I have worked as a developer utilizing the Umbraco CMS for the last 5 years and my experiences over the years have been positive and negative namely between the core open source CMS and its "Pro" (paid for) companion add-ons.
On the positive side, whilst I've had to deal with massive changes in the Umbracos APIs, UI, UX; with discipline i've enjoyed a largely stable and enjoyable product. Our end-users also regularly comment on how good Umbraco has been to work on.
On the negative side much of this positive "shine" has been tarnished when "pro" offerings; namely Contour and Courier, get effectively "refactored" to reflect significant changes in Umbraco's core.
For us, these two products had become so essential in the tool-chain that when sweeping changes occur, upgrading and using them then becomes a frightening, unwieldy and all too many times, a terribly buggy experience.
Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Courier over a year ago, because v2 was impossible to work with. This also meant we had to completely re-evaluate the way we used the CMS, which caused huge headaches for us and our end-users. We're past all this now, but it did damage the perceprtions of Umbraco as a product.
I'm starting to hear good things about Courier again, namely that it actually works as originally intended. We may go back to it, but it will never be given to end-users again and would remain a developers only tool.
Sadly I really take issue now because Contour, which was very feature complete and stable in Umbraco 6 has become a cut down and re-thought product under the new name of "Umbraco forms". My latest foray (as of v4.0.2) into this product has demonstrated a lack of original features, a broken UI and changes in the APIs. What makes this all the worse is I cannot revert to Contour 3.x on Umbraco 7 because it's development has halted in favour of v4, with Contour 3.x looking and working poorly in Umbraco 7.
Considering these two products are commericial offerings (that we have paid for) I simply don't understand why the path they follow, doesn't seem to match the same rapid develpment cycles as the core?
Is it not about time these two products get drawn in and maintained as part of the core? Maybe it would make more sense to restrict their functional ability as part of a commercial offering instead? In courier for example limit the number of nodes it can shift from one instance to another. In contour you could limit submissions or only allow certain features for free.
The pro add-ons continue to be of huge frustration to me and I do think it's damaging to the core product.
I totally agree with you. Umbraco core is great, very happy with it. It has a fast release cycle. The pro add-ons however got a bit too many glitches/bugs.
Completely agree. We had put the Courier debacle behind us and moved on, despite being massively pissed off when Neils fobbed us off with
Cut down on the drama. Courier does work for the majority. Period.
Recently, we have been moving a big complex site over from Umbraco 6 to Umbraco 7, which has been quite the undertaking. We are now starting to worry since Umbraco Contour doesn't appear to work properly in 7.
Once again, we had made the perfectly reasonable assumption that Pro plugins, that we pay for from the Umbraco team, would work properly and be supported through the Umbraco lifecycle. The fact that this is once again proving to be false is very damaging.
On other Umbraco projects that we've rolled from v7 i've built my own forms and cut out the pro worry, it's very easy to write to custom tables and with a little tussle with AnuglarJS i've also managed to create my own custom section in the back-office.
Unfortunately on our main corp. websites our end users need to be able to roll their own forms, which is why Contour was sooo good!
What really annoys me is "Umbraco Forms" should have initially been a simple re-work of the back office UI in the rich new AngularJS framework, leaving ALL existing Contour data structures and APIs intact or extended as necessary. This would've retained backward compatibility and the headaches i'm now suffering. Annoyingly the UI is currently partially broken, although i'm sure it'll be fixed fairly soon. I found a plugin that will "upgrade" old forms to new, but that spectacularly failed! Pah!
I wouldn't mind if the trial versions were packaged with the core. This would allow the team to continue monitizing them. It might eliminate the package install / upgrade / findtherightversion headaches.
Umbraco Forms purchaser here, and I'm pretty disappointed so far. It looks great on the surface but there are missing features from 6 (which seems to be theme with Umbraco) and some of the existing Forms features just don't work. Even after a few updates, the Row option and Conditions are broken. It would also help if there were some sort of transparency to Forms updates. If you won't let me see the source then at least give me a changelog.
I've also noticed that load balancing support, while somewhat flaky in the core, is almost nonexistent in Umbraco Forms.
