when less is more

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I’ve taught Umbraco for years (v2, 3, 4, and 5)

I love XSLT. I also enjoy Razor.

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Have you used Umbraco 5? Umbraco 4?

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way with a quick bit of history…

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Umbraco is the Danish word for an allen key or a hex key

…you know, like you get with IKEA furniture

…the thing that brings everything together to fit perfectly

That's the original umbraco logo in the corner, by the way.

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It’s just as well it’s a type because “unbrako” is a registered trademark

And now when you search for ‘umbraco’ you get results all about the cms

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Difference?

Umbraco is not a SYSTEM you adapt to, Umbraco Is a Framework you form into something you can work with and fit

your needs.

Lotus Elise versus SUV on cruisecontrol

2-fold goal of umbraco sites – fun to build, easy to live with. These are NOT incompatible goals

Umbraco isn’t for every situation.

Though you can use Umbraco for almost anything, be aware of what it’s best at to get the most from it.

These are the big 3 building blocks of Umbraco.

Today we’ll handle these in order, starting with document types

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In my opinion, this is the situation between v4.7 and v5.1

All these slides are my opinion.

These things are better in v5, IMO.

But these are also easily corrected in v4 and there are packages to help even today.

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This isn’t better or worse, simply different.

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It’s true, Razor is even better in v4 than in v5!

And, you can use XSLT if you want to.

The differences between v4 (Master pages) and v5 (views) is mostly about the syntax. The ideas are extremely

similar.

Just like with id’s on <div>’s in your html that your CSS will target,

So the content will target the placeholder by it’s id.

Nested or master/child templates.

Eliminate redundancy… make site-wide changes quickly

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Toolbar buttons make it easy.

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Multiple place holders with default content (saves work later)

Better in v4

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New in Umbraco 4.7, you can use Razor macros;

… and can simply point to the file rather than making a macro in umbraco.

… Easier source code control and reusability across projects that way.

Lee Kelleher is working on a similar capability for XSLT

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There’s a syntax difference in v4… you use @Model. In v5 you used either @CurrentPage or @DynamicModel.

Otherwise it’s the same.

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Could also have @Model.Children.Where(“!umbracoNaviHide”)

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Be sure to check for a property’s existence in v4

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Translators aren’t in v5. It’s a very strong feature of v4.

And there are two excellent helps to make living with multi-lingual sites even easier because editing is easier than

creating (remember to always check the validity of a machine translation before publishing of course)

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Name change – they’re just called Macros in v4

Same capabilities

Syntax change in the markup, but same functionality.

V4 shown above, equivalent v5 shown below

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Only available in v4.

Use the cool “square bracket syntax” for macro parameters to automatically select values based on a page’s content,

a visitors cookie, or from a form value

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Add the ?umbDebugShowTrace=true querystring parameter to your url to see a full performance trace output

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While we’re talking about performance… Here’s a real-world example

During the site and tour launch there were 138 visitors every second.

Even under that load the large homepage rendered in 0.016 seconds (16 thousandths of a second!)

BTW, Umbraco is ready for load balancing (and Azure)!

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Macro caching is free speed!

A slow umbraco macro might take 5 hundredths of a second.

(fix the speed problem if you can)

With caching it takes just 1 ten-thousandths of a second!

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Just specify how long a macro’s output should be cached before it is run again.

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These don’t (yet?) exist in v4 or aren’t as strong.

Get involved and make it happen!

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Personally, I don’t like Canvas (aka ‘live’) editing and always disable it for users. But at least it’s possible in v4.

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All you need to do is set the publish and/or unpublish date and time and Umbraco will dutifully take care of

everything.

This is not available in v5.

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Yes, I really like XSLT. I also like Razor. It’s great having the choice to use the best/preferred tool for the job.

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There are over 500 packages for v4!

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(make your own and share!)

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Reserved urls and paths let you put your pages and applications in an umbraco site and tells umbraco to leave them

alone.

Turn off debug mode when going live – it also disables the output trace from ?umbDebugShowTrace=true

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Specify (culture-specific) 404 pages for your site

Built-in task schedular

Redirect users to your own customized help pages when they click the help icon in the back office

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Not in v5

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Not only can you make your own custom dashboard controls (really easy to do!)

… but you can show/hide it based on who is logged in to Umbraco

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These aren’t just big names, they demonstrate that you can build whatever you want with Umbraco.

No limits.

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Don't feel this way… for long, anyway.

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Become a karmanator yourself!

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Become part of the Umbraco Community!

People WANT to help you!

They have been in exactly the same situation and know what you're going through.

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There are more all over the world. Get local.

If there isn’t one nearby, start one yourself

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