Browsers

The Umbraco UI should work in all modern browsers:

• Chrome (Latest)

• Edge (Chromium)

• Firefox (Latest)

• Safari (Latest)

Local Development

Below you can find the minimum requirements to run Umbraco 10 on your machine:

• .NET 6.0.5 and higher

• One of the .NET 6 - Supported OS versions

• One of the following .NET Tools or Editors:

  • Visual Studio Code with the IISExpress extension

  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 version 17.0 or higher.

    • Optional: JetBrains Rider version 2022.3 and higher

  • .NET Core CLI

• SQL connection string (SQL Server)

Hosting

Recommendation requirements to run Umbraco

As Umbraco releases are aligned to the .NET release cadence, it's also aligned with Microsoft's Long-term support policy for the underlying framework. For the best experience, we would recommend that you ensure to be on latest and supported Microsoft versions to run and host Umbraco CMS:

• Windows Supported releases

• MacOs Supported releases

• Ubuntu Supported distributions and other Linux Packages

• .NET Supported releases

• IIS Supported releases

• SQL Server Supported releases

• SQLite

As Umbraco version 10 is based on .NET 6 follow the requirements for .NET 6.

For more information, see the Host and deploy ASP.NET Core applications article in the Microsoft documentation.

Other recommendation

• Ability to set file permissions to include create/read/write (or better) for the user that "owns" the Application Pool for your site. This would typically be NETWORK SERVICE.

Database Account Roles

The database account used in the connection string will need permissions to read and write from tables. It will also require permission to create schema during installs and upgrades:

• The db_owner role has full permissions on the database.

• To use an account with more restricted permissions, the db_datareader and db_datawriter roles will be needed for normal use to read from and write to the database. The db_ddladmin role, which can modify the database schema, is required for installs and upgrades of the CMS and/or any packages that create database tables.

For more information on the Database-level roles, see the Microsoft documentation.

How to install and configure your Umbraco installation.

Requirements

Defines the system requirements to run Umbraco.

Install

Umbraco installation steps and guidelines.

Upgrading

Covers the steps to upgrade your copy of Umbraco to a newer version.

Server Setup

Information about server setup for Umbraco including information about permissions and load balancing.

Config

How to configure your Umbraco installation. Includes information about all of Umbraco's configuration files and options.

Installing the latest nightly builds

How to install the latest nightly builds.

Install Umbraco using CLI

The fastest way to get the latest version of Umbraco up and running is using the command line (CLI).

1. Open your command line.

2. Install the Umbraco templates:

dotnet new install Umbraco.Templates::10.xx

1. Create a new project:

dotnet new umbraco --name MyProject

1. Navigate to the newly created project folder. It will be the folder containing the .csproj file:

cd MyProject

1. Build and run the newly created Umbraco site:

dotnet run

1. The console will output a message similar to: [10:57:39 INF] Now listening on: https://localhost:44388

2. Open your browser and navigate to that URL.

3. Follow the instructions to finish up the installation of Umbraco.

Alternative Methods for Installing Umbraco

There are numerous ways to install Umbraco. Below, you can find links to different installation methods that will help you easily install and set up Umbraco projects.

.NET CLI installation

.NET CLI, included with the .NET Software Development Kit (SDK), can be used to install or uninstall .NET templates from NuGet. This can be done by using the dotnet new command on any OS. The underlying Template Engine enables the creation of custom templates which make new project bootstrapping much faster. With a few steps you can have an Umbraco project running without the need for a code editor.

Visual Studio installation

Visual Studio is used to write native code and managed code supported by .NET and many others. Its built-in tools provide the ability to develop and execute applications for any platform. Developers will be able to install Umbraco without ever having to leave Visual Studio.

Run Umbraco on IIS

Learn how to run an already installed local installation of Umbraco.

VS Code installation

Visual Studio Code is an editor with an embedded webserver (through the IIS Express extension). A fast way to get you up and running with Umbraco.

Installing Nightly Builds

From Umbraco v9 and above you can use the Nightly Builds to get the latest version to use and test before it is released. Learn how to install the Nightly builds to get started.

Running Umbraco on Linux/macOS

Since Umbraco 9 it has been possible to run Umbraco CMS natively on Linux or macOS High Sierra. To get Umbraco running you will need to follow some steps.

Install Umbraco unattended

Use the Unattended installs when spinning up Umbraco instances on something like Azure Web Apps to avoid having to run through the installation wizard.

This section describes how to use the runtime mode setting to optimize Umbraco for the best development experience or optimal production environment.

Configuring the runtime mode

You can configure the runtime mode to optimize Umbraco for different development experiences and environments by setting Umbraco:CMS:Runtime:Mode to one of the available modes:

• BackofficeDevelopment (default)

• Development

• Production

This can be done via the appsettings.json file, environment variables, or any other .NET configuration provider (like Azure Key Vault/App Configuration). Although this setting affects how Umbraco behaves at runtime, some modes have prerequisites on how the project is built/published. Make sure to read the descriptions of each mode before changing this setting from the default BackofficeDevelopment mode, as incorrect configuration can result in your application not starting (by throwing a BootFailedException).

BackofficeDevelopment mode

The BackofficeDevelopment mode is the default behavior for Umbraco: it does not optimize Umbraco for any specific environment and does not have any prerequisites. This mode allows for rapid development (without having to recompile/rebuild your project), including all development from within the backoffice.

Development mode

The Development mode can be used when you're developing from an IDE (like Visual Studio, VS Code, or Rider) or the dotnet CLI (e.g. using dotnet watch). It is a recommended prerequisite if you want to use the Production mode in your production environment.

This mode disables in-memory ModelsBuilder generation and validates the following setting:

• Umbraco:CMS:ModelsBuilder:ModelsMode is not set to InMemoryAuto.

If you want to use the generated models, use SourceCodeAuto or SourceCodeManual, which requires manually recompiling the project after the models have changed (e.g. after updating Document Types, Media Types, Member Types, or Data Types). Razor views (cshtml files) will still be automatically compiled at runtime, allowing you to quickly iterate on the rendered output from templates, (macro) partial views, and view components.

The recommended approach to enable Development mode is to update the appsettings.json file with the following settings:

Ensure your models are generated by running Umbraco and navigating to Settings > Models Builder > Generate models. You can remove the following properties from your csproj project file to enable the compilation of Razor views (which also ensures your views do not contain compilation errors and is a prerequisite for enabling Production mode):

Fix any compilation errors you might get after this, e.g. if you accidentally referenced deleted models or properties. Running the application will still show the rendered content and you're now ready to optionally enable Production mode on your production environment.

Production mode

Use Production mode to ensure your production environment is running optimally by disabling development features and validating whether specific settings are configured to their recommended production values.

• The application is built/published in Release mode (with JIT optimization enabled), e.g. using dotnet publish --configuration Release;

• Umbraco:CMS:WebRouting:UmbracoApplicationUrl is set to a valid URL;

• Umbraco:CMS:Global:UseHttps is enabled;

• Umbraco:CMS:RuntimeMinification:CacheBuster is set to a fixed cache buster like Version or AppDomain;

• Umbraco:CMS:ModelsBuilder:ModelsMode is set to Nothing.

The recommended approach to enable Production mode is to update the appsettings.Production.json file (or create one) with the following settings:

Although you can still edit document types and views (if not running from the published output), changes won't be picked up until you've rebuilt your project or republished the application.

Also ensure the UmbracoApplicationUrl is updated to the primary URL of your production environment, as this is used when sending emails (password reset, notifications, health check results, etc.) and the keep-alive task.

Customize/extend runtime mode validation

Validation of the above-mentioned settings is done when determining the runtime level during startup using the new IRuntimeModeValidationService and when it fails, causes a BootFailedException to be thrown. The default implementation gets all registered IRuntimeModeValidators to do the validation, making it possible to remove default checks and/or add your own (inherit from RuntimeModeProductionValidatorBase, if you only want to validate against the production runtime mode). The following validators are added by default:

• JITOptimizerValidator - Ensure the application is built/published in Release mode (with JIT optimization enabled) when in production runtime mode, e.g. using dotnet publish --configuration Release;

• UmbracoApplicationUrlValidator - ensure Umbraco:CMS:WebRouting:UmbracoApplicationUrl is configured when in production runtime mode;

• UseHttpsValidator - ensure Umbraco:CMS:Global:UseHttps is enabled when in production runtime mode;

• RuntimeMinificationValidator - ensure Umbraco:CMS:RuntimeMinification:CacheBuster is set to a fixed cache buster like Version or AppDomain when in production runtime mode;

• ModelsBuilderModeValidator - ensure Umbraco:CMS:ModelsBuilder:ModelsMode is not set to InMemoryAuto when in development runtime mode and set to Nothing when in production runtime mode.

