Sitefinity Release Notes

Dear Sitefinity CMS customers and partners! We are excited to announce the release of Sitefinity CMS 13.1. Below you will find the details about what is included in this release.

What's new in Sitefinity 13.1

Unified single- and multi-site management

Sitefinity 13.1 unifies single-site and multi-site modes and allows you to seamlessly manage transitions from single-site to multi-site without changes in the end user experience. The number of sites you can create is determined only by your license. The site configurations are directly accessible via the top-left site selector and the Site Properties view. Additionally, you can configure modules per site from the same screen.

Learn more...

Multilingual management changes

Sitefinity CMS 13.1 improves the management of multilingual sites in a number of areas, including increased performance, expanded UI, and enhanced extensibility. We have also eliminated problematic scenarios when switching between single language and multilingual modes, such as:

• Projects in multi-site mode with shared providers and different default languages
• Adding a second language to the system then removing it (switching back to monolingual), then adding it back again (switching again to multilingual)
• Projects that initially worked in monolingual mode, have content created, and later switch to multilingual mode

Single language websites are immediately updated to multilingual when you add languages through basic settings.

Developers will enjoy simplified APIs and improved extensibility when working with multi-lingual and multi-culture content. For upgrading to 13.1, most common scenarios are not expected to require any code updates. For cases when they do, the impacted APIs are clearly marked as Obsolete with guidance about using the new APIs.

Learn more...

New Documents management interface

We redesigned the Documents module, and it now uses the new interface. The module retains most of its previous functionality and also includes a number of new features and improvements such as:

• Ability to search within all folders and libraries

• Improved side navigation menu with quick navigation that allows easy access to folders and files

• Improved reordering experience with a simple drag and drop

• Improved filtering directly from the side menu with an overview of filter results and the ability to add more filter criteria

Learn more...

Feature parity for the Images module

In 13,1, we have completed work on the feature parity for the new Images module, including:

• Ability to replace an image or choose a different file for a particular translation
  
• Ability to bulk edit image properties, such as alternative text or description
  
• Ability to bulk assign tags and categories
  

In the process, we fixed a number of bugs and applied many small UI updates.

Learn more...

Personalization by HubSpot contact property and HubSpot Score

You can now create user segments in Sitefinity CMS that are based on contact properties and lead score from HubSpot.

In addition, HubSpot Popup forms are now supported, provided you have configured the Sitefinity CMS Web Security module to allow HubSpot sources.

Learn more...

Keyboard shortcuts support in the New UI

We have introduced a number of keyboard shortcuts in Content modules and Pages that will improve the user experience of content editors, as well as their efficiency and productivity. The keyboard shortcuts are available only in the new UI.

Learn more…

Sitefinity CLI becomes the recommended upgrade tool

The updated Sitefinity CLI automatically upgrades your Sitefinity project and installs the NuGet packages. Upgrading through the CLI has the following advantages:

• The target framework of the upgraded project is automatically set to the relevant Sitefinity CMS framework version
• Automatic handling of broken or missing references
• Automatic fixes for binding redirects
• All Sitefinity projects in the solution are automatically upgraded without the need to manually go through them
• You can include it as a step in a Continuous integration pipeline.

Learn more…

.NET Core Renderer [CTP]

Continuing the improvement of the .NET Core application, with this release we added more widgets and improved the functionality of the new page editor:

• Introduction of the Image widget
• Introduction of the Call to action (CTA) widget
• Ability to choose an image or video for background
• Copy/paste widget settings in the new editor
• Duplicate of widget in the new editor
• Column and widget labels in the new widget designer
• Implementation of caching for the page API

Learn more…

Page layout service

Using the Page layout service API, you can manage the communication between Single Page Applications (SPAs) and your Sitefinity CMS backend. In this scenario, Sitefinity CMS no longer handles the frontend rendering of your pages and content. Instead, you write a dedicated frontend application that accesses the content and the layout from the backend. The Page layout service API handles the communication between such apps and the Sitefinity CMS backend using standard OData REST API. With Sitefinity 13.1, this service graduated out of beta status to a fully supported feature.

Learn more...

What's improved

Performance - Improve Startup Time at scale

Optimized the startup process for projects with many languages and dynamic types. We have observed over 40% improvement in startup performance for projects with 90+ dynamic types and 60+ languages.

Automatic cleanup of unused temp items

We have implemented automated scheduled task that executes in the background and removes unused lifecycle temp items from all modules. These items used to remain in the database and degrade performance.

