It seems like every week there is a new upgrade for Umbraco. With 15 sites in Umbraco, this is getting to be a bit of a task to upgrade all 15 and keep track of anything that is custom built for each site. How often should I upgrade? The sites I have created run fine in their current versions. What would be the rationale to upgrade outside upgrading for the sake of upgrading?
I would say the main reasons you want to upgrade in general are security, new features, and so you don't get left behind. Security is obvious; any security-critical update should be applied ASAP. New features are nice, but that's more of a user-preference when to let that prompt an upgrade. You really don't want to let the installations get so old that upgrading becomes difficult or impossible, though.
If you have that many sites to take care of, I would focus on not getting left behind. I think upgrading only for every 7.x version or two, plus major security patches, is a reasonable way to go.
I have tried to jump versions, but when I do the sites always break. For example, I upgraded from 7.5.9 to 7.6.0 and I get errors of the config/UrlRewriting.config file missing and a few others. The UrlRewriting.config file was there in version 7.5.9 and the site ran fine. I upgraded via Nuget and something broke the site during the upgrade. When I upgraded the site to 7.5.10, it ran fine. My concern is that if I miss an upgrade, something will break and I have to spend time trouble shooting the issue. I don't have the sort of problem with WordPress unless there is a plugin that is not upgrading, but not with the core of the application. I always have issues when I upgrade form say 7.5.x to 7.6.x.
Why is Umbraco being updated every week? I see upgrades from WordPress at the most once a month and the process is much easier to upgrade the core of the WordPress site. It seems like Umbraco is being released too soon and each patch they release is to fix something missed during development.
Umbraco cloud would not be an option. There needs to be a better update process. I cannot bill a client each time there is an update or I have to fix something that breaks because the Umbraco team decided to take a completely new direction. The change from using the node id was HUGE deal on one project. When we updated, a lot of things we had setup broke and the client was not very happy about it they even asked why are we using Umbraco when WordPress updates are free. This is the struggle with Umbraco. I like using it, but the upgrade process can be very painful and a waste of time. From a business perspective, this update process is not sustainable and saying the only real easy option to upgrade is to host on umbraco cloud is very limited.
If you are having that much trouble with your upgrades, I think you need to do an assessment of what is causing the upgrade issues. Most Umbraco releases do not have many breaking changes, and when they do, they are often pretty obscure, minor things. The only way Umbraco Cloud is able to do automatic upgrades is because not much manual effort should be required to do an Umbraco upgrade anyway.
If you upgrades are breaking sites every time, there may be an issue with the way you are building things. Do the upgrade issues you hit fall into a consistent category, or are they all over the place?
The upgrades are all over the place. Umbraco list most of the breaking changes, but there are some that are missed. Sometimes the upgrade goes smoothly and others, its a complete mess and have to waste time reverting back a version. This is not a good work flow for a development company to spend time on updates that should only take a few minutes to perform. I am competing against other developers that use WordPress and Drupal. I have been selling my clients on using Umbraco, but the update process has pushed some back to WordPress because they really don't have issues in the update process.
Something else to be aware of, Umbraco do provide version specific upgrade instructions when there are version specific requirements. Your example of 7.5.9 to 7.6 is a great example of that. URL Rewrite was removed from Umbraco because, as I understand it, it introduced quite a large memory leak and it wasn't very performant. They version specific upgrade instructions explained that there may be traces left that need to be removed manually.
This isn't necessarily an Umbraco issue, in some respects it is a .Net/Nuget issue as well when there are vastly complex changes that need to be applied.
Umbraco HQ runs an approximate 2 week release cycle, however in each cycle they don't necessarily update all their products. So you might find the CMS doesn't get an update for 6 weeks, but forms and courier get updates in that period.
Personally, I almost never upgrade to a .0 release and generally aim to wait for a .2 (e.g. 7.9.2) then, I read the patch notes when a new release comes out and see if the changes are critical or fix any issues I've been experiencing. If they don't I'll look to upgrade when time allows ideally not skipping more than 4 releases (but that is subjective to how quickly those 4 come out).
As for a business model, we simply charge a yearly support price for general maintenance which covers patch releases and includes a clause for breaking changes in Minor/Major version updates. This covers, for the most time, any issue that might arise.
For me there are always the same two pain points. Nuget packages not upgrading right, part of the time because the package simple puts stuff into the bin directory and not add references to the package repository and the second is the merging of the language configuration files.
I think splitting the language config into "umbraco" and "3rd party" would go along way towards easing my issues.
I think splitting the language config into "umbraco" and "3rd party" would go along way towards easing my issues.
FYI, Umbraco now supports this. You can put language files in the folder for a specific plugin under ~/App_Plugins/. It's up to the plugin developer to take advantage of that though (and they'd have to require whatever Umbraco version introduced that capability).
This might be a rather controversial view but for most Umbraco users they tend to upgrade infrequently (annually - longer..!).
