Hey everyone, I’ve been a dedicated Umbraco developer for a long time—since version 4.5, to be exact. Over the years, I’ve built a career that I’m incredibly proud of, largely thanks to this amazing CMS and it's community. It’s given me the freedom to create just about anything my clients needed, and if I couldn't create it, a massive library of community created packages to choose from. Whether it was a simple site or something much more complex, I’ve always felt confident I could deliver. But I’ve got to admit, with Umbraco v14 and v15, I feel like I’ve hit a wall. I can’t even write a simple plugin anymore, and that’s even after following tutorials! It’s like everything I once knew is shifting, and I can’t keep up. I’ve never had a real need for TypeScript in my career, so that has been a bit of a challenge. Sure, I’ve picked up new things over the years, development is constantly changing, but I always felt in control. Now, with three major version releases in just one year, and another release just on the horizon, I’m struggling to adjust. It’s overwhelming, to say the least. To be clear, this isn’t meant as criticism—I know the Umbraco team is working hard to move things forward, and I want that too. But I can’t help wondering if anyone else feels the same way. Are these changes exciting for others? Are we as a community ready for this massive leap? I’ve been doing web development for over 25 years, and for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling a real fear of being left behind. Maybe it’s just the natural course of things—the younger generation stepping in with their fresh skills and perspectives. Maybe this is their time to shine, and I’m feeling a bit of imposter syndrome creeping in. I’d love to hear from others, especially those who’ve been on this journey for a while. How are you all adapting to these changes? Are you embracing them, or are you feeling a bit lost like me? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Cheers, -Roger

I have felt the same with trying to move CSP manager over and hit a solid wall in Typescript until talking to @Nik about the issues he had overcome with the same and I realised I was trying to do everything instead of one small bit Also you don't need Typescript to create packages or any processing etc. Just Umbraco and the community haven't got the full traction of how we do it! With Hacktober round the corner am sure we will see some virtual hack sessions like last year with people hacking and/or looking to pair up and figure things out

I've been using Umbraco since 2008 and I remember similar feelings several times in the past, but a little bit of perseverance and soon the struggles will feel like a distant memory. Moving from xslt to Razor, then later to V8 and components and composers felt like a struggle at the time but that all seems trivial now. I think this feels like a bigger step (for me at least) since at work we were stuck on V8 until recently so the jump is Framework to Core as well as now looking at going headless so that also needs getting up to speed with the Content Delivery API and a front end framework (Next js in my case). I feel I have to build something myself before I 'get it' so that's what I'm focussing on now.

In my case. I'm new to Umbraco and i started when v13 just came out. And my struggle was guides. Most easily available info is for version v9 and under. And a lot of things changed so it was hard to find even simplest things like getting member custom properties. Or creating a blocklist in the backend.

I certainly feel the lostness at times, and can wholeheartedly sympathise with you Roger. Started as well back on V4 and transitioned through every major hurdle such as yourself (albeit some of those hurdles taking me years to break the old habits of!) The V8 Framework to V9 Core jump was certainly the biggest 'oh no' moment with how much it felt it had set me back. Recently i've found certain AI tools ability to digest and explain certain code files fantastic for catching me up to a somewhat relevant speed and even though I may not grasp the solutions as fast as others do, it atleast helps keep the mind ticking along with all the new developments being made Umbraco and .net Core wise. (Its especially helped me with DI as for some darn reason it took me aaages to crack that thought process). Keep cracking on chap. Its difficult, but being in the industry for 25 years as you say, your experience and wisdom is invaluable!

I'm finding new back office a strain, but am getting there slowly, not so many free braincells these days 🤣

I've been a 'web deisgner' since 1996 and started using Umbraco since version 4.6. I started building client sites in 2018 in version 7 and have not looked back. Being mostly front end I love working with Block List and Block Grid and have even made a few packages. My experience with V14+ is the opposite to most .Net devs… I comfortable creating web components, with or without VIte, Lit and Typescript. I got one working in V14, with the help of @Warren Buckley's scaffolding kit, as he released it. The problem I have is learning how to get my web components integrated with Umbraco! At CodeGarden I tried to make life easier by taking a .Net Razor app I had made and converting it to WASM in the hope it would be easier to integrate, but even with the help of people much smarter than me I could not get it working, although I feel we got close. Since then there are a few people who have got Blazor WASM apps working in V14. But… I am not giving up hope. I quite easily recreated the intrinsic parts of UmBootstrap in V14 quite easily. This is such a great community I am confident with a bit of knowledge sharing we will have a fantastic selection of packages ready for the next LTS V17 and the start of a new Umbraco era.

