Contao news

Contao version 3.5.0-beta1 is available. Please do not use beta versions for productional websites! Download the release to check whether your website or custom extension needs adaptation.

Here are some of the highlight features in the new version. For a complete list, please read the changelog or check out the closed tickets of the release milestone (see the links at the end of the announcement).

Change password

The new front end module "change password" adds a form to the page, which members can use to change their password. Other than in the "personal data" module, the "change password" module will also ask for the old password.

Picture insert tag

Analogous to the {{image}} insert tag, there is now also a {{picture}} insert tag, which allows to insert responsive images.

Compare templates

Thanks to Yanick Witschi, there is now an option to compare customized templates with their original or another template of the same group.

Cache tuning

An additional lookup file now allows to map any request for the empty domain to a cached page, independent of which languages the visitor's browser accepts. In the past, only a limited mapping was possible.

Performance optimization

The performance of Contao when rendering websites with a lot of news or events could be notably improved by selectively tuning the database queries. In addition, lazy loading of the content elements by means of closures could decrease the RAM demand of the listing modules.

Newsletter recipients

It is now possible to move or copy newsletter recipients from one channel into another. At that, the stored double opt-in data will be deleted and the status will be set to "added manually".

Arrow brackets in user input

In Contao 3.5, we have adjusted the user input validation so arrow brackets are only removed if they are part of an HTML tag. A regular usage, e.g. as comparison operator, is now possible.

Improved error handling

The front end error handling has been standardized and now the 404 page is always generated if an event or a news item is not found or if an invalid page number or date is entered. This also applies if a page is called via its numeric ID instead of its alias (e.g. 44.html instead of home.html). Rendering the error page is meant to help avoid duplicate content in this case.

Duplicating multiple items

It is now possible to duplicate multiple items in the back end list view.

Hidden system files

The new release standardizes the handling of hidden system files beginning with a dot (e.g. .htaccess, .git or .svn). These files are now ignored everywhere in Contao.

New hooks

The following hooks were added in Contao 3.5.0-beta1:

• compileArticle
• postAuthenticate
• newsListCountItems
• newsListFetchItems
• getPageStatusIcon

Updated plugins

The following plugins were updated in Contao 3.5.0-beta1:

• Respimage to version 1.3.0
• jQuery to version 1.11.2
• jQuery UI to version 1.11.4
• Mediaelement.js to version 2.16.4
• Colorbox to version 1.6.0
• HTML5Shiv to version 3.7.2
• DropZone to version 3.12.0
• ACE-Editor to version 1.1.8

IDE compatibility

The Contao source code has been highly optimized regarding its IDE compatibility, so now it is possible to click almost every class, method or property to directly jump to its declaration.

Also see: GitHub tickets | GitHub compare view | Contao changelog | Release overview