This is one of the advantages of Umbraco as I see it - there aren't the long list of vulnerabilities discovered every few weeks like there are with Wordpress require regular updates. Take a look at the blog for the historical security alerts. Even when one is found HQ do a fantastic job of releasing a dll or workaround for the last few years of versions.
Unless there's a particular feature or backend bug you need to fix - why upgrade? There lies risk?
Obviously Cloud goes about this a different way and that's to be saluted too!
Is it me or is Umbraco versions coming more frequently? I upgrade a client's site to only find out a week later either from an Umbraco update or my client that something as simple as a content picker is broken. Umbraco is great if you don't upgrade and when you do, you risk breaking a site and spending hours fixing the issue. Seems to me that Umbraco DOES NOT do a good job a QCing their code and rely on developers that use the CMS to tell them when something is broken. I don't have this issue with other CMS's like Sitecore or Shopify. I like using Umbraco, but the upgrade process is very combersome when you have 8 sites to upgrade where each is setup a little different. Just looking at all the bugs on this page makes me not trust that Umbraco is ready for enterprize level and seems more like a hobby sort of project. I have spoken with other Umbraco developers and they feel the same way.
The solution seems to be "use the cloud", but that's not going to work when my clients want and need to host their sites.
I just wish that when there is a release, it is not full of bugs and have to update 8 clients sites because something that was working for over a year, is not broken.
Umbraco are purposely working towards a two week schedule of releases.
A lot of the time you won't notice what has changed in a release, there are performance tweaks, look and feel changes etc so they are not essential updates. Sometimes there are security updates so it's worth upgrading for them.
I work for an agency too and we don't do upgrades for free. Some companies charge a monthly support and maintenance fee, this can cover the cost of upgrading the website.
We don't upgrade most of the sites we do unless the client wants to. When that is the case we usually charge them for a day's work to bring the site from 7.2.x to the latest trusted version.
When new releases come out it can also introduce bugs. I usually take a client's site to the highest version of the minor release below the latest.
So if the latest sir 7.10.4 I would take them to 7.9.5 or whatever the highest is in the 7.9 versions.
I never jump to the latest when upgrading. I always take it to the highest version in each minor. So I do it in steps. I use source control and database backups between upgrades.
Have a read of my post for upgrading Umbraco safely.
The question is why so many releases? And what's the purpose?
I don't want to be a bad ass, I love Umbraco and have use it for the last 6 years, but the amount of new releases, which normally is a very good thing, is insane, specially for small(er) web agencies, lacking the resources and time to upgrade so often.
All of the sudden, projects created last year, with the newest version, are like way behind, almost obsolete.
The clients won't pay for frequent upgrades and they won't pay 3.000 kr, a month for Umbraco Cloud.
The answer to my question might be that this (the amount of releases) is a strategic decision to attract clients to Umbraco Cloud. Which is fine, but in the long run it might the path to self destruction, when something you love gets too commercial.
I miss the days when I was preaching to folk to use Umbraco. :-)
Just to dispel this myth: no of course we're not releasing new versions for strategic reasons.
The simple facts are:
There's more people working on CMS
There's more contributors to CMS
We have so many bright minds in our community who deliver wonderful updates to us, totally for free, in their own time - this is humbling and we're processing them as fast as we can
Remember Health Checks
Remember Change Document Type
Remember Content Templates (aka Blueprints)
Remember Nested Content
Remember all the new opportunities to make really, really cool packages
Remember all the new opportunities to create your own custom code
Remember ALL the small things that used to annoy you and required a workaround but now are no longer a problem
We enjoy releasing small updates which fix actual problems for people
In "the old days" we would just pile up fix after fix after feature after breaking change and release those in one go - making upgrades incredibly hard
What are updates good for? We've learned an enormous amount from running Umbraco Cloud, in order to keep our service running smoothly and to keep your servers running smoothly we've fixed:
Performance issues, so many performance issues
Memory leaks
Memory footprint issue
Minor security issues (non-criticial, critical issues would get a huge alert and patches for any version we can and need to patch)
Usability issues
Upgrade issues
Serious bugs that would lead to data corruption
We'd love to be in a position where upgrading to a new version of Umbraco is super boring.. in that it just works
With "super boring" also comes "quite exciting" as you have annoying bugs fixed and possibly some great new features
We're not there yet, but we're getting better at it
Friendly advise: remember, you don't have to upgrade to each little patch version that comes out, but it's good to have a support contract with your clients that gets you to do an upgrade every few months at least - the more often you run an upgrade, the less scared you get of doing them, the faster it goes, the more you earn on that support contract (win win)
Umbraco Cloud costs about DKK 183 a month
We are and always have been a commercial company, that's why you could love this free gift you've been given by HQ for so long - keep preaching my friend :-)
If I sound a little defensive.. well, it's only because I'm super proud of the current state of Umbraco. The things that our dev team and the community have accomplished over the past few years: astonishing. :-)
Ps. A lot of this has been made possible due to the early cheerleading of fine people like you Ion, so thank you for preaching!
While there might be a pretty regular stream of releases, there's no need real need to keep pace with every patch.
