Welcome to Core CMS v0.5.10! This release marks another major step in our visual builder and portability roadmap, introducing the new Latest Posts Editor.js block tool, robust customization controls for RSS syndication, key updates to site search relevance, and several hard-won stability fixes.
Here is a breakdown of what's new in v0.5.10:
📰 Native Latest Posts Block Tool
We have expanded the visual block builder (Editor.js) with a native Latest Posts block tool. Instead of relying on rigid, hardcoded templates or third-party widgets, administrators can now drop a dynamic post list directly into any page or layout.
- Dynamic Grid Layout: Automatically renders a responsive grid of published posts on the frontend.
- Configurable Count: Set the exact number of posts to display directly within the block settings.
- Alignment Block Tunes: Full compatibility with our centralized alignment tuning tool (Left, Center, Right, or stretched layout).
- Column Compatibility: Fully supported as a nested tool inside responsive multi-column layouts and glassmorphic section containers.
- Skeleton-Skin Styling: Adheres strictly to our design standards, applying simple layout skeletons while letting the active theme style the visual output.
📡 RSS Feed Plugin Customizations
Syndication is now fully customizable. We upgraded the rss-feed plugin with a dedicated settings page and enhanced support for modern aggregator apps.
- Admin Settings Panel: Manage your feed settings directly in the dashboard. Adjust Content Mode (Full HTML vs. Excerpt-only), Excerpt Length, and the Feed Limit (defaults to 20).
<content:encoded>Support: Standard-compliant delivery of full post HTML content in syndication feeds.- Featured Image Enclosures: Posts with a featured image automatically append
<enclosure>tags, displaying beautiful cover previews in Feedly, Reeder, and other readers. - Clean Plain-Text Excerpts: Improved text extraction from Editor.js blocks for
<description>tags to prevent JSON bleed. - Proper Metadata: Feeds now include
<lastBuildDate>and correct XML namespace declarations forcontent:anddc:tags. - Zero Residue Uninstall: Added full uninstallation procedures (
uninstall.php) for seamless cleaning.
🔄 Hardened Blogger Import Engine
We ironed out edge-cases in the blogger-feed import script to handle historical HTML payloads with maximum fidelity.
- Code Block Parsing: Imports
<pre>and<code>blocks cleanly as native Editor.jscodeblocks. - HTML Table Preservation: Blogger tables now fall back gracefully into native
rawHTML blocks instead of being discarded. - Paragraph Splitting: Improved extraction of posts using legacy
<br>elements instead of standard paragraph blocks. - Multi-Image Divs: Unwraps images stored inside multi-image parent elements into individual Editor.js image blocks.
- Concurrency Guards: Uses PHP's
flock()to prevent simultaneous background imports from racing and creating duplicates when cache expires. - Sync Lock TTL: Added a configurable lock TTL to control sync frequencies.
🔍 Advanced Search Usability
We upgraded the modular search experience for larger collections.
- Title-Weighted Relevance: Search queries that match post titles are ranked higher than content matches.
- Numbered Pagination: Search results are now paginated (10 per page) with intuitive numbered controls (1 2 3 … N).
- Results Count Summary: Adds a summary banner stating "Showing X–Y of Z results for: [query]".
Technical Bug Fixes
- Latest Posts Status Filter: Patched the SQL query in the Latest Posts rendering logic to check for
post_status = 'publish'instead of'published'to prevent blank grids.
Try it out by updating to v0.5.10 today!
— Jason Brain