The following example removes the default UmbracoApplicationUrlValidator and adds a new custom DisableElectionForSingleServerValidator:

Information on how to deploy Umbraco in a Load Balanced scenario and other details to consider when setting up Umbraco for load balancing.

Overview

Configuring and setting up a load balanced server environment requires planning, design and testing. This document should assist you in setting up your servers, load balanced environment and Umbraco configuration.

This document assumes that you have a fair amount of knowledge about:

• Umbraco

• IIS 10+

• Networking & DNS

• Windows Server

• .NET5+

Design

These instructions make the following assumptions:

• All web servers can communicate with the database where Umbraco data is stored

• You are running Umbraco 9.0.0 or above

• You will designate a single server to be the backoffice server for which your editors will log into for editing content. Umbraco will not work correctly if the backoffice is behind the load balancer.

There are three design alternatives you can use to effectively load balance servers:

2. Each server hosts copies of the load balanced website files and a file replication service is running to ensure that all files on all servers are up to date

3. The load balanced website files are located on a centralized file share (SAN/NAS/Clustered File Server/Network Share)

You will need a load balancer to do your load balancing.

How Umbraco load balancing works

In order to understand how to host your site it is best to understand how Umbraco's flexible load balancing works.

The following diagram shows the data flow/communication between each item in the environment:

The process is as follows:

• Administrators and editors create, update, delete data/content on the backoffice server

• These events are converted into data structures called "instructions" and are stored in the database in a queue

• Each front-end server checks to see if there are any outstanding instructions it hasn't processed yet

• When a front-end server detects that there are pending instructions, it downloads them and processes them and in turn updates it's cache, cache files and indexes on its own file system

• There can be a delay between content updates and a front-end server's refreshing, this is expected and normal behaviour.

Scheduling and server role election

Although there is a backoffice server designated for administration, by default this is not explicitly set as the "Scheduling server". In Umbraco there can only be a single scheduling server which performs the following 3 things:

• Keep alive service - to ensure scheduled publishing occurs

• Scheduled tasks - to initiate any configured scheduled tasks

• Scheduled publishing - to initiate any scheduled publishing for documents

Automatic Server Role Election

Umbraco will automatically elect a "Scheduling server" to perform the above services. This means that all of the servers will need to be able to resolve the URL of either: itself, the Backoffice server, the internal load balancer, or the public address.

There are two server roles:

• SchedulingPublisher - Usually this is the backoffice instance.

• Subscriber - These are the scalable front-end instances - not recommended to be used for backoffice access.

Each instance will be allocated a role by the automatic server role election process, but they can also be set explicitly (recommended)

For example, In the following diagram the node f02.mysite.local is the elected "Scheduling server". In order for scheduling to work it needs to be able to send requests to itself, the Backoffice server, the internal load balancer or the public address. The address used by the "Scheduling server" is called the "umbracoApplicationUrl".

By default, Umbraco will set the "umbracoApplicationUrl" to the address made by the first accepted request when the AppDomain starts. It is assumed that this address will be a DNS address that the server can resolve.

For example, if a public request reached the load balancer on www.mysite.com, the load balancer may send the request on to the servers with the original address: www.mysite.com. By default the "umbracoApplicationUrl" will be www.mysite.com. However, load balancers may route the request internally under a different DNS name such as "f02.mysite.local" which by default would mean the "umbracoApplicationUrl" is "f02.mysite.local". In any case the elected "Scheduling server" must be able to resolve this address.

In many scenarios this is fine, but in case this is not adequate there's a few of options you can use:

Common load balancing setup information

The below section applies to all ASP.NET load balancing configurations.

Server Configuration

This section describes the configuration options depending on your hosting setup:

Data Protection

The replacement for Machine Keys in ASP.NET Core are called Data Protection. You will need to setup data protection to the same keys on all servers, without this you will end up with view state errors, validation errors and encryption/decryption errors since each server will have its own generated key.

Session State and Distributed Cache

Because Umbraco in some cases uses TempData, your setup needs to be configured with a distributed cache.

Logging

There are some logging configurations to take into account no matter what type of load balancing environment you are using.

Testing

Your staging environment should also be load balanced so that you can see any issues relating to load balancing in that environment before going to production.

You'll need to test this solution a lot before going to production. You need to ensure there are no windows security issues, etc... The best way to determine issues is have a lot of people testing this setup and ensuring all errors and warnings in your application/system logs in Windows are fixed.

Ensure to analyze logs from all servers and check for any warnings and errors.

Unattended upgrades

When upgrading it is possible to run the upgrades unattended.

FAQs

Here's some common questions that are asked regarding Load Balancing with Umbraco:

Question> Why do I need to have a single web instance for Umbraco admin?

TL:DR You must not load balance the Umbraco backoffice, you will end up with data integrity or corruption issues.

The reason you need a single server is because there is no way to guarantee transactional safety between servers. This is because we don't currently use database level locking, we only use application (c#) level locks to guarantee transactional data integrity which is only possible to work on one server. If you have multiple admins saving and publishing at once between servers then the order in which this data is read and written to the database absolutely must be consistent otherwise you will end up with data corruption.

Additionally, the order in which cache instructions are written to the cache instructions table is important for LB, this order is guaranteed by having a single admin server.

Question> Can my SchedulingPublisher backoffice admin server also serve front-end requests?

Yes. There are no problems with having your SchedulingPublisher backoffice admin server also serve front-end request.

However, if you wish to have different security policies for your front-end servers and your back office servers, you may choose to not do this.

In this part of the Umbraco CMS documentation, you can get to know the product and the default functionality. It is here you start your Umbraco journey with the installation, setup, and basics of working with the CMS.

Umbraco CMS is a flexible and editor-friendly Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to create beautiful and modern websites. Use the latest version of .NET, integrate with your favorite services, and help your customers launch a website tailored to their specific needs.

Learn much more about Umbraco CMS and get an overview of the top features on Umbraco.com.

The Umbraco CMS documentation caters to both experienced Umbraco/.NET developers and beginners with guides and high-level articles.

This documentation platform covers only major versions of the Umbraco CMS since Umbraco 9. If you are using an older version of Umbraco CMS, you will need to go elsewhere.

The documentation for Umbraco 7 and 8 lives on our.umbraco.com.

Prerequisites

• Install the newest Umbraco dotnet templates.

  • In Visual Studio 2022, the .NET CLI templates are enabled to appear, by default. For information on how to enable .NET CLI templates in Visual Studio 2019, see the .NET CLI Templates in Visual Studio article.

• Check the Requirements to ensure you have everything you need to start your Umbraco project.

Quick start

This is an abbreviated version of the installation steps. Jump to the Create a new project section for a more thorough guide.

• Open Visual Studio.

• Go to File > New > Project, search for Umbraco.

• Choose Umbraco Project (Umbraco HQ) then click Next.

• Choose or specify the parameters, leave the default or leave them all empty.

• Click Create.

• Use CTRL+F5 to run the project and start the Umbraco installer.

Video Tutorial

Create a new Umbraco project

To install Umbraco we first need to install Umbraco's dotnet new templates.

For more information check the first 2 steps of the Install Umbraco with .NET CLI article.

Create the Visual Studio project

Go to File > New > Project and search for Umbraco in the Search for templates field.

Once you select Umbraco Project (Umbraco HQ) navigate to the next step by selecting Next.

Configure the project

In this step, you will be able to give your project a name specific to the project you are creating.

Adding additional information

In the next step, you are able to specify some additional parameters like the Target framework. The rest are optional.

You can then click the Create button and your Umbraco Project will be ready for you.

Running the site

You can now run the site through Visual Studio using F5 or the Debug button.

Follow the installation wizard and after a few steps, you will get a message saying the installation was a success.

Next steps

You are now ready to start building your Umbraco project. Have a look below for different resources on the next steps.

• Getting Started with Umbraco

• Tutorial: Create a website from scratch

• Find different options for hosting your Umbraco website

• Learn about configuration in Umbraco CMS

This is a quick guide on getting your Umbraco website running locally on IIS.

The guide will assume you already have IIS configured and know your way around it, as well as having a local website you wish to host.

Setting up prerequisites

First, you need to ensure you have "Development time IIS support installed". To check this, go to the Visual Studio installer, click modify and check on the right side under "ASP.NET and web development":

Once that is installed you should set up a new IIS site - and make sure to add the hostname to your hosts file as well. Here is my setup for an example:

Add permissions to NuGet cache folder

You might need to change permissions for the NuGet cache folder - C:\users\<username>\.nuget\packages. The user or group (IIS_IUSRS) that the IIS site is running on requires Read permissions on this folder because this is where some of the files for Umbraco and Umbraco packages are being served from during development. If the IIS user or group does not have permission to read from the NuGet cache folder, you could run into a DirectoryNotFoundException while running the site.