If HQ sticks strictly to semver, you should be able to jump from minor to minor without too much trouble, as patch releases shouldn't introduce breaking changes.
We try, but sometimes we need to make small breaking changes. We list them in the release notes as best as we can so you can be aware of them and anticipate them. We go out of our way to keep everything we can backwards compatible for upgrades through config options and additional code to detect new vs. older installs but sometimes we just have to break something, there's usually workarounds or instructions available for these things though.
It's totally ok to sound and be defensive. It's cool to be proud of the current state of Umbraco and it's hard not to be, regardless if you are part of the U HQT or jsut a humble user of Umbraco.
The part about the strategic decision on my post is not an accusation. On the contrary, nothing this good can exist without financial support.
And it's amazing what you guys do and how the company grows. I am myself happy and damn proud and I don't work there.
Umbraco Cloud is perfect; all I was trying to say is, that you have to keep in mind that there a lot of those who can't afford to pay for it and enjoy not worrying about upgrading.
No time for upgrades = no enjoying all the new features and "stuck" with v. 6.2 or 7.2.
It's like watching everyone drinking beer while I barely afford a glass of sparkling water. :-)
How do you remove the annoying popup where it says there is an update available? I have a situation where the Umbraco site was created in 7.5 and upgrading to anything over 7.6 is going to break several things on the site. My client has asked several times why I am charging them to do a simple update (I am not changing any functionality) when their other sites built in WordPress are free. This it the struggle I have. I sell clients on the idea of using Umbraco and pull them away from WordPress or Drupal, only to charge them to do updates when they had not had this issue with the other platforms. In my opinion, Umbraco should not release anything until it is fully vetted. Breaking pre-existing core components because the developer staff found a new .net library to do something better causes me to reconsider using Umbraco, especially when I update using Nuget and it doesn't really do a goood job of updating dependencies. Switching from using IDs to UIDs was a nightmare for some of my sites that were set up in 7.3.
I wonder, is the auto-upgrade approach that Umbraco Cloud uses something that can eventually be implemented for non-Cloud Umbraco installations? If so, have there been any thoughts about doing this? It may impact Umbraco Cloud sales a bit, but having safe, Wordpress-style one-click upgrades across-the-board would undoubtedly strengthen the CMS as a whole.
I have yet another issue when updating a site. Sometimes, like today, I tried to update from 7.6.6 to 7.6.7 via Nuget. The update from nugget went well without any errors. When I ran the site and took a look at the version number, it still said 7.6.6! This has happened on several updates and on multiple versions, 7.6.4, 7.7.7, etc... Why does the version not update? I updated 3 Drupal sites today in less than 30 minutes. Each time I update an Umbraco site I NEVER know what is going to happen.
Can anyone shed some light on why the version number is not updating?
During the upgrade what options are you selecting when it tries to modify your web.config and the like? If you're selecting no then the upgrader won't run on the next run I believe.
The web.config is being updated, but I leave my grid edits alone. The issue is with the .dll files I think. It seems that with every update Umbraco puts out, they change their mind on what dependencies are best. The bin folder always has a lot of change and I suspect that is where the issues lie. If you start with a fresh copy of a new version Umbraco runs, but if you upgrade, there are all sorts of issues not related to third party plugins you have to worry about. These issues are related to Umbraco itself and the way that the Nuget update does a poor job of fixing things.
What a great question and there can be a great many factors and/or reasons to upgrade.
I've taken projects from 4 to 6 and from 6 to 7 and they have all been incredibly difficult tasks for a variety of reasons.
ALL breaking changes in Umbraco which include .net itself, old/new .net libraries, outdated or unavailable plug-ins, configuration differences, schema upgrades, old vs new datatypes and your own implementation itself (XSLT, webforms & MVC/Razor) will factor heavily in any upgrade.
So you have to ask why? before you do!
If you're lucky enough to start a project on 7.x.x you are undoubtedly in the strongest position to keep on the upgrade path.
Here's some pointers to help keep transitions smooth.
Start the project in Visual Studio. If you're in a team env. some kind of source control is essential.
When you're developing use localDB and IISExpress to keep things simple and easy to maintain. You can sync schema and content with the team using the awesome uSync (pay for a license).
Limit your use of third party plugins, considering how long they will be supported for and make full use of nuget to keep upgrades straight forward.
Use ModelsBuilder with MVC/Razor in your implementation and consider DI with autofac (not essential, but helpful if the project is team oriented so that you can separate concerns and if required build in testing).
Sorry to reiterate but if you're not using the Umbraco Cloud service, uSync EVERYTHING!
If you stick to this, in general I've found jumping up in 7 relatively pain free. Issues do still creep in. There are still some awesome gotcha's that can ruin your day. Here are a few...
Caching in Umbraco is HEAVY. You need to clear down carefully after an upgrade.
.net libraries do still change, keep an eye on breaking changes.
Configs do still change, keep an eye on this, the web.config particularly.