Other

Minimal resource package now uses npm scripts infrastructure

The Minimal resource package has been updated to use the npm script infrastructure - GitHub

What's fixed

New content editing experience:

• AdminApp: Multiple Related Media fields of Dynamic Modules are not properly validated regarding to the file extension (FP)
• Editing a page with Url “Sitefinity” causes the AdminApp to lose the toolbar (FP)
• AdminApp: Last Modified on the page edit view displays inaccurate date (FP)
• AdminApp: DynamicContent Bulk publish creates language versions in language from which it was published (FP)
• AdminApp: Anchor gets stripped when it is added for a document (FP)
• AdminApp: Image upload from rich text editor fails when selecting required categories (FP)
• AdminApp: Rich text editor - built in "Insert document" tool
• AdminApp: Unable to set an inbuilt field as Required (FP)
• AdminApp: Improper error messages for failed image upload due to size limitation
• AdminApp: Failed image upload generates locked draft item
• AdminApp: Dropdown field doesn't show the actual value of the field (FP)
• AdminApp Classification custom field values are not persisted after duplicating a page (FP)
• AdminApp: Revision history requests are sent under HTTP instead of HTTPS (FP)
• AdminApp: Editing hyperlink in Content Block doesn't work (FP)
• AdminApp: Duplication of Draft Page doesn't duplicate page template (FP)
• AdminApp: OG tags character limit exceeded undescriptive error (FP)
• Required Long text field throws a validation error when an HTML tag is opened in one line and closed in another ( FP )
• Cannot duplicate page when have big number of sites ( FP )
• Items list cannot be generated in content block link manager
• New content editing: Custom types don't show titles when trying to Select page or content item while creating a link (FP)
• Going from a custom Sitefinity backend page to an AdminApp page leaves the content from the custom page visible (FP)
• Content Block HTML Editor changes relative URL to an absolute URL (FP)
• Opening an event from the dashboard recent items, opens it in the Classic UI (FP)
• Cannot use the hyperlink tool to link draft/unpublished pages in the new interface's editor (FP)
• Link selector broken when href missing from markup (FP)
• Workflow link to item in notifications not working for Pages (FP)
• Pages with changed url structure could have duplicated url (FP)
• Different backend pages are not loading when Admin UI is enabled in Azure App Service (FP)
• Users with Custom role with edit permissions unable to edit pages in new interface (FP)
• Source of image doesn't get updated when synced to Target and using Azure blob storage (FP)
• Anchor tag without URL cannot be added in the WYSIWYG Rich text editor (FP)
• Last modified field inconsistency (FP)
• Revision history: Page and widget templates grids are visible under the version preview of given template when AdminApp is turned on
• Editing links created with the link manager removes their custom attributes -( FP)
• Autogenerated widget property editors: Editing a widget and clicking 'Save' without any changes, makes the save button unresponsive
• Page edit: No unsaved changes warning is displayed when switching languages
• Reorder option should not appear in the single list item actions menu
• Bulk delete message is not pluralized for Blogs and Lists
• Page edit: No unsaved changes warning is displayed when switching languages
• Parent classification selector does not show suggestions on input
• Show all link behavior in taxonomies field has incorrect behavior
• Expose Bulk command type from AdminApp
• Expose OperationsFilted interface from AdminApp
• Expose AdminApp image selector to the extensions
• AdminApp: extensibility point - Field change service
• Expose a new method in AdminApp ColumnsProvider to remove columns
• API to create custom OData endpoints
• UrlName is missing from folder edit

Ecommerce

• Ecommerce: Having a related data field from a product type to a built-in module and vice versa hangs the project on initialize (FP)
• Ecommerce: Error logging improvement - "The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request." when the Checkout is unsuccessful
• Ecommerce: Error on Checkout with PayPal Standard (FP)

SiteSync

• SiteSync: View Details in email goes to a 404 page (FP)
• SiteSync: When changing the parent of a dynamic type, moved items are synced twice
• SiteSync: Configuring read only mode on configuration causes the SiteSync option in the UI to lead to an IIS 404 (FP)
• Unable to sync the existing users through SiteSync (FP)
• SiteSync: Personalized widgets on page templates are not synced (FP)
• SiteSync: Sync dynamic module with changed main short text field - items sent to recycle bin are not synced correctly
• SiteSync: Page content synchronization invalidates cache for pages with navigation (FP)

Feather/MVC

• Errors are being logged when we create a page using MVC card widget and MVC Login/Log out button (FP)
• Pagination for MVC based widgets throws exception when browsing higher page number than total number of pages (FP)
• MVC Users list widget: 404 when opening details for a user
• MVC Forms: Manual sort of items in the designer of a DropdownList control results in a multiple steps process due to the scroll (FP)
• MVC widget does not always persist library selection (FP)
• Preview is not working when page is converted from WebForms template to MVC(personalized) template and saved as draft
• Filtration based on date in MVC based dynamic content widget does not work
• MVC content widgets register wrong content location filter when the widget is in single item mode (FP)

Other:

