What's new
8.1 version contains Translations Module, Site Sync and Email Campaigns improvements and numerous fixes.
NuGet packages are available on http://nuget.sitefinity.com.
Dev Tools and Frameworks
Feather Front-End Framework
Dev Tools and Frameworks
- Bootstrap – updated to 3.3.4
- Angular.js – upgraded to v1.3.15
- MVC - upgraded to MVC 5, required from this version on
New MVC Widgets
New MVC Selectors
New APIs
- Ability to define relative routes (documentation)
- Ability to control where on a page to render scripts on widget level (documentation)
- Ability to control where on a page to render style sheets on widget level (documentation)
Other
- Layouts: Razor layouts are truly dynamic and execute on every page request, unless the page is output cached
- Layouts: Ability to have multiple placeholders in a Layout files (documentation)
- Layouts: Page templates based on layout files are organized in categories depending on the parent frontend package of the layout files
- Grid widgets: Ability to edit class names and labels via the UI
- Grid widgets: Automatic registration of grid widgets (documentation)
- Grid widgets: Registering of the package's grid widgets in separate sections in the toolbox (documentation)
- Packages: Additional page templates are generated by default for the Bootstrap, the Foundation and the Semantic UI packages
- Toolbox: All MVC widgets are registered in the same categories as their WebForms equivalent
- Content block: All tools options is added in editor toolbar
- Content block: Document manager is added
- Content block: Video manager is added
Translations Module
(documentation)
The Translations module helps you automate the process of translating your content items, pages, and templates. Using this module, you can easily send multilingual content directly to external translating agencies, and follow the progress of translations from within Sitefinity.
Depending on the translation agency you work with, you can:
- Export content to XLIFF files, send them manually to the translating agency, and import them back to Sitefinity, when ready;
- Integrate with the FTP server of the translation agency. Translation files are sent to the FTP server automatically, and imported back to Sitefinity, when ready.
- Integrate with the translation services of the agency directly. Translation files are automatically sent to the service, and imported back to Sitefinity, when ready.
- By default, Sitefinity integrates with Lionbridge Freeway (via Clay Tablet). Implementers can easily add translation services of their choice.
Translation editors can also:
- Determine which Sitefinity items to send for translation, and to which languages;
- Review the status of all sent translations in a dedicated section Translations;
- Preview all returned translations, and
- Handle any errors or conflicts, which occur when sending translations forward and backward.
Thus, the module allows you to minimize the tedious work of managing translations, reduces the risk of errors, and provides centralized control of all translation tasks.
Licensing: Available in Enterprise Edition
Site Sync Improvements
Scheduling of multiple sync tasks (FP, FP)
This functionality allows you to schedule multiple synchronization tasks to occur in time. You can create numerous tasks and set them to sync to different destination servers or sites.
In a new section “Scheduled tasks”, users can view upcoming scheduled sync tasks and modify them. Section “Sync history” displays a list of completed syncs in the past.
Other Improvements
- Added sync of content and pages Scheduled for Publish. On the scheduled date, the content will publish on the target server (FP).
- Added auto retry of failed sync tasks. Admins can set the number of retries and the retry interval (documentation).
- Added email notifications when a sync task completes. Admins can enable this option and specify the recipient email address in Settings>Advanced>SiteSync.
- Added syncing of Search indexes, which causes re-index on the target server. Admins can enable this option in Settings>Advanced>SiteSync (documentation).
- Added syncing of Configurations. Admins can enable this option, and include/exclude configs in Settings>Advanced>SiteSync (documentation).
- Added syncing of Resources (Labels & Messaging). Admins can enable this option in Settings>Advanced>SiteSync (documentation).
- Improved SSL configuration
Email Campaigns Improvements
Batch Sending of Emails (FP, FP)
Using this functionality, you can send emails in batches to the SMTP server. Thus, you minimize the chance of overloading the mail server, and can adhere to server limitations, if such exist.
Admins can enable this option in
Settings>Advanced>Notifications>Profiles. There, they can specify the number of emails in a batch, and the time intervals between sending batches.
Other Improvements
- Bounce message are separated in 2 categories - Soft and Hard bounces.