The new v2 datatypes don't offer any kind of crossgrade, so If you want to use them you will need to find a way of transitioning data. There are third party plugins that can help here. Don't overwrite v1 properties with v2 or you will lose the data! Also be careful overwriting other property types. I thought it would be "simple" to change a textfield to a related links datatype....the data didn't get wiped on this occasion, but it broke the picker!
If you fancy a "tidy up" be real careful about what's in use and what's not! Believe it or not a few datatypes are essential for the normal function of Umbraco because they are required for Membership! So don't go wiping out stuff in an existing project without testing first! I've learned the hard way!
To fix my issue, I removed the local App_Data folder and all of the .dll files in the bin folder. I then did the upgrade via Nuget, which put back all of the .dll files and the upgrade finally took. Before I removed files, the upgrade seemed to work except when I saw the screen where is says upgrading from 7.6.x to 7.x, it would always say upgrading from 7.6.6 to 7.6.6. 3 hours later, I have finally upgraded the site. I have 3 more sites to go and who know what issues I will run into with the others. As great as Umbraco is, it is by far the WORST CMS when it comes to upgrading.
I have to say - your experience doesn't reflect my own. I suspect you're doing something different. It would be interesting to find out what.
You say you run nuget locally - do you then hit the site locally and then see the upgrade screen? Just to check do you have a separate prod and local db? What happens when you deploy the updated site to production or are you doing something straight on the server?
I have production, staging, and local copies of the application. Before I begin, we usually copy the production site over to our staging and local environments. Locally, I run the application with Visual Studio 2017 to be sure I have a working copy and the site is working as it does on production and staging. After I get a good build with no errors, I first try to upgrade via the NuGet Package Manage Consule (Install-Package UmbracoCms -Version 7.x.x). I then build the application and run it. Sometimes the upgrade does as it should and others times not so good. If the upgrade is successful locally or on stagging, I then run the upgrade on the production application and upload the changes. I have worked with several other Umbraco developers and they all have the same issues. Sometimes the update works properly, others it doesn't. After I finally got the site to update from 7.6.6 to 7.6.7, I was able to repeat the same process all the way up to version 7.10.4.
Interestingly I just updated a site and hit an error. The site was running under VS - I'd configured a local address http://local.mysite - when I set this back to IIS Express and a default localhost:xxxx address the install went through without a hitch!?!
UPDATE- turns out I hadn't configured IIS property to modify the source directory. It was never going to work.
Yes I have tried the update and install package via Nuget. Not all of my sites have an issue upgrading. Sometimes the upgrade simply works, while other times it is a massive fail and I have to spend time looking through documentation or posts to see if there is a bug or solution. Upgrading a site should not be a difficult process, especially if you're upgrading from 7.6.6 to 7.6.7. Umbraco is not ready for "Prime Time" in regards to it's upgrading process and small development shops like mine can't afford to waste time trouble shooting something that should not be an issue. I would understand if I was using a lot of third party plugins, but so many bugs in the core of the application can be an issue when it comes to choosing to go with something like WordPress, Drupal, DotNetNuke, etc... I like the speed at which I can develop a site, but the upgrade process is a mine field and if you don't keep up with all of the blog posts from Umbraco, it is easy to miss something. If the Cloud service takes care of all of the upgrade issues, why doesn't the standalone upgrade do the same?
My personal gripe with upgrading Umbraco is, when done via Nuget in VS, that it overwrites my config files and I've got to let it, or your instance may miss a new setting. Once it's overwritten them all you then need to compare vs old versions (fine, we use VSTS), but it's still a manual process. The same is true when you upgrade forms, it puts in a new config file and I've got to compare/transfer over my changes manually. It feels pretty laborious.
My other gripe is that VS doesn't allow me to filter by files that aren't included in a project, so on recent upgrades to 7.10.4 from V7.7ish I've found that I've had to go through pretty much every folder on the site to include required files. This is a true PITA, if anyone has an easier way to do this I'd love to hear it!
The more I think about it, the more the majority of my upgrade issues are with VS.
I've found that I've had to go through pretty much every folder on the site to include required files.
You decide here, no files that didn't get included in the first place need to be included. You should only include files that need to be built by msbuild.
Shouldn't do. We keep them backwards compatible. I'd have to look at the Our upgrades, but ALL of them were upgraded with "no to all" on the config files. I do not recall significant manual adjustments, which is how we try to make it work gracefully.
1.) If we don't include new items within the Umbraco folder, when another member of the team gets the latest version from VSTS it will either fail to build or build but then throw some errors in the back office because it's missing files. Are you suggesting that the entire Umbraco folder should automatically rebuild even if it's missing files? Items in the Bin/AppPlugins are included on the basis of whether they're recreated at build or not, e.g. license files, forms config etc.
2.) If you don't overwrite and compare your config files you have to go and add things in such as the new BackOffice tours config lines; and how exactly would you know that's required without seeing it? Answer, you wouldn't. I've a list of files that we've amended that I use when upgrading so I know which bits need re-adding back in.