When the site is published these files are copied from the NuGet cache folder to wwwroot/umbraco and wwwroot/App_Plugins and these folders will typically have the correct permissions. For more information on setting permissions, see the File and folder permissions article.

Add new launch profile

At this point you can go to your Visual Studio solution of the site and in the Properties folder there is a launchSettings.json file, that looks like this:

{
  "iisSettings": {
    "windowsAuthentication": false,
    "anonymousAuthentication": true,
    "iisExpress": {
      "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:40264",
      "sslPort": 44360
    }
  },
  "profiles": {
    "IIS Express": {
      "commandName": "IISExpress",
      "launchBrowser": true,
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      }
    },
    "Umbraco.Web.UI.NetCore": {
      "commandName": "Project",
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      },
      "applicationUrl": "https://localhost:44360;http://localhost:40264"
    }
  }
}

You can add a new profile called IIS, and point it at your local domain. Here it is with my example domain:

{
  "iisSettings": {
    "windowsAuthentication": false,
    "anonymousAuthentication": true,
    "iis": {
      "applicationUrl": "https://testsite.local",
      "sslPort": 0
    },
    "iisExpress": {
      "applicationUrl": "http://localhost:40264",
      "sslPort": 44360
    }
  },
  "profiles": {
    "IIS Express": {
      "commandName": "IISExpress",
      "launchBrowser": true,
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      }
    },
    "IIS": {
      "commandName": "IIS",
      "launchBrowser": true,
      "launchUrl": "https://testsite.local",
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      }
    },
    "Umbraco.Web.UI.NetCore": {
      "commandName": "Project",
      "environmentVariables": {
        "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development"
      },
      "applicationUrl": "https://localhost:44360;http://localhost:40264"
    }
  }
}

At this point IIS will be added to the launch profiles, and you can run the site from Visual Studio by choosing IIS in the dropdown:

And finally the site is running from your local IIS:

This is the guide for upgrading existing installations in general.

In this article, you will find everything you need to upgrade your Umbraco CMS project.

You will find instructions on how to upgrade to a new minor or major version as well as how to run upgrades unattended.

Before you upgrade

The following lists a few things to be aware of before initiating an upgrade of your Umbraco CMS project.

• Sometimes there are exceptions to general upgrade guidelines. These are listed in the . Be sure to read this article before moving on.

• Check if your setup meets the for the new versions you will be upgrading your project to.

• Things may go wrong for different reasons. Be sure to ALWAYS keep a backup of both your site's files and the database. This way you can always return to a version that you know works.

• Before upgrading to a new major version, check if the packages you're using are compatible with the version you're upgrading to. On the package's download page, in the Project compatibility area, click View details to check version-specific compatibility.

Legacy Umbraco

The steps outlined in this article apply to modern Umbraco from version 10 and later versions.

Are you upgrading to a minor for Umbraco 6, 7, or 8? You can find the appropriate guide below:

Upgrade to a new Major

You can upgrade to a new major of Umbraco CMS directly by using NuGet.

Choose the correct .NET version

Use the table below to determine which .NET version to upgrade to when going through the steps below.

Upgrade your project using Visual Studio

It's recommended that you upgrade the site offline and test the upgrade fully before deploying it to the production environment.

1. Stop your site in IIS to prevent any changes from being made while you are upgrading.

2. Open your Umbraco project in Visual Studio.

3. Right-click on the project name in the Solution Explorer and select Properties.

4. Select the .NET version from the Target Framework drop-down.

5. Go to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution...

6. Go to the Installed tab in the NuGet Package manager.

7. Upgrade Umbraco.Cms.

   a. Select the correct version from the Version drop-down.

   b. Click Install to upgrade your project.

1. Make sure that your connection string has TrustServerCertificate=True in order to complete successfully the upgrade:

1. Restart your site in IIS, build, and run your project to finish the installation.

Upgrade to a new Minor

NuGet installs the latest version of the package when you use the dotnet add package command unless you specify a package version:

dotnet add package Umbraco.Cms --version <VERSION>

Add a package reference to your project by executing the dotnet add package Umbraco.Cms command in the directory that contains your project file.

Run dotnet restore to install the package.

When the command completes, open the .csproj file to make sure the package reference was updated:

Run an unattended upgrade

When upgrading your Umbraco project, it is possible to enable the upgrade to run unattended. This means that you will not need to run through the installation wizard when upgrading.

Below you will find the steps you need to take in order to upgrade your project unattended.

Enable the unattended upgrade feature

1. Add the Umbraco:Cms:Unattended:UpgradeUnattended configuration key.

2. Set the value of the key to true.

Run the upgrade

With the correct configuration applied, the project will be upgraded on the next boot.

Boot order

The Runtime level will use Run instead of Upgrade to allow the website to continue to boot up directly after the migration is run. This happens instead of initiating the otherwise required restart.

Unattended upgrades in a load balanced setup

Follow the steps outlined below to use unattended upgrades in a load balanced setup.

2. Deploy to all environments.

3. Set the Umbraco:CMS:Unattended:UpgradeUnattended configuration key to true for the Main server only.

4. Boot the Main server and the upgrade will run automatically.

5. Wait for the upgrade to complete.

6. Boot the Read-Only servers and make sure they do not show the “upgrade required” screen.

In some cases, you might need to install Umbraco instances automatically without having to run through the installation wizard to configure the instance.

You can use the Unattended installs feature to allow for quick installation and set up of Umbraco instances on something like Azure Web Apps.

This article will give you the details you need to install Umbraco unattended.

Get clean install of Umbraco

In order to get a clean instance of Umbraco, follow our installation guide for how to .

Configure your database

As you will not be running through the installation wizard when using this feature, you need to manually tell Umbraco which database to use.

• Set up and configure a new database - see for details.

• Add the connection string using configuration.

SQL Server Example in appsettings.json

SQLite Example in appsettings.json

A value is configured for the keyumbracoDbDSN_ProviderName to ensure usage of the Microsoft.Data.SQLite ADO.NET provider.

It is recommended that you make use of the values shown below for the Cache, Foreign Keys and Pooling keywords on your connection string.

Enable the unattended installs feature

The unattended installs feature is disabled by default. In order to enable it, you need to add the following JSON object to a JSON configuration source.

Remember to set the value of InstallUnattended to true.

The keys for this would then be as follows:

Initialize the unattended install

After completing the steps above you can now initialize the installation by booting up the Umbraco instance.

Once it has completed, you should see the following when visiting the frontend of the site.

Configuration options

Depending on your preferences, you can use any type of configuration to specify the connection string and login information, as well as enable unattended install. With the extending configuration functionality, it is possible to read from all kinds of sources. One example can be using a JSON file or environment variables.

Program.cs has a condition, which if met, an appsettings.Local.json file will be added and configured as a configuration source.

Having intellisense will help you to add your connection string and information needed for the unattended install.

More support

We have added support for unattended installs with Name, Email and Password, and Connection String as CLI params, which are also available in Visual Studio. There you can fill in your information as follows:

CLI

Visual Studio

Follow these steps to set up an Umbraco project with VS Code. The benefit of using VS Code is that it is super quick to get up and running.

Installing and setting up VS Code

1. Go to and download VS Code for free.

2. Once installed, launch VS Code.

3. Click the extensions menu at the bottom on the left side. Then search for C#, install it then press reload.

Creating your Umbraco project

Configure VS Code to run the Umbraco project

Open your project folder in VS Code, your project will look something like this:

Now we need to tell VS Code how to run your project.

Open the command palette, you can use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+P, and type in Tasks: Configure and select the Tasks: Configure Task option:

Select "Create task.json from template"

Now select ".NET Core" as your template.

After this VS Code will have created a folder called .vscode that contains a file called tasks.json, it's this file that tells VS Code how to build your project.

Now that we've told VS Code how to build your project, we need to tell it how to launch it. VS Code can do this for you. First, select the little play button in the left side menu, and then select the "create a launch.json file" link.

This will prompt a menu to appear, select .NET 5+ and .NET Core:

Now you'll see a green play button appear with a dropdown where ".NET Core Launch" is selected.

If you navigate to the Files section, a new launch.json file is created in the .vscode folder. When you press F5, the launch.json file tells VS Code to build your project, run it, and then open a browser .

With that, you're ready to run the project! Press F5, or click the little green play button in the Run and Debug section to run your brand new Umbraco site locally.

Umbraco Web Installer

This section continues from where we left off but covers the installation and configuration of Umbraco inside your web browser when you run Umbraco for the first time.

You will see the install screen where you will need to fill in some data before Umbraco can be installed.

When the installer is done you will automatically be logged into the backoffice.

Congratulations, you have installed an Umbraco site!

Umbraco 8 contains a lot of breaking changes and a lot of code has been cleaned up compared to Umbraco 7. Due to this, it will not be possible to do a direct upgrade from Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 8. You need to migrate your content from your Umbraco 7 site into your Umbraco 8 site and then recreate the rest in the new version.

