Publii updated to version 0.42, adding expanded tag and author options

It's been a while, but the latest Publii release is finally ready to come out of the oven, bringing with it a slew of the new tag and author options, more efficient block handling features in the block editor, and support for assigning a menu to multiple positions; this is also the first release to have AMP support removed from the feature set, as previously noted in the last release.

Grab the update package from the Downloads section of the Publii site if you want to get stuck in, but if you want to get some more in-depth information on the changes included in this release, keep reading!

AMP Support Removed

As previously reported during the release of the previous Publii update, version 0.41, AMP support has been removed in this release. Despite Google's expectations, AMP failed to set the online world alight amid concerns regarding its impact on web design and monetization. Some argued that AMP-based pages severely restricted creativity and flexibility when designing a site, while others expressed fears that AMP sites would negatively impact advertising revenue.

Putting these issues aside, there are more practical concerns that led to the decision to axe AMP support in Publii. Chief among these is the fact that the static sites that Publii produces are already well-optimized to load quickly, negating the major benefit that AMP pages were meant to provide; in fact, some Publii-built websites actually performed better than the AMP-enabled versions.

Implementation and maintenance of the AMP feature in Publii requires a lot of development time, which we feel could be better targeted at improving the core feature-set and stability of the Publii app as a whole, rather than focused on a fairly niche functionality that doesn't always provide a benefit to our users' sites.

For those who wish to continue to use AMP pages on their Publii site, they may continue to use the previous release, version 0.41, and should avoid installing any theme updates as these will not be built with AMP support in mind.

We understand that the removal of AMP support may disappoint some of our users, but we truly believe that this decision is in the best interest of our users, and we remain firmly committed to providing a fast and user-friendly CMS that is suitable for all skill levels, and look forward to providing more great features in the future.

Expanded Tag and Author Options

One of the great things about the Publii community is that they are always happy to let us know what kind of additional features they wanted to see added to the app; often suggesting things that we didn't even consider before! We have received many requests for these features, so we hope that they'll be helpful.

First up is the addition of a simple WYSIWYG editor to the author/tag description section. Though not extensive, it provides all the standard options that one would need to add a bit of flair to your description text.

Secondly, a set of options have been added to allow users to specify which elements should be included on an author/tag page, similar to the PostConfig options available when creating a post. Using these settings, you can enable or disable elements such as the post counter, description, author avatar, and even post listings.

In order to take advantage of these changes you will need to update your theme to the latest version; all of the themes have already been updated to support this feature and are ready for download.

For users that do not wish to update their theme but still would like to include these features, we have created a short tutorial in our forum describing what changes need to be made in which theme files in order to add support. You may check this tutorial via the following link: https://forum.getpublii.com/...

New UI for Block Handling in the Block Editor

In order to make managing blocks in the Block Editor more efficient and easy-to-follow, we have overhauled the Bulk Editing feature to allow all blocks to be managed via a side-panel which displays the full list of blocks. Via this section you may quickly duplicate or delete a block, or drag and drop blocks to reorder them as needed. Performance has also be improved, making the editing process a lot smoother and faster.

These changes also includes some helpful visual cues to remove the guesswork from block editing; when selecting a block from the list in the side panel, the relevant block will also be highlighted in the main window so that you know which block you are editing. This also works the other way; click on a block in the main window will highlight it in the list of blocks in the side panel, so you'll always know where you are!

One Menu, Multiple Positions

Tired of recreating menus so that they can be assigned to multiple positions? This update includes some changes to the Assign Menu option that allows a single menu instance to be displayed in multiple positions. For example, if you want to have your main menu displaying in both the header and footer menu position of a page, you can now assign the one menu to both positions; no need to create a second menu instance. Of course, this is only possible when the theme supports such menu positions!

A new setting has also been added which allows users to set the allowed menu levels for a given menu position. Often, the main menu at the top of the site will display all the submenu categories, allowing site visitors to find specific sections of your site, whereas the footer menu is usually more limited, allowing only broad access to specific sections without the subsections. With the changes to this feature, you can specify how many levels of the menu that is assigned to a position will be available.

Keep in mind that the allowed number of levels cannot exceed the value defined in the theme, which is indicated by an additional message where relevant. You may also set an unlimited number of menu levels to a position by setting the value to "-1".

