Release notes

Article number: 304813

10.4 release notes

10.4 introduces improvements to the CMS in the following areas:

In addition to these, we've introduced a searchable audit trail and increased the range of audited actions. Internationalisation has been increased with configurable UTC offsets supported throughout the interface. Some small and large changes have been made in response to customer feedback on the forums and in emails.  The asset class based work was based on discussions with West Cheshire and Leeds CSU. Additions of paths in the file and image upload screens (Wigan Council), improved image handling through the use of image paths and sharper resized pictures (University Hospital Birmingham) and front end editable profile avatars (NE London CSU).

In terms of platform this release runs on .NET framework 4.5. Also please note that in line with Microsoft's discontinuation of the server 2003 support hosting on IIS6 is no longer supported.

 

Asset Classes

Work flow in posts

The previous release of the CMS improved Sitekit’s n-tier workflow configuration and usability. This release sees this further extended to include posts. The post system is now becoming a frequently used tool to map complex datasets to a web environment so adding workflow to posts was a logical next step.

 

Index search changes

Sitekit’s indexed search has been in place for a few years now. In 10.4 it has been substantially revamped both in terms of logic and maintenance. The search logic has been extended to support multi word searches and also exact phrase searches. At the same time the ordering of results has been changed to accentuate content with multiple instances of the search terms. On the maintenance side an administrator can now re-build their own search indexes manually via the admin interface. This is useful if you’ve just bulk uploaded a lot of new files.

Data island changes

Data islands (snippets of code made up of XML/XSL transforms) have long been the stable of 3rd party content integration in the CMS. In 10.4 their management has been centralised and optimised to make them easier to work with and to improve their caching in order to speed the rendering of pages that they are on.

 

Asset class based variable schemes

Variable schemes are commonly used when building sites in the CMS. They allow the site builder to vary page content based on that page's location in the navigation tree or on the domain requesting it. In this release this has been extended so that content can now be varied depending on a page's asset class. This means that dynamic changes can be applied across multiple domains and branches via asset classes and also ensures that when editing the scheme you edit is the one associated with the correct branch.

Security improvements

The improvements in 10.4 encompass several security enhancements and patches. These relate to vulnerabilities found during our internal testing, hardening of areas associated with brute force attacks and server obfuscation. We strongly encourage our deployed customers to upgrade to 10.4 to improve their site's security.  

Documentation changes - New help pages 

Most additional and new content is labelled as ‘10.4’ so a search of help for ‘10.4’ will present most if not all of the following:

http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/posts-and-workflow.htm workflow and posts
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/File-Editor-Bulk.htm - customer suggested change for file properties popup
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/link-checker-report.htm - new help page for revised Link Checker Report
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/edit-a-file.htm -corrected from current file editor help link
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/macros-via-variable-block-arguments.htm  - new page dealing with variable block macros
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/time-zones-configuration.htm - new page dealing with UTC support
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/data-islands-configuration.htm - new data island configuration page 
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/data-island-usage.htm - new page on data island usage
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/faq.htm?postid=623 – new post describing revised search logic
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/search-spider.htm   - new search re-indexing page

 

Documentation changes - Updated pages

http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/KB/Mailing-Lists/html-mailing-list-best-practice.htm - updated to reference size calculating web service
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/syntax/reserved-or-magic-words.htm - added themeid, parentpageinfo.shortcutid
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/managing-scripts.htm - added reference that header welcomestyle is now part of this
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-manage-send-mailshot.htm - updated to show that assets can be picked also
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-edit-workflow-status.htm - change to images used
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-build-workflow.htm - include posts
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/default-workflow.htm - include posts
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/Image-Editor-Bulk.htm - code snippet reference
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/create-or-configure-posts.htm - post ordering
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/syntax/general-facilities.htm - variable block macros
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/configuring-posts.htm - new tag type
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/editing-post.htm - multi-select and new tag type
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/creating-a-page-for-posts.htm - new tag type
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/adding-posts.htm - new tag type
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/front-end-page-option.htm - new tag type
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/domains.htm - subweb checkbox needs related entry on site settings
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/member-profiles.htm - custom fields and avatar added to the editability of the member profile also added to
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/developing-with-and-extending-sitekit-cmss/profile-photograph-and-additional-details/543
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-edit-change-title.htm - replacing disallowed characters in web page names
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/syntax/reserved-or-magic-words.htm - all page comments removed
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-manage-audit-trail.htm search added to audit trail
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/syntax/xml-data-islands.htm - revised for new Dataisland configuration section
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/faq.htm?postid=3 – addition of IP authentication, dataisland and search changes to auditable data
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/faq.htm?postid=345 – addition of new copied items to site copy, workflow, dataislands, post types, scripts
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/Sitekit-search-options.htm - overview of all search options , updated for index search change
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-configure-site-search-list.htm - redo index
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/v10/documentation/help/deploying-an-indexed-search.htm - redo output, still waiting on span class for results
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-style-variable-schemes.htm - asset based variable schemes
http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/asset-classes.htm - application of them via asset classes

Deprecated

10.4 will only run on IIS7 upwards, support for IIS6 and server 2003 has been deprecated in this release.

For security purposes, the author metadata tag has been removed from the page HEAD tag in page with the relevant DTD.

Old forums and forum configuration will no longer be supported in this and later releases, it will not be removed where it is still in use.

The resource planning module has been deprecated in favour of posts.

The CMS's support for embedding .NET controls has been removed from this release.

The directory module has been deprecated in favour of the new posts system except in cases where it is still in use. It doesn’t appear in new sites and is marked as deprecated in help. http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-manage-directory.htm

Related questions