In this issue we've been re-focusing on tools to help build new sites and helpful usability improvements for maintaining existing ones, let's dive in.
Improvements
- Stricter password requirements & password strength meter optionally available.
By default we still only require passwords to be 8 characters, but you can now show a password strength meter & optionally enforce only strong passwords.
Available in Admin > Site Settings > Security > Password
- Addresses will now be title cased when saved.
This happens automatically for all billing & delivery addresses when created or saved. - Added the ability for select inputs to have placeholders
Available in Admin > Form Builder > Edit Form > When add/editing a select field you can now set placeholder text. - A few fixes arising from recent Google Search Console alerts
Such as compare lists no longer being indexed (as they do not need to be) and product review microdata will now only come through when a product has reviews to avoid sending zeros for ratings. - Google Analytics > Custom Dimensions
Available in Admin > Connect > SEO > Google Analytics & Adwords > Custom map {} for custom dimensions and metrics e.g. {"dimension1": "ecomm_prodid"}. Example uses of this could be tracking readership by author, impact of out-of-stock products on conversion, different behaviours of loyal customers using a logged-in parameter (read more here), tracking different types of users/roles which is identified when forms are filled in. - Email manager multiple tags
Available in Admin > Email Manager > When sending emails you can now select multiple user tags per group to send to at once. (Hold shift to select multiple) - Featured and special product sorting
New tabs for featured & special offer products available in Admin > Product Manager, in here you can now sort products within the featured or special offer tabs. These override the default sort orders, generally bringing these sorted products to the top of product lists. - Delivery method listed in orders CSV
Delivery & payment method names now show through in the orders CSV report, allowing you to filter columns & compare metrics of how well each method performs in excel or libre/open office. - Product manager sold date ranges
New date range selection available on the Product Manager screen which shows the total quantity of products sold. - International SMS sending now supported
Both our Twilio & Textmarketer setups now allow you to send SMS updates to users anywhere in the world by automatically working out their country code.
Developer
- Rivendell default template
A new default responsive template, find out more in our dedicated post here.
https://github.com/ReallyEasyCart/rivendell - Rivendell Builder
A series of example header, slider & footer layouts available for new site designs complete with quick instructions to add them in.
https://design.reallyeasycart.co.uk/rivendell-components/ - REC Design Hub refresh
https://design.reallyeasycart.co.uk/ - Bring forms into templates more easily with the new rec_form() twig method
{{ rec_form('Form Name') }}
You can even pass default options for the inputs based on the input name, e.g.
{{ rec_form('Contact Form', { input_field_1: 'Bob Smith', input_field_33: 'Worcester' }) }} - SCSS/Sass to power your CSS templates
In Rivendell templates you can now use SCSS automatically, as well as in other templates by including a file with the new scss() function, e.g. {{ scss("css/scss/site.scss") }} - Responsive base based blog posts now use font icons for social sharing to Facebook and Twitter instead of previous icon images.
This should fit nicer into existing designs and can easily be changed in the blog_info.html.twig template. - Removing {{ page.content }} from a template now fully removes the page content ckeditor input.
Allowing you to design layouts entirely based on content blocks. But you can still use page.content where needed and it will correctly position its input in order if it's between other content blocks. - We have also switched from FontAwesome (v4.4 previously) to ForkAwesome (v1.1) https://forkaweso.me/Fork-Awesome/icons/
It has full compatibility with our previous FontAwesome version, plus many new icons. FontAwesome v5 has changed how their icons come in, meaning we couldn't auto-upgrade to v5, but ForkAwesome is an open source project that aims to continue the great work of the old FontAwesome project.
Nothing should change for you, it'll work just as it did before but with a few new icons available.
Also, if you like v5 of FontAwesome, though not officially supported, you can bring this in on a specific site though you'll need to hook up icons to use yourself.