Ticked off with half baked, Pro add-ons
I have worked as a developer utilizing the Umbraco CMS for the last 5 years and my experiences over the years have been positive and negative namely between the core open source CMS and its "Pro" (paid for) companion add-ons.
On the positive side, whilst I've had to deal with massive changes in the Umbracos APIs, UI, UX; with discipline i've enjoyed a largely stable and enjoyable product. Our end-users also regularly comment on how good Umbraco has been to work on.
On the negative side much of this positive "shine" has been tarnished when "pro" offerings; namely Contour and Courier, get effectively "refactored" to reflect significant changes in Umbraco's core.
For us, these two products had become so essential in the tool-chain that when sweeping changes occur, upgrading and using them then becomes a frightening, unwieldy and all too many times, a terribly buggy experience.
Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Courier over a year ago, because v2 was impossible to work with. This also meant we had to completely re-evaluate the way we used the CMS, which caused huge headaches for us and our end-users. We're past all this now, but it did damage the perceprtions of Umbraco as a product.
I'm starting to hear good things about Courier again, namely that it actually works as originally intended. We may go back to it, but it will never be given to end-users again and would remain a developers only tool.
Sadly I really take issue now because Contour, which was very feature complete and stable in Umbraco 6 has become a cut down and re-thought product under the new name of "Umbraco forms". My latest foray (as of v4.0.2) into this product has demonstrated a lack of original features, a broken UI and changes in the APIs. What makes this all the worse is I cannot revert to Contour 3.x on Umbraco 7 because it's development has halted in favour of v4, with Contour 3.x looking and working poorly in Umbraco 7.
Considering these two products are commericial offerings (that we have paid for) I simply don't understand why the path they follow, doesn't seem to match the same rapid develpment cycles as the core?
Is it not about time these two products get drawn in and maintained as part of the core? Maybe it would make more sense to restrict their functional ability as part of a commercial offering instead? In courier for example limit the number of nodes it can shift from one instance to another. In contour you could limit submissions or only allow certain features for free.
The pro add-ons continue to be of huge frustration to me and I do think it's damaging to the core product.
Martin.
I totally agree with you. Umbraco core is great, very happy with it. It has a fast release cycle. The pro add-ons however got a bit too many glitches/bugs.
Completely agree. We had put the Courier debacle behind us and moved on, despite being massively pissed off when Neils fobbed us off with
Recently, we have been moving a big complex site over from Umbraco 6 to Umbraco 7, which has been quite the undertaking. We are now starting to worry since Umbraco Contour doesn't appear to work properly in 7.
Once again, we had made the perfectly reasonable assumption that Pro plugins, that we pay for from the Umbraco team, would work properly and be supported through the Umbraco lifecycle. The fact that this is once again proving to be false is very damaging.
Hi Zac
Thanks for your comments.
On other Umbraco projects that we've rolled from v7 i've built my own forms and cut out the pro worry, it's very easy to write to custom tables and with a little tussle with AnuglarJS i've also managed to create my own custom section in the back-office.
Unfortunately on our main corp. websites our end users need to be able to roll their own forms, which is why Contour was sooo good!
What really annoys me is "Umbraco Forms" should have initially been a simple re-work of the back office UI in the rich new AngularJS framework, leaving ALL existing Contour data structures and APIs intact or extended as necessary. This would've retained backward compatibility and the headaches i'm now suffering. Annoyingly the UI is currently partially broken, although i'm sure it'll be fixed fairly soon. I found a plugin that will "upgrade" old forms to new, but that spectacularly failed! Pah!
M.
I wouldn't mind if the trial versions were packaged with the core. This would allow the team to continue monitizing them. It might eliminate the package install / upgrade / findtherightversion headaches.
Umbraco Forms purchaser here, and I'm pretty disappointed so far. It looks great on the surface but there are missing features from 6 (which seems to be theme with Umbraco) and some of the existing Forms features just don't work. Even after a few updates, the Row option and Conditions are broken. It would also help if there were some sort of transparency to Forms updates. If you won't let me see the source then at least give me a changelog.
I've also noticed that load balancing support, while somewhat flaky in the core, is almost nonexistent in Umbraco Forms.
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