Regenerate Tag and Author Slugs

In the last release we added an option to regenerate post slugs; helpful when changes have been made to the title of the post. Now, the option has been made available for tag and author page slugs to be regenerated in a similar way by simply clicking the Refresh Icon to the right of the slug field.

Refresh Log Files

In a similar vein, a button has been added to the Log Viewer (located in the Tools section of the app) that will allow you to immediately refresh logs; in previous versions the app had to be restarted before such changes would be visible.

Additional Option for Handling custom_elements

Previously, the WYSIWYG Editor in Publii included a custom_elements field, where HTML tags could be added to prevent the editor from automatically cleaning up the elements when generating the post.

Unfortunately, this option wasn't always specific enough to prevent cleanup, or too broad to be useful in some situations. Now, a second option has been added which, when combined with the originally-available option, makes adding custom elements easier and ensures that the editor will not remove the custom elements in error.

To make use of this feature, the custom element should be added to the original window labelled 'Additional valid elements in the WYSIWYG editor' with a wildcard selector that identifies the values that may be included in the custom element. Next, in the new section (labelled 'Custom Elements available in the WYSIWYG Editor'), only the custom element itself should be added. This layer of redundancy helps to prevent errant removal of the custom elements by the editor.

Other Improvements

There never just a set of new features in a Publii release; there's always a few improvements worth noting that aren't cool enough to justify their own section in this article, but are worth knowing about anyway. Here's what's new in this release:

Unified Editor Interface

The User Interface in the various editors available in Publii were not consistent. Now, they have been updated so that the same set of icons appears in all editors, from the Block and WYSIWYG editors, down to the mini WYSIWYG editors in author and tag editing pages and theme options.

Image Lazy-Load

In earlier versions of Publii, if a post had lazy-loading enabled, all images in the post were assigned the 'loading' attribute with the 'lazy' value, with no possibility to change it, even when adding the "eager" attribute. Now, you can to that. Specifically, you may add the attribute loading=eager to an image, and it will now work as you intend rather than ignoring your instructions.

Additional enhancements

• Block Editor - Migrated from timestamp-based IDs to UUIDv4.
• Block Editor - Added confirmation prompt when removing images.
• Added detection for exceeding free-space quota during backup creation.
• Enhanced detection of lazy-load images that have the "eager" value.
• Disabled the 'convert_urls' option for mini-WYSIWYG editors in the theme/plugin/website options.
• Improved 'aria-*' attributes for the built-in cookie banner.
• Updated Electron to version 22.
• Additional minor visual and code improvements, updated dependencies.

Bugfixes

Our users find a bug, and we do our best to squash it. Here's what's been fixed in this release:

• Solved issue with overriding script.js file in theme overrides.
• Resolved issues with improper handling of tag/author pages in XML sitemaps.
• Fixed issues with invalid slashes in XML sitemaps on Windows.
• Addressed issues with meta robots handling and canonical URLs' values for author pages.
• Solved issue with disappearing website logo during theme change.
• Fixed issues when changing themes on newly-created websites.
• Resolved issue with tags which contain a comma in their name.
• Fixed issue with importing specific WXR files for WordPress websites that included a specific form of category nesting.
• Solved issues with embedding relative URLs.
• Fixed issues with creating slugs as IDs for header blocks.
• Resolved issue with inability to edit tag SEO options when tags are marked as no-index.

Hotfixes

Publii hotfix 0.42.1

1. Updated SFTP chmod settings: The previous default configuration of the SFTP module set the chmod for the files to 666; now it is 644. We recommend checking the chmod settings on your server and adjusting them if needed. Folders (directories) should have 755, and files should have 644.
2. Updated the Simple theme to version 2.6.2.0.
3. Updated the icon sets for WYSIWYG and Block editor; now, if you use a custom interface, the missing icons should be displayed.
4. Added the ability to translate block names in the Insert bar.
5. Fixed the layout of error messages in the tag/author edit sidebar.
6. Fixed an issue with incorrect width for the multi-select tag and authors, which caused the entire content of the select to be not visible.
7. Fixed a pagination issue when pretty URLs were disabled.

And that's the lot for today. We really hope that this release includes features that our users will find helpful, and remember that you are always welcome to join us on our community forums or the Publii GitHub repositoryif you have any suggestions, have run into any bugs, or just need a bit of help with getting things off the ground. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more updates to come in the future!

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