3.3 release notes

django CMS 3.3 has been planned largely as a consolidation release, to build on the progress made in 3.2 and pave the way for the future ones.

The largest major change is dropped support for Django 1.6 and 1.7, and Python 2.6 followed by major code cleanup to remove compatibility shims.

What’s new in 3.3

  • Removed support for Django 1.6, 1.7 and python 2.6
  • Changed the default value of CMSPlugin.position to 0 instead of null
  • Refactored the language menu to allow for better integration with many languages
  • Refactored management commands completely for better consistency
  • Fixed “failed to load resource” for favicon on welcome screen
  • Changed behaviour of toolbar CSS classes: cms-toolbar-expanded class is only added now when toolbar is fully expanded and not at the beginning of the animation. cms-toolbar-expanding and cms-toolbar-collapsing classes are added at the beginning of their respective animations.
  • Added unit tests for CMS JavaScript files
  • Added frontend integration tests (written with Casper JS)
  • Removed frontend integration tests (written with Selenium)
  • Added the ability to declare cache expiration periods on a per-plugin basis
  • Improved UI of page tree
  • Improved UI in various minor ways
  • Added a new setting CMS_INTERNAL_IPS for defining a set of IP addresses for which the toolbar will appear for authorized users. If left unset, retains the existing behaviour of allowing toolbar for authorized users at any IP address.
  • Changed behaviour of sideframe; is no longer resizable, opens to 90% of the screen or 100% on small screens.
  • Removed some unnecessary reloads after closing sideframe.
  • Added the ability to make pagetree actions work on currently picked language
  • Removed deprecated CMS_TOOLBAR_SIMPLE_STRUCTURE_MODE setting
  • Introduced the method get_cache_expiration on CMSPluginBase to be used by plugins for declaring their rendered content’s period of validity.
  • Introduced the method get_vary_cache_on on CMSPluginBase to be used by plugins for declaring VARY headers.
  • Improved performance of plugin moving; no longer saves all plugins inside the placeholder.
  • Fixed breadcrumbs of recently moved plugin reflecting previous position in the tree
  • Refactored plugin adding logic to no longer create the plugin before the user submits the form.
  • Improved the behaviour of the placeholder cache
  • Improved fix-tree command to sort by position and path when rebuilding positions.
  • Fixed several regressions and tree corruptions on page move.
  • Added new class method on CMSPlugin requires_parent_plugin
  • Fixed behaviour of get_child_classes; now correctly calculates child classes when not configured in the placeholder.
  • Removed internal ExtraMenuItems tag.
  • Removed internal PluginChildClasses tag.
  • Modified RenderPlugin tag; no longer renders the content.html template and instead just returns the results.
  • Added a get_cached_template method to the Toolbar() main class to reuse loaded templates per request. It works like Django’s cached template loader, but on a request basis.
  • Added a new method get_urls() on the appbase class to get CMSApp.urls, to allow passing a page object to it.
  • Changed JavaScript linting from JSHint and JSCS to ESLint
  • Fixed a bug when it was possible to drag plugin into clipboard
  • Fixed a bug where clearing clipboard was closing any open modal
  • Added CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER setting
  • Renamed the CMS_WIZARD_* settings to CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_*
  • Deprecated the old-style wizard-related settings
  • Improved documentation further
  • Improved handling of uninstalled apphooks
  • Fixed toolbar placement when foundation is installed
  • Fixed an issue which could lead to an apphook without a slug
  • Fixed numerous frontend issues
  • Added contribution policies documentation
  • Corrected an issue where someone could see and use the internal placeholder plugin in the structure board
  • Fixed a regression where the first page created was not automatically published
  • Corrected the instructions for using the delete-orphaned-plugins command
  • Re-pinned django-treebeard to >=4.0.1

Upgrading to 3.3

A database migration is required because the default value of CMSPlugin.position was set to 0 instead of null.

Please make sure that your current database is consistent and in a healthy state, and make a copy of the database before proceeding further.

Then run:

  1. python manage.py migrate
  2. python manage.py cms fix-tree

Deprecation of Old-Style Page Wizard Settings

In this release, we introduce a new naming scheme for the Page Wizard settings that better reflects that they effect the CMS’s Page Wizards, rather than all wizards. This will also allow future settings for different wizards with a smaller chance of confusion or naming-collision.

This release simultaneously deprecates the old naming scheme for these settings. Support for the old naming scheme will be dropped in version 3.5.0.

Action Required

Developers using any of the following settings in their projects should rename them as follows at their earliest convenience.

  1. CMS_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE
  2. CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN
  3. CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLUGIN_BODY
  4. CMS_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER => CMS_PAGE_WIZARD_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER

The CMS will accept both-schemes until 3.5.0 when support for the old scheme will be dropped. During this transition period, the CMS prefers the new-style naming if both schemes are used in a project’s settings.

Backward incompatible changes

Management commands

Management commands uses now argparse instead of optparse, following the Django deprecation of the latter API.

The commands behaviour has remained untouched.

Detailed changes:

  • commands now use argparse subcommand API which leads to slightly different help output and other internal differences. If you use the commands by using Django’s call_command function you will have to adapt the command invocation to reflect this.
  • some commands have been rename replacing underscores with hyphens for consistency
  • all arguments are now non-positional. If you use the commands by using Django’s call_command function you will have to adapt the command invocation to reflect this.

Signature changes

The signatures of the toolbar methods get_or_create_menu have a new kwarg disabled inserted (not appended). This was done to maintain consistency with other, existing toolbar methods. The signatures are now:

  • cms.toolbar.items.Menu.get_or_create_menu(key, verbose_name, disabled=False, side=LEFT, position=None)
  • cms.toolbar.toolbar.CMSToolbar.get_or_create_menu(key, verbose_name=None, disabled=False, side=LEFT, position=None)

It should only affect developers who use kwargs as positional args.