On point 1, I actually agree with you on the point of VSTS and getting upgrades. In a team environment we have also suffered difficulties with other team members getting files....but STILL don't check in those folders.
When the team member does a get latest, get them to run a nuget Update-Package -reinstall on the umbraco nuget package and then rebuild all in VS2107. This should pull down all of the necessary Umbraco files for that team member.
On point 2, your mileage will vary depending on the update, in general i've not had many problems with 'no to all' and you should find it's pretty acceptable most of the time. But I have had a few occasions where i've needed to tweak the configs a lttle.
How often should I upgrade?
It seems like every week there is a new upgrade for Umbraco. With 15 sites in Umbraco, this is getting to be a bit of a task to upgrade all 15 and keep track of anything that is custom built for each site. How often should I upgrade? The sites I have created run fine in their current versions. What would be the rationale to upgrade outside upgrading for the sake of upgrading?
-Lee
I would say the main reasons you want to upgrade in general are security, new features, and so you don't get left behind. Security is obvious; any security-critical update should be applied ASAP. New features are nice, but that's more of a user-preference when to let that prompt an upgrade. You really don't want to let the installations get so old that upgrading becomes difficult or impossible, though.
If you have that many sites to take care of, I would focus on not getting left behind. I think upgrading only for every 7.x version or two, plus major security patches, is a reasonable way to go.
@David,
I have tried to jump versions, but when I do the sites always break. For example, I upgraded from 7.5.9 to 7.6.0 and I get errors of the config/UrlRewriting.config file missing and a few others. The UrlRewriting.config file was there in version 7.5.9 and the site ran fine. I upgraded via Nuget and something broke the site during the upgrade. When I upgraded the site to 7.5.10, it ran fine. My concern is that if I miss an upgrade, something will break and I have to spend time trouble shooting the issue. I don't have the sort of problem with WordPress unless there is a plugin that is not upgrading, but not with the core of the application. I always have issues when I upgrade form say 7.5.x to 7.6.x.
Why is Umbraco being updated every week? I see upgrades from WordPress at the most once a month and the process is much easier to upgrade the core of the WordPress site. It seems like Umbraco is being released too soon and each patch they release is to fix something missed during development.
Hi Mov3nforward,
If you want to know more about upgrades of Umbraco on Umbraco Cloud have a look here. https://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Umbraco-Cloud/Upgrades/
/Dennis
Hi Mov3nforward
The easiest way to handle upgrades is to use Umbraco Cloud -https://umbraco.com/products/umbraco-cloud/
You can move all your projects in the Umbraco Cloud system and after that upgrading will be like click one button
Thanks,
Alex
Umbraco cloud would not be an option. There needs to be a better update process. I cannot bill a client each time there is an update or I have to fix something that breaks because the Umbraco team decided to take a completely new direction. The change from using the node id was HUGE deal on one project. When we updated, a lot of things we had setup broke and the client was not very happy about it they even asked why are we using Umbraco when WordPress updates are free. This is the struggle with Umbraco. I like using it, but the upgrade process can be very painful and a waste of time. From a business perspective, this update process is not sustainable and saying the only real easy option to upgrade is to host on umbraco cloud is very limited.
If you are having that much trouble with your upgrades, I think you need to do an assessment of what is causing the upgrade issues. Most Umbraco releases do not have many breaking changes, and when they do, they are often pretty obscure, minor things. The only way Umbraco Cloud is able to do automatic upgrades is because not much manual effort should be required to do an Umbraco upgrade anyway.
If you upgrades are breaking sites every time, there may be an issue with the way you are building things. Do the upgrade issues you hit fall into a consistent category, or are they all over the place?
The upgrades are all over the place. Umbraco list most of the breaking changes, but there are some that are missed. Sometimes the upgrade goes smoothly and others, its a complete mess and have to waste time reverting back a version. This is not a good work flow for a development company to spend time on updates that should only take a few minutes to perform. I am competing against other developers that use WordPress and Drupal. I have been selling my clients on using Umbraco, but the update process has pushed some back to WordPress because they really don't have issues in the update process.
Hi Mov3nforward,
Something else to be aware of, Umbraco do provide version specific upgrade instructions when there are version specific requirements. Your example of 7.5.9 to 7.6 is a great example of that. URL Rewrite was removed from Umbraco because, as I understand it, it introduced quite a large memory leak and it wasn't very performant. They version specific upgrade instructions explained that there may be traces left that need to be removed manually.
This isn't necessarily an Umbraco issue, in some respects it is a .Net/Nuget issue as well when there are vastly complex changes that need to be applied.
Umbraco HQ runs an approximate 2 week release cycle, however in each cycle they don't necessarily update all their products. So you might find the CMS doesn't get an update for 6 weeks, but forms and courier get updates in that period.
Personally, I almost never upgrade to a .0 release and generally aim to wait for a .2 (e.g. 7.9.2) then, I read the patch notes when a new release comes out and see if the changes are critical or fix any issues I've been experiencing. If they don't I'll look to upgrade when time allows ideally not skipping more than 4 releases (but that is subjective to how quickly those 4 come out).
