I am thrilled to announce the release of Core CMS v0.6.0! This update tackles one of the biggest bottlenecks in modern web performance: image payloads. We've introduced a brand-new Media Optimizer plugin that completely overhauls how images are handled, processed, and delivered—ensuring your site stays incredibly fast without sacrificing quality.
Major Highlights / Updates
Here are the biggest improvements you'll notice right out of the box:
- Client-Side WebP Conversion: Before your image even leaves your browser, our Canvas API intercepts JPEG/PNG uploads and converts them to highly compressed WebP formats. This drastically reduces upload bandwidth and bypasses server limits.
- Server-Side Srcset Generation: After upload, our PHP GD engine automatically works in the background to generate responsive derivatives (like 480w, 800w, and 1200w). Your site will now serve perfectly sized images to mobile devices.
- Plugin Settings Page: A new dedicated Admin UI to configure your WebP quality, maximum primary width, and breakpoints for srcset generation. It also features a beautiful Library Status view to see exactly which images are fully optimized.
- Editor.js Nested List Support: We've added recursive list parsing! Your editor block now fully supports nested lists and preserves all internal HTML elements and link structures on the front end.
Technical Deep Dive
For the developers out there, we've laid down some serious foundational work to support these features:
- Dynamic Hooks Architecture: We introduced new core hooks like post_media_upload and admin_media_scripts. These allow plugins to inject scripts securely and process media immediately after the primary DB insert without patching core files.
- JSON Metadata Schema: The Media Optimizer dynamically injects a LONGTEXT column into the media table upon activation. This stores a flexible JSON map mapping your derivatives, ready for the front-end renderer.
- Zero Residue Compliance: In true Core CMS fashion, we built comprehensive install.php and uninstall.php scripts. Running a Deep Clean completely drops the injected schema and purges options, leaving zero footprint.
- List Compatibility Adapter: Upgraded our old flat-string list data structures on-the-fly to the modern nested object format expected by @editorjs/list v2.0+ via an elegant background conversion layer.
Looking Ahead
With media delivery solved, Phase 6 is rolling along beautifully. The foundation is set, and we're looking forward to rolling out PRO features like our upcoming Bulk Optimizer for retroactively processing older libraries and advanced social integrations in Phase 6.2!
Check out the live demo and documentation at core-cms.brainav.ca.
Until next time!
— Jason Brain