Matt Brailsford

📰 Getting Started on Bluesky for Umbraco Developers

Bluesky is emerging as a dynamic platform for the Umbraco community, offering opportunities for connection and content discovery. Dean Leigh's Starter Pack and Rick Butterfield's custom feed enhance user experience, while the Umbraco Bluesky Labeler and UMB.FYI bot facilitate engagement. Join Bluesky to connect with fellow Umbraco enthusiasts.

📰 Introducing the Umbraco Bluesky Labeler

The recent surge in Bluesky users has inspired community initiatives utilizing its open API, such as the Umbraco Bluesky Labeler, created to highlight key community members like Umbraco HQ and MVPs. This opt-in feature allows users to connect more easily, fostering engagement within the community.

📰 UMB.FYI links get Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters

In a recent discussion, the Umbraco community suggested adding UTM parameters to UMB.FYI newsletters to help authors track web traffic sources. The newsletter now includes parameters indicating the source and medium, while ensuring no identifiable data is shared. This change aims to enhance authors' insights and demonstrate the newsletter's value.

📰 Reconnecting a Fragmented Community Through Automation: aka The Story of UMB.FYI

In "Reconnecting a Fragmented Community Through Automation," Matt Brailsford describes the creation of UMB.FYI, a newsletter aimed at uniting the Umbraco community amidst fragmentation caused by social media changes. Utilizing automation for content collection, curation, and distribution, UMB.FYI has successfully engaged over 500 subscribers, fostering community collaboration and knowledge sharing.

📰 Creating a Bluesky bot in C#

Matt Brailsford details the development of a Bluesky tips bot for UMB.FYI, which monitors mentions and responds with thank-you messages. He discusses the setup process, opting for a polling method due to bandwidth concerns, and outlines the bot's architecture, including the implementation of a Bluesky client for handling notifications.

📰 UMB.FYI gets a Bluesky tips bot

With the rise of Bluesky users and the Umbraco community, a tips bot has been introduced to facilitate content suggestions for the UMB.FYI newsletter. Users can easily submit tips by tagging the UMB.FYI account on social media. The initiative aims to keep the community informed across various platforms.

📰 UMB.FYI gets Profiles, Tags and Topics

In the latest update to the UMB.FYI newsletter, Matt Brailsford introduces new features including profile pages for content creators, tag pages for article categorization, and topic pages that group related tags. These enhancements encourage community contributions and aim to improve user engagement with the newsletter's content.

📰 Launching the GitHub Discussions Blog Loader for Astro

Matt Brailsford introduces a GitHub Discussions Blog loader, leveraging Astro’s new Content Layer API. This loader simplifies data fetching for blog posts, allowing easy installation via npm. He highlights improvements like multi-author support, category organization, and integration with Astro's markdown processor, encouraging users to explore this setup.

💬 UMB.FYI celebrates it's first birthday

📰 Building a GitHub Discussions Powered Blog

Matt Brailsford explores using GitHub Discussions as a blogging platform, seeking an alternative to dev.to due to its increasing spam. He details setting up a repository for blog posts, configuring categories and labels, and utilizing Astro for site creation. Matt highlights features like Markdown support, automated deployments, and comment integration via Giscus.

📰 Deploying TypeScript Type Definitions for Umbraco v14 Packages

Matt Brailsford outlines the process for deploying Umbraco v14 extension type definitions as NPM packages, ensuring type checking for users. Key steps include consolidating types, generating type definitions using TypeScript, rolling them up with API Extractor, packaging the definitions, and defining an import map for proper resolution.

💬 Codegarden 2024 Doodle Roundup

📰 The Challenge of Versioning Expandable API's in Umbraco

Umbraco v12 has introduced headless core products with expansion functionality, allowing selective expansion of nested entity reference objects. However, versioning REST APIs becomes problematic when expansion is taken into account, and Matt Brailsford suggests a date-based versioning strategy.

📰 Using the Command Pattern to Re-Apply Changes to an Observable Model in Umbraco Bellissima

In Umbraco v14, observable models are introduced to provide reactivity for components displaying up-to-date data. To address potential issues with handling user input, Matt Brailsford suggests using the command pattern to encapsulate modifications, store them, and reapply them when needed. This approach ensures user modifications are maintained if the observed model changes.

📰 Enhancing Asynchronous Data Fetching in Umbraco v14 with Lit Async Directives

Umbraco Commerce uses interconnected models for backoffice display, requiring efficient data fetching. Lit's async directives enable easy request handling, improving UI performance and user experience.

📰 Reusing Umbraco Properties in Umbraco v14

In Umbraco v14, when building custom editor UI it can be useful to reuse the existing property editors that Umbraco comes with. In this article Matt Brailsford discusses how to do just that.

📰 Creating your own UI extension points in Umbraco v14 - Part 6: Filters & Conditions

This post discusses controlling the display of "quick actions" in an application using filtering and conditions. Filtering is used to display items based on static attributes, while conditions control display based on dynamic runtime conditions. Custom conditions can also be implemented.

💬 UMB.FYI reaches it's 30th newsletter!

📰 Creating your own UI extension points in Umbraco v14 - Part 4: Interchangeable Elements

This post discusses how to enable the replacement of elements with a custom user controls in Umbraco v14. It covers updating the manifest definition, implementing the required interface, and overriding the default element with a custom component. Developers can now replace the default button element and update the manifest to use the custom component instead.

📰 Creating your own UI extension points in Umbraco v14 - Part 5: Kinds

In this post, we explore the use of "kinds" to create reusable manifest definitions, reducing repetition in manifest definitions by preconfiguring settings. Kinds are registered with the extensions registry and used to prepopulate properties in manifests.