The smarter way to create with Umbraco and uSkinned.
uSkinned Site Builder 7.2 is here, bringing a completely redesigned experience to the first screen you see after you log in.
Previously, this area provided a simple overview of recent activity, licence status and a few handy creation shortcuts.
With 7.2, it becomes a much more powerful part of your everyday workflow — helping you create content faster, understand what’s happening across your site and get to the tools and information you need more quickly.
The new experience is split into six dedicated sections: Create, Templates, Activity, Licence, Site and Help.
Create
A new central hub for quickly creating content across your uSkinned Site Builder website.
From here, you can jump straight into creating:
- Pages
- Shops
- Interactive Listings
- Blogs
- Members sections
- Search
- Sitemap XML
- Robots TXT
- Multiple website setups
- Theme Designs
Everything is right where you need it, making it much quicker to get started with new areas of your website.
Templates
This one is a biggie!
You can now browse and install any available uSkinned Site Builder Starter Kit or Theme add-on directly from inside the CMS.
There’s no need to leave Umbraco, download packages, or manually install them.
The Templates section will always stay up to date with our latest add-on releases too, so whenever we release something new, it will be available right inside your CMS.
Your next Starter Kit or Theme add-on is now only a one-click install away — and takes seconds.
From the uSkinned Dashboard, click 'Install' on any Theme or Starter Kit in seconds.
Activity
The new Activity section gives you a much more detailed view of what has been happening across your website.
It is split into two clear columns:
Your activity shows your own recent content creation and updates.
All activity gives you an overview of recent changes made across the website by everyone using the CMS.
It’s a simple way to keep track of what’s happening without having to dig through individual sections of the site.
Licence
The new Licence section makes it much easier to understand the current status of your uSkinned Site Builder licence.
You’ll get a clear overview of your licence details, along with useful notifications to keep you informed.
If you need to upgrade or purchase a licence, you’ll also have quick access to the relevant options from the same place.
Site
The Site section brings together useful information about the website you’re currently working on.
You can quickly view details such as:
- Your uSkinned Site Builder version
- Your Umbraco version
- Published content
- Recycle bin status
- Media storage usage
- Your own user information
You can also see whether additional security features, such as two-factor authentication, have been activated on your user account.
It gives you a much clearer snapshot of both the website and your own setup without needing to jump around the CMS.
Help
Need a hand? The Help section puts useful resources right at your fingertips.
You’ll find quick links to the latest uSkinned documentation and changelog, helping you find answers and keep up with recent changes.
We’ve also built our video series directly into the experience, giving you step-by-step guidance while you create and manage your website.
Whether you’re just getting started or looking for help with a particular feature, support is never far away.
The video library will continue to grow too, with new and updated guides appearing automatically as they’re released, so you’ll always have the latest help at your fingertips.
Convert Umbraco Grid to Block Grid
With the Umbraco Grid now deprecated, we’ve added a new conversion feature to help make the move to Block Grid much easier.
You can now convert existing Umbraco Grid content to the newer Block Grid component, helping you modernise older content without having to rebuild everything from scratch.
It’s a much smoother path forward for existing uSkinned websites and another step towards making upgrades less painful.
'Convert to Block Grid' can be found on deprecated Umbraco Grid Layout components.
More in uSkinned Site Builder 7.2
The new Dashboard is a big part of 7.2, but there’s plenty more included in this release.
New Block Grid configuration options
We’ve added new Block Grid configuration options following requests from uSkinned users.
These give you greater control when working with Block Grid layouts and make it easier to tailor your setup to suit the way you build.
Simpler custom codebases
We’ve also made improvements to the way custom codebases work.
Previously, creating a custom codebase involved copying a larger set of files. With 7.2, you only need to create copies of the exact files you intend to change.
That means less duplication, a cleaner custom codebase and an easier way to manage your own modifications.
We’ll have a new video guide covering this workflow very soon.
More control with categories
Interactive Listing and Shop category names are now rendered as additional classes on items.
This was another user-requested improvement and gives developers more flexibility when targeting and styling items based on their assigned categories.
And plenty more
As always, 7.2 also includes a wide range of smaller enhancements, improvements and fixes across uSkinned Site Builder.
You can find the full details in our changelog.
A better way to work
The first screen you see when opening uSkinned Site Builder should be genuinely useful.
With quicker content creation, one-click Starter Kit installation, detailed activity tracking, clearer licence information, site insights and built-in help — alongside a whole range of other improvements — 7.2 gives you a more productive way to build and manage your websites.
uSkinned Site Builder 7.2 is available now for Self-Hosted customers.
#h5yr
Step 3
Create
Create content with the Visual Editor and utilise built-in eCommerce and integrations.
Step 4
Go Live
You can host securely on Azure with uSkinned Hosted, or go your own way with a Self-Hosted license.
About the author
Paul Daly
Co-founder and Creative Lead at uSkinned.
It's my responsibility to lead the design and frontend coding efforts for all of our products as well as across each team, including Marketing, Branding, Content and Support.