As for a business model, we simply charge a yearly support price for general maintenance which covers patch releases and includes a clause for breaking changes in Minor/Major version updates. This covers, for the most time, any issue that might arise.
For me there are always the same two pain points. Nuget packages not upgrading right, part of the time because the package simple puts stuff into the bin directory and not add references to the package repository and the second is the merging of the language configuration files.
I think splitting the language config into "umbraco" and "3rd party" would go along way towards easing my issues.
Just my 2 cents
FYI, Umbraco now supports this. You can put language files in the folder for a specific plugin under
~/App_Plugins/. It's up to the plugin developer to take advantage of that though (and they'd have to require whatever Umbraco version introduced that capability).This might be a rather controversial view but for most Umbraco users they tend to upgrade infrequently (annually - longer..!).
This is one of the advantages of Umbraco as I see it - there aren't the long list of vulnerabilities discovered every few weeks like there are with Wordpress require regular updates. Take a look at the blog for the historical security alerts. Even when one is found HQ do a fantastic job of releasing a dll or workaround for the last few years of versions.
Unless there's a particular feature or backend bug you need to fix - why upgrade? There lies risk?
Obviously Cloud goes about this a different way and that's to be saluted too!
Is it me or is Umbraco versions coming more frequently? I upgrade a client's site to only find out a week later either from an Umbraco update or my client that something as simple as a content picker is broken. Umbraco is great if you don't upgrade and when you do, you risk breaking a site and spending hours fixing the issue. Seems to me that Umbraco DOES NOT do a good job a QCing their code and rely on developers that use the CMS to tell them when something is broken. I don't have this issue with other CMS's like Sitecore or Shopify. I like using Umbraco, but the upgrade process is very combersome when you have 8 sites to upgrade where each is setup a little different. Just looking at all the bugs on this page makes me not trust that Umbraco is ready for enterprize level and seems more like a hobby sort of project. I have spoken with other Umbraco developers and they feel the same way.
http://issues.umbraco.org/issues/U4?p=25&f=false
The solution seems to be "use the cloud", but that's not going to work when my clients want and need to host their sites.
I just wish that when there is a release, it is not full of bugs and have to update 8 clients sites because something that was working for over a year, is not broken.
Umbraco are purposely working towards a two week schedule of releases.
A lot of the time you won't notice what has changed in a release, there are performance tweaks, look and feel changes etc so they are not essential updates. Sometimes there are security updates so it's worth upgrading for them.
I work for an agency too and we don't do upgrades for free. Some companies charge a monthly support and maintenance fee, this can cover the cost of upgrading the website.
We don't upgrade most of the sites we do unless the client wants to. When that is the case we usually charge them for a day's work to bring the site from 7.2.x to the latest trusted version.
When new releases come out it can also introduce bugs. I usually take a client's site to the highest version of the minor release below the latest.
So if the latest sir 7.10.4 I would take them to 7.9.5 or whatever the highest is in the 7.9 versions.
I never jump to the latest when upgrading. I always take it to the highest version in each minor. So I do it in steps. I use source control and database backups between upgrades.
Have a read of my post for upgrading Umbraco safely.
https://codeshare.co.uk/blog/how-to-upgrade-umbraco-safely/
Seconding the upgrade to the latest patch on the previous minor, has served us well for years.
The question is why so many releases? And what's the purpose? I don't want to be a bad ass, I love Umbraco and have use it for the last 6 years, but the amount of new releases, which normally is a very good thing, is insane, specially for small(er) web agencies, lacking the resources and time to upgrade so often.
All of the sudden, projects created last year, with the newest version, are like way behind, almost obsolete.
The clients won't pay for frequent upgrades and they won't pay 3.000 kr, a month for Umbraco Cloud.
The answer to my question might be that this (the amount of releases) is a strategic decision to attract clients to Umbraco Cloud. Which is fine, but in the long run it might the path to self destruction, when something you love gets too commercial.
I miss the days when I was preaching to folk to use Umbraco. :-)
Just to dispel this myth: no of course we're not releasing new versions for strategic reasons.
The simple facts are:
If I sound a little defensive.. well, it's only because I'm super proud of the current state of Umbraco. The things that our dev team and the community have accomplished over the past few years: astonishing. :-)
Ps. A lot of this has been made possible due to the early cheerleading of fine people like you Ion, so thank you for preaching!
While there might be a pretty regular stream of releases, there's no need real need to keep pace with every patch.
If HQ sticks strictly to semver, you should be able to jump from minor to minor without too much trouble, as patch releases shouldn't introduce breaking changes.
We try, but sometimes we need to make small breaking changes. We list them in the release notes as best as we can so you can be aware of them and anticipate them. We go out of our way to keep everything we can backwards compatible for upgrades through config options and additional code to detect new vs. older installs but sometimes we just have to break something, there's usually workarounds or instructions available for these things though.
Patch releases have to be non-breaking.
You try, and do a damned good job of it.
