3.0 release notes

What’s new in 3.0

Warning

Upgrading from previous versions

3.0 introduces some changes that require action if you are upgrading from a previous version.

Note

See the quick upgrade guide

New Frontend Editing

django CMS 3.0 introduces a new frontend editing system as well as a customisable Django admin skin (djangocms_admin_style).

In the new system, Placeholders and their plugins are no longer managed in the admin site, but only from the frontend.

In addition, the system now offer two editing views:

• content view, for editing the configuration and content of plugins.
• structure view, in which plugins can be added and rearranged.

Page titles can also be modified directly from the frontend.

New Toolbar

The toolbar’s code has been simplified and its appearance refreshed. The toolbar is now a more consistent management tool for adding and changing objects. See Extending the Toolbar.

Warning

Upgrading from previous versions

3.0 now requires the django.contrib.messages application for the toolbar to work. See Enable messages for how to enable it.

New Page Types

You can now save pages as page types. If you then create a new page you may select a page type and all plugins and contents will be pre-filled.

Experimental Python 3.3 support

We’ve added experimental support for Python 3.3. Support for Python 2.5 has been dropped.

Better multilingual editing

Improvements in the django CMS environment for managing a multi-lingual site include:

• a built-in language chooser for languages that are not yet public.
• configurable behaviour of the admin site’s language when switching between languages of edited content.

CMS_SEO_FIELDS

The setting has been removed, along with the SEO fieldset in admin.

• meta_description field’s max_length is now 155 for optimal Google integration.
• page_title is default on top.
• meta_keywords field has been removed, as it no longer serves any purpose.

CMS_MENU_TITLE_OVERWRITE

New default for this setting is True.

Plugin fallback languages

It’s now possible to specify fallback languages for a placeholder if the placeholder is empty for the current language. This must be activated in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF per placeholder. It defaults to False to maintain pre-3.0 behaviour.

language_chooser

The language_chooser template tag now only displays languages that are public. Use the toolbar language chooser to change the language to non-public languages.

Undo and Redo

If you have django-reversion installed you now have undo and redo options available directly in the toolbar. These can now revert plugin content as well as page content.

Plugins removed

We have removed plugins from the core. This is not because you are not expected to use them, but because django CMS should not impose unnecessary choices about what to install upon its adopters.

The most significant of these removals is cms.plugins.text.

We provide djangocms-text-ckeditor, a CKEditor-based Text Plugin. It’s available from https://github.com/divio/djangocms-text-ckeditor. You may of course use your preferred editor; others are available.

Furthermore, we removed the following plugins from the core and moved them into separate repositories.

Note

In order to update from the old cms.plugins.X to the new djangocms_X plugins, simply install the new plugin, remove the old cms.plugins.X from settings.INSTALLED_APPS and add the new one to it. Then run the migrations (python manage.py migrate djangocms_X).

File Plugin

We removed the file plugin (cms.plugins.file). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-file

As an alternative, you could also use the following (yet you will not be able to keep your existing files from the old cms.plugins.file!)

• https://github.com/stefanfoulis/django-filer

Flash Plugin

We removed the flash plugin (cms.plugins.flash). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-flash

Googlemap Plugin

We removed the Googlemap plugin (cms.plugins.googlemap). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-googlemap

Inherit Plugin

We removed the inherit plugin (cms.plugins.inherit). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-inherit

Picture Plugin

We removed the picture plugin (cms.plugins.picture). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-picture

Teaser Plugin

We removed the teaser plugin (cms.plugins.teaser). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-teaser

Video Plugin

We removed the video plugin (cms.plugins.video). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-video

Link Plugin

We removed the link plugin (cms.plugins.link). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-link

Snippet Plugin

We removed the snippet plugin (cms.plugins.snippet). Its new location is at:

• https://github.com/divio/djangocms-snippet

As an alternative, you could also use the following (yet you will not be able to keep your existing files from the old cms.plugins.snippet!)

• https://github.com/pbs/django-cms-smartsnippets

Twitter Plugin

Twitter disabled V1 of their API, thus we’ve removed the twitter plugin (cms.plugins.twitter) completely.

For alternatives have a look at these plugins:

• https://github.com/nephila/djangocms_twitter
• https://github.com/changer/cmsplugin-twitter

Plugin Context Processors take a new argument

Plugin Context have had an argument added so that the rest of the context is available to them. If you have existing plugin context processors you will need to change their function signature to add the extra argument.

Apphooks

Apphooks have moved from the title to the page model. This means you can no longer have separate apphooks for each language. A new application instance name field has been added.

Note

The reverse id is not used for the namespace any more. If you used namespaced apphooks before, be sure to update your pages and fill out the namespace fields.

If you use apphook apps with app_name for app namespaces, be sure to fill out the instance namespace field application instance name as it’s now required to have a namespace defined if you use app namespaces.

For further reading about application namespaces, please refer to the Django documentation on the subject at https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#url-namespaces

request.current_app has been removed. If you relied on this, use the following code instead in your views:

def my_view(request):
  current_app = resolve(request.path_info).namespace
  context = RequestContext(request, current_app=current_app)
  return render_to_response("my_templace.html", context_instance=context)

Details can be found in Attaching an application multiple times.

PlaceholderAdmin

PlaceholderAdmin now is deprecated. Instead of deriving from admin.ModelAdmin, a new mixin class PlaceholderAdminMixin has been introduced which shall be used together with admin.ModelAdmin. Therefore when defining a model admin class containing a placeholder, now add PlaceholderAdminMixin to the list of parent classes, together with admin.ModelAdmin.

