Release Highlights

CMS 8.03 Release Highlights

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Release Schedule

  • Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.:
    • Tue, 14th July 2020 07:00 am Prague time (01:00 am D.C. time)
  • Voice of America:
    • Wed, 15th July 2020 03:00 am D.C. time (09:00 am Prague time)
  • Office of Cuba Broadcasting:
    • Wed, 15th July 2020 05:00 am D.C. time (11:00 pm Prague time)
  • LibertyNet:
    • Wed, 15th July 2020 12:00 Prague time (06:00 am D.C. time)​
  • Jobs Publisher:
    • Wed, 14th July 2020 9:00 Prague time (03:00 am D.C. time)​

Table of contents

  1. See Also Updates
  2. Bulk Actions for Image Upload 8.0
  3. CMS 8 Search Updates
    1. Card View
    2. Primary Action Based on Location
  4. CMS 8 Article Updates
    1. Text Indent Implementation
    2. Insert Button Move to Front Position
    3. Improved UX on the Search and Attach Screen
  5. SEO Audit
    1. Zone Settings
    2. Introduction and Teaser Introduction for Content Pages
  6. Responsive Performance Improvements
    1. Caching Changes on Akamai Platform
    2. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Improvement
  7. LiveBlog Widget Improvements

New Features

1. See Also Updates

The feature of "See Also" promotion, which allows links to other articles and content to be inserted directly into the body of the article is very useful for services in terms of increasing user engagement and retention. In order to further enhance this feature, it will now be possible to take advantage of the following updates to the "See Also" functionality:

  • Add multiple links to the "See Also" block
  • Customise the "See Also" title (available both for single and multiple links option)

Multiple Links

The multiple "Also read" links option will be available as part of the Embed functionality inside a content edit page. To access it, please click on the "Insert Embed Content" button when editing an article (or content in general).

The Embed modal will now have a slightly different set of tabs. There will be a Single item attach tab and Multiple items attach tab.

Single item attach will keep the same functionality that the "Search" tab has had previously. Multiple items attach tab will make it possible to pick several items, which will then become displayed in the pane on the right side of the pop-up modal.

RH 8.03 - See Also - Multiple items - Save (2)

Once the selection has been made, click "Save" and a new modal with custom title set up option will be triggered.

There it will be possible to set up a custom title. If a custom title is not set up, a default option for the site will be displayed, which is set up via configuration key. (It is the localised version of the "See Also" phrase.)

After saving you get the result :

Custom Title for Single Item "Also Read"

We also updated the existing "See Also" functionality with Custom title option in case of a single item:

2. Bulk Actions for Image Upload 8.0 ​

Previous release introduced the new multiple-image upload page with metadata reader in Pangea CMS 8.0. Bulk action for multiple-image upload 8.0 will further improve this functionality and simply editors' work with metadata when uploading images. Editors will be able to select images to edit metadata or restore images.

In order to bulk-edit the images, it is possible to select all of the images that are being uploaded (by clicking "Select All") or only select particular ones to be bulk edited. A collapse switcher has been added to the upload screen, which allows for a faster overview of the images which were selected by the editor to be bulk-updated.

Once the editor has decided which images' metadata are to be edited through bulk-edit, simply click on the "Edit" button in the bottom right of the page. A popup modal will appear, where the metadata can edited for all the selected images.

After the metadata are submitted, clicking on Next will show the editor an overview of all the metadata that will be applied to selected images.

After clicking Apply, the editor is returned back to editing individual images, but with the newly added metadata. That way, it is possible to bulk-edit the default metadata for multiple images and then review any additional tweaks to the individual images as necessary.


3. CMS 8 Search Updates ​

Card View ​

In order to allow flexibility and personalisation of image search results, a metadata slider has been added to the image search results page. This will allow users to toggle between displaying or hiding metadata information (e.g. Source, date taken, etc.) based on preference of the particular editor.

Without metadata:

With metadata:

Primary Action Based on Location ​

The primary actions will now adjust based on the context of where the content is searched. If an editor clicks on the image thumbnail or title when looking at image search results on the main search page, they will open an image preview with all the metadata.

