Blog

Wow, hasn't time flown?! This weekend I'll be boarding my plane to Denmark ahead of Codegarden 2026 so it's about time we thought about packing our bags! But what to bring? If you've not been before, or if you're forgetful like I am, I've written you a packing list...

In 2021, I dreamed of improving the icon picker in the Umbraco backoffice and today, in Umbraco 17.4, the package I started is making a splash as part of Core!

This is the story of Umbicosaurus.

Are you heading to Umbraco Spark and hoping to explore Bristol while you're here? I live near Bristol and now consider myself a Spark veteran, so thought I'd share my insights!

Act is a fantastic tool for testing GitHub actions locally instead of pushing that 10th commit in a row called Testing GitHub Actions (again) but configuring it to work correctly can be a balancing act, so here are some tips for getting Act working with your .NET CI/CD flows.

Editor experience isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s what makes or breaks your build. With the arrival of the first LTS using the new backoffice, we're seeing fresh possibilities to shape more intuitive and delightful editing environments. But with great innovation (hello Bellissima!) comes the loss of old comforts (farewell AngularJS).

You might recognise "entity signs" from the "pending changes" sign in older versions of Umbraco. But now, in Umbraco 17, we can add our own!

Custom block views have changed with recent versions, so let's take a look at how we might do this.

We've been able to add blocks (as seen in Block List and Block Grid) to the Rich Text Editor (RTE) since Umbraco 13, but they're topical at the moment with v17 being released, the first LTS version since macros have been removed, more of us are looking to replace macros for good!

RTE Blocks are a new way of thinking about content (and a good replacement for macros!)

I'm sure you're already aware of property descriptions! They’re useful to explain a property when a name doesn't give enough detail. The property descriptions have accepted markdown for a long time now (although allowed features have changed over time!). And because it’s markdown, that means we can use HTML too. And because its HTML it means we can also make use of web components, like UUI!

Examples of common or useful regular expressions I've created over the years.

Was it a comma separated list or a JSON array? When using the Content Service, it can be really useful to know what format to store data in.

Modern Umbraco allows Blocks to be added inline in the Rich Text Editor. Umbraco 14 removes support for macros. This code sample will map macros to blocks with the help of uSync Migrations.

Are you heading to Umbraco Spark this year but not sure what to expect? I live near Bristol and now consider myself a Spark veteran, so thought I'd share my insights!

Since the dawn of CodeProject and Stack Overflow, we've been copying and pasting other developers' code and now with the advent of ChatGPT, Copilot and other AI solutions, it's easier than ever to use code somebody (or something) else wrote... without necessarily understanding the code completely.

I often see developers creating whole new Examine indexes for their blog or shop search, but this isn't necessarily needed, especially when paired with a Path query (with the help of the Search Extensions package)

At the request of Jesper, I've put together a packing list for CODECABIN.

Plex allows for streaming live TV when hooked up to TV tuners. This can allow for TV to be viewed around the house without an aerial cable or using internet bandwidth. Plex also makes a great DVR (live TV recorder) with the recordings then instantly available on your own personal streaming service.

Umbraco v14.1 contains a partial replacement for AngularJS Filters for generating dynamic labels for blocks and list views in the backoffice: Umbraco Flavored Markdown (or UFM). Here's a quick guide.

Searching for exact strings in Examine can be a little counter-intuitive. Couple that with the confusion of multiple values (potentially using the Repeatable text strings or tag data types) and inconsistencies between the backoffice tooling and the fluent API and you've got a right potential mess on your hands!

The number of times I get access to a project to work on locally without knowing the admin password, you wouldn't believe! And every time, I forget the steps to enable a password reset!

The Candid Contributions Podcast episode "Toots, Tweets and Time Management" mentioned the Umbraco Community Mastodon but made some comments I think may have been misleading, so I thought I'd clarify.

Authenticity in the fediverse isn't as simple as a blue tick (then again, it's not that simple on Twitter any more either!) but there are some insights we can gather from a quick glace at a profile. I often see people attempting to interact with fediverse accounts that aren't real people, so these tips ought to help.

Are you heading to Umbraco Spark this year but not sure what to expect? I live near Bristol and now consider myself a Spark veteran, so thought I'd share my insights!

Spoiler: we don’t always mean the CMS.

If you’re reading this article, there’s a high chance you're acquainted with Umbraco, but perhaps you're not fully aware of the nuance that comes with the phrase. So what exactly do we mean when we say “Umbraco”?

Recently, something in the Azure DevOps Pipelines "Deploy to Azure" flow has been messing up parameters in the "additional arguments" field under "Additional Deployment Options".

A guide to getting started with Mastodon and the Fediverse tailored to the Umbraco Community.

22 Umbraco community members in a luxury cabin nestled into a hillside in the UK's Peak District National Park talking all things Umbraco over a long weekend.

A summary of my experiences at CODECABIN '23.

It can't be just me that finds all the properties on a .NET URI object confusing! This tool takes a URI input and outputs all the properties without the need to debug.

In Umbraco v13 and below, the Block editors (list and grid), Nested Content and custom list views allow you to customise how the summarized/collapsed items appear using AngularJS templates and filters - you're not just stuck with the default!

I'm sure many of us have been told at some point in our careers that "magic strings are bad" but why exactly is that and what could go wrong? And what alternatives are there to improve our code?

My favourite method of merging feature branches has to be "rebase and merge" (that's a "semi-linear merge" if you're using DevOps) - it allows us to avoid losing data while keeping the tree clean and tidy.

But what is a rebase and how do they work?

Linting commit messages can be useful to enforce a standard of git commit messages - but how can we run these as checks on a GitHub pull request?

Are your git repos a dumping ground for code? I'm really fussy about how people use git - and that's a good thing. We'll take a look at branching strategies, the importance of commit messages and how often should you commit, anyway? Let's investigate how, with 5 simple tips, we can turn a code dump into a glorious archive of software and how this can save time, frustration and money.

It’s a dark and stormy night and you wake up with a start: is that the looming feeling of .NET 5 and Umbraco 9 on the horizon?! Upskilling yourself (and your team) can be a daunting prospect for developers, but I’ll guide you through which skills and processes need to change and which you can put on the back-burner. From development environments and .NET 5 concepts to configuration, deployment and hosting - it’s not as big a change as it might sound!

Accessibility is a fairly new concept in the world of the web. The web itself is only in its early 30's (not much older than myself!) and I think it's fair to say that accessibility wasn't a priority in Web 2.0. To catch up, it makes a lot of sense to stand on the shoulders of giants - what can we learn about accessibility from the real world that we can apply to the web?

One weekend. One website. One rebuild.

GitKraken allows you to open the current repository in the terminal by hitting Alt + T but by default, this won't be the new Windows Terminal.

Umbraco is "The Friendly CMS" and, as a community, we aim to be warm and welcoming, greeting everyone we encounter with a Friendly high-five. But how can we inject some of this Friendliness into our work and make the websites we craft as Friendly as possible?

uSync Sync-Pack files (with the .uSync extension) are simply ZIP files and can be viewed in any ZIP viewer, including the one built into Windows.

It wasn’t long ago that every agency and freelancer had their own custom CMS they’d use for client projects. We decided that was a bad idea. But we’ll often be seen writing custom code within that standardised CMS. Are we making the same mistakes again?

Have you ever noticed what seems like a margin beneath an image that you can't get rid of? Baselines and line heights could be your problem.