Codegarden 2025 showcased why Umbraco remains such an outstanding content management system. The 'Friendly CMS' continues to pave the way for AI-augmented experiences, editor usability and flexibility that lets us think 'how' rather than 'if' something can be done.
After 20 years, Umbraco has evolved into a 150+ strong, profitable company whilst maintaining its community roots. The event had something for everyone who works with content.
AI takes centre stage
Umbraco made a clear statement about AI this year. We can now ask Umbraco to do something for us using AI prompts.
The standout presentation came from Phil Whittaker and Matthew Wise, who spent their garden leave developing a way to turn AI prompts into Umbraco actions. Their live demo showed Claude AI organising and moving all unused datatypes into a single folder with one prompt and a full explanation of every step.
This capability is genuinely limitless. We could generate content, restructure sites, modify the CMS interface, improve accessibility, or source high-quality images for articles.
This isn't just a trend. Their approach uses Model Context Protocol (MCP), which Docker is already working to support in the hosting world.
Environmental responsibility
We're exploring this technology carefully since our return, considering both scope and environmental impact. As James Hobbs asked in his talk, "Is ChatGPT killing the penguins?" It's our responsibility as developers to ensure it isn't.
Using AI to augment content once and then serving it thousands of times makes environmental sense. We're exploring ways to monitor and report a site's carbon footprint whilst finding ways to reduce it.
Umbraco's new backoffice transforms editor experience
Umbraco's content editing interface is changing completely. As developers, we can now easily customise these experiences using technology we have decades of combined experience with.
We'll be able to style backoffice pages to mirror the site's frontend. The underlying technology is JavaScript, a language you've probably used today without realising it.
Beyond cosmetic improvements
We're exploring how to implement content directly from external services like Microsoft 365 in simple, and intuitive ways. We're heavily focused on editor experience. This means streamlining how people work with content on a daily basis.
This gives us a platform to implement almost anything. Want to remove the post option from a page's right-click menu? You can. Replace it with an experience that guides editors through prompts rather than confronting them with empty fields.
We can build editor experiences that look and feel like the final product users will see.
Other innovations worth watching
Beyond AI and the new backoffice, several other presentations caught our attention:
-
'Gotta cache'em All' showed how Umbraco's new hybrid cache will help websites scale better whilst using less energy during quieter times.
-
'The Future of Search' demonstrated how we'll integrate any search service directly into Umbraco sites, including semantic ranking.
-
'Unboxing Umbraco Commerce' showed how easy it could be to build online stores whilst maintaining security and maintainability.
The sky's the limit with Umbraco. If you can think of a feature, we're confident we can start working on 'how' rather than 'if' it can be done.
Want to explore what's possible with your Umbraco site? Get in touch with our team to see what we can build together.
