I'm a .net developer for many years and until now I was sticking to my own cms because I hated how all systems forced you to use something like a template which limited your applications. I mean I wanted complete flexibility from a cms, so it could work as a website backend, as a source for newsletters that could call for content through an API, or even as a standalone data editor for any other use.
I understand that Umbraco is my best bet and after visiting and browsing the website the last months, I decided to make some time to get started with it.
What I wanted to ask, is since I'm playing around and probably not commiting to a project for the next months, should I stick with the current 4.x release or wait for a 5.x beta? I'd hate to start all over after a few months!
It's important to know that the basic concepts of Umbraco 4 and 5 remain the same (Document Types, Templates. Macros) so it'll be my advice to use the current version (Umbraco 4.x) to learn these concepts as there's far more resources and videos etc.
Once you start getting to looking into the API then your choice becomes harder.
I'm not sure if Umbraco 5 will support XSLT when it's released so you might want to learn Razor over XSLT (though personally I love XSLT and find it super quick to develop).
I'll probably be starting with 4.x and understand the backend concepts.
I took a glimpse on Razor and it seems pretty straight forward, I hope this is actually the case. I also hope it doesn't have performance issues, because I saw a few posts in the forum about it and performance is probably the most importand thing for me, along with flexibility.
Also, isn't the template logic pretty dependent on xslt? How will it be removed? It may sound a bit silly, probably I'll figure this out myself when I get to know the basic concepts!
Regarding XSLT I'm pretty sure it will be supported with the initial stable release of v5 since it's very fundamental to the succes of Umbraco.
There has been some rumours/talks about XSLT not being a part of Umbraco out of the box in the future but I'm pretty sure v5 will be launched with XSLT out of the box. But in future releases you might need to plug it in if you want to use XSLT for macroes etc.
As it is now you can use Razor, XSLT, User Controls, python or even Ruby to create Macroes to fetch content so it's not like you can't fetch content without XSLT already. I think many .net developers use usercontrols and the API a lot when they're building their sites. XSLT is just another option (a very popular one among frontend developers).
Yup, user controls seem very tempting. I just think every developer wants to be in control of the frontend and know how it behaves. Actually custom user controls on the front end is what caught my attention the first time I was around! :)
Well, it seems I can't karma you yet so thanks everybody!
You're very welcome and please don't hesitate to ask further questions if there is something you need to know - as you have probably figured by now this is a very friendly community :)
Have fun on your Umbraco journey - we're right here to guide you through it.
Just to be clear, you use XSLT the same way as Razor within Templates, mostly it's down to user preference. I only use userControls if I have to, otherwise I find templates with macros (either Razor or XSLT) much easier and cleaner.
There were some performance issues with Razor I believe a while back, it's quite new so I think these were down to bugs rather than Razor being slow.
Umbraco is *fast* out the box (especially with macro caching) and it's been pushed hard so I doubt very much you'll find performance a problem.
Should I get started with the current version?
Greetings to the friendliest community :)
I'm a .net developer for many years and until now I was sticking to my own cms because I hated how all systems forced you to use something like a template which limited your applications. I mean I wanted complete flexibility from a cms, so it could work as a website backend, as a source for newsletters that could call for content through an API, or even as a standalone data editor for any other use.
I understand that Umbraco is my best bet and after visiting and browsing the website the last months, I decided to make some time to get started with it.
What I wanted to ask, is since I'm playing around and probably not commiting to a project for the next months, should I stick with the current 4.x release or wait for a 5.x beta? I'd hate to start all over after a few months!
And any other advice would be appreciated!
Thanks!
Hey,
Welcome to the forum!
It's important to know that the basic concepts of Umbraco 4 and 5 remain the same (Document Types, Templates. Macros) so it'll be my advice to use the current version (Umbraco 4.x) to learn these concepts as there's far more resources and videos etc.
Once you start getting to looking into the API then your choice becomes harder.
I'm not sure if Umbraco 5 will support XSLT when it's released so you might want to learn Razor over XSLT (though personally I love XSLT and find it super quick to develop).
Hope that helps
Rich
Hey Rich, thanks on your reply!
I'll probably be starting with 4.x and understand the backend concepts.
I took a glimpse on Razor and it seems pretty straight forward, I hope this is actually the case. I also hope it doesn't have performance issues, because I saw a few posts in the forum about it and performance is probably the most importand thing for me, along with flexibility.
Also, isn't the template logic pretty dependent on xslt? How will it be removed? It may sound a bit silly, probably I'll figure this out myself when I get to know the basic concepts!
Thanks again.
Hi Pantelis
Regarding XSLT I'm pretty sure it will be supported with the initial stable release of v5 since it's very fundamental to the succes of Umbraco.
There has been some rumours/talks about XSLT not being a part of Umbraco out of the box in the future but I'm pretty sure v5 will be launched with XSLT out of the box. But in future releases you might need to plug it in if you want to use XSLT for macroes etc.
As it is now you can use Razor, XSLT, User Controls, python or even Ruby to create Macroes to fetch content so it's not like you can't fetch content without XSLT already. I think many .net developers use usercontrols and the API a lot when they're building their sites. XSLT is just another option (a very popular one among frontend developers).
Hope this clarifies things a bit.
/Jan
Hi Jan, thanks for clearing this for me.
Yup, user controls seem very tempting. I just think every developer wants to be in control of the frontend and know how it behaves. Actually custom user controls on the front end is what caught my attention the first time I was around! :)
Well, it seems I can't karma you yet so thanks everybody!
Hi Pantelis
You're very welcome and please don't hesitate to ask further questions if there is something you need to know - as you have probably figured by now this is a very friendly community :)
Have fun on your Umbraco journey - we're right here to guide you through it.
/Jan
Hey,
Just to be clear, you use XSLT the same way as Razor within Templates, mostly it's down to user preference. I only use userControls if I have to, otherwise I find templates with macros (either Razor or XSLT) much easier and cleaner.
There were some performance issues with Razor I believe a while back, it's quite new so I think these were down to bugs rather than Razor being slow.
Umbraco is *fast* out the box (especially with macro caching) and it's been pushed hard so I doubt very much you'll find performance a problem.
Rich
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