Umbraco 7 is end-of-life, when will you migrate to V12 (or not)?

Umbraco 7 is end of life... Hellup! But what does that actually mean for my website? And what should I do?

Of course, every agency advises you to migrate your site to the latest version as quickly as possible. Trade is trade. But there is no immediate reason to panic, because your site will continue to run. Believe it or not, there are still sites running in Umbraco V4 that are doing just fine.

It is also not so easy which step to take next, because Umbraco has (to be honest) set out a rather hectic version update roadmap. Umbraco 7 is about six years old now, so it's time. But Umbraco 8 is only 3 years old and will be end-of-life early next year, Umbraco 9 only existed for a very short time and is now completely end-of-life. Over the last year we have had versions 10 and 11, and we are now at version 12. Version 13 will be available next year.

This seems like a lot of updates and an undesirable situation, especially because a number of versions have so-called 'breaking changes'. This version cannot simply be updated automatically, and requires a lot of manual work if you want to convert it to the latest version. An 'update' or 'migration' from V7, V8, V9 to the latest Umbraco version is therefore simply a complete rebuild .

Of course, Umbraco did not take this step lightly, it was all with the highest goal: security and stability . A lot has changed in recent years in the underlying techniques of Microsoft and other frameworks. Umbraco's long-term vision required it to be built on the latest. So that the basis is in order, and new versions can be rolled out that are easy to update. In short, the latest versions will last you for years to come!

But now back to the beginning. What should I do with my Umbraco V7 website?
We also advise you to migrate to the latest version of Umbraco, but do so with common sense.

• Do you want to renew your website in the short term (1 year)? Please feel free to wait until then.
• Is your V7 website a simple online brochure. Then you can actually wait a very long time, but the site is probably easy to rebuild.
• Do you have a business-critical website with a lot of functionality? Then I would start a process to renew the site as soon as possible. A rebuild easily takes 3 months, and time flies.
• If you're considering an upgrade, you can even check this article out Migrated 5 websites from Umbraco 7 to 12—Affordable

If you have a V7 website, but no plans to renew it yet? Then it might be wise to take a critical look at your site. The lifespan of a website 'front end' (design and functionality) is approximately 4 years to keep up with the times.

Maybe you have more questions than answers now.... Send me ( melvin@zaaks.nl ) an email? Then we can talk about it some more.