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What's new With 5.0.0

September 23, 2021

ContentBox 5 is a major update for this CMS and it includes a major architectural change to move the CMS forward for the next 10-15 years. We have introduced multi-tenancy and a complete headless approach to ContentBox. It has become one of our biggest releases since our initial release since 2011.

You can find our release notes here and we will discuss our major areas of improvement for this release. If you need to upgrade your previous versions of ContentBox, please see our upgrade guide.

ContentBox CLI

We have used the power of CommandBox, to build a ContentBox CLI (contentbox-cli) module that will assist you with installations, upgrades, maintenance and much more. Once CommandBox is installed you can run the following to install our cli:

box install contentbox-cli

That's it. This will install the contentbox namespace which will assist you in your ContentBox adventures. Please see the installation guide on usage.

ColdBox 6 Core

We have upgraded our core to ColdBox 6 and we have received a tremendous amounts of benefits (https://coldbox.ortusbooks.com/intro/release-history/whats-new-with-6.0.0). Here are some of the features we get with this upgrade:

  • Performance, performance, performance. ColdBox 6 has been finely tuned to make your applications much more performant and stable under high load.

  • Better new CFML engine support

  • Asynchronous programming. We have introduced the concepts of the async package to the core and ContentBox will leverage more of these features for background job processing, automation and much more.

  • New logging facilities and enhancements

  • Better exception handling for developers

  • REST Handlers and highly performant REST Routing

  • Singleton View Rendering. You will find that all renderings are way faster than before.

  • Much more!

CBSecurity 2

We have migrated our cbsecurity module to the latest version to give you a wealth of features (https://coldbox-security.ortusbooks.com/intro/release-history/whats-new-with-2.0.0) such as:

  • Fortified rule engine

  • Annotation based security engine

  • JWT support

  • Security Services

  • Cross site request forgery support

Multi Site Support

Although multi-tenancy been one of ContentBox's most requested features, we were hesitant for many years to comply due to the size of the needed refactoring. However, we have finally created a great base for making ContentBox multi-tenant. You can now configure 1 or 10000 sites under the same ContentBox umbrella. The new installer actually creates two sites for you: a development/staging site and a production site. That means that you can manage different content environments all under the same deployment.

Here are some of the features you get with multi-site ContentBox:

  • Ability to register an infinite number of sites

  • Site detection by regular expressions or patterns on incoming URIs

  • Site detection by header identifier if using the headless CMS or reverse proxies

  • Each site can contain its own

    • Categories

    • Blog

    • Pages

    • Content Store

    • Menus

    • Commenting System

    • Themes

  • Admin site switcher

  • Admin site control bar

  • Clone content or entire content hierarchies from one site to the other

  • Publish content directly to different sites

  • Move content between sites

  • Much more coming soon.

Admin UI Revamp

The entire admin UI has been revamped and streamlined. You will find it much more breathable and easier to work with, especially from mobile devices and smaller screens. We are also starting to prepare a major theme change and customization that might be introduced in the final release or scheduled for a minor update.

We have also started our migrations to Alpine.js and Tailwind for the reactivity and overall look and feel of the admin module.

PostgreSQL Support

We have completely changed our ORM structures and custom queries so it can be friendlier to other RDBMS. In this release we focus on portability of the host database and finally have core PostgreSQL support.

Performance

We have analyzed the entire ORM structures, queries and CFML code in this release thanks to FusionReactor's Profiler. We have streamlined the way the CMS loads and the results are impressive. In ContentBox 5, first loads are about 70% faster and page executions are around 30-40% faster than ContentBox 4.

No More Admin Auto Updates

This is such a controversial feature to be able to deliver patches via the admin. We have completely dropped the capability to patch the CMS from within the CMS. It caused more issues than it solved and in Windows it was pretty much impossible.

We have moved to a CommandBox + Migrations approach and the results are amazing. No more broken installs, half done db updates and more. Now you can simply run two CLI commands and be done with it. Here is a typical flow for updating your system:

# stop the server
stop
# Update ColdBox and ContentBox
update coldbox,contentbox
# Run Migrations
migrate up
# start it up again
start

Release Notes

Bugs Squashed!