- Soft bounce massages can be resent multiple times
What's fixed
Email Campaigns
- It is possible to bypass validation when user subscribes to mailing list
- The ampersand in the links added to the email campaign issues are being encoded when using the Rich Text (HTML) type (FP)
- CampaignOverviewclass is not public (FP)
Feeds
- Feeds in multisite in monolingual do not show dynamic item if there is another site in multilingual (FP)
- Feed mapping settings for RSS Feed cannot be edited (FP)
- Content is not updated from external RSS feeds - scheduled tasks are created but not executed (FP)
Forms
- ControlCssClassOnError and Validator MessageCssClass are not applied for forms controls (FP)
- Issue with the FormMultipleChoice widget creating a response with a value -AddOtherChoiceItemValue- when posting in the backend or when using an AJAX enabled form (FP)
Libraries
- Having more than one library of different types with the same urls stops rendering the items and results in exception (FP)
- Libraries list view is broken when the first image of the library has invalid data
Login
- Login name is not displayed on home page for any user but Administrator (FP)
- Frontend users are not redirected to the url specified in the ReturnUrl query string parameter after successful login (FP)
- Configuration option for sts_logout query string passed automatically. It allows to sign out from the STS instead of the relying party. The setting can be found in Administration -> Settings -> Advanced -> Security -> StsSignout (FP)
Media
- Additional URLs get 404 error (FP)
Now there is a setting ( Administration -> Settings -> Advanced -> Libraries -> MediaFilesAdditionalUrls -> Media items additional URLs relative to site root (not to a containing page) ). It allows arbitrary additional URLs for a library item (Image, Document or Video) to be added and those URLs will redirect to the default one for the item.
- Reordering images functionality is not ordering images properly (FP)
Dynamic Content
- GetDataItem does not filter by the type parameter (FP)
- Dynamic content items hierarchical filtering and sorting by field throws exception on first load (FP)
- Address field for a dynamic module prompts for location every time (FP)
- Related data cannot be retrieved from item in the DynamicContentUpdated Event (FP).
- Choice field: Selected field in configurations not affecting default choice (FP)
- Negative numbers between 0 and -1 throw invalid number (FP)
- Custom provider inheriting from OpenAccessDynamicModuleProvider does not fire IDynamicContentEvents from the EventHub (FP)
- Using IsSingleItem in an inherited DynamicContentView causes error (FP)
MVC
- MVC layouts render invalid markup for statistics script (FP)
- TempData is lost after moving from one controller to another (FP)
- HttpContext.CurrentHandler returns null in MVC widgets (FP)
- FileResult returns document with 0 bytes (FP)
- BeginFormSitefinity helper method does not work when performing post on the home page (FP)
- BeginFormSitefinity helper method does not work when there are multiple forms on a page \valid for Hybrid mode only\(FP)
- Widget that performs redirect on HttpPost doesn't work if you access the home page directly without pointing the url (FP)
- Using AntiForgeryToken attribute causes an error (FP)
- The Url property of the Controller class is null (FP)
- Page precompilation does not work for page templates in Pure mode (FP)
- Using of PageData in controller breaks the page indexing (FP)
- Setting the ToolboxesConfig.config file in read only mode results in error when returning file result in controller action (FP)
- Html.BeginFormSitefinity doesn`t send a file for upload using Kendo Uploader (FP)
- Regression in BeginSitefinityForm since 8.0.5704.0 causing it to render broken action URLs.
- Preview of pages with controllers with no default constructor throws an exception
- Search: Setting ViewBag.Title in MVC controller on Frontend package based page causes the static HTML to not be indexed
Page Templates
- Custom layout control wrapper div disappears after you change the width of the divs in the layout control (FP)
- Using ScriptManager on a master page template prevent script combining (FP)
Pages
- Multilingual: delete translation of a page that has child page, but not in the current language is possible from Actions->Delete and not from page edit screen of this page (FP)
- Child page cannot be sent to recycle bin when there is a page with the same title in the sitemap (FP)
- The "null" appearing below the title on a settings page for a collection item
- Preview does not work when specific control properties are modified
- Page layout content disappear when layout element is edited (FP)
- Layout Controls: Resource not downloading (FP)
- Precompiled assembly is not used when opening pages due to cache issue (FP)
Performance
- Performance optimizations in Inline Editing parsing
- Opening content item for edit invalidates the page cache for pages with that content widget
Permissions
- Backend users who do not have the credentials to edit widget templates are able to edit them if they can edit a widget on a page
- Forms: Modify permissions doesn't take effect
Recycle Bin
- Scheduled task doesn't properly check if an item has been deleted. In some cases this might delete pages that are restored from the recycle bin and not supposed to be deleted.
- Scheduled tasks for permanent data deletion failed with SQL time out exception for Dynamic content items
Security
- Having more than 150 roles for a user makes the auth cookie larger than 4096 bites (FP)
- When Sitefinity is Child application the login URL is case sensitive (FP)
Site Sync
- List of sites that can be synced doesn't have pagination (FP)
- Syncing pages with disabled additional url to an existing page (FP)
- Problem with Pages and Page Templates logged to sync when they are opened but not modified (FP)
- Problem with uninstall of Site Sync module not clearing all records from the data base
- Problem with syncing forms of throwing an error on the target server (FP)
Sitemap Generator
- Relative Urls are generated when frontend pages require SSL (FP).