PlaceholderAdmin doesn’t have language tabs any more and the plugin editor is gone. The plugin API has changed and is now more consistent. PageAdmin uses the same API as PlaceholderAdminMixin now. If your app talked with the Plugin API directly be sure to read the code and the changed parameters. If you use PlaceholderFields you should add the mixin PlaceholderAdminMixin as it delivers the API for editing the plugins and the placeholders.

The workflow in the future should look like this:

1. Create new model instances via a toolbar entry or via the admin.
2. Go to the view that represents the model instance and add content via frontend editing.

Placeholder object permissions

In addition to model level permissions, Placeholder now checks if a user has permissions on a specific object of that model. Details can be found here in Permissions.

Placeholders are pre-fillable with default plugins

In CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF, for each placeholder configuration, you can specify via ‘default_plugins’ a list of plugins to automatically add to the placeholder if empty. See default_plugins in CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF.

Custom modules and plugin labels in the toolbar UI

It’s now possible to configure module and plugins labels to show in the toolbar UI. See CMS_PLACEHOLDER_CONF for details.

New copy-lang subcommand

Added a management command to copy content (titles and plugins) from one language to another.

The command can be run with:

manage.py cms copy_lang from_lang to_lang

Please read cms copy lang before using.

Frontend editor for Django models

Frontend editor is available for any Django model; see documentation for details.

New Page related_name to Site

The Page object used to have the default related_name (page) to the Site model which may cause clashing with other Django apps; the related_name is now djangocms_pages.

Warning

Potential backward incompatibility

This change may cause you code to break, if you relied on Site.page_set to access cms pages from a Site model instance: update it to use Site.djangocms_pages

Moved all template tags to cms_tags

All template tags are now in the cms_tags namespace so to use any cms template tags you can just do:

{% load cms_tags %}

getter and setter for translatable plugin content

A plugin’s translatable content can now be read and set through get_translatable_content() and set_translatable_content(). See Custom Plugins for more info.

No more DB table-name magic for plugins

Since django CMS 2.0 plugins had their table names start with cmsplugin_. We removed this behaviour in 3.0 and will display a deprecation warning with the old and new table name. If your plugin uses south for migrations create a new empty schema migration and rename the table by hand.

Warning

When working in the django shell or coding at low level, you must trigger the backward compatible behaviour (a.k.a. magical rename checking), otherwise non migrated plugins will fail. To do this execute the following code:

>>> from cms.plugin_pool import plugin_pool
>>> plugin_pool.set_plugin_meta()

This code can be executed both in the shell or in your python modules.

Added support for custom user models

Since Django 1.5 it has been possible to swap out the default User model for a custom user model. This is now fully supported by DjangoCMS, and in addition a new option has been added to the test runner to allow specifying the user model to use for tests (e.g. --user=customuserapp.User)

Page caching

Pages are now cached by default. You can disable this behaviour with CMS_PAGE_CACHE

Placeholder caching

Plugins have a new default property: cache=True. If all plugins in a placeholder have set this to True the whole placeholder will be cached if the toolbar is not in edit mode.

Warning

If your plugin is dynamic and processes current user or request data be sure to set cache=False

Plugin caching

Plugins have a new attribute: cache=True. Its default value can be configured with CMS_PLUGIN_CACHE.

Per-page Clickjacking protection

An advanced option has been added which controls, on a per-page basis, the X-Frame-Options header. The default setting is to inherit from the parent page. If no ancestor specifies a value, no header will be set, allowing Django’s own middleware to handle it (if enabled).

CMS_TEMPLATE context variable

A new CMS_TEMPLATE variable is now available in the context: it contains the path to the current page template. See CMS_TEMPLATE reference for details.

Upgrading from 2.4

Note

There are reports that upgrading the CMS from 2.4 to 3.0 may fail if Django Debug Toolbar is installed. Please remove/disable Django Debug Toolbar and other non-essential apps before attempting to upgrade, then once complete, re-enable them following the “Explicit setup” instructions.

If you want to upgrade from version 2.4 to 3.0, there’s a few things you need to do. Start of by updating the cms’ package:

pip install django-cms==3.0

Next, you need to make the following changes in your settings.py

• settings.INSTALLED_APPS

  • Remove cms.plugin.twitter. This package has been deprecated, see Twitter Plugin.
  • Rename all the other cms.plugins.X to djangocms_X, see Plugins removed.

• settings.CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

  • Replace cms.context_processors.media with cms.context_processors.cms_settings

Afterwards, install all your previously renamed ex-core plugins (djangocms-whatever). Here’s a full list, but you probably don’t need all of them:

pip install djangocms-file
pip install djangocms-flash
pip install djangocms-googlemap
pip install djangocms-inherit
pip install djangocms-picture
pip install djangocms-teaser
pip install djangocms-video
pip install djangocms-link
pip install djangocms-snippet

Also, please check your templates to make sure that you haven’t put the {% cms_toolbar %} tag into a {% block %} tag. This is not allowed in 3.0 any more.

To finish up, please update your database:

python manage.py syncdb
python manage.py migrate  (answer yes if your prompted to delete stale content types)

Finally, your existing pages will be unpublished, so publish them with the publisher command:

python manage.py publisher_publish

That’s it!

Pending deprecations

placeholder_tags

placeholder_tags is now deprecated, the render_placeholder template tag can now be loaded from the cms_tags template tag library.

Using placeholder_tags will cause a DeprecationWarning to occur.

placeholder_tags will be removed in version 3.1.

cms.context_processors.media

cms.context_processors.media is now deprecated, please use cms.context_processors.cms_settings by updating TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS in the settings

Using cms.context_processors.media will cause a DeprecationWarning to occur.

cms.context_processors.media will be removed in version 3.1.