A content migration tool has been implemented in Umbraco 8.1.0, to help you with the transition.

In this guide you can read more about the tool, its limitations, and how to use it in practice.

What are the limitations?

In the following section, you can learn more about the limitations of migrating content from Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 8.

Versions supported

The content migration tool is a database migration, which is made for the database schema of Umbraco 7.14+. This means that in order to do the migration you need to ensure your Umbraco 7 site is running at least Umbraco 7.14.

Database types supported

Umbraco 8 does not support MySQL databases. This means that the migration will not work when moving from an Umbraco 7 site using MySQL to Umbraco 8 on SQL Server

The database types that are supported are SQL Server and SQL CE.

Known issues

Feedback from user testing has shown that some databases are harder to migrate than others.

Third party property editors

The migration will transform the data stored in third party editors as well. However, it will be stored as it was in Umbraco 7. If the structure has changed or the property editor doesn't exist, you will still be able to find the data in the database. It will, however, not be available in the backoffice.

What will happen

When the migrations are running, Umbraco will go through your entire Umbraco 7 database and update it to the format required for Umbraco 8. The schema will be remodeled and transformed into the correct format and your existing compatible data will be transformed to fit with Umbraco 8.

These migrations will be running directly on your database. They are transforming schema and data - not transferring. Therefore always ensure that you have a backup before attempting to do this. In case something goes wrong, you will be able to rollback and try again.

It is highly recommended to clean up your site before running this as it will be quicker.

• Empty Content recycle bin

• Empty Media recycle bin

How it works

In the following guide we will migrate the content of an Umbraco 7.13.1 site to Umbraco 8.1.0.

Step 1: Upgrading to 7.14+

The site in this example is an Umbraco 7.13.1 site, and we will use Nuget to update it.

Once it is upgraded and you have verified everything is working, move on to the next step.

Step 2: Migrating content to Umbraco 8

The first thing to do is to spin up a fresh new Umbraco 8.1+ site. Make sure everything works and that no content is there.

Take a backup of your database from the Umbraco 7.14 site. Take the information for the backup database and add that to the connectionstring for the Umbraco 8.1 site. If you are running SQL CE, you will have to copy the database over to the new site as well.

Once the connectionstring is set, the final step is to change the Umbraco version number in the web.config on the Umbraco 8.1 site. Chang it to 7.14.0. This will indicate that there is an upgrade pending and it needs to run the migration.

The version will be set to 8.1.0, and you need to change it to the version you are currently migrating from.

When you start the site it will ask you to login and then show you this screen:

From here, the automatic migration will take over, and after a little bit you can log in and see your content:

Step 3: Files migration

Before moving on to this step, make sure that the Umbraco 8 project is no longer running.

The following files/folders need to be copied into the Umbraco 8 project:

• ~/Views - do not overwrite the default Macro and Partial View Macro files, unless changes have been made to these.

• ~/Media

• Any files/folders related to Stylesheets and JavaScripts.

• Any custom files/folders the Umbraco 7 project uses, that aren't in the ~/Config or ~/bin.

• ~/App_Data/UmbracoForms - in the case Umbraco Forms was used on the Umbraco 7 site.

Merge the configuration files carefully to ensure any custom settings are migrated while none of the default configurations for Umbraco 8 is overwritten.

You'll have to revisit all templates and custom implementations to get the site up and running, as all markup is still Umbraco 7-specific.

Step 4: Post-migration checks

As you are updating your template files and custom implementation, you should also verify your configuration files and settings.

Umbraco 8 contains a few changes regarding the Sections in the Umbraco Backoffice. Because of this, you should also check your User Groups and make sure they have access to the appropriate sections.

Since the underlying framework going from Umbraco 8 to the latest version has changed, there is no direct upgrade path. That said, it is possible to re-use the database from your Umbraco 8 project on your new project in order to maintain the content.

It is not possible to migrate the custom code as the underlying web framework has been updated from ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core. All templates and custom code will need to be reimplemented.

You also need to make sure that the packages you are using are available on the latest version.

Prerequisites

• A Umbraco 8 project running the latest version of Umbraco 8.

• A clean installation of the latest version of Umbraco.

• A backup of your Umbraco 8 project database.

Video Tutorial

Step 1: Content Migration

2. Import the database backup into SQL Server Management Studio.

3. Update the connection string in the new projects appsettings.json file so that it connects to the Umbraco 8 database:

1. Run the new project and login to authorize the upgrade.

2. Select "Upgrade" when the upgrade wizard appears.

3. Once the upgrade has been completed, it's recommended to login to the backoffice to verify if your project is upgraded to new version.

Step 2: File Migration

1. The following files/folders need to be copied from the Umbraco 8 project into the new project:

   • ~/Views - Do not overwrite the default Macro and Partial View Macro files unless changes have been made to these.

   • ~/Media - Media folder from v8 needs to be copied over into the wwwroot - media folder

   • Any files/folders related to Stylesheets and JavaScript.

2. Migrate custom configuration from the Umbraco 8 configuration files (.config) into the appsettings.json file on the new project.
3. • As of Umbraco Forms version 9, it is only possible to store Forms data in the database. If Umbraco Forms was used on the Umbraco 8 project, the files need to be migrated to the database.

4. Run the new project.

   • It will give you an error screen on the frontend as none of the Template files have been updated.

Step 3: Custom Code in the latest version

The latest version of Umbraco is different from Umbraco 8 in many ways. With all the files and data migrated, it is now time to rewrite and re-implement all custom code and templates.

Examples of changes

One of the changes is how published content is rendered through Template files. Due to this, it will be necessary to update all the Template files (.cshtml) to reflect these changes.

• Template files need to inherit from Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.Views.UmbracoViewPage<ContentModels.HomePage> instead of Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoViewPage<ContentModels.HomePage>

• Template files need to use ContentModels = Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.PublishedModels instead of ContentModels = Umbraco.Web.PublishedModels

Depending on the extent of the project and the amount of custom code and implementations, this step is going to require a lot of work.

Once the new project runs without errors on a local setup it is time to deploy the website to production.

This concludes this tutorial. Find related information and further reading in the section below.

Related Information

In this article, we'll explain how you can get the latest builds of Umbraco. You can do this in three steps:

Adding the nightly feed as a NuGet source

The NuGet feed containing the nightly builds is https://www.myget.org/F/umbraconightly/api/v3/index.json.

You can either add this feed through the command line or use an IDE of your choice. In this article, we'll provide steps for:

Option 1: Using the command line

To add the nightly feed using the command line:

1. Open a command prompt of your choice.

2. Run the following command:

Now the feed is added as a source named Umbraco Nightly.

Option 2: Using Visual Studio

To add the nightly feed using Visual Studio:

1. Open Visual Studio.

2. Go to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Package Manager Settings.

1. The Options window open.

2. Select the Package Sources option in the NuGet Package Manager section.

3. Click the + icon.

4. A new Package source will be added automatically and highlighted.

5. Enter the desired name for the feed in the Name field.

6. Enter the link https://www.myget.org/F/umbraconightly/api/v3/index.json into the Source field.

7. Click OK.

Now the feed is added as a source named Umbraco Nightly.

Option 3: Using Rider

To add the nightly feed using Rider:

1. Open Rider.

2. Go to View > Tool Windows > NuGet.

3. Go to Sources tab.

4. Choose the C:\Users\Úmbraco\AppData\Roaming\NuGet\NuGet.Config to add the feed globally.

5. Cick the green + button in the New Feed field.

1. The New feed dialog opens.

2. Enter the desired name in the Name field.

3. Enter https://www.myget.org/F/umbraconightly/api/v3/index.json in the URL field.

1. Click OK.

Now the feed is added as a source named Umbraco Nightly.

Finding the latest nightly version

In the previous steps, we've added the feed and are now ready to install the nightly build.

However, which version should we install? This is, in particular, an issue if we want to create a new site using the dotnet template. The dotnet command does not allow us to use wildcard characters to install the newest version.

Using IDE, we can see a list of available versions in both Visual Studio and Rider. We can then use that version to install the template.

Here we're going to assume that you want to create a brand new site with the dotnet template. The approach is the same if you're updating an existing site. You'll click the Update button for the Umbraco.Cms package instead of installing the template through the terminal.

Let's look at how we can find the latest version of the nightly build:

Option 1: Using Visual Studio

You can use the package manager in Visual Studio to browse the available template versions.

1. Open Visual Studio.

2. Go to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages For Solution...

1. Select Umbraco Nightly from the Package source dropdown in the NuGet - Solution window.

1. Check the Include prerelease checkbox.

2. Search for Umbraco.Templates in the Browse field.

3. Choose that package.

4. Click on the Version dropdown and see the available nightly builds.

5. Choose the applicable version and note down the version number.

Option 2: Using Rider

You can use the NuGet window in Rider to browse the available template versions.