• Create user dialog - previously assigned roles are marked as checked
• "The thumbnails for this library need to be regenerated." message shows up when image thumbnail is site synced ( FP )
• Dynamic module items are not unpublishing on the scheduled date when a workflow is enabled on them ( FP )
• Multisite: Cannot duplicate the pages when create site in monolingual ( FP )
• Revision history: encoding of characters in the title ( FP )
• Remove Widgets Permissions from global permissions
• Issues with JavaScript, CSS and Embed code widgets in 13.0 ( FP )
• Additional URLs for dynamic content items do not redirect to the default one (FP)
• After deleting Site sync server, the "Waiting items" count is not reset (FP)
• ModuleBuilder: Error "Methods on type 'Decimal?' are not accessible" (FP)
• HealthCheck Service: authKey header is case sensitive (FP)
• Page Preview: Content item links on page point to 404 in multisite (FP)
• Forms: HiddenField names are not applied correctly in the Edit screen of an email template (FP)
• Forms: HiddenField items do not have a name in the received email when using the {|Form.Fields|} syntax (FP)
• Responsive Design: Mobile preview url is case sensitive (FP)
• Revision history of blog posts and lists do not open in new interface after upgrade from version 8.0 or below (FP)
• Content Location doesn't register when setting the priority to highest through API (FP)
• Pages: Custom Error pages (404) don't get resolved when View Permission for All pages is set to Authenticated except the 404 error page (set to everyone) (FP)
• Pages: Custom error pages per section not getting resolved. Only root level 404 page returned properly (FP)
• Media: Updated Folder url is not reflected in the UI (FP)
• Fields with restricted view permissions have default value when using OData services (FP)
• Multisite: Unable to view all sizes of images after changing the site context (FP)
• Introduce automatic adjustment of the orientation of images based on the EXIF orientation metadata (FP)
• CPU load optimization when enabling new providers through multisite management with enabled advanced settings search
• License Expiration widget improvements
• Pages that do not have translation are logged for sync after publish operation (FP)
• Export/Import: Download Zip file page will stay saying Downloading indefinitely
• Personalization not working when using Azure Gateway service (FP)
• Finnish letters in page title are encoded (FP)
• Finnish letters in page template titles are displayed encoded when selecting a new template for a page (FP)
• Workflow: Page approval notifications link does not work for non-default sites in the new UI (FP)
• Text entered in a localizable field of a dynamic content item is copied to another language (FP)
• Make public method CreateListViewModel virtual for BlogModel and EventModel
• "Pages where NewsItem are published" throws javascript error when you have 6 or more providers (FP)
• Additional URL for File shows error saying URL is not valid if the URL has spaces in it (FP)
• Login widget forgot password shared email
• The canonical URL of the page has the alias domain instead of the actual domain (FP)
• Sitemap does not have site subfolder URL for pages (FP)
• Json file in bin folder prevents the resolution of views from external assemblies (FP)
• Unable to get old profile values when using ProfileUpdating event (FP)
• Precompiler tool not working when site is configured to resolve different languages with different domains (FP)
• Multi page form submits instead of navigating across form pages when hitting Enter (FP)
• Editing form responses results in error "The number of elements in the select list exceeds the maximum allowed number of 4096 elements" (FP)
• A module's custom fields disappear when you save its definitions in Advanced settings when using Database configuration storage (FP)
  
• Multilingual: Adding a second language breaks the search in dynamic module' backend list page (FP)
  
• Multilingual: In a multilingual, multi-site setup, the site with a single language shows inconsistent URLs in Navigation widget and in Sitemap (FP)
  
• Performance issue with Analytics module in the new UI (FP)
  
• CPU and Memory spike when enabling new providers through Multisite with Advanced settings search (FP)
  
• User with view permissions for images, documents or content items, is not able to see the related fields (data, media) (FP)
  
• Removing additional URLs for items does not remove the URL in single language sites (FP)
• Webhook: CDN for pages in the non-default languages are not invalidated after publish when site is configured to resolve different languages with different domains (FP)
  

Sitefinity CLI - GitHub :

• Upgrade command: Added an option to use custom NuGet sources.

Microsoft Machine Translation Connector project - GithHub:

• Fix to support translation where the text is longer than 5000 characters.
• Make EndpointURL(Base URL) configurable to one of the four URLs supported by Microsoft.
• Retry mechanism for transport and server failures.

Other changes

Developer Tools updates:

Update in multiple third party components used by the product that also contains security fixes and other optimizations

• Angular upgraded to 9.1.9
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Client and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime updated to 16.1.20211.12000
• Progress Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX updated to version 2020.2.512.45
• Progress Telerik UI for WPF updated to version 2020.2.513.45
• Progress Kendo UI updated to version 2020.2.513.0
• ServiceStack updated to version 5.9.0
• HTML Sanitizer updated to version 5.0.319
• Microsoft.AspNet.OData updated to version 7.4.1
• Microsoft.OData.Core updated to version 7.6.1
• Microsoft.OData.Edm updated to version 7.6.1
• Microsoft.Spatial updated to version 7.6.1

API and DB Changes

API Changes

• Added viewport meta tag for responsive design in ~/ResourcePackages/Bootstrap4/MVC/Views/Layouts/default.cshtml and ~/ResourcePackages/Minimal/MVC/Views/Layouts/default.cshtml.

• The full list of API changes is available here.

Database Changes

• Full list of database changes is available here.

Other Changes

Admin App Extensions - GitHub:

• After the New UI is upgraded to Angular 9.1.9 and Ivy is introduced, there are changes to how extensions are loaded in the application. Extensions built in the old version of the extensions repository are not compatible anymore, because they are missing Ivy generated metadata.
  The old extensions code should be recompiled using the latest versions of the extensions repository, which is also upgraded to Angular 9. While you are recompiling the extensions, there may be compilation errors due to Ivy. This guide will help migrating your code: Angular Update Guide.

Regards,
Progress Sitefinity Team