  • [CONTENTBOX-1085] - Preflight check has a race condition where duplicate settings can be inserted and stop app from starting

  • [CONTENTBOX-1106] - ColdBox modules directory renamed to modules_bak during upgrade to ContentBox 4.2

  • [CONTENTBOX-1107] - Custom Module Dependencies are not respected by ContentBox ModuleService

  • [CONTENTBOX-1111] - When deactivating modules, module widgets still remained registered

  • [CONTENTBOX-1115] - Regression cachelayout setting missing from UI on pages and blog entries

  • [CONTENTBOX-1118] - media service had a hardlink to the UI module which threw an exception when the UI module was removed

  • [CONTENTBOX-1126] - BaseContent has expireDate as required via validation but not in the model

  • [CONTENTBOX-1127] - Problem with multiple select options in RecentPages widget

  • [CONTENTBOX-1128] - Problem in RecentPages widget on filter by category

  • [CONTENTBOX-1132] - Fix CB admin bar image alignment on tailwind sites

  • [CONTENTBOX-1133] - Fix ContentBox "latestversion" updater error #445

  • [CONTENTBOX-1134] - Fix content sidebar toggle label #444

  • [CONTENTBOX-1143] - multi domain bug when using cgi.http_host just like ColdBox, move to cgi.server_name instead affects all caching cleanups

  • [CONTENTBOX-1151] - Bug in Widget View clearing out cached widget query

  • [CONTENTBOX-1152] - ACF incompats with relocate() after applicationStop() due to ungraceful app metadata wiping by ACF

  • [CONTENTBOX-1155] - Admin Views Accessible even if logged out: cbsecurity not firing.

  • [CONTENTBOX-1157] - CB 5, Context menu Sitemap not visible, see screenshot

  • [CONTENTBOX-1158] - ms sql server doesn't support sqltype boolean

  • [CONTENTBOX-1196] - When cloning and marking to publish, not publishing due to missing publish date

  • [CONTENTBOX-1198] - Site settings for comments are not being transferred

  • [CONTENTBOX-1182] - "\" doesn't go to global search

  • CONTENTBOX-1331 zipSlip fix for zip extractions

  • CONTENTBOX-1330 Error in Menu Sandbox

  • CONTENTBOX-1329 Listing Options do not work in Media Manager

  • CONTENTBOX-1327 Content Store, Entries and Pages Clone Error

  • CONTENTBOX-1318 If Page and ContentStore Item Have the Same Slug an Error is Thrown

  • CONTENTBOX-1317 Deleting a ContentStore Item from the Options Menu Throws an Error

  • CONTENTBOX-1316 Text Filter on Widget Insert is Broken

  • CONTENTBOX-1311 Truncate Auth Logs Function Throws SQL Error on SQL Server

  • CONTENTBOX-1307 ContentBox Menus and Submenus Default Order to Publish Date, not the Order

  • CONTENTBOX-1306 "Create Page" button in Admin throws Error

  • CONTENTBOX-1304 No Longer Able to Drill Down in Site Map

  • CONTENTBOX-1302 Theme is reset to default when saving a site

  • CONTENTBOX-1298 Prevent Re-Slugification of ContentStore Slugs on Every Save

  • CONTENTBOX-1290 Add Backward Compatibility Alias for @cb for ContentBox Models

  • CONTENTBOX-1284 Saving content on one site, if your site selection clears, will result in the

  • assignment of page to default

  • CONTENTBOX-1277 The model namespace of cb was always wrong. It should have been contentbox if not, no module settings woud have ever been set.

  • CONTENTBOX-1276 RenderView Widget Attempts to Render Before View has Been Set

  • CONTENTBOX-1268 Regression - menu() in the cbHelper does not return the menu children in data mode

  • CONTENTBOX-1266 Data Snapshots in Admin are not Site Aware

  • CONTENTBOX-1256 DIFF Screen forces everything onto a single line and is unusable in a modal

  • CONTENTBOX-1251 Change tray icons to relative paths so CommandBox can open them correctly

  • CONTENTBOX-1245 contentstore saving did not account for original slug in order to change downstream hiearchies

  • CONTENTBOX-1240 Ordering pages on the sitemap breaks the javascript

  • CONTENTBOX-1231 exception when visiting newly created sites due to theme not being activated

  • CONTENTBOX-1224 Site Data Does not Export

  • CONTENTBOX-1220 Cache cleanups interceptor missing events for entry and content store removals