1. Open Rider.

2. Go to the Packages tab in the NuGet window..

3. Select Umbraco Nightly from the All Feeds dropdown.

1. Check the Prerelase checkbox.

2. Search for Umbraco.Templates in the Search field.

3. Choose that package.

4. Click on the Version drop down and see the available nightly builds.

5. Choose the applicable version and note down the version number

Installing the latest nightly version template

Now that our feed is added and we know the exact version we're ready to install our template.

To install the latest nightly version template:

1. Open your command prompt.

2. Run the following command using the latest version:

With that, we've successfully installed the latest nightly build of Umbraco.

All we have to do now is to create a site using the dotnet new umbraco -n MyAwesomeNightlySite command.

Use the information below to learn about any potential breaking changes and common pitfalls when upgrading your Umbraco CMS project.

If any specific steps are involved with upgrading to a specific version, they will be listed below.

Use the to complete the upgrade of your project.

Breaking changes

Release notes

You can find a list of all the released Umbraco versions on website. When you visit Our Umbraco website, click on the version number to view the changes made in that specific version.

Find your upgrade path

Are you looking to upgrade an Umbraco Cloud project from 9 to 10? Follow the guide made for instead, as it requires a few steps specific to Umbraco Cloud.

Sometimes there are exceptions to these guidelines, which are listed in the .

Note

It is necessary to run the upgrade installer on each environment of your Umbraco site. If you want to update your staging and live site then you need to repeat the steps below and make sure that you click through the install screens to complete the upgrade.

Contents

In this article you will find instructions for 2 different ways of upgrading:

Upgrade using NuGet

1. Open up the Package Console and type: Update-Package UmbracoCms

2. Choose "No to All" by pressing the "L" when prompted.

   • If there are any specific configuration changes required for the version you are upgrading to then they will be noted in the .

Alternatively, you can use the Visual Studio NuGet Package Manager to upgrade:

1. Open the NuGet Package Manager and select the Updates pane to get a list of available updates.

2. Choose the package called UmbracoCms and select update.

The upgrade will run through all the files and make sure you have the latest changes while leaving the files you have updated.

Upgrades to versions lower than 7.2.0

You will be asked to overwrite your web.config file and the files in /config, make sure to answer No to those questions.

For some inexplicable reason, the installation will fail if you click "No to All" (in the GUI) or answer "L" (in the package manager console) to the question: "File 'Web.config' already exists in project 'MySite'. Do you want to overwrite it?" So make sure to only answer "No" (in the GUI) or "N" (in the package manager console).

We will overwrite the web.config file. We'll back it up so don't worry. You can find the backup in App_Data\NuGetBackup\20140320-165450\. The 20140320-165450 bit is the date and time when the backup occurred, which varies. You can then merge your config files and make sure they're up to date.

Upgrade manually from a zip file

Copy the following folders from inside the .zip file over the existing folders in your site:

• /bin

• /Umbraco

• /Umbraco_Client

Merge configuration files

You can expect some changes to the following configuration files:

• Any file in the /Config folder

• The /Global.asax file

• The web.config file in the root of your site (Important: make sure to copy back the version number, and the connection string as they were.)

• In rare cases, the web.config file in the Views folder

There's also the possibility that files in the /Config folder are new or have been removed(we note this in the release notes). WinMerge (and other diff tools) is able to compare folders as well so you can spot these differences.

Up until version 6.0.0 it was necessary to change the version number in ClientDependency.config. This was to clear the cached HTML/CSS/JS files in the backoffice. Change the current version number to one that's higher than that. Make sure not to skip this step as you might get strange behavior in the backoffice otherwise.

Merge UI.xml and language

Some packages (like Contour and Umbraco Forms) add dialogs to the UI.xml. Make sure to merge those changes back in from your backup during the upgrade so that the packages continue to work. This file can be found in: /Umbraco/Config/Create/UI.xml.

Packages like Contour, Umbraco Forms, and Courier also make changes to the language files located in: /Umbraco/Config/Lang/*.xml (typically en.xml).

Finalize

After copying the files and making the config changes, you can open your site. You should see the installer which will guide you through the upgrade.

The installer will do two things:

• Update the version number in the web.config

• Upgrade your database in case there are any changes

We are aware that, currently, the installer is asking you for the database details of a blank database while upgrading. In the near future this will be pre-filled with your existing details and the wording will be updated. So no need to be scared. Enter the details of your existing database and Umbraco will upgrade it to the latest version when necessary.

Post installation

One important recommendation is to always remove the install folder immediately after upgrading Umbraco and never to upload it to a live server.

Potential issues and gotchas

Browser cache

Google Chrome has notoriously aggressive caching. If something doesn't seem to work well in the backoffice, make sure to clear cache and cookies thoroughly (for other browsers as well). Normally the browser cache problem is automatically handled in an Umbraco upgrade by modifying the config/ClientDependency.config version number. If you wish to re-force this update you can increment this version number. This will ensure that any server-side cache of JavaScript and stylesheets gets cleared as well.

One way to nudge the cache in Chrome is to open the developer tools (F12) and go to the settings (the cog icon). There will be a checkbox that says "Disable cache (while DevTools is open)". Once this checkbox is on you can refresh the page and the cache should be invalidated. To force it even more, the "reload" button next to your address bar now has extra options when you right-click it. It should have "Normal reload", "Hard reload" and "Empty cache and hard reload" now. The last option is the most thorough and you might want to try that.

With Umbraco CMS on .NET Core, Linux/macOS is natively supported with SQLite as the database.

In the below section, we describe how to get started with running Umbraco CMS.

How to get started running Umbraco CMS on Linux/macOS

To get started with Umbraco CMS first have a look at the .

Once you've made sure you meet the requirements it is time to install the Umbraco Templates on your system.

To do this follow the guide.

With the templates installed on your system, it is now possible to create Umbraco projects.

To create a project, there are two options:

• Continue creating projects using the .NET CLI.

• Create new projects using Visual Studio.

To create new projects using Visual Studio, you can use the guide.

Once you create a new project it will use SQLite by default.

If you want to use an SQL server database, you will need to .

The still apply to this process as well.

Backup

It is critical that you back up your website and database before upgrading. There are database changes made during installation and you cannot revert an Umbraco 7 database to an Umbraco 6 database.

.Net 4.5

Umbraco 7 is built on .Net 4.5 and your development environment will require this version installed in order to operate. Visual Studio users may require 2012 or higher.

HTML 5 browser support

Umbraco 7 requires browsers with proper HTML 5 support, these include Chrome, Firefox, IE10+

Breaking changes

Before you upgrade be sure to read the list of breaking changes. This is especially recommended if you have removed or modified code in the core or if one of these breaking changes directly affects your installation.

for more details.

Examine

It is recommended to rebuild all Examine indexes after completing the upgrade.

Xml Cache rebuild

You should re-generate the XML cache. This can be done by following the prompts when visiting the following URL:

your-domain.com/umbraco/dialogs/republish.aspx?xml=true

Configuration changes

It is recommended that you use a Diff tool to compare the configuration file changes with your own current configuration files.

• /web.config updates

  • You will need to compare the new Umbraco 7 web.config with your current web.config. Here is a quick reference of what needs to change:

    • Remove the section name="BaseRestExtensions" section

    • Remove the section name="FileSystemProviders" section

    • Remove the sectionGroup name="system.web.webPages.razor" section

    • Remove the <FileSystemProviders> element

    • Remove the BaseRestExtensions element

    • Remove the add key="umbracoUseMediumTrust" element

    • Remove the system.web.extensions element

    • Removes the xhtmlConformance element

    • Remove the system.codedom element

    • Remove the compilation assemblies, /compilation

    • Remove the system.web.webPages.razor element

    • New: sectionGroup name="umbracoConfiguration" section

    • New: umbracoConfiguration element

    • Ensure that the targetFramework="4.5" is added to the httpRuntime element

    • Add add key="ValidationSettings:UnobtrusiveValidationMode" value="None" to the appSettings element

• /config/clientdependency.config changes

  • remove add name="CanvasProvider" element

• /views/web.config updates

• New macroscripts/web.config

• config/umbracoSettings.config

  • Remove the EnableCanvasEditing element

  • Remove the webservices element

• Removed xsltExtensions.config
• /config/applications.config and /config/trees.config have some icon paths and names updated. You need to merge the new changes into your existing config files.

