Umbraco CMS is an excellent, highly rated medium to enterprise level content management system, renowned for its flexibility, simplicity, and extensive customisation options.
At NXT we’ve loved it since 2012 and have watched it evolve over the years. We’re heavily involved in its customisation but as the technology continue to evolve, Umbraco is setting its sights on the future, with an exciting roadmap that includes the adoption of groundbreaking technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this blog post, we will dive into the latest versions of Umbraco and explore how the inclusion of AI is poised to revolutionise content management in 2024 and beyond.
Latest versions of Umbraco CMS
Umbraco has been evolving rapidly to keep pace with the industry's ever-changing needs. By 2024, we can expect Umbraco to have launched several major versions, each introducing new features, improvements, and enhanced performance. Some of the latest versions leading up to 2024 have included:
- Umbraco 9: This major release builds upon the success of Umbraco 8 and brings a host of performance enhancements, user interface improvements, and streamlined development experience. It focuses on providing a robust foundation for the future developments of Umbraco.
- Umbraco 10: As the CMS continues to evolve, Umbraco 10 introduced even more advanced features and capabilities. Its focus revolved around optimising the user experience for both developers and content editors, making it even more intuitive and efficient and building upon the block builder functionality.
- As of 14th December 2023, Umbraco announced Umbraco version 13 - the newest Long Term Supported (LTS) version of the CMS, perfectly synchronised with the latest Microsoft LTS release .NET 8, and C# 12. Stay tuned for further details by tracking Umbraco’s updates via the Umbraco Blog.
- As announced by Umbraco back in 2022, long term support for Version 7 installations stopped in July 2023, and migration past version 8.18 requires wholesale CMS updates to .NET Core > .NET8 meaning re-writing part of the custom methods used. For many clients this has required further investment into their CMS infrastructure but with the new versions available provides a future proof business solution building upon the latest, most secure versions of the .NET framework.
Inclusion of AI for Umbraco
One of the most significant advancements in Umbraco's future is the use of Artificial Intelligence for content management. AI-driven technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way we create, manage, and deliver content. Here's how Umbraco is likely to leverage AI in 2024:
- Content personalisation: AI algorithms can analyse user data, preferences, and behaviour to deliver personalised content tailored to each individual visitor. By understanding the context and interests of users, Umbraco can dynamically present relevant content, increasing engagement and conversions. Using tools such as Drift AI, we can give administrators access to greater levels of visitor insights and data, allowing content personalisation specific for their business needed.
- Content generation: AI can assist content creators in generating high-quality, relevant content faster. Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms can suggest content ideas, perform automatic proofreading, and ensure SEO optimisation, freeing up time for content teams to focus on strategy and creativity. This is incredibly useful as an extra "pair of hands" when you might have limited time or resources during the content development phase of a UX upgrade project. Tools such as SEOWind support integration with content editors to enable faster review and suggestion of relevant content. Other tools include dialogue automation for content creators speeding up delivery of ideas to real-world content.
- Enhanced analytics and insights: AI-powered analytics can provide deeper insights into audience behaviour, content performance, and optimisation opportunities. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Umbraco can make data-driven recommendations for content improvements, A/B testing of specific templates or content blocks to enable higher conversion rates. AI’s ability to process so much data at incredible speeds makes enables smarter recommendations rather than manual analysis on web page items such user behaviours, trends, and correlations. Using tools such as Power BI can help visualise these trends for simpler analysis.
- Security and data preference management: In 2024 data management, privacy and personal data security are always top of the list when strategising new web application projects. Ensuring features such as encryption protocols and data protection regulation such as GDPR as critical. Using AI tools for Umbraco can support strengthening of these requirements to ensure any public posture management reviews give your business great results externally. Ensuring you have followed best practise, tools such as Securiti can provide pro-active integration and support data consent and privacy.
Umbraco CMS Tech partnerships
The future of Umbraco CMS in 2024 is set to be an exciting one, driven by innovation and the integration of AI capabilities but more importantly the integration of supported tech partners, which can be viewed here. Umbraco has invested significant effort into building supported relationships with enterprise software and SaaS providers. This builds a solid foundation for the support and maintenance of the platform for those investing into it. With Monterro's investment into the platform, this should continue to grow and continue Umbraco's growth.
With major releases in past few years including versions 9,10, 12 and now Umbraco 13, the CMS will continue to empower developers and content editors with enhanced performance and user-friendly interfaces. The inclusion of AI for content management opens up new possibilities for personalised experiences, intelligent content generation, advanced analytics, and improved customer support. As the digital landscape evolves, Umbraco is ready to embrace the future and propel businesses to new heights of success.