Overview

Textpattern 4.9.0 is a feature release with support for PHP 8.5 & MySQL 8.4, new features, security enhancements, improvements and bug fixes. In semantic versioning terms, Textpattern 4.9.0 is a minor release; in Textpattern terms we consider this a ‘big’ release.

As with all Textpattern upgrades, please refer to the current Textpattern system requirements and ensure you have known-good backups of your site files and database, including all uploaded content such as images & files. Before you make any changes, please refer to the accompanying release notes in HISTORY.txt to ensure you understand what has changed in this release, along with any releases that may have been skipped. You can check your current Textpattern version from the bottom of any page on the admin-side.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this release with reporting & resolving bugs, providing & improving language translations and overall improvements to the Textpattern ecosystem. We’re grateful to all contributors offering us their expertise, time, attention, words, donations, signal boosting, evangelism, cheerleading and all other activities that fuel our project.

Textpattern’s infrastructure and continued development is kindly supported by DigitalOcean, 1Password and BrowserStack. We are grateful for their ongoing involvement & support for Textpattern, and our global community of authors, publishers, designers and administrators. Thank you!

There is no spyware, adware, user tracking or other junk in Textpattern. We work hard to keep Textpattern fast, nimble, secure and ready for pretty much anything you can throw at it. You can show your appreciation by sponsoring Textpattern on GitHub or supporting Textpattern on Open Collective. Alternatively, you can donate to Team Textpattern with PayPal.

We have a friendly forum for a Textpattern sites showcase – tell us what you’ve made with Textpattern, we’d love to hear from you. Even a ‘hello!’ or ‘thanks!’ helps us to gauge how far Textpattern has travelled, so don’t be a stranger.

System requirements

Textpattern 4.9 requires a minimum of PHP 5.6 as part of the system requirements, though using a vendor-supported PHP version is highly recommended. There are notable performance gains with modern PHP versions, as well as security considerations.

Download Textpattern 4.9.0

You can download Textpattern 4.9.0 from textpattern.com or GitHub. Both locations provide the same compressed archive files, along with checksums for validating your download.

Textpattern 4.9.0 is available as a .zip archive intended for single-site instances. Most Textpattern administrators will find this archive format appropriate for their needs.

Textpattern administrators wishing to use Textpattern’s multi-site capabilities or having a preference for a UNIX/Linux-centric archive format can download either the .tar.gz or .tar.xz archive as they include the necessary extra multi-site support files and symbolic links.

From Textpattern 4.9.0, we offer a .tar.xz archive for further byte savings. The XZ compression format’s storage algorithm provides a considerably smaller download than the .tar.gz archive. The unpacked contents of the .tar.xz archive are identical to the .tar.gz archive’s unpacked contents.

From textpattern.com

You can download Textpattern 4.9.0 from textpattern.com using the following links,

From GitHub

• Textpattern v4.9.0 on GitHub

Install

Please refer to the Textpattern INSTALL.txt for a comprehensive walkthrough. This file is included in the Textpattern archive and linked here for your convenience.

Upgrade

We have a forum thread dedicated to Textpattern 4.9.0 feedback. We gather field reports from fellow Textpattern administrators and users that may assist or guide you with upgrading.

Please refer to the Textpattern UPGRADE.txt for the upgrade procedure. This file is included in the Textpattern archive and linked here for your convenience.

As with any software update, please ensure you verify working backups of Textpattern sites you are upgrading before undertaking any modifications. This includes the Textpattern database and files, plus any file and/or image uploads.

The vast majority of Textpattern upgrades are smooth sailing and occur without incident, but on the rare occasion something does go astray it’s preferable to safely restore the known-good version from your full site backup and troubleshoot any issues while your site continues to be available on the prior version.

What’s new in Textpattern 4.9.0?

We have made more than 2,000 changes to the Textpattern core codebase since the release of Textpattern 4.8.8 in 2022. This represents a considerable amount of time spent & care taken to ensure our CMS thrives on new releases of MySQL & PHP, as well as maintaining support for older MySQL & PHP releases.

We have paid particular attention to ensure Textpattern’s compatibility with the recently-released PHP 8.5.0, as well as previous PHP releases made after the release of Textpattern 4.8.8 (i.e. PHP 8.4 & PHP 8.3).

We are confident that Textpattern works well on modern MySQL & PHP, and we will continue to work towards patch releases of Textpattern 4.9 to provide compatibility with PHP’s annual release cadence and MySQL’s next Long Term Support (LTS) release scheduled for mid-2026.

The Textpattern HISTORY.txt outlines changes for this and all previous Textpattern releases, along with their respective release dates. We recommend you read the list of changes to understand how this may affect your current sites, especially if you’re upgrading from older versions. Please note that while upgrades from very old releases of Textpattern are possible, you may need to perform a multi-stage upgrade.

If you require clarification on any aspect of the release notes, we recommend you seek advice before starting a site upgrade. The Textpattern support forum is an excellent place to start, and the Textpattern user documentation provides examples, explanations and background information.

The following lists are cherry-picked items from the @HISTORY.txt@ to provide an overview for interested parties.