  • CONTENTBOX-1214 Font issues when loading admin

  • CONTENTBOX-1206 Respect carriage returns on comments

New Feature

  • [CONTENTBOX-1121] - Upgrade javaloader to v2.0

  • [CONTENTBOX-1123] - Upgrade to cborm 3 and get all of it's goodness

  • [CONTENTBOX-1135] - Upgrade to ColdBox 6

  • [CONTENTBOX-1136] - Upgrade to CBSecurity 2

  • [CONTENTBOX-1139] - New configuration for site is using cfconfig with environment variables

  • [CONTENTBOX-1140] - Upgrade the usage of `bit` sql type to `boolean` sql type to avoid issues with major DB vendors and also to support PostgreSQL natively

  • [CONTENTBOX-1141] - Multi-site capabilities for all content and installations

  • [CONTENTBOX-1142] - All administrator js/css libraries updated to latest versions

  • [CONTENTBOX-1149] - Installer can now create a production and development site for you thanks to multi-site support

  • [CONTENTBOX-1153] - update security rules to match cbsecurity 2.0

  • [CONTENTBOX-1179] - Upgrade to cborm 3

  • [CONTENTBOX-1192] - Use Docbox 3 to generate the docs instead of the old approach

  • CONTENTBOX-1308 Refresh tokens support

  • CONTENTBOX-1301 Remove all $(document).ready() and move to DOMContentLoaded events to avoid relying on jquery and allow for deferred js

  • CONTENTBOX-1300 Load all js assets with defer to allow for modern JS libraries and for non blocking to DOM loading

  • CONTENTBOX-1291 Add ability for all search based content type services to have a array of property list return

  • CONTENTBOX-1275 Consolidate the editors (pages,contentstore,entries) to a single content editor

  • CONTENTBOX-1274 content version Diff ignore whitespace by default

  • CONTENTBOX-1269 Content Object Helpers

  • CONTENTBOX-1264 Enable Setters on Primary Keys to allow for migration of uuids to be consistent

  • CONTENTBOX-1257 Add export all and export selected to bulk actions

  • CONTENTBOX-1254 Add ability to load .env files on demand for NON commandbox installations

  • CONTENTBOX-1253 Ability to configure all orm settings via env variables.

  • CONTENTBOX-1252 Add filtering to geek settings by site

  • CONTENTBOX-1249 Remove the dsn creator in preference to our cli based approach

  • CONTENTBOX-1248 DSN Creator should update the dialect once the process starts

  • CONTENTBOX-1246 Allow json as native markup for content storaage

  • CONTENTBOX-1244 Ability to have unique slugs on a per content type basis instead of before which was unique across content types

  • CONTENTBOX-1242 Use the browser's timezone to display all date times to users

  • CONTENTBOX-1241 Add cbswagger documentation to resources and api module

  • CONTENTBOX-1238 tailwind polyfills

  • CONTENTBOX-1234 ContentBox core now registers a contentbox-tasks schedule executor that can be used for scheduled tasks

  • CONTENTBOX-1232 Add an option to open a site from the site manager

  • CONTENTBOX-1225 Add a clear entire template cache from the admin

  • CONTENTBOX-1222 new buildContentCacheCleanupKey() on content objects so we can clean multiple permutations of the same content

  • CONTENTBOX-1219 Introduce category count caching to speed up renderings

  • CONTENTBOX-1217 Rearchitecture of the active content to NOT be a relationship but using the versions relationship

  • CONTENTBOX-1213 New Updater task and start of tasks that can ship with ContentBox

  • CONTENTBOX-1205 Add support for markdown comments from the ui

  • CONTENTBOX-1168 Responsive UI Verifications

  • CONTENTBOX-1153 Upgrade to cbSecurity 2

Task

  • [CONTENTBOX-1110] - Drop lucee 4.5 support

  • [CONTENTBOX-1138] - Drop support for `runtime.properties.cfm` in favor of cfconfig datasource additions

  • [CONTENTBOX-1144] - Remove autoupdates capabilities in order to rely on CommandBox for patches and updates

  • [CONTENTBOX-1166] - Upgrade v4 migration to only run on v4 systems

  • [CONTENTBOX-1177] - Removal of full screen button as all browsers support this now

  • [CONTENTBOX-1181] - Remove the textarea editor, it's useless

Improvements

  • [CONTENTBOX-1108] - Add restrictions on orm cfc locations for faster startups on Application.cfc

  • [CONTENTBOX-1109] - Remove directory browsing for production installations

  • [CONTENTBOX-1116] - Change the order of the logout function, to the announcement has the oCurrentAuthor still, for logging purposes.

