Kentico Xperience 13 Beta 3: What Do You Need to Know?

The announcement of Kentico Xperience’s upcoming release took place at Kentico Connections 2019. Since then, we have been eagerly awaiting the Beta release that would introduce the much loved MVC page builder widgets and components functionality into the ASP.NET Core world.

The release of Kentico Xperience 13 Beta 3

The previous release of Beta 2 only went as far as converting the Kentico MVC libraries for use with ASP.NET Core but missed out on the page builder functionality. With the release of Kentico Xperience 13 Beta 3, we finally get to see an ASP.NET Core version of the Dancing Goat sample application. This version demonstrates the differences in building a widget or form component in Kentico 12 using ASP.NET MVC 5 compared to Kentico Xperience 13 using ASP.NET Core.

While working with Kentico 12, we have explored various routing approaches for Kentico MVC sites including:

• Traditional MVC routing based on patterns
• Built our own internal routing package based on the content tree
• Contributed and used the open source DevTrev dynamic routing package, also based on the content tree

The benefits of Kentico Xperience 13 Beta 3

There are many benefits to the Kentico Xperience 13 Beta 3 which allows us to make use of the built-in dynamic routing supplied by Kentico themselves. Firstly, the setup and usage are very similar to the DevTrev dynamic routing package, automatically making it easier for the Kentico community to use and understand. 

Secondly, Kentico is providing sample migration code within the Kentico Xperience 13 documentation. This will help developers migrate and preserve URLs generated by previous custom-built routing packages if they want to make the switch. The script will store the existing URLs within the new Former URLs application ensuring they are not broken during the switch. Kentico are also adding the ability to automatically render canonical URLs when using the Alternative URL functionality.

Visibility conditions have made a return to the Kentico platform too. In Kentico 12, when adding fields to widgets for content editors to configure, you would often want them to be conditionally required or conditionally visible, so the content editor isn’t overloaded with fields they don’t need to complete. Even though this may sound like a small change, the results are a massive improvement for content editors which helps to avoid unnecessary confusion.

With Kentico Xperience 13’s full release on the horizon later this year, we’re looking forward to seeing what more this version has to offer and attending the Kentico Xperience Connections event to keep up to date on new advancements.