New release of EPiServer CMS with enhanced preview and improved SEO

Today we're releasing EPiServer CMS version 8.0.0. I want to highlight this release since it contains a number of important updates, as well as some small breaking technology changes.

Multi-publish and preview

The beta stamp from projects is now removed. Projects make it possible to group content that you're working with, such as a campaign that contains several landing pages, teasers, products and videos. You can then preview all the content as if it was published, making it easy to see exactly what the experience will be like. When you're all set you can decide to go live immediately or schedule it for publish at a later date.

Support for canonical URLs

EPiServer has always supported the use of canonical URLs, but now it is easier than ever to setup multiple domains and ensure that there is only one canonical URL. This works for both pages and products and is essential to avoid a penalty from search engines for duplicated content. The feature includes adding canonical link elements to the HTML head of your pages and redirecting requests to your primary domain. In a later release we'll be adding alternate language versions as well.

Better ways to organize content types and properties

You can now control grouping, including access rights, of content types and properties using a typed model. This feature will make it easier to organize the edit interface for your customer's specific needs.

Improved control to ensure design consistency

One of the most common requests when it comes to block management is the possibility to restrict which blocks can be used where. I'm happy to say that you now can do exactly that! We've also added other functionality to take care of more advanced needs around content control.

Performance improvements

We're always working on improving performance. In this release we've made optimizations to the core APIs as well as improved the testability.

Updated UX guidelines

Our UX guidelines, available at ux.episerver.com, is the place to go if you want to make sure that your EPiServer add-ons and customizations have the same look and feel as the platform itself. The UX guidelines are now updated and simplified using new refactored CSS that is available in this release.

Updated browser support

Our policy for Internet Explorer is to support the two last versions, but before removing support for a specific version we want to make sure that few customers are affected. For quite some time we have supported the three latest versions (9, 10 and 11), but with this release we're removing support for Internet Explorer 9.

Updated major version number

The technology changes made to support this causes an increment in the major version number to 8 to follow semantic versioning. Read Linus Ekström's blog post, linked below, to get all the details and to see if this affects your solution. If the customer has an active subscription the license that has been used for 7.x will continue to work. When it comes to how certifications are handled for new major versions we will soon give you an update on that. But, rest assured, your EPiServer 7 certification will continue to be valid.

Related information

• Release information
• Add-ons support for CMS 8
• User guide (15-1)
• Improved support for canonical URLs - blog post by Henrik Nyström
• Performance improvements in the PropertyDataCollection - blog post by Henrik Nyström
• The new and improved allowed types - blog post by Ben McKernan
• Changes regarding language handling during content loading - blog post by Johan Björnfot
• Upgrading your site and add-ons to EPiServer CMS 8 pre-release - blog post by Linus Ekström
• Typed tabs/groups - blog post by Per Bjurström
• Projects  - blog post by Magnus Baneryd

Comments

Eric Feb 23, 2015 02:52 PM

Nice and welcome CMS 8 :)

Ted Feb 24, 2015 08:35 AM

Some really appreciated additions in this release! Well done!

Feb 24, 2015 11:43 AM

It's quite faster than 7.19 :)

Justin Le Feb 27, 2015 02:46 AM

Support for canonical URLs, Better ways to organize content types and properties and Improved control to ensure design consistency: love it!

Edmund Ward Jun 11, 2015 11:24 AM

Link to "Add-ons support for CMS 8" seems to lead to an EPiServer login dialogue.  I'm logged into world.episerver.com. Can the page be made available please?