Reasons why you should keep your Umbraco Up-to-Date

From time to time, it is seen to receive an email from one of you guys asking whether it is safe, and if it's worth the hassle to upgrade their Umbraco website to the upgraded version. If you are asking yourself whether you should update your Umbraco website to the upgraded version, then keep reading this article.

Why Should You Use The upgraded Version of Umbraco?

Initially, let's take a look at the more obvious logical reasons why you need to keep your Umbraco install up-to-date.

1. Security is usually the top of any list of reasons to keep your software patched to the upgraded version. Security is probably the most crucial reason why you should keep your Umbraco website updated in terms of infrastructure. With each and every new release, they will solve security vulnerabilities that pen-testing reports and end-users have identified to make sure your Umbraco website is safe and secure and is up-to-date with new industry standards.

Don't get us wrong, Umbraco is definitely not a Wordpress. Umbraco is a considerably more secure and stable than Wordpress (because of the main difference in the Wordpress plug-in architecture), so you can be very positive that your current Umbraco build is safe and secure, however, having the latest Version will have to ensure you not to get caught out by any potential new vulnerabilities

2. Awesome New Features, With each and every new update, comes new features and modifications. Take a look to the screenshot below, for example of exactly how the back-end editor has changed over a few different releases.

By constantly and frequently upgrades, your website may automatically achieve a whole host of new extra features for very little effort on your part. This is one of the main reasons we always tend to urge anyone with a new project to use an off the shelf CMS instead of trying to change the wheel.

With every new upgrade you can get new features, in latest releases, these have integrated things like info tabs, auto-URL rewriting, scheduled health checks, improved search indexing and all other useful benefits

3. Bragging Rights, Whenever you meet your mates in the pub, do you want to be the guy who has to hold his head in shame and admit he is using Umbraco 4, or do you want to be the 'cool' one using the latest and greatest? One word of caution, if your mates get excited about Umbraco updates... you may want to ask some girls out!

4. Bug Solutions. From our experience, Umbraco is a wonderful platform which so far has always worked for us, however, despite the rigorous testing, like all software bugs may slip through the cracks. If you go into the Umbraco forums seeking help due to the fact something within your website is not properly working, do not be surprised if you get asked to update.

We remember working on one Umbraco 6 project in a load balanced environment and it had constant cache-invalid problems between the nodes. The fix was very simple, We updated to Umbraco 7 which took about half an hour and the problem solved.

5. The Longer You put It The More Painful It Will Be. We are guessing a plenty of people this will help to understand what working in an 'agile' way means and some of the new better practices are, especially around the DevOps activity. With these philosophies, gone are the days of massive projects that are provided once or twice a year in a big-bang approach.

On the other hand, our present trend is to do lots of little things constantly. Upgrading will surely follow in this way. If you do not bother updating your Umbraco website for several years, it will be more and more painful, compared to updating your Umbraco website on a frequent and consistent basis. If you are planning on re-developing your website from Royex then you may consider leaving it to sit for a while, however, even in these instances, We will suggest you stay in the upgrade loop. By this way you will be more prepared.

Royex is a leading Umbraco Website Development Company in Dubai. We are also a registered partner of Umbraco for Middle East Region. Our experienced Umbraco developers understand business needs and provide the right Umbraco Website Development & CMS solution as per the business needs that requirements of your enterprise. We have worked with various clients and have the experience of handling multiple projects in Umbraco platform at the same time. We ensure the secure, stable, flexible and user-friendly solutions. Please feel free to contact us at info@royex.net if you need any help on Umbraco Website Development or update.