• /config/tinyMceConfig.config

  • The inlinepopups is compatible and supported in Umbraco 7. You need to remove these elements: plugin loadOnFrontend="true", inlinepopups/plugin;

  • The plugins element that is shipped with Umbraco 7 looks like this:

    • You need to merge the changes from the new tinyMceConfig file into yours. The command elements that have changed are: JustifyCenter, JustifyLeft, JustifyRight, JustifyFull, umbracomacro, umbracoembed, mceImage, subscript, superscript, styleselect

    • Remove the command: mceSpellCheck

• /config/dashboard.config

  • You need to merge the changes from the new dashboard.config into yours. Some of the original dashboard entries that were shipped with Umbraco 6 have been replaced or removed.

Medium Trust

Umbraco 7+ will no longer support medium trust environments. There are now some assemblies used in the core that do not support medium trust but are used extensively. Plugin scanning now also allows for scanning Umbraco's internal types which requires full trust.

Events

Tree events

Content, Media, Members, and Data Type trees will no longer raise the legacy tree events (based on BaseTree). It is recommended to change all tree event handlers to use the new tree events that fire for every tree in Umbraco including legacy trees. The new tree events are static events and are found in the class Umbraco.Web.Trees.TreeControllerBase:

• MenuRendering

• RootNodeRendering

• TreeNodesRendering

Legacy business logic events

The Content, Media, Member, and Data Type editors have been re-created and are solely using the new Umbraco Services data layer. This means that operations performed in the backoffice will no longer raise the legacy business logic events (for example, events based on umbraco.cms.businesslogic.web.Document). It is recommended to change your event handlers to subscribe to the new Services data layer events. These are static events and are found in the services. For example: Umbraco.Core.Services.ContentService.Saved.

Property Editors

Legacy property editors (pre-Umbraco 7) will not work with Umbraco 7. During the upgrade installation process, Umbraco will generate a report showing you which legacy property editors are installed. These will all be converted to a readonly Label property editor. No data loss will occur but you'll need to re-assign your existing data types to use a new compatible Umbraco 7 property editor.

Most Umbraco core property editors shipped will be mapped to their equivalent Umbraco 7 editors. The Image cropper editor has not been completed for v7.0.

The Related Links property editor and XSLT

Since the Related Links property is an advanced property editor, the data format has changed from XML to JSON. This should not have any effect when retrieving the data from razor. If you are outputting Related Links data with XSLT you will need to update your XSLT snippet. Making use of the new library method umbraco.library:JsonToXml and taking into account that the xml structure has also slightly changed.

GUID -> Alias mapping

One of the database changes made in Umbraco 7 is the change of referencing a property editor from a GUID to a string alias. In order to map a legacy property editor to a new Umbraco 7 version you can add your custom "GUID -> Alias" map during application startup. To do this you would add your map using this method: Umbraco.Core.PropertyEditors.LegacyPropertyEditorIdToAliasConverter.CreateMap

Parameter Editors

Legacy parameter editors (pre-Umbraco 7) will not work with Umbraco 7. If Umbraco detects legacy parameter editor aliases that do not map to a Umbraco 7 parameter editor it will render a textbox in its place. You will need to update your macros to use a compatible Umbraco 7 parameter editor as those that aren't supported.

Previously, parameter editors were registered in an Umbraco database table: cmsMacroPropertyType which no longer exists. Parameter editors in Umbraco 7 are plugins like property editors. During the Umbraco 7 upgrade installation process it will update the new cmsMacroProperty.editorAlias column with the previous parameter editor alias. During this process it will look into the Umbraco.Core.PropertyEditors.LegacyParameterEditorAliasConverter for a map between a legacy alias to a new Umbraco 7 alias.

Custom legacy parameters can be mapped to new Umbraco 7 parameter editor aliases during installation. This can be done by modifying the mapping during application startup using this method: Umbraco.Core.PropertyEditors.LegacyParameterEditorAliasConverter.CreateMap.

Database changes

All database changes will be taken care of during the upgrade installation process.

For database change details see (including all child tasks):

Tags

See above for the database updates made for better tag support.

• Tags can now be assigned to a nodes property and not only a node

• Multiple tag controls can exist on one page with different data

  • The legacy API does not support this, the legacy API will effectively, add/update/remove tags for the first property found for the document that is assigned a tag property editor.

• There is a new ITagService that can be used to query tags

  • Querying for tags in a view (front-end) can be done via the new TagQuery class which is exposed from the UmbracoHelper. For example: @Umbraco.TagQuery.GetTagsForProperty

Packages

You should check with the package creator for all installed packages to ensure they are compatible with Umbraco 7.

For package developers

We see common errors that we cannot fix for you, but we do have recommendations you can follow to fix them:

TypeFinder

The TypeFinder has been deprecated since 4.10 and is now found under Umbraco.Core.TypeFinder.

JavaScript in menu actions

While you need to have JavaScript inside menu actions to trigger a response, it is highly recommended that you use the recommended UmbClientMgr methods. You should not try to override parent.right.document and similar tricks to get to the right-hand frame.

Use the recommended Umbraco uicontrols

If you have a webforms page, it is recommended to use the built-in ASP.NET controls to render panels, properties and so on. If you use the raw HTML or try to style it to match the backoffice, you will get out of sync. Follow the guidelines set by Umbraco's internal editors and use the ASP.NET custom controls for UI.

We have made custom Umbraco templates that are available for use with dotnet new. The steps below will demonstrate the minimum amount of actions required to get you going and set up an Umbraco project from the command line using .NET templates.

Video Tutorial

Install the template

Once that is complete, you can see that Umbraco was added to the list of available projects types by running dotnet new --list:

To get help on a project template with dotnet new run the following command:

dotnet new umbraco -h

From that command's output, you will get a better understanding of what are the default template options, as well as those command-line flags specific to Umbraco that you can use (as seen below):

Create an Umbraco project

1. Create a new empty Umbraco solution using MS SQL Azure/Server: dotnet new umbraco -n MyCustomUmbracoProject

You will now have a new project with the name MyCustomUmbracoProject, or the name you chose to use. The new project can be opened and run using your favorite IDE or you can continue using the CLI commands.

Run Umbraco

1. Navigate to the newly created project folder: cd MyCustomUmbracoProject

2. Build and run the new Umbraco .Net Core project: dotnet build dotnet run

The next step is to run through the Umbraco CMS installation. If you chose to use MS SQL Server/Azure you will need to add your connection string during this setup process to get access to the Umbraco backoffice.

This section describes different ways of setting up servers for use with Umbraco

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and HTTPS

We strongly encourage the use of HTTPS with Umbraco installations especially in production environments. Using HTTPS will greatly enhance the security of your website, see the for more information.

To ensure a stable and smoothly running Umbraco installation, these permissions need to be set correctly.

Information about hosting a v9 application using IIS.

Information on how to deploy Umbraco in a Load Balanced scenario and other details to consider when setting up Umbraco for load balancing.

Best practices for running Umbraco on Azure Web Apps.

The runtime mode setting optimizes Umbraco for the best development experience or optimal production environment.

Sometimes there are exceptions to these guidelines, which are listed in the .

Note

It is necessary to run the upgrade installer on each environment of your Umbraco site. If you want to update your staging and live site you need to repeat the steps below. Make sure you click through the install screens so that your upgrade is complete.

Contents

In this article you will find instructions for 3 different ways of upgrading:

Upgrade using NuGet

1. Open up the Package Console and type: Update-Package UmbracoCms

2. Choose "No to All" by pressing the "L" when prompted.

   • If there are any specific configuration changes required for the version you are upgrading to then they will be noted in the .

Alternatively, you can use the Visual Studio NuGet Package Manager to upgrade:

1. Open the NuGet Package Manager and select the Updates pane to get a list of available updates.

2. Choose the package called UmbracoCms and select update.

The upgrade will run through all the files and make sure you have the latest changes while leaving files you have updated.

Upgrade manually from a zip file

Copy the following folders from inside the .zip file over the existing folders in your site:

• /bin

• /Umbraco

Merge configuration files

You can expect some changes to the following configuration files:

• Any file in the /Config folder

• The /Global.asax file

• The web.config file in the root of your site (Important: make sure to copy back the version number, and the connection string as they were.)

• In rare cases, the web.config file in the /Views folder

There's also the possibility that some files in the /Config folder are new or some have been removed (we do make a note of this in the release notes). WinMerge (and other diff tools) can compare folders as well so you can spot these differences.

Merge UI.xml and language files

Some packages like Umbraco Forms add dialogs to the UI.xml. Make sure to merge those changes back in from your backup during the upgrade so that the packages continue to work. This file can be found in: /Umbraco/Config/Create/UI.xml.

Packages like Umbraco Forms and Courier also make changes to the language files located in: /Umbraco/Config/Lang/*.xml (typically en.xml).

Finalize

After copying the files and making the config changes, you can open your site. You should see the installer which will guide you through the upgrade.

