Orchard Harvest 2025 speakers, adding GraphQL support for the GeoPoint Field - This week in Orchard (12/09/2025)
All of our speakers and their introductions are now available! Our topics for this week are adding GraphQL support for the GeoPoint Field and updating to Font Awesome 7. Don't forget to check out the results of the "Improving the Orchard Core starting experience" survey!
Orchard Core updates
Adding GraphQL support for the GeoPoint Field
Let's say that you are using some service to translate ZIP codes to latitude/longitude values. To do that, you can store these values using a GeoPoint Field. However, until now, we have lacked the necessary support to integrate it into GraphQL. Thanks to Rumen Novachkov, Orchard Core now supports this too! See a little example of this new addition!
To demonstrate it, we first need to ensure that the Spatial feature is enabled under Tools -> Features. Now we can create a content type called Location under Design -> Content Definition -> Content Types. And of course, we need to attach a GeoPoint Field too; we named it GeoPoint. Finally, we need to create a Location content item under Content -> Content Items by hitting the New drop-down button and selecting our Location content type. Once we have that, the only missing thing is to enable the GraphQL feature.
Our last stop will be under Tools -> GraphiQL, where we can construct our query. Here we have a straightforward query, where we listed the latitude and longitude properties of the GeoPoint Field of all of our Location content items. And as you can see, we created two Location content items with some random latitude/longitude values.
Updating to Font Awesome 7
Orchard Core is using Font Awesome 6, but from version 3.0.0, Font Awesome will be updated to version 7.0.0! It includes more icons, improved performance, and new ways to make your designs look amazing. Be aware that some changes may be required in your templates. If you navigate to the changelog of Font Awesome, you can find some instructions about the changes, like removed classes, dropped support for Less, and the official Vue component now supports Vue 3+ only. Please follow the instructions from the mentioned changelog.
News from the community
Orchard Harvest 2025 speakers
The Orchard Harvest 2025 conference will be held in Prague, and we look forward to seeing you all this autumn in the Czech Republic, in the heart of Europe. Our confirmed dates for this year are November 11th and 12th. Secure your early-bird tickets to the conference, taking place November 11-12, 2025, in Prague at the Botanique Hotel Prague, a modern hotel inspired by nature with a green approach in the city centre.
Don't miss this limited-time offer: just $250 for two days of all-access learning and networking. Get your tickets here!
All of our speakers and their bios are now available! Be sure to check out the updated official website of the conference for our awesome speakers!
As we move forward, we will keep community members informed of the details, and you will find every detail in this newsletter, too!
We hope to see you in Prague!
Survey results: Improving the Orchard Core starting experience
Orchard Core is a powerful tool for building apps, but the user experience is not always smooth. We aim to identify new ways to improve it, from simplifying the initial steps to helping experienced users work more efficiently. Whether through AI or other solutions, we first want to understand how you approach site setup today and where things feel repetitive, unclear, or time-consuming.
A few weeks ago, we at Lombiq ran a short survey asking: What slows you down when starting with Orchard Core?, and the answers were clear:
- Onboarding can be confusing.
- Docs and recipes need to be stronger.
Now it's time for the next step: brainstorming solutions together. We published the survey results as a GitHub discussion, including the conclusion and next steps based on the results. Our immediate priorities are:
- Starter recipes: We should create easy-to-use recipes for common scenarios (blog, corporate site, workflows, etc.) that can serve as solid starting points.
- Docs revamp: We'll improve the documentation to make it clearer, more detailed, and easier to follow.
Both of these will be discussed in separate GitHub threads over the next couple of weeks.
Please join those discussions and share your ideas, pain points, or favorite approaches. Your input will directly shape what we build.
Orchard Dojo Newsletter
Lombiq's Orchard Dojo Newsletter has 445 subscribers! We have started this newsletter to keep the community around Orchard informed about the latest news on the platform. By subscribing to this newsletter, you will receive an email whenever a new post is published to Orchard Dojo, including 'This Week in Orchard', of course.
Do you know of other Orchard enthusiasts who would like to read our weekly articles? Tell them to subscribe here!