Hi, I totally agree, I have been struggling with porting my packages to V14 for some time, even after doing the backoffice course I am still struggling It's a learning curve for sure! I'm waiting for some other packages to be ported and will be tearing them apart to see how things work

Hi, I must admit due to things changing in my personal life (divorce) and professionally I did not try out V14 yet. Also I don't think it's production ready yet. Not everything was ready with the V14 release and it seems critical functionality has been removed without the docs telling you so (https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/issues/17035) But back when they released the RFC for the new back office extension API, I raised a few concerns with the direction that was taken (https://github.com/umbraco/rfcs/pull/27#issuecomment-947602231) Personally I did and do not like that things moved more to the front-end, because I am backend developer. I have been doing Umbraco since V3 and most developers ( that I know) extending the back office (in a project or in a package) have primarily been C# developers. I see a lot of seasoned package developers struggle at the moment getting there package moved over to V14. But I am sure this is just a steep learning curve we have to overcome. We had several of them in the past : V3 - > V4 : move from custom templating syntax to .NET master pages V4 -> V4.5 : razor was introduced V4.5 -> V4.9 : the introduction of MVC V4.9 -> V6 : new request pipeline (contentfinders, url providers, etc...), new CRUD services V6 -> V7 : Angular backoffice V7 -> V8 : too much changes to name V8 -> V9 : move to .NET Core And most of us learned to deal with these changes.

I'm finding the same in v14. The actual Umbraco docs are pretty good, but it seems the community is not quite caught up as far as what we are used to in the past with blog posts and samples/examples and community findings. To be expected though right? It's so new still, but for now I'm largely just blindly feeling my way around.

As an example this has taken 2 months ish... Sooo painful, but it's starting to make sense... At this point I'm at the lit stage and haven't touched the Umbraco side yet https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1282003949993590835/1283888721963253935/umbnav2.mp4?ex=66e4a20c&is=66e3508c&hm=531ac6981aaba6d4111a5a19d5d2b61924e443d3c4efc880c71ec1a43923c642&

Sorry mate, sounds like it been a bumpy road. You've been at this even longer than me. I missed v3 entirely and didn't really get into v4 until many of the kinks were ironed out. I also am probably more of a backend developer than a front end- though I certainly know my way around javascript/jquery/angular.js and even my CSS is not too bad, I generally leave front end to the folks who are really good at it. The idea of trying to be a web component developer is almost as daunting as the alternative of not being able to develop custom property editors.

I would say one thing, the umbraco v14 backoffice course I did in August was 100% worth it! It cleared up a fair amount

must do that one then 🙂

This is @Warren Buckley's Automate Umbraco Project Setup Using GitHub Template Repositories and Actions which has helped me get started https://blog.hackmakedo.com/2024/06/10/automate-umbraco-project-setup-using-github-template-repositories-and-actions/

I'm actually really liking Vite and Lit for making backoffice components. My biggest lightbulb moment was realizing that Lit has a lifecycle. Lit will render properties in real time when they change, just like angular.js. As for structure, I've set up typescript in a new project, vite builds it and it goes to my web project under /App_Plugins/PluginName/PluginName.js it works fine. My only real complaint is there seeming to be no real documentation for all of the umbraco contexts that are available. If I need the current node id in the backoffice, how am I to know that I need the UMB_DOCUMENT_WORKSPACE_CONTEXT?

I agree that the lack of doc for v14 at the moment is quite an issue. In order to have a usable workspace, we need few dozens of manifest items and contexts without any proper guides yet beside looking into the source code. ⌨️ But I believe that the new backoffice will be around for couple years so we still have time to catch up with it. 🤞

Hey everyone, I have been reading this thread and its comments with great interest. We at Umbraco are always looking for ways to improve, and these comments are precious for our continued work with the Backoffice. What is clear to me (and as stated in this thread) is that the official documentation is still lackluster; There are many new concepts in Bellissima including “workspaces” and “contexts”, and I know these areas in particular are still in a draft state more or less, and that is just for reference documentation. To connect all of the new concepts, we have been using tutorials to a greater extent in the V14 documentation, and currently, none show off all the available contexts. More tutorials will be made available to show off what Bellissima can do. I would be interested in hearing more about what you are looking for in this regard. Feel free to email us at backoffice@umbraco.dk with suggestions or contribute to the documentation if you find anything interesting. I commend all of you for getting things done regardless: You have been looking through the source code, written blog articles, and made packages/starter kits/GitHub templates to ease getting started. I am proud of you as a community for getting together like this to overcome one of the largest hurdles Umbraco has encountered