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Stepping into Umbraco 12

With the release of Umbraco 12 on .NET 7, there's lots to get excited about alongside the refreshed & updated dependencies and frameworks

Introducing Umbraco 12 - a significant release that brings exciting new features such as the Content Delivery API for headless capabilities, support for Entity Framework Core, and an updated ImageSharp for better image processing. Additionally, Umbraco 12 has updated its other dependencies and add-ons, including Umbraco Forms, Deploy, and Workflow.

Umbraco 12 is a fantastic update that comes with an exciting new feature - the Content Delivery API for headless capabilities. With this new feature, you can enjoy headless capabilities without the need for additional installation or writing your own headless API. Another significant feature is the built-in support for EF Core, which is a huge timesaver for developers working with custom database tables. Additionally, Umbraco 12 has updated its other dependencies and frameworks, including ImageSharp, to ensure that your projects are running the latest and greatest and remain secure and performant. 

 

Key features:

  • Content Delivery API
  • Omnichannel Content Delivery
  • Flexibility, consistency, and support
  • Support for Entity Framework Core
  • A new version of ImageSharp
  • New split license for ImageSharp
  • Add-ons: Umbraco Forms, Deploy, and Workflow 12

 

Forms, Deploys & Workflows
Umbraco has released new versions of Umbraco Forms, Umbraco Deploy, and Umbraco Workflow. Although these are major updates, their primary purpose is to ensure full compatibility with Umbraco 12.

In Forms, the headless API has been updated to align with the new Content Delivery API from a documentation, library, and feature perspective. Deploy has also seen significant performance improvements, leveraging cache refresh optimizations made in Umbraco 12. As a result, deployment operations like restoring/transferring content and updating the Umbraco schema have seen a 35 to 50% boost in performance.

Both Umbraco Forms and Deploy are included with all Umbraco Cloud projects. Therefore, anyone running Umbraco 12 or later will benefit from these updates. You can find more information about the updates in the version-specific upgrade notes for Umbraco Forms, Deploy, and Workflow.

Headless
Previously, Umbraco only had a built-in templating engine and language for traditional CMS approach. However, if you required headless capabilities, you had to create them from scratch or add them through an extension. But now, Umbraco has a fully functional Content Delivery API, which enables you to go headless in all of your Umbraco projects, whether you need omnichannel content management or want to make Umbraco content available elsewhere.

 

Umbraco Heartcore - still beats strong
There may be some confusion regarding whether the release of our Content Delivery API replaces Umbraco Heartcore, umbracos headless SaaS offering. However, this is not the case. In fact, Heartcore offers several benefits that you won't get by just using the Content Delivery API.

For instance, Heartcore comes with CDN features, caching, GraphQL, and various tools in the backoffice that are designed to support all the Heartcore-specific features. Additionally, Heartcore is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, which means that all upgrades and maintenance are fully automated and continuously supported. The Heartcore team has been an integral part of planning and implementing the Content Delivery API, ensuring that there is alignment across both the standard CMS and the SaaS offering. In the future, REST API updates for Umbraco Heartcore will further enhance the alignment, making it even easier for developers to switch between the standard CMS and Heartcore.

If you require a pure headless approach, Umbraco Heartcore is still the best solution for your project.

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