The installer will do two things:

• Update the version number in the web.config

• Upgrade your database in case there are any changes

We are aware that, currently, the installer is asking you for the database details of a blank database while upgrading. In the near future this will be pre-filled with your existing details and the wording will be updated. So no need to be scared. Enter the details of your existing database and Umbraco will upgrade it to the latest version when necessary.

Run an unattended upgrade

When upgrading your Umbraco project to Umbraco v8.12+ it is possible to enable the upgrade to run unattended. This means that you will not need to run through the installation wizard when upgrading.

Below you will find the steps you need to take in order to upgrade your project unattended.

Enable the feature

1. Add the Umbraco.Core.RuntimeState.UpgradeUnattended key to appSettings in your web.config file.

2. Set the value of the key to true.

Check the ConfigurationStatus

In order to trigger the actual upgrade, the correct version number needs to be set.

It is important to use the version number of the version that you are upgrading to. If this is not set, the upgrade will not run even if the UpgradeUnattended key has been set to true.

1. Locate the ConfigurationStatus key in the appSettings section in your web.config file.

2. Update the value to match the Umbraco version that you are upgrading to.

Run the upgrade

With the correct configuration applied, the project will be upgraded on the next boot.

Boot order

The Runtime level will use Run instead of Upgrade in order to allow the website to continue to boot up directly after the migration is run, instead of initiating the otherwise required restart.

Unattended upgrades in a load balanced setup

Follow the steps outlined below to use run unattended upgrades in a load balanced setup.

1. Upgrade Umbraco via NuGet in Visual Studio. Make sure the Umbraco.Core.ConfigurationStatus key in appSetting in the web.config file is updated to match the target version.

2. Deploy to all environments, including the updated appSetting for Umbraco.Core.ConfigurationStatus.

3. Set the Umbraco.Core.RuntimeState.UpgradeUnattended key in appSetting in the web.config to true for the Main server only.

4. Request a page on the Main server and the upgrade will run automatically.

5. Wait for the upgrade to complete.

6. Browse the Read-Only servers and make sure they do not show the “upgrade required” screen.

Post installation

One important recommendation is to always remove the install folder immediately after upgrading Umbraco and never to upload it to a live server.

Potential issues and gotchas

Browser cache

Google Chrome has notoriously aggressive caching, so if something doesn't seem to work well in the backoffice, make sure to clear cache and cookies thoroughly (for other browsers as well). Normally the browser cache problem is automatically handled in an Umbraco upgrade by modifying the config/ClientDependency.config version number. If you however wish to re-force this update you can increment this version number which will ensure that any server-side cache of JavaScript and stylesheets gets cleared as well.

One way to nudge the cache in Chrome is to open the developer tools (F12) and go to the settings (the cog icon). There will be a checkbox that says "Disable cache (while DevTools is open)". Once this checkbox is on you can refresh the page and the cache should be invalidated. To force it even more, the "reload" button next to your address bar now has extra options when you right-click it. It should have "Normal reload", "Hard reload" and "Empty cache and hard reload" now. The last option is the most thorough and you might want to try that.

Configuring IIS for .NET 5

• Install the and download the Hosting Bundle. Ensure you download the correct .NET version as per the .

• Once you have the hosting bundle installed and have restarted IIS (net stop was /y followed by net start w3svc), create a site in IIS as you would for a v8 site, however you need to ensure that ".NET CLR version" is set to "No Managed Code" for the Application Pool.

Publish website for manual deployment to IIS

You can use the dotnet CLI to compile and collate all files required for hosting

Alternatively you can use folder or ftp publishing in Visual Studio to compile and collate all required files to for the application to run.

In Visual Studio right click on Umbraco web project in the Solution Explorer and choose Publish... command.

Environment Variables in ApplicationHost.config

In the Management section you find the Configuration Editor:

One section is of particular interest:

• In the first, left hand dropdown list (Section:) choose: system.webServer/aspNetCore section.

• In the second, right hand dropdown list (From:) choose: ApplicationHost.config <location path='[YOUR-SITENAME]'>. This ensures your settings will be stored in a machine specific file and not the website's web.config. The web.config might end in a public repository and should not contain sensitive data like Connection Strings or SMTP configuration with username and password. Additionally by default the web.config will be overwritten during each publish processes.

Find the line named environmentVariables and open the dialog to add environment variables. These work similar to the launchSettings. E.g. you can define ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT and create an appSettings.[ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT].json file. Or even better create environment variables for sensitive settings like passwords. There are some differences to launchSettings.json configuration:

• Variable names need to change the object structure form JSON by combining the segments with double underscore __ e.g. ConnectionStrings__umbracoDbDSN

• escaped backslashes \\ e.g. serverName\\databaseInstanceName are replaced by single backslash \ e.g. DATABASESERVER123\SQL2017

IIS Hosting models

IIS can host .NET 5 applications using 2 different hosting models

• In-process hosting runs an .NET 5 app in the same process as its IIS worker process

Out-of-process .NET 5 apps run in a separate from the IIS worker process. The module controls the management of the Kestrel server and requests are proxied between them.

Ensure you read the and general documentation before you begin - you will need to ensure that your ASP.NET Core & logging configurations are correct.

Azure Requirements

• 2 x App service plans with 1 x web app in each:

  • One for the backoffice (Administrative) environment

  • One for your scalable public-facing environment (Public)

• 1 x SQL server that is shared with these 2 web apps

The setup above will allow for the proper scaling of the Administrative and Public web apps.

The App Service plan with the Administrative web app should only be scaled up. The reason for this is that the web app needs to stay as a single instance.

The App Service plan with the Public web app can be scaled both out and up.

Lucene/Examine configuration

The single instance Backoffice Administrative Web App should be set to use .

The multi-instance Scalable Public Web App should be set to use .

Umbraco TEMP files

When an instance of Umbraco starts up it generates some 'temporary' files on disk. In a normal IIS environment, these would be created within the folders of the Web Application. In an Azure Web App, we want these to be created in the local storage of the actual server that Azure happens to be used for the Web App. So we set this configuration setting to 'true' and the temporary files will be located in the environment temporary folder. This is required for both the performance of the website as well as to prevent file locks from occurring due to the nature of Azure Web Apps shared files system.

Steps to set-up an environment

1. Create an Azure SQL database

2. Install Umbraco on your backoffice administrative environment and ensure to use your Azure SQL Database

3. Install Umbraco on your scalable public-facing environment and ensure to use your Azure SQL Database

4. Test: Perform some content updates on the administrative environment, ensure they work successfully in that environment, then verify that those changes appear on the scalable public-facing environment

Scaling

Do not scale your backoffice administrative environment this is not supported and can cause issues.

The public-facing subscriber Azure Web Apps can be manually or automatically scaled up or down and is supported by Umbraco's load balancing.

Deployment considerations

Since you have 2 x web apps, when you deploy you will need to deploy to both places - There are various automation techniques you can use to simplify the process. That is outside the scope of this article.

This describes some more advanced techniques that you could achieve with flexible load balancing

The election process that runs during the startup of an Umbraco instance determines the server role that instance will undertake.

There are two server roles to be aware of for flexible load balancing:

• SchedulingPublisher - The Umbraco instance usually used for backoffice access, responsible for running scheduled tasks.

• Subscriber - A scalable instance that subscribes to content updates from the SchedulingPublisher server, not recommended to be used for backoffice access.

Explicit SchedulingPublisher server

It is recommended to configure an explicit SchedulingPublisher server since this reduces the amount of complexity that the election process performs.

The first thing to do is create a couple of small classes that implement IServerRoleAccessor one for each of the different server roles:

Now that your subscriber servers are using your custom SubscriberServerRoleAccessor class, they will always be deemed 'Subscriber' servers and will not attempt to run the automatic server role election process or task scheduling.

By setting your SchedulingPublisher server to use your custom SchedulingPublisherServerRoleAccessor class, it will always be deemed the 'SchedulingPublisher' and will always be the one that executes all task scheduling.

Subscriber servers - Read-only database access

In some cases infrastructure admins will not want their front-end servers to have write access to the database. By default front-end servers will require write full access to the following tables:

• umbracoServer

• umbracoNode

This is because by default each server will inform the database that they are active and more importantly it is used for task scheduling. Only a single server can execute task scheduling and these tables are used for servers to use a server role election process without the need for any configuration. So in the case that a subscriber server becomes the SchedulingPublisher task scheduler, it will require write access to all of the Umbraco tables.

Now that your subscriber servers are using your custom SubscriberServerRoleAccessor class, they will always be deemed 'Subscriber' servers and will not attempt to run the automatic server role election process or task scheduling. Because you are no longer using the default ElectedServerRoleAccessor they will not try to ping the umbracoServer table.

Controlling how often the load balancing instructions from the database are processed and pruned

The configurations can be adjusted to control how often the load balancing instructions from the database are processed and pruned.

Below is shown how to do this from a JSON configuration source.

