Contao news

Just in time for the Contao Conference 2019 in Duisburg (Germany), the Contao Manager version 1.2.0 was released. As expected, this version contains many new and interesting features.

Install commercial and private extensions

In the new version, a previously painfully missing function has been added: The Contao Manager is now able to manage commercial and private extensions.

For users this means that private and commercial extensions can be uploaded to the Contao Manager via drag & drop or via the corresponding button. The Contao Manager recognizes the new extension and it can then be installed using Composer. No manual adjustments to files or the like are necessary. Thus all installed extensions can be managed in one central place.

Providers of commercial or private extensions will find all necessary information in the new documentation.

Complete revision of the extension search

Mathias Arzberger and the Contao Stammtisch Dresden have given a lot of thought to how the extensions can be presented in a searchable and optically clear way. Thanks for the templates, which are available on the website of the Stammtisch Dresden.

New extensions are displayed in the Contao Manager under the menu item Discover. The design was also applied to the public extension list at extensions.contao.org.

The extensions are first presented in three groups:

• Latest and updated extensions
• Best rated extensions
• Extensions with the most downloads

You can get more results of the category by clicking on More results.

Detailed information can be retrieved for each extension. Besides the package description, dependencies and known conflicts, these can also be recommendations for other packages that are useful in combination with the selected extension.

Consolidation of Contao packages

There is another innovation in the Packages menu: All extensions that belong directly to Contao are now displayed together and updated together. This ensures that there will be no problems when updating Contao if not all single Contao bundles are updated at the same time.

Banner zone in the Contao Manager

With the newly created banner zone, an opportunity was created to present free and commercial extensions at a prominent location. The advertising of commercial extensions in the Contao Manager and at extensions.contao.org offers a source of income for the further development of Contao. Interested developers should contact the Contao Association at association@contao.org.

Documentation

The documentation for the Contao Manager has been integrated into the new Contao documentation that can be found at docs.contao.org.

Backward Compatibility

An update to the new version of Contao Manager will only take place if at least PHP 7.1 is installed on the server. Users of PHP 5.6 can still use the Contao Manager version 1.1 with corresponding restrictions, but an update to PHP 7.1 is strongly recommended.