How to start off with Umbraco v5 (jupiter)

by Damiaan Peeters 13. February 2012 08:30

Searching for some basic information on the new v5? Let me help you out on this one.  I tried to compile a short list of useful resources to get started with the Umbraco v5 RTM.  I’m not digging into the more advanced stuff like trees, custom datatypes, IoC, plugins,…

MVC & Razor

So, you want to start with Umbraco v5. Probably, you already heard some rumors about it. It’s not exactly the same as v4.

You should know about now that V5 is based on ASP.Net MVC.  You can find some basic tutorials on MVC on http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials.  Razor is the language expected by the view engine.  Even if you are not a .Net programmer, you should be able to get some results quickly.

My first v5 site by Sebastiaan Janssen

If you like to watch video, there is a 35 minutes video how he created a simple website in v5.

Languages, document types and templates

No nothing changed.  Well, a lot changed, but for languages and document types there are no big changes against v4.  Concerning the “Templates”, you only need to know that the common language is now Razor.  YES!  you can use razor in your template as well.  No need anymore for embedded razor scripts or XSLT macro’s.

Partial views

MacroScripts or partial views… What’s in a name?  Partial views are more MVC-ish, while MacroScripts are for the Umbraco v4 dinosaurs.  Nothing to worry about.  You can just create a partial view in the “Settings” section.

Although you can put everything in partial views you still have the ability to create macros.  The big advantage is that macros can be cached. This can save you precious CPU cycles and database hits.

Umbraco Jupiter has 2 new macro types.  Being Partial View and Surface action.  Shannon Deminick wrote about the new macro types in v5 on the Umbraco blog.  Please note that this is an older article and there is currently no Xslt support or xslt macro in V5. On his own blog Shannon Deminick wrote about Partial View macros.

Permissions

Matt Brailsford wrote a post on permissions in umbraco v5 which is worth reading.

Wiki

Did you know there is an “official” wiki on v5?  It might not be the most complete resource, but it contains very useful and in depth information.  The url is http://jupiter.umbraco.org/AllPages.aspx

Got issues or missing some features?

Report them at http://issues.umbraco.org or view the progress for the upcoming releases on  http://progress.umbraco.org/

Codegarden 12

Last but not least, go to codegarden 12.  The entire conference is dedicated to V5. It is said that it is a wonderful experience to be there.  It’s full of awesome sessions and activities .

You might also want to check out the videos of codegarden 11.  Umbraco v5 was still under heavy development at that time, but there are some interesting videos over there.

Got any other tips?  Post them below!  Or catch me on twitter if you have questions!

Upgrade of blog engine succeeded

by Damiaan Peeters 12. February 2012 22:23

After running my blog for almost 3 years on BlogEngine.Net version 1.5, I’ve finally made some time to upgrade to the latest and greatest BlogEngine.Net 2.5.  The only difference is that I reactivated comments using Disqus!

So, feel free to send me some comments, or catch me on twitter!

Who.I.am

Certified Umbraco Master, Part of Umbraco Certified partner comm-it, .Net and Azure developer, seo lover. Magician in my spare time.

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