Hi Sebastiaan
It's totally ok to sound and be defensive. It's cool to be proud of the current state of Umbraco and it's hard not to be, regardless if you are part of the U HQT or jsut a humble user of Umbraco.
The part about the strategic decision on my post is not an accusation. On the contrary, nothing this good can exist without financial support. And it's amazing what you guys do and how the company grows. I am myself happy and damn proud and I don't work there.
Umbraco Cloud is perfect; all I was trying to say is, that you have to keep in mind that there a lot of those who can't afford to pay for it and enjoy not worrying about upgrading.
No time for upgrades = no enjoying all the new features and "stuck" with v. 6.2 or 7.2.
It's like watching everyone drinking beer while I barely afford a glass of sparkling water. :-)
How do you remove the annoying popup where it says there is an update available? I have a situation where the Umbraco site was created in 7.5 and upgrading to anything over 7.6 is going to break several things on the site. My client has asked several times why I am charging them to do a simple update (I am not changing any functionality) when their other sites built in WordPress are free. This it the struggle I have. I sell clients on the idea of using Umbraco and pull them away from WordPress or Drupal, only to charge them to do updates when they had not had this issue with the other platforms. In my opinion, Umbraco should not release anything until it is fully vetted. Breaking pre-existing core components because the developer staff found a new .net library to do something better causes me to reconsider using Umbraco, especially when I update using Nuget and it doesn't really do a goood job of updating dependencies. Switching from using IDs to UIDs was a nightmare for some of my sites that were set up in 7.3.
Set this:
In your web.config.
I believe there are a couple config settings that allow you to retain the old ID's (i.e., no need to update just yet).
Thanks
I think it only shows for administrators. You could create a different user group and give them the permissions they need
I wonder, is the auto-upgrade approach that Umbraco Cloud uses something that can eventually be implemented for non-Cloud Umbraco installations? If so, have there been any thoughts about doing this? It may impact Umbraco Cloud sales a bit, but having safe, Wordpress-style one-click upgrades across-the-board would undoubtedly strengthen the CMS as a whole.
I have yet another issue when updating a site. Sometimes, like today, I tried to update from 7.6.6 to 7.6.7 via Nuget. The update from nugget went well without any errors. When I ran the site and took a look at the version number, it still said 7.6.6! This has happened on several updates and on multiple versions, 7.6.4, 7.7.7, etc... Why does the version not update? I updated 3 Drupal sites today in less than 30 minutes. Each time I update an Umbraco site I NEVER know what is going to happen.
Can anyone shed some light on why the version number is not updating?
During the upgrade what options are you selecting when it tries to modify your web.config and the like? If you're selecting no then the upgrader won't run on the next run I believe.
The web.config is being updated, but I leave my grid edits alone. The issue is with the .dll files I think. It seems that with every update Umbraco puts out, they change their mind on what dependencies are best. The bin folder always has a lot of change and I suspect that is where the issues lie. If you start with a fresh copy of a new version Umbraco runs, but if you upgrade, there are all sorts of issues not related to third party plugins you have to worry about. These issues are related to Umbraco itself and the way that the Nuget update does a poor job of fixing things.
What a great question and there can be a great many factors and/or reasons to upgrade.
I've taken projects from 4 to 6 and from 6 to 7 and they have all been incredibly difficult tasks for a variety of reasons.
ALL breaking changes in Umbraco which include .net itself, old/new .net libraries, outdated or unavailable plug-ins, configuration differences, schema upgrades, old vs new datatypes and your own implementation itself (XSLT, webforms & MVC/Razor) will factor heavily in any upgrade.
So you have to ask why? before you do!
If you're lucky enough to start a project on 7.x.x you are undoubtedly in the strongest position to keep on the upgrade path.
Here's some pointers to help keep transitions smooth.
If you stick to this, in general I've found jumping up in 7 relatively pain free. Issues do still creep in. There are still some awesome gotcha's that can ruin your day. Here are a few...
To fix my issue, I removed the local App_Data folder and all of the .dll files in the bin folder. I then did the upgrade via Nuget, which put back all of the .dll files and the upgrade finally took. Before I removed files, the upgrade seemed to work except when I saw the screen where is says upgrading from 7.6.x to 7.x, it would always say upgrading from 7.6.6 to 7.6.6. 3 hours later, I have finally upgraded the site. I have 3 more sites to go and who know what issues I will run into with the others. As great as Umbraco is, it is by far the WORST CMS when it comes to upgrading.
I have to say - your experience doesn't reflect my own. I suspect you're doing something different. It would be interesting to find out what.
You say you run nuget locally - do you then hit the site locally and then see the upgrade screen? Just to check do you have a separate prod and local db? What happens when you deploy the updated site to production or are you doing something straight on the server?
