Umbraco v4 Web CMS Coming Soon

By Barb Mosher | Published Jan 27, 2009

The excitement is building in the Umbraco camp as they get days closer to releasing version 4 of their open source .Net-based Web Content Management System.

It has been a while since their last full version was released - June of 2007 to be exact. That one involved the move to the .Net 2.0 framework and a number of new features and enhancements.

You can get the latest release candidate, v4 RC3 now. This candidate release fixed some problems with the last release related to deleting files and macros via the context menu. Other enhancements include:

The internal search engine was upgraded to Lucene 2.0 search
The Membership Provider is now 100% compatible with Umbraco content and members for security trimming
Word is compatible with Umbraco Content Channels
Content Channels now support the tagging control

So you can head over and get the latest candidate release, or you can hold off just a little while longer and start preparing for the final release of v4 which is expected to come any day now according to the Umbraco website.

They are suggesting you start preparing for the upgrade and are providing some pointers to get you going. There is an automated upgrade wizard that will convert your existing installation (v3.0.5 or greater) to v4. This will make the upgrade easy - unless you're using the following functionality:

The XSLT helper method RenderTemplate()
UltraSimpleMailer / Newsletter
3rd party datatype

Have a read of their upgrade process or just spend time perusing the Umbraco version 4 section of the site to see all the new things that will be available.

Is that a ripple of excitement we just saw run across your face?