Tribiq CMS 5.2.4 Community has been released.

This is the first public release since version 5.2.2, and contains hundreds of improvements and new features.

Improved Administration Interface

There are many usability improvements in the Storekeeper administrative system, with greater speed and smoothness to the interface.

Storekeeper has been made more scalable, and is capable of handling huge numbers of data objects - whether that be Content Items, Users, or other types of data. (Customers are already using Storekeeper to manage sites with over 100,000 data objects). There is a "Select All" button in every Storekeeper panel, which allows all objects in the current view to be selected, so that some action can be performed on them.

With regards to managing Plugins, an administrator can now inspect a Plugin and see where a Plugin or one of its Plugin Instances is used, and on which Content Items, Templates or Families.

The concept of Plugin Albums has been introduced, for Plugin Instances which are intended for use in many places within a site. For example, a Banner with a useful graphic might be used in many places, and so would typically reside in the Album. Using the Album, it is easier to find useful Plugin Instances when configuring a page.

Placing a new Plugin in an empty Slot is now a much smoother process. An administrator can now configure a Plugin Instance on the fly. While in Slot Mode, simply click on "Add a Plugin", choose the Plugin with the desired functionality, configure an Instance for that Plugin, and click "Choose".

The process is greatly improved, especially for often-used Plugins like Banners, and webmasters should find the insertion process less obtrusive, so not hampering creativity while building a site.

Another productivity enhancement is in the Quick Create Content Item panel. While creating a new page, an administrator can optionally choose to create the page with a "feature" Plugin. This makes it easier to create pages with functionality already embedded, such as when adding a picture gallery.

Storekeeper's Dropbox now has a multiple upload feature, so that when creating Documents and Pictures an administrator may select many things at once on a local drive and upload them. Documents can now be directly downloaded from Storekeeper and Pictures can be previewed.

Last but not least, there is now a pop-up info box in Storekeeper. Administrators can click the "gemstone" beside the Tribiq logo to see useful information such as the CMS version, edition, database and installation information.

Plugin "Nest" Introduced

In version 5.2.2 it is not possible to insert more than one Plugin Instance into a Slot. This restriction has been in place to maintain high performance across the CMS, and to facilitate scaling across Templates and Families and avoiding any logic issues.

The new Plugin Nest now allows many Instances to be inserted without compromising that scalability.

We expect that the most popular use of this Plugin will be for rotating meathead graphics. For this purpose a Banner would be inserted; but the Nest allows almost any kind of Plugins to be mixed, so in fact very powerful Nests can be created.

Nests may contain a plain set of Plugin Instances, just placed one above the other. Alternatively, Tabs may be specified so that visitors have an interactive experience with the Nest, clicking on each Tab to select a different Instance within the Nest.

Nests are implemented by means of a Plugin Nest Plugin. An administrator can insert a Plugin Instance into the Nest, add another Instance, and so on; he can then add Tabs, and go to the Storekeeper panel for that Nest to re-arrange the order of the Tabs, their names and so on.

As well as this, there is a new Slideshow Plugin.

A Slideshow is a special kind of Nest. Plugins on the the tabs of a Nest will perform automatic transitions from one slide to another (the timing and transition style are controlled in the Slideshow Plugin Settings).

This Plugin has been developed as a replacement for Flash-based animations, where a more content manageable solution was required, and to improve compatibility with devices on which Flash is not installed, such as the iPhone.

Improved Multiple Language Support

Many of the features of Advanced Visitor Language Support (AVLS) have now been added to our Community product.

Once running, the AVLS Plugin now adds functionality in Storekeeper which allows an administrator to manage the chain of "content equivalences" of an Item.

At a glance, an administrator can see if a page has its corresponding translations, and he can create, view and delete those translations.

When adding new Languages, there is now an improved interface for declaring the Home, Search and Extranet pages of a site or its languages.

There are improvements when importing Visitor Language Packs with their Visitor Phrases. It is easier for administrators to import CSV files that have been edited in Excel.

Multi-lingual capability is now added to Groups and Categories. They can now be created as Public (or not Public), and when Public they can be given names in the enabled languages.

The popular Banner Plugin is now multilingual, and can use Visitor Phrases. Therefore it is easier to co-ordinate an Instance of the Banner Plugin which appears on the same page in different languages.

Comments and Forums

There are improvements to the Comments Plugin, and it now has a rich-text editor and an anonymous report-a-post feature (for reporting spam or offensive posts).

In Pro, the Forums have been given a major upgrade, and there is now a Forum Search feature.

Improvements to other Plugins

The entire Extranet system has been rewritten to improve the ease of set-up and flexibility.

When new Users sign up, they are now sent an email confirmation with a hashed link embedded.

This uses Email Templates, which can be HTML-based emails and can be edited via Storekeeper.

There is a new "log me in automatically" feature for the Extranet Plugin.

All Content Types now feature a Summary field. This is designed to appear on Content Summary Lists. These have also been improved with better Plugin Settings interfaces.

It is now easier to manage favicons and "Home Screen" icons for the iPhone/iPad, and these can be uploaded via Storekeeper.

Performance

We have added minification to most use of JavaScript, for faster page downloads.

All JavaScript used by the CMS is now included in the foot of the page for a significantly faster page-load.

Upgrading

We have improved the upgrade path for anyone upgrading from 5.1.4 or earlier.