I have production, staging, and local copies of the application. Before I begin, we usually copy the production site over to our staging and local environments. Locally, I run the application with Visual Studio 2017 to be sure I have a working copy and the site is working as it does on production and staging. After I get a good build with no errors, I first try to upgrade via the NuGet Package Manage Consule (Install-Package UmbracoCms -Version 7.x.x). I then build the application and run it. Sometimes the upgrade does as it should and others times not so good. If the upgrade is successful locally or on stagging, I then run the upgrade on the production application and upload the changes. I have worked with several other Umbraco developers and they all have the same issues. Sometimes the update works properly, others it doesn't. After I finally got the site to update from 7.6.6 to 7.6.7, I was able to repeat the same process all the way up to version 7.10.4.
You run Install-Package and not Update-Package?
FYI, you generally don't need to upgrade each incremental version. You can simply upgrade from your current version to the latest version.
There is currently a bug though, which means you'd want to upgrade from 7.6.6 to 7.7.x, and then to 7.10.4: http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-11300
Interestingly I just updated a site and hit an error. The site was running under VS - I'd configured a local address http://local.mysite - when I set this back to IIS Express and a default localhost:xxxx address the install went through without a hitch!?!
UPDATE- turns out I hadn't configured IIS property to modify the source directory. It was never going to work.
Steve
Yes I have tried the update and install package via Nuget. Not all of my sites have an issue upgrading. Sometimes the upgrade simply works, while other times it is a massive fail and I have to spend time looking through documentation or posts to see if there is a bug or solution. Upgrading a site should not be a difficult process, especially if you're upgrading from 7.6.6 to 7.6.7. Umbraco is not ready for "Prime Time" in regards to it's upgrading process and small development shops like mine can't afford to waste time trouble shooting something that should not be an issue. I would understand if I was using a lot of third party plugins, but so many bugs in the core of the application can be an issue when it comes to choosing to go with something like WordPress, Drupal, DotNetNuke, etc... I like the speed at which I can develop a site, but the upgrade process is a mine field and if you don't keep up with all of the blog posts from Umbraco, it is easy to miss something. If the Cloud service takes care of all of the upgrade issues, why doesn't the standalone upgrade do the same?
I've not personally tried the Umbraco Cloud, but the theory is it takes a lot of the headaches out of upgrades (at least it's advertised as such).
For those of you who aren't quite as versed in the idiosyncrasies of upgrading Umbraco...it's probably a better way to manage a project.
My personal gripe with upgrading Umbraco is, when done via Nuget in VS, that it overwrites my config files and I've got to let it, or your instance may miss a new setting. Once it's overwritten them all you then need to compare vs old versions (fine, we use VSTS), but it's still a manual process. The same is true when you upgrade forms, it puts in a new config file and I've got to compare/transfer over my changes manually. It feels pretty laborious.
My other gripe is that VS doesn't allow me to filter by files that aren't included in a project, so on recent upgrades to 7.10.4 from V7.7ish I've found that I've had to go through pretty much every folder on the site to include required files. This is a true PITA, if anyone has an easier way to do this I'd love to hear it!
The more I think about it, the more the majority of my upgrade issues are with VS.
You decide here, no files that didn't get included in the first place need to be included. You should only include files that need to be built by msbuild.
Yes indeed, I agree with Seb you only include in your VS project
I add-in the configs as I transform them depending on the environment. Also I include my uSync files as these need to be source controlled.
The rest of Umbraco stuff that gets copied in via nuget can very much remain out of the project (but will still deploy).
I.e.
DLLS, AppPlugins, AppData, umbraco folder, umbraco_client folder
On the contrary, it asks you. Say "no to all", always. That's how the documentation tells you to do it too.
I've not had much trouble with 'no to all' on minor version upgrades. But configs do change, so you cannot always assume everything will be ok.
Shouldn't do. We keep them backwards compatible. I'd have to look at the Our upgrades, but ALL of them were upgraded with "no to all" on the config files. I do not recall significant manual adjustments, which is how we try to make it work gracefully.
Ok so two points here:
1.) If we don't include new items within the Umbraco folder, when another member of the team gets the latest version from VSTS it will either fail to build or build but then throw some errors in the back office because it's missing files. Are you suggesting that the entire Umbraco folder should automatically rebuild even if it's missing files? Items in the Bin/AppPlugins are included on the basis of whether they're recreated at build or not, e.g. license files, forms config etc.
2.) If you don't overwrite and compare your config files you have to go and add things in such as the new BackOffice tours config lines; and how exactly would you know that's required without seeing it? Answer, you wouldn't. I've a list of files that we've amended that I use when upgrading so I know which bits need re-adding back in.
Hi Paul
On point 1, I actually agree with you on the point of VSTS and getting upgrades. In a team environment we have also suffered difficulties with other team members getting files....but STILL don't check in those folders.
When the team member does a get latest, get them to run a nuget Update-Package -reinstall on the umbraco nuget package and then rebuild all in VS2107. This should pull down all of the necessary Umbraco files for that team member.
On point 2, your mileage will vary depending on the update, in general i've not had many problems with 'no to all' and you should find it's pretty acceptable most of the time. But I have had a few occasions where i've needed to tweak the configs a lttle.
M.
We'll give that a go Martin and see how we get on :-)
is working on a reply...