Blog - Glass.Mapper is changing

I have been working on Glass.Mapper for the last 4 years and have seen it grow in strength and popularity within the Sitecore community to become one of the most popular modules. According to Nuget.org there have been over 12,000 downloads of Glass.Mapper.Sc and 500 of Glass.Mapper.Umb, I am not sure how many I account for, but this is an amazing number! I remember that when I originally posted the project I would watch it each week as it slowly crept up, and I was so proud when we reached the first 100 downloads.

It is awesome that Glass.Mapper is being used around the world and that people are seeing how it can improve their Sitecore development experience. It is exciting to see how it helps in the development of amazing websites of all shapes and sizes. Some of my best experiences have been attending Sitecore events when people I don't know come to talk about Glass.Mapper and to thank me for my work on the project.

However this success brings a set of problems, the main one being time. To develop Glass.Mapper in the direction I want it to go and to ensure that it is always at the leading edge takes more time than I have. This has lead to some features taking longer, not being as polished or even not implemented, and more importantly it has meant that community contributions have not been merged

I don't want to stop working on Glass.Mapper because I enjoy the project and enjoy working with the community. Therefore I have decided to see if I can support and grow Glass.Mapper as a project that can support me and give me more time to improve it.

So what does this mean?

Firstly the Glass.Mapper project will remain open source and free for anyone to use. I will now be offering consultation on Glass.Mapper (and Sitecore in general) and training (and certification) on the Glass.Mapper framework; It is a complex framework and there are lots of interesting things it can do which I am not sure everyone is aware of. I would really recommend the training (of course) because there is a lot that can be done with the framework, some great hidden features and a few misconceptions.

This I hope will give me more time to work on the project with some of my first aims being:

• Update the documentation and videos
• Add a load of features ideas to the Sitecore solution
• Update, improve and reboot the Umbraco solution
• Restructure the Glass.Mapper nuget packages
• + 100 other ideas.

How can you help?

If you need help developing a Sitecore solution or advice on how you can get even more out of Glass.Mapper then please contact me at hello@glass.lu. If you are new to Glass.Mapper or just want to learn about all the amazing things that the framework can do then book some training. The training course  will take you through the basics of using Glass.Mapper to the more advanced features such as pipelines and handlers.

Thanks to the community for supporting the project and a special thanks to my partner Laura for her help, patience and encouragement. I hope with the communities support we can continue to grow and make Glass.Mapper the best .NET ORM out there.

Also please feel free to send me any questions you might have about these changes, any ideas or if email me if you just want to say hi.

Mike