django CMS 3.5 released
Another step towards our goal: to put the best tool possible into the hands of web content creators.
We are very pleased to announce the release of django CMS 3.5, which brings significant new improvements in usability and user-experience.
Developers already love django CMS for the power it gives them and the facilities it offers for the integration of rich content applications into a unified interface. For years it has been a reliable, consistent tool that allows them to get on with the work. The most recent advances in django CMS mean that now more than any comparable web content management system it makes it possible for users - even when engaged in complex editing tasks - to think less about the tool itself, and focus instead on the work they are producing.
For everyday changes and simple content creation, django CMS allows users to edit in-place with a click or two, a process that has become faster and more transparent than ever in the the new version.
For power users and site managers, the new developments are even more significant, now offering unprecedented control and options to build reusable layouts and complex components, all available within django CMS itself, without the need to dive into templates or distract the frontend design team from development work.
django CMS brings the task closer to the user, faster and more smoothly than can be achieved in other applications.
Behind the scenes
django CMS is conceived as a decoupled, modular system. Our continued efforts towards separation of concerns have enabled us to make substantial speed increases in numerous aspects of the interface, particularly when dealing with large-scale, complex content.
The improvements to structure mode are an example of this. Structure mode has gained some vast speed improvements for the user, thanks to wholly rewritten logic that eliminates the need to render content in order to interact with its structure, or re-render pages when changes are made to placeholders and plugins. Until now, the structure board has been implemented as an overlay on top of the rendered page that allows editing access to the plugins generating it. It’s now a fully-independent representation of placeholders and the hierarchy of plugins within them.
As well as making it easier to develop plugins, interaction with the structure board and the plugin system is much faster, with even the most complex changes taking effect without delay. In practice, the effect is of working with a tool that works so naturally and effectively that the users stops noticing the tool, and sees only the work.
Similarly, changes to the page node system in the CMS's backend have made possible new developments in other parts of the system. Ever since its earliest versions, navigation nodes in django CMS (responsible for maintaining site hierarchy and building navigation menus) have been predicated on CMS Page model instances. Though this approach has made a lot of sense for a page-based CMS, version 3.5 decouples navigation nodes from pages. For the developer, the advantages are numerous and offer yet more flexibility. For the user, it brings substantial speed increases, especially at scale and in large multi-site management.
For the developer (and the developer’s customer)
django CMS works beautifully for developers, and fits their work and needs admirably. Sometimes overlooked however is that many developers must work not just for themselves, but for their customers. django CMS aims to be a product that is not only chosen by developers for their customers, but is requested by customers - including the largest customers, with the largest and most demanding projects.
For the corporate platform django CMS is able to equal or better many of the industry-standard heavyweight products that web presence managers traditionally reach for by default, even in those areas where such products used to maintain an advantage. It has always been free open-source software, and limitlessly extensible and flexible, but now it is competing those products on their own ground.
For the developer with ambitions to reach the largest customers, django CMS is an opportunity to bring their skills and expertise to new markets.
Take it for a spin
Take the new django CMS 3.5 for a spin on the Divio Cloud:
New to django CMS?
Try our tutorial, taking you from the very basics to building your own addon applications. You don't need any Python/Django knowledge to follow the tutorial, and it'll show you how quickly and easily you can be productive using the system.
Release Notes
For developers, check out the official release notes and other documentation.
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