamed the “Workspace” and you can add a new set of “Workspace Views,” which were formerly known as “Content Apps.” Dashboards are still called dashboards but now can be registered with a set of conditions.

The extension-first approach means the backoffice is now far more flexible and customizable for each individual client. This means:



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