  • [CONTENTBOX-1117] - Update dsn creator to support lucee 5.3 mysql jdbc path

  • [CONTENTBOX-1120] - Intercept installer relocation to check if the installer module is even installed else present a nice message

  • [CONTENTBOX-1125] - Add a setting for the timeout in the forgot password workflow

  • [CONTENTBOX-1131] - Encode theme settings in active theme page

  • [CONTENTBOX-1150] - CSS Updates to match new admin theme

  • [CONTENTBOX-1156] - CB5 - Multi site - feature to allow URL Path

  • [CONTENTBOX-1161] - DSN Module Update to latest CFML engine settings

  • [CONTENTBOX-1197] - Refactor formulas to methods so they can give a performance boost and increase encapsulation

  • [CONTENTBOX-1193] - update express to latest stable lucee

  • [CONTENTBOX-1194] - update express to latest tomcat 9

  • [CONTENTBOX-1195] - update tuckey rewrites to latest based on commandbox

  • CONTENTBOX-1328 Inconsistent spacing between panels under Details

  • CONTENTBOX-1324 Create Setting - Core Checkbox With Global Option Seems Redundant

  • CONTENTBOX-1319 SSL Options on Relocation Widget Should Default to Current Protocol

  • CONTENTBOX-1315 Settings Area is Extremely Slow to Load on Large Site

  • CONTENTBOX-1314 Stats for Subscribers Should be Placed under Comments Menu

  • CONTENTBOX-1313 Site Selection Cookie Should Either Not Expire or Expiry Forwarded on Request

  • CONTENTBOX-1310 Drag and Drop Ordering on Large Site Tree is Very Slow

  • CONTENTBOX-1305 Issue a warning when you will save content that is published and into draft mode.

  • CONTENTBOX-1299 Finalize migration to ColdBox 6 REST instead of REST Template assets

  • CONTENTBOX-1297 Increase Column Size of Content slugs, title, featuredImage, featuredImageURL

  • CONTENTBOX-1294 CKEditor Allow access to ContentBox Plugins Insert Buttons in Source Edit Mode

  • CONTENTBOX-1293 SubPage Menu Widget should Default to Current Page

  • CONTENTBOX-1289 Dashboard Should Be a Single Link in Admin and "About" should be in "System"

  • CONTENTBOX-1288 Clicking in to a Content Objects Children should Reset Page Scroll

  • CONTENTBOX-1287 Allow transactional argument to SiteService@save

  • CONTENTBOX-1283 Allow Categories to be Internal/UnPublished

  • CONTENTBOX-1282 Migrate post to pre js for assets to save on minimization and inline js that is used.

  • CONTENTBOX-1281 Admin current working site id should be set in a cookie instead of cache to provide longevity.

  • CONTENTBOX-1279 Loading Site Config Page on Large Site is Extremely Slow

  • CONTENTBOX-1273 rework all settings tabs to have their own form and validation to avoid validation issues in different tabs you don't get notified with

  • CONTENTBOX-1272 ACF increase post parameter list for mass setting updates

  • CONTENTBOX-1255 Add JSON Diffing support for ContentStore items in the history panel

  • CONTENTBOX-1250 Add quoted table names, join columns and columns to preserve case on all RDBMS systems

  • CONTENTBOX-1239 Also the DSN name is now hard-coded in the cfconfig file so you can have a database named something other than "contentbox"

  • CONTENTBOX-1223 Update the clear page wrappers call to include multi-site regex expression to clear stale data

  • CONTENTBOX-1218 Add an isPreview to the addContentVersion() so the max content checks are not executed on previews

  • CONTENTBOX-1216 registering info for contentbox logging as the default.

  • CONTENTBOX-1215 If a post has been written in a certain markup, make sure the editor adheres to it

  • CONTENTBOX-1211 Granular performance optimizations for content object iteration and rendering

  • CONTENTBOX-1210 Optimize avatar image creation by using a request cache

  • CONTENTBOX-1209 Optimize the way site() does discovery and site usage by adding a request cache

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