Zenario 9.1

Version 9.1 of Zenario has now had its public release and is available to everyone. It has the following new features and changes:

Major feature: Banner plugins now use WebP for faster page-loads

The WebP image format is a high-performance format recommended by Google. When testing sites with PageSpeed, Google frequently mentions non-WebP images as causing slowness on pages.

We have thus introduced an important new performance feature in Zenario, so that it makes WebP images for all images that are going to be displayed through Banners on the site, which usually means mastheads, calls-to-action and other key images.

It works like this: You can make images in the usual way, and upload them as JPG or PNG images at a large size (at least as large as you intend the site to display them, and 2x as large if you would like to have Retina quality images on the site). It's not necessary (or possible) to upload a WebP image directly.

As soon as Zenario attempts to display an image on the front end it makes a WebP version of the image and stores it underneath the cache directory called public/images. The regular JPG/PNG is stored as well, for backward compatibility.

When a visitor then accesses the page and its images, Zenario then tries to serve the WebP image, provided the visitor's browser is compatible; otherwise it falls back on the JPG/PNG.

So far we have just implemented this for the Banner plugin, but in later releases we will update other modules to use WebP.

Other SEO tools

noindex meta tag

For SEO purposes, it is now possible set a noindex meta tag on a content item.

Editing warning on wrongly-linked content items

Zenario supports URLs which include the full menu path down to a content item's alias, i.e. the path is the concatenation of the current aliases of the parents of the linked-to content item. The problem is, an administrator can change an alias, and a WYSIWYG editor may contain a link that's now outdated. It won't cause the link to break (since only the final part matters) but is confusing for search engines.

In WYSIWYG editing mode, Zenario now shows a yellow warning triangle when a hyperlink links to a page in Zenario for which the deep-level path in the link differs from the current path to the content item. That way, an administrator can spot outdated ones and update them.

Other changes on aliases

We've improved the handling of aliases on multi-language sites, so that it is clear when the administrator is an is not allowed to edit the alias of a translated page. (This depends on the site settings, which determine whether translations have the same or a different alias from the original).

In admin mode, Zenario now shows an icon next to links that go to spare aliases.

Creating a new site

When making a new Zenario site, or resetting a site, the Organizer display is now reduced to just the start page, the language picker, and the Configuration panel.

Admin toolbar

The admin toolbar no longer has a "visitor preview" button. This used to allow a page to be simulated in different browser widths, but it was getting out of date and inaccurate.

The "Edit metadata" button on the toolbar now has a more informative tooltip.

When viewing a content item or layout in admin mode, empty slots are hidden by default. There's now a "Show empty slots" (and "Hide empty slots") toggle-action button.

Previously when creating a content item it immediately said it was "modified" by the administrator who created it; we have improved this, so that newly-created content items now show "created", and only "modified" when they have actually been modified.

Scheduled publishing

When scheduled publishing has been set for a content item at some time in the future, Zenario shows a warning on the Publish confirmation box.

It is possible to cancel scheduled publishing, to change the date/time it's set to be published, and to publish the item immediately.

Organizer

Seeing where a plugin is used

In Organizer, it is possible to select a module in the Modules panel, and see where its plugins are used. Previously this did not include instances of where a plugin was used in a nest or slideshow.

So it is now possible to select a module, click the folder icons to see which regular plugins it has, and then see a notice when there are instances of the plugin in either a nest or a slideshow.

Skins panel

We've improved the appearance of the Skins panel in Organizer. It's easier to see when a skin extends another skin, and other changes.

Modules

There is now better information about modules. When viewing a plugin settings the class name is shown. If a module's program code is missing from the filesystem it is now no longer possible to access the settings of its plugins.

Gridmaker

When using Gridmaker to design a layout, and deleting a slot, the confirmation message now states whether anything is using that slot, including plugins or version-controlled content. This makes it safer to delete a slot.

Menu management

Responsive menu

The Menu (Responsive Multilevel v2) plugin now supports links to Home, Search, Register and Login pages.

Menu nodes

Menu nodes can now link to hierarchical-type documents. It was previously only possible for them to link to content items and external URLs.

Multiple Image Container plugin now supports zipping

Multiple Image Container plugins (MICs) are commonly used for making a gallery-type page.

They now have a plugin setting, which if enabled, will cause the images in the MIC to be offered for download as a zip file. This is a common requirement when building extranet systems, such as for resellers or distributors, who may wish to download a set of marketing images.

Metadata plugin

The Metadata plugin now supports the "pinning" of content items; in other words when placed on a content item that is pinned, it can show an icon and words to say the content item is pinned.

It also now supports the display of the Zenario date published of a content item, as opposed to just the release date.

Document content items

Improvements to S3 document storage to support videos

Document content items can be stored on Amazon's AWS service, in the S3 storage. This is useful where you wish to store very large files, or where you want to have a small local version in Zenario, and a larger version in S3. This way, you can let S3 take care of serving and backing-up large files, while keeping your Zenario installation lightweight.

The latest change includes support for videos, so that when creating a content item you can specify the MIME type of the S3 file to be set to "video/mp4". It is also now optional to store a local file, thus you can have a Document content item which stores solely the S3 file.

Rescanning

For document content items, we have the ability to scan their text contents and/or image (subject to them being PDF or image files). When replacing a file on a document content item, Zenario now automatically attempts to rescan them.

Image paths fixed, organizer.php

The organizer.php program file has been moved to the root of the Zenario directory (the same as index.php). This should prevent some occasional problems that occurred when trying to make links to pages/images in the WYSIWYG editor, where they would have the wrong prefix.