A Major New Milestone for MODX Revolution

By Ryan Thrash  |  November 2, 2017  |  5 min read
A Major New Milestone for MODX Revolution

MODX is happy to announce a massive feature release of MODX Revolution was published on on November 1, 2017 as version 2.6.0—the seventh such Revo release.

With 117 improvements covering the entire platform, this represents a huge amount of work and boon for Revo site owners and users. The focus of this release was to increase stability and improve the user experience in the MODX Manager, boost overall performance and make it easier for developers to create MODX solutions.

We suggest that all users upgrade to MODX Revolution version 2.6.0, particularly if you’re running a version prior to 2.5.8. Not only will you have a more performant and enjoyable user experience, but you will also benefit from a more secure site that is ready for the coming rounds of Revo innovation.

To that point, this release does not mean a feature-stop for MODX Revolution. There are still many excellent features and fixes to be merged into upcoming MODX Revolution releases. Our main focus will move towards groundbreaking work, including xPDO 3 and a Slim refactor for the core MODX framework and a movement to improve the Manager UI even further. As such, we ask for collaboration from the Community on all those fronts to accelerate making this happen! So please ask around in the MODX Community Slack (#development or #mab), or even better: attend the MODXpo in Minsk.

The following encompasses just some of the amazing work that went into MODX Revolution 2.6, which we tried to keep brief but failed miserably. So here's the list of highlights:

UI improvements

  • Major Media Browser and Resource tree improvements for a more fluid user experience
  • Polishing Resource editing, Template Variables (TVs) and dialog windows
  • Moving TVs to modx-resource-main-left/right will not only work, but will also look amazing
  • More flexibility added for styling the Manager UI
  • SVGs are now displayed as thumbnails in the media browser
  • Improved Extras Installer including being able to read changelog before starting an upgrade
  • Improved “Who’s online” dashboard widget
  • Empty Template Variable categories are now hidden when editing Resources

User Experience

  • Additional Aria Roles for improved accessibility in the Manager
  • Improved field captions and error messages with more helpful instructions
  • User management search is extended with the ability to search in Metadata fields, e.g. phone:1234567890 or zip:12345. It also shows more relevant columns now.
  • More Manager actions can now be opened in a new tab/window by using Cmd/Control + Click or middle-mouse button.
  • For multi-context site developers, duplicating Contexts now includes all associated TV values. The same applies to deleting: it removes TV values. Duplicating all Resources under a Context is now optional and enabled by default.
  • Ability to change the Context order for multi-site/multi-context installations
  • View both sent and received Manager messages

Performance & Stability

  • Added a new event when the Resource cache updates to ease integrating third-party caching mechanisms into MODX
  • Binary file uploads now handled via streams to decrease server load
  • Improved file permissions handling
  • The Manager Dashboard will always load, even if dynamic widgets experience failures
  • Duplicating Contexts with many resources now takes a fraction of the time/server resources
  • Improved User management performance and usability
  • Site_status now works when sessions are disabled

Developer improvements

  • See which Templates are using a TV directly from the TV-editing UI
  • When a non-existent Snippet is called, it will be logged in the Manager error.log
  • New ability to filter the Manager log on Class Key (e.g. Chunk, Snippet, etc) for faster searches
  • Ability to define Richt Text Editors per context
  • The Events overview now shows all the Plugins using the Events
  • Event filtering in the Plugin edit window
  • Three new Extras Installer events: OnPackageInstall (also fired when a package is updated), OnPackageUninstall and OnPackageRemove
  • You can now use the 2 048 kb tag to show used memory
  • New after (append) and before (prepend) Output Filters
  • Developers can now get an array of files inside a modDirectory instance
  • Two new ExtJS components for creating headers and descriptions

Under the hood

  • Additional security hardening
  • Database improvements including new installs using inno_db tables for the storage engine and supporting utf8_mb4 collations
  • DKIM support to modMail for improved email delivery
  • Fixed uncached tags in cached elements
  • REST API improvements and cleanups
  • Lexicons now work from both the database and filesystem
  • Removed code for legacy PHP version (< 5.3)

Contributors

Many of the fixes took place during the MODX Bug Hunt and Hacktoberfest community events—both of which played a big part in making 2.6 happen. Special thanks goes out to Jason Coward, MODX Chief Architect, who locked himself up for the last few weeks to merge pull requests in Github and lead testing efforts. Spending time on merging PRs, instead of shaving, should make for an excellent Movember.

This release was further made possible by our amazing community members, including: Thomas Jakobi, Jason Coward, David Pede, SintezCode, Jesse Visser, Fabian Christen, Mark Hamstra, Johan van der Molen, Vasily Naumkin, Lars Bratke, Roel Zeilstra, Oene Tjeerd de Bruin, Thomas Gautvedt, Marc Jenkins, Romain Tripault, Sander Drenth, Mike Reid, Jens Külzer, Ivan Klimchuk, Julian Weaver, Benjamin Davis, Andre van der Meulen, Maef, islandsins, Jay Gilmore, Ryan Thrash, Gauke Pieter Sietzema, Nikolay Lanets, Lukas Zahnd, John Peca, Sergey Shlokov, Vasily Krakovetsky, Mat Dave Jones, Rico/Goldsky, Vladimir/vgrish, Simon Champion, Hugo Peek, Oliver Meyer, Joshua Curtis, wandering213, Sebastian G. Marinescu, Joeke Kloosterman, lawrenz1337, James Rotering, Andy Baughman, Christian Seel, manicko, John Hamann, Mark Willis, Pathologic, Fernando Figaroli and Alessandro Chinazzo. THANK YOU!

Download MODX Revolution 2.6.0

_Photo by Nicolas Tissot on Unsplash_