Options:

• TimeToRetainInstructions - The timespan to keep instructions in the database; records older than this number will be pruned.

• MaxProcessingInstructionCount - The maximum number of instructions that can be processed at startup; otherwise the server cold-boots (rebuilds its caches)

• TimeBetweenSyncOperations - The timespan to wait between each sync operations

• TimeBetweenPruneOperations - The timespan to wait between each prune operation

Umbraco v8+ uses Serilog for logging. When load balancing Umbraco consideration should be given as to how the log files from each server will be accessed.

There are many Serilog Sinks available. One of these may be appropriate to store logs for all servers in a central repository such as Azure Application Insights or Elmah.io.

For more information, see .

This section describes best practices with running Umbraco on Azure Web Apps

What are Azure Web Apps

They have been called a few names in the past, many people still know Azure Web Apps as Azure Web Sites.

App Service is a fully Managed Platform for professional developers that brings a rich set of capabilities to web, mobile and integration scenarios. Quickly create and deploy mission critical web Apps that scale with your business by using Azure App Service.

Umbraco will run on Azure Web Apps but there are some configuration options and specific Azure Web Apps environment limitations to be aware of.

Recommended configuration

You need to add these configuration values. E.g in a json configuration source like appSettings.json:

You can also copy the following JSON directly into your Azure Web App configuration via the Advanced Edit feature.

The minimum recommended Azure SQL Tier is "S2", however noticeable performance improvements are seen in higher Tiers

Storage

It is important to know that Azure Web Apps uses a remote file share to host the files to run your website. This is due to the files running your website do not exist on the machine running your website. In many cases this isn't an issue. It can become one if you have a large amount of IO operations running over remote file-share.

Issues with read-only filesystems

Scaling

Web worker migrations

It's important to know that Azure Web Apps may move your website between their 'workers' at any given time. This is normally a transparent operation. In some cases you may be affected by it if any of your code or libraries use the following variables:

• Environment.MachineName (or equivalent)

When your site is migrated to another worker, these variables will change. You cannot rely on these variables remaining static for the lifetime of your website.

How to find the Linux App Service Logs

The quickest way to get to your logs is using the following URL template and replacing {app} with your Web App name:

https://{app}.scm.azurewebsites.net/api/logstream

You can also find this in the KUDU console by clicking Advanced Tools > Log Stream on the Web App in the Azure Portal.

Web App secret management

If the file system on your servers isn't performing any file replication then no Umbraco configuration file changes are necessary. However Media will need to be configured to use a shared location such as Blob storage or S3.

Depending on the configuration and performance of the environment's local storage you might need to consider and the .

Synchronised File System

If the file system on your servers is performing file replication then the Umbraco temporary folder (~/umbraco/Data/TEMP) must be excluded from replication.

If the file system on your servers is located on shared storage you will need to configure Umbraco to locate the Umbraco temporary folder outside of the shared storage.

Replication techniques

A common way to replicate files on Windows Server is to use [DFS](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb540031(v=vs.85), which is included with Windows Server.

Additional DFS resources:

There are other alternatives for file replication out there, some free and some licensed. You'll need to decide which solution is best for your environment.

Non-replicated files

When deploying Umbraco in a load balanced scenario using file replication, it is important to ensure that not all files are replicated - otherwise you will experience file locking issues. Here are the folders and files that should not be replicated:

• ~/umbraco/Data/TEMP/*

• ~/umbraco/Logs/*

  • This is optional and depends on how you want your logs configured (see below)

If for some reason your file replication solution doesn't allow you to not replicate specific files folders (which it should!!) then you can use an alternative approach by using virtual directories.

The following is not the recommended setup but it is a viable alternative:

• Copy the ~/umbraco/Data/TEMP directory to each server, outside of any replication areas or to a unique folder for each server.

• Create a virtual directory (not a virtual application) in the ~/umbraco/Data/ folder, and name it TEMP. Point the virtual directory to the folder you created in step 2.

• You may delete the ~/umbraco/Data/TEMP folder from the file system - not IIS as this may delete the virtual directory - if you wish.

IIS Setup

IIS configuration is pretty straightforward with file replication. IIS is only reading files from its own file system like a normal IIS website.

Mixture of standalone & synchronised

In some scenarios you have a mixture of standalone and synchronised file systems. An example of this is Azure Web Apps where the file system isn't replicated between backoffice and front end servers but is replicated between all front end servers, in this configuration you should follow the steps for synchronised file systems.

Examine Directory Factory Options

• The TempFileSystemDirectoryFactory allows Examine to store indexes directly in the environment temporary storage directory, and should be used instead of SyncTempEnvDirectoryFactory mentioned above.

• The SyncedTempFileSystemDirectoryFactory enables Examine to sync indexes between the remote file system and the local environment temporary storage directory, the indexes will be accessed from the temporary storage directory. This setting is needed because Lucene has issues when working from a remote file share so the files need to be read/accessed locally. Any time the index is updated, this setting will ensure that both the locally created indexes and the normal indexes are written to. This will ensure that when the app is restarted or the local environment temp files are cleared out that the index files can be restored from the centrally stored index files.

Advanced techniques

In this article you can learn more about the common terms and concepts that are used throughout the Umbraco backoffice.

When you go to the backoffice for the first time, you're presented with the login screen.

A section in Umbraco is where you do specific tasks related to that section. For example Content, Settings and Users. You can navigate between the different sections of the backoffice by clicking the corresponding icon in the section menu.

The Section menu is the horizontal menu located on the top of the backoffice.

A tree is a hierarchical list of items related (and usually restricted) to a specific concept, like for example content or media.

Node

A node is an item in a tree. Images and folders in the Media section are shown as nodes in the Media tree, pages and content in the Content tree and so forth.

A dashboard is the main view you are presented with when entering a section within the backoffice. It can be used to show valuable information to the users of the system.

Default dashboard in the content section

Editor

An editor is what you use to edit different items within the backoffice. There are editors specific to editing stylesheets, there are editors for editing Macros and so forth.

Content is what you find in the Content section. Each item in the tree is called a content node. Each content node in the content tree consists of different fields, and each of them are defined by a Document Type.

Document Type

Document Types define the types of content nodes that backoffice users can create in the content tree. Each Document Type contains different properties. Each property has a specific Data Type for example text or number.

Properties

Every Document Type has properties. These are the fields that the content editor is allowed to edit for the content node.

Each Document Type property has a Data Type which defines the type of input of that property. Data Types reference a Property Editor and are configured in the Umbraco backoffice in the Settings section. A Data Type can be something basic (textstring, number, true/false) or more complex (multi-node tree picker, image cropper, etc).

A property editor is the view used by Data Types to insert content into Umbraco. An example of a property editor is the Textarea. It's possible to have many Textarea Data Types with different settings that all use the Textarea property editor.

Media items are used to store assets like images and video within the Media section and can be referenced from your content.

Media Types

Media Types are similar to Document Types in Umbraco, except they are specifically for media items in the Media section.

Umbraco comes with 3 default Media Types: File, Folder and Image.

A member is someone who has access to signup, register and login into your public website and is not to be confused with Users.

Member Types

Similar to a Document Type and a Media Type. You are able to define custom properties to store on a member such as twitter username or website URL.

A Template is where you define the HTML markup of your website and also where you output the data from your content nodes.

Packages

A macro is a reusable piece of functionality that you can reuse throughout your site. Macros can be configured with parameters and used on content nodes that has a Rich Text Editor, a Grid editor or a Macro Picker property. You can define what macros are available for your editors to use. When an editor inserts a macro it will prompt them to fill out any of the defined parameters for the macro.

A parameter editor defines the usage of a property editor for use as a parameter for Macros.

Users

A user is someone who has access to the Umbraco backoffice and is not to be confused with Members. When Umbraco has been installed a user will automatically be generated with the login (email) and password entered during installation. Users can be created, edited and managed in the User section.

Content Templates provide a blueprint for content nodes based on an existing node.

Alias: Umbraco.ContentPicker

Returns: IPublishedContent

The content picker opens a panel to pick a specific page from the content structure. The value saved is the selected nodes

Data Type Definition Example

Content Example

MVC View Example

Without Modelsbuilder

With Modelsbuilder

Add values programmatically

Although the use of a GUID is preferable, you can also use the numeric ID to get the page:

If Modelsbuilder is enabled you can get the alias of the desired property without using a magic string:

Alias: Umbraco.CheckBoxList

Returns: IEnumerable<string>

Displays a list of preset values as a list of checkbox controls. The text saved is an IEnumerable collection of the text values.

Data Type Definition Example

Content Example

MVC View Example

Without Modelsbuilder

With Modelsbuilder

Add values programmatically

Although the use of a GUID is preferable, you can also use the numeric ID to get the page:

If Modelsbuilder is enabled you can get the alias of the desired property without using a magic string: