ONE: Umbraco upgrades are excellent. I've blogged individually about point upgrades, but it's a simple process — with the patch upgrades implemented without fuss. So with point upgrades being so simple & covering automatic, there are only full version shifts to worry.

TWO: Less useful, document type switching has gone. A significant enhancement available in Umbraco 7 was the capability to change document types. Utilizing alternative templates has been with us since version 4, but document type flow was relaxed. Admittedly, it will be fixed quickly.

THREE: An unexpected error with images crops up if you select to force a back-office editor to choose an image (as opposed to a folder or a file). I've got a sense that this is similar to the builder modes — but I'm not assured.

FOUR: On Builder Modes, I admire if the default PureLive model (which as revert I presume will be in 90+% of Umbraco 8 sites) is a nod for the increasing dominance of front-end-dev-entry. Back-end devs aren't happy outwardly IntelliSense, which you don’t get on PureLive models — but maybe defaulting to a setup that doesn't need you to know anything regarding DLLs enables a lower barrier to approach for front-end devs. I'll blog about transitioning within PureLive & a model setup that allows IntelliSense on Doc Type fields different time.

FIVE: Reordering document type fields is a worry; composites seldom come before inherited objects, sometimes different sections are & there seems to be no plan to reorder them. There are ordering quantities but no edit option — perhaps a short-term bug. A workaround is to practice F12 & take off the disabled = "disabled" on the HTML & you can reorder them — but save doesn't work correctly or consistently. Perhaps a short-term bug?

SIX: Training is becoming more further online & the opportunity to meet people & the create the community is diminished as an output. The last Umbraco exercise I went on was way back in 2012, but at the event, I met Darren Ferguson, Matt Brailsford, Andrew Knox,  Paul Wright & others. Not the same possibilities to create a network through online training.

SEVEN: After talking to our Umbraco account manager, he verified that certifications hold for two versions, so Umbraco 6 certifications are not valid. I would suggest that Umbraco will now target a two-year release cycle; they have a unique code base & that would mean that Umbraco 7 certification will terminate in 2021 — which will be a big shock to companies that have raised six years of Umbraco 7 creds.

EIGHT: Since choosing on the challenge of hosting 2 Manchester Umbraco meetups a year (heady responsibility), it's clear that the engaged audience in Manchester had drifted away since that sultry night when Niels popped over. Even that's a function of rebooting a meetup that has slipped off the schedule for various devs, maybe the lack of local training has begun Umbraco shops more isolated & less happy to participate. Probably, this can be reversed as I consider meetup strength is a bellwether for the association strength.