Legacy Umbraco packages
Four tools from earlier generations of Umbraco — Media Download, Trace Log Viewer, Date Range Picker and Dictionary Editor — collected in one place.
Most of my Umbraco packages began with a small frustration on a real project. I wanted to download a Media folder without losing its structure, read an error without logging into the server, or give an editor access to translations without opening up all of Settings.
This article brings together four earlier package introductions. Each section keeps its original publication date and the Umbraco generation it was written for. These are historical releases; use the linked project documentation and package history to check compatibility with an existing site.
Media Download
Originally published 4 April 2022 · Umbraco 8
Moving a Media library between sites sounds like a file-copying job, until you look at the folders on disk. Umbraco stores the tree structure in its database, so copying the physical Media folder doesn’t give you the named, nested folders you see in the backoffice.
Diplo Media Download added a Download action to the Media library. You could download a file or folder as a zip archive, optionally including all its nested folders while preserving the Media-tree structure.
That made it handy for exporting a selection of assets or handing a folder to someone without giving them server access. Large exports could take time, and the original article left compatibility with Blob storage and custom file-system providers unconfirmed.
Source on GitHub · NuGet package history · Umbraco Marketplace
Trace Log Viewer
Originally published 23 June 2013 · Umbraco 6 and 7
When Umbraco introduced Log4Net text logging, diagnosing a problem meant finding the trace files on the server. They were readable, but searching, filtering and sorting them from inside Umbraco wasn’t an option.
Diplo Trace Log Viewer brought those files into the backoffice. You could select a log, search its messages, sort entries or filter by severity — useful when you wanted just the errors and warnings from a busy installation.
The Umbraco 6 version lived in a dashboard; the Umbraco 7 version was rewritten with AngularJS and Web API controllers and appeared in the Developer tree. These versions target the older text-log format. The separate Audit Log Viewer deals with the content audit trail.
Source on GitHub · NuGet package history
Date Range Picker
Originally published 19 January 2014 · Umbraco 7
Umbraco 7’s new backoffice was a good excuse to learn how to build an AngularJS property editor. I chose something I’d wanted for a while: a single editor for a start date and an end date, useful for events and bookings.
The picker adapted Dan Grossman’s Bootstrap date-range control to fit the backoffice. A property value converter completed the other half of the job, letting Razor templates read the stored value as a strongly typed date-range object with start and end dates.
The original article explored both the interface and the converter, along with a few lessons about connecting jQuery events to AngularJS. Its code belongs to the Umbraco 7 API and backoffice.
Dictionary Editor
Originally published 23 March 2018 · Umbraco 7.7 and later in the 7.x series
Editors often need to change Dictionary translations, but giving them the whole Settings section is a lot of access for a few words. Diplo Dictionary Editor provided a dedicated section you could grant access to separately.
It brought Dictionary values together on one page, with bulk editing, nested or alphabetical sorting, language filtering and inline search. Editors could change translations without creating new keys, and CSV export and import made it possible to work on values offline or send them to a translator.
This was an editing tool. For automatic translation, see the free Diplo Dictionary Translator. For supported page content and blocks as well as Dictionary items, explore Diplo Translator Omni.
Source on GitHub · NuGet package history
What I’m building now
The backoffice has changed a lot since these packages began. You can find my current tools on the packages page, including God Mode, Audit Log Viewer and Translator Omni.