However, if the same image thumbnail or title is clicked on when the editor is looking through search results in an "Insert Embed Content" pop-up modal, the image will be attached to the content they are currently creating.

4. CMS 8 Article Updates ​

Text Indent Implementation ​

Text indentation will be available inside the new CMS article edit page. This will provide editors more options to give their stories a more dynamic look when formatting.

Insert Button Moved to Front Position ​

Based on the feedback we received from various services, we have moved the Insert Embedded Content button to the front of the toolbar.

Improved UX on the Search and Attach Screen ​

Based on feedback from the services, the search and attach screen for Related Content has been updated. The updates cover:

Related content when adding New Content:

  • Panel starts with a search open (sidebar)
  • after the click, sidebar closes and Search results displays
  • user can select multiple items
  • a sticky panel will display the selected content with a label displaying the number of selected content.

Related content when Editing

  • By default always opens with the panel that shows the attached content

5. SEO Audit ​

Zone Settings

Based on a review of various Zone pages, the toop-tips (hints) for title and meta title in Zone (Category) settings have been updated. These new tool-tips should help Pangea CMS users learn more about each part of the zone settings.

The title of the zone (category) is displayed to any visitors as the title of the web page and as the clickable title among the search engine results.
This title is therefore important for usability, SEO, as well as social sharing. Because of this, it is important and recommended to:

  • use appropriate keywords in the title,
  • for the title to be descriptive and short with no more than 30-40 characters.

The is another meta tag that various browsers may use for search results (SERPs).

Introduction and Teaser Introduction for Content Pages

The use of metadata which are utilised for search engine optimization (SEO) has been standardised across all content pages in Pangea CMS. Part of this standardisation is the use of introduction or description as a tool for SEO.

In order to promote content of the responsive pages through widgets, zones, via social network, or on search result page (e.g. Google), a content introduction/ description should be filled out. This introduction/description is then used for meta description of a content page. While Google does not use meta-description as a ranking signal alone, it nevertheless ends up having a massive effect on the click-through-rate (CTR) of a page, because it shows up in search results.

Introduction is also used for structured data markup which helps search engines better understand content available on the site.

With the exception of loop-video and fact-check, content and teaser introduction has been enabled for all content pages in both the old and new CMS 8. It will therefore be up to each editor to decide whether they wish to have the introduction display on the web page. They can do so by (un)ticking the Display Introduction check-box. In case the check-box is left empty, the introduction will only provide the meta description for search engines.
In case the introduction is too long (more than 160 characters), teaser introduction also needs to be filled out. The teaser introduction can then be used for meta description for search engines and social networks.

For content where both the teaser and content introduction are left empty, the first 160 characters from the 1st paragraph of the body of text will be used instead.

6. Responsive Performance Improvements ​

Caching Changes on Akamai Platform ​

Note: Caching changes on Akamai platform are release independent and have been deployed on 8th of June-2020.

  • Static content caching has been changed from 15 minutes to 30 days. It includes CSS, JavaScripts and logos.
  • Font caching has been changed from 15 minutes to 30 days.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Improvement

  • image fade-in animation is shortened from 1 to 0.5 second
  • image-enhancer JavaScript improvement
    • change of image enhancer JavaScript implementation so it runs immediately after domContentLoaded event
  • dollardom javascript library (http://julienw.github.io/dollardom/doc/) is replaced with native JS libraries (eg. querySelector / querySelectorAll) wherever it is possible

7. LiveBlog Widget Improvements ​

The existing LiveBlog widget has been adjusted to achieve a lighter and clearer look.

Please use this Config key to localise the link to the LiveBlog page: Responsive.Widget.LiveBlog.SeeMoreLinkTitle

In the upcoming releases, LiveBlog undergo a number of updates, including:

  • introducing a new LiveBlog page,
  • bringing the LiveBlog edit page to the new CMS 8,
  • as well as introducing a new LiveBlog widget, which will reflect the newly improved LiveBlog structure.