- Sitemap generator system library inaccessible (FP)
Users and Profiles
- LastLoginDate of front-end users is not updated (FP)
- UsersIsOnlineTimeWindow is not working (FP)
- The email field is not available as a field to user profiles (FP)
- Deleting a profile field from a used profile, results in YSOD when editing the user.
- Users which name is GUID cannot be set when NickName is empty (FP)
- Unable to see recovered users' password when there isn't recovery email set under advanced settings (FP)
- The "Is a public profile" property ignored when using a UserList widget. To apply a filter, open the widget for Edit > Advanced > ControlDefinition > Views > UserProfilesFrontendMaster and set IsProfilePublic = true for FilterExpression property (FP)
- Disabling Forums module causes "Invalid resource message" on EditUser screen (FP)
- Using Auto-generated fields in UserProfiles widget templates throws an error when you preview the page (FP)
- User.IsLoggedIn doesn't display the correct status. There is a public method of SecurityManager, called IsUserOnline(string providerName, User user) that you can use to get whether the user is currently online or not (FP).
- View Roles in BoxesView doesn't show users count. We applied a fix and now the users count per role gets update. This has been tested with 300 roles each with 500 users (150 000 users in the entire system) (FP)
- YSOD is thrown when trying to use an existing NickName with Profiles public widget (FP).
- Profile public widget - fixed issue with email validation and expose error message instead of refreshing the page with no logging.
- Setting predefined values for First and Last name in the Basic profile results in 404(FP)
- When creating a user the validation messages for First name and Last name fields are not cleared (FP).
- Editing custom field's default value is not persisted after it is created (FP)
- Profile type drop-down is not showing in the User Profile widget (FP)
- Profile of a user with Username ending with a period/dot cannot be viewed(FP)
- Broken MasterListView template after adding more than four role providers (FP)
- User Activation page displays null after selection (FP)
- Pages with profile widget throw exception on postback (FP)
Widgets
- Social Share: LinkedIn big icon with counter does not display count (FP)
- Content Block: breaks page functionality when specific HTML is added to the page (FP)
- Content block: Pressing enter while editing a shared content block in Html mode, will save the content block and will redirect you back to the list view (FP)
- Content block: New shared content is not visible on the list of available shared content
- Content block: Document manager can't be opened using "Edit properties" option (FP)
- Content Block: Making bullet list from multiple lines creates only one bullet (FP)
- Video widget: Unable to edit a page where the MediaPlayerControl is located if Silverlight is used (FP)
- ItemLanguageFallback does not work (FP)
Workflow
- Workflow notifications aren't sent to administrators (FP)
- Can not translate and send for approval Dynamic Item in case the default language has no translation (FP)
- Unable to duplicate widgets dropped on the page by other users (FP)
Other
- Audit Trail: Added logging for configuration changes
- Back-end Pages: All classifications back-end page cannot be opened for edit
- Comments: Old comments widget (prior Sitefinity 6.2) is not working on Sitefinity 8.0
- Compiler: Server returns random error when requesting page markup (FP)
- Ecommerce: Error messages are logged every time when a page with a Product list widget is being requested (FP)
- Events: Date picker doesn't work for "End date" when creating a past event in the same day (FP)
- Events widget: CalendarView doesn't show items from the correct provider when using multi site (FP)
- Feather: Binding redirect problem in feather when using multilingual site with specific culture that fallback to the invariant culture of the item (FP)
- Forms: The SaveFormEntry method of the FormsControl class throws exception in NLB environment with huge load
- Forums: International characters in the thread's title/body are escaped (FP)
- Labels and Messages: Sitefinity back-end labels change depending on the language of the opened page (FP)
- Labels and Messages: Having a Labels.resx file prevents upgrade scripts from updating Sitefinity labels (TP)
- Language selector: does not consider url parameters (FP)
- Localization: Localized registration and account activation email. Templates are exposed as resources under Labels - RegistrationConfirmationEmail, RegistrationSuccessEmail. Custom templates can use the following syntax to resolve localization resources {$ClassId, Key$}. Example: {$Labels,RegistrationConfirmationEmail$} (FP)
- Personalization: Personalization preview console results in error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." in test mode scenario
- RadEditor: filters are not applied when entering text in HTML mode (FP)
- Responsive design: Option for selecting specific responsive design rule for a particular page is not working as always all responsive design rules are applied (FP)
- Search: Issue where wrong translator was used for additional search fields
- Taxonomies: When new translation is added to a category, the parent item is not expandable and it should be manually selected for every single translation
- Provided virtual methods for TaxonomyService and ProductTypesService
- Invalid web resource Url containing not encoded chars - '&' (FP)
- Randomly occurring error: Type is enhanced when there are more than one connection to the same database from several site instances (FP)
- Content: if you have a non required custom field of type number, leaving the field empty results in error The value '' cannot be parsed as the type 'decimal'
Upgrade instructions
Api and database changes