Headlines

• Feature release with support for PHP 8.5, security and functionality enhancements, general improvements, bug fixes.
• Security: Fix reported cross-site scripting issue relating to article preview CSRF token (many thanks, Paul Ritchie at Pentest Limited).
• Mail: Support for SMTP for sending emails via third-party systems to improve deliverability. Industry-standard PHPMailer also available internally.
• Plugins: Full plugin creation and editing now available, including pophelp support. Plugins can be updated directly from the admin panel when new versions are available from plugins.textpattern.com. Zip, Template (.php), and .txt plugin types are supported, with improvements in Textpack handling, and verification to prevent tampering during installation.
• Sandboxed article previews: Write panel offers previews for each field or the whole article, with or without tag parsing. Either snapshot or continuous (live) previews are available.
• Dynamic thumbnails: Only display images at sizes you need by using a width, height or crop attribute in image/thumbnail tags to securely render an image at that resolution, and cache it for future use. Dynamic admin-side thumbnails are also supported, with dimensions governed by Admin-Theme Preferences. Supports most modern image formats, including SVG.
• Pending articles can now be display on sites to offer collaborative workflows.
• Themes are more self-contained and can include Textpacks and Preferences, as well as their own checksums.

Admin-side

• ‘Sticky’ Save buttons on all admin panels.
• Panel upgrades to expose additional info (image and file sizes, dates, etc) and to permit individual asset deletion.
• Pre-fight Diagnostics now collapses if you’ve read it, and reopens automatically if something changes.
• Language panel improvements, including In-use languages cannot be deleted.
• New Mail and Admin Theme prefs areas. A few new preferences scattered throughout.

Tags

• <txp:date /> tag.
• <txp:if_article_status /> tag.
• <txp:if_items_count /> tag.
• Added parent attribute to <txp:category />.
• Added inline value to format attribute of <txp:css />.
• Added alias attribute to <txp:evaluate />.
• Ability to serve files via type attribute to <txp:file_download />.
• Added exclude attribute to <txp:file_download_list /> and <txp:linklist />.
• Site production status values to process attribute of <txp:hide />.
• Added level attribute to <txp:if_category />.
• Added match, separator attribute capability to <txp:if_yield />.
• Added exclude, month and time attributes to <txp:images />.
• Added lang attribute to <txp:page_url />.
• Added target attribute to <txp:popup />.
• Added filter attribute to <txp:section_list /> and <txp:if_section />.
• Added global variable attribute.
• Added global offset attribute can be set by URL parameters.
• Tag-related: Self-closing tag output for html5 doctype to silence validators.

Plugins

• Plugins import Textpack strings correctly.
• Compiled plugins can be uploaded via ‘Browse…’ feature.
• Compatible plugin upgrades directly from the Plugins panel.
• Create and install new plugins directly from the Plugins panel.
• Plugin multi-edit option: revert to last installed code content.
• All plugin metadata exposed in the Plugin Edit panel.

Internal tweaks

• Field size increases (up to 16MB Page templates, 1023-character descriptions) and checks.
• Content dates are now virtually limitless, extending prior to (as far back as 1 AD) and beyond the UNIX epochs.
• Many system-wide constants are overridable from config.php (a.k.a. “administrator preferences”).
• RPC functionality improvements and metaWeblog.newMediaObject support.

Developers

• Concurrent logins for testing.
• Panel-level callbacks on the Users, Articles and Images panels, allowing for finer-grained and deeper customisation.
• New UI library, written from the ground up.
• Many new callbacks and hook points, including new lifecycle ‘loaded’ step.

Feedback

We are particularly interested in feedback on these areas:

• User experience with dynamic thumbnails.
• User experience with Textpattern on PHP 8.5 compared to previous versions of PHP.
• Compatibility and usability with end-of-life’d PHP releases, factoring in the Textpattern system requirements.
• Usability of the new tag attributes (refer to the Textpattern HISTORY.txt for details).
• Any unexpected issues appearing in the front-side of your Textpattern sites.
• Any unexpected issues shown in admin-side Diagnostics.

We have a dedicated support forum thread for Textpattern 4.9.0 feedback where Textpattern users, experts & developers gather and address feedback. We are grateful for all feedback, even a short confirmation that your upgrade(s) completed as expected is appreciated.

We maintain Textpattern issues at GitHub if you would like further insight into where we’re heading with this release and future work.

Further notes

If you find anything not working correctly or wish to propose improvements, please file a report on GitHub. There are templates for feature requests and bug reports.

Textpattern Demo

The Textpattern demo has been updated to offer Textpattern test drives. The demo sites are rebuilt every few hours using the Textpattern auto-installer.

We hope you enjoy this release and it serves you, your sites and clients well!

Thank you for your interest in Textpattern!

Beta releases are used for testing new features, enhancements and bug fixes before the production-grade release of Textpattern is made available. We appreciate real-world feedback from Textpattern testers, hackers, and enthusiasts. Pending feedback & results from Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.2, we will either work toward an additional beta release or proceed to a release candidate.

Overview

Textpattern 4.9.0 is a feature release with support for PHP 8.4 & MySQL 8.4, new features, security enhancements, improvements and bug fixes.

Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.2 includes changes & fixes made in Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.1 along with improvements & modifications following user feedback, further enhancements to core functionality, and updated third-party libraries that Textpattern uses in its inner workings.

We tracked the release process of PHP 8.4 from the early alpha releases in summer 2024, and we are especially interested in feedback on any warnings or errors with PHP 8.4. Internet hosting organisations are actively deploying PHP 8.4, and its availability will continue to become more widespread.

Textpattern includes changes to add support for MySQL 8.4. MySQL 8.4 is the current long-term support (LTS) release, and accordingly we are keen to hear about any issues arising with Textpattern.

Download Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.2

As with any software update, please ensure you verify working backups of Textpattern sites you are modifying before undertaking any upgrades.

You can download Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.2 from textpattern.com or GitHub. Both locations provide the same files, along with checksums for validating your download.

Most Textpattern site administrators will use the .zip archive. To take advantage of Textpattern’s multi-site capabilities, please download the .tar.gz or .tar.xz archive as they include the necessary extra support files.

We now offer a .tar.xz archive for further byte savings. The unpacked contents of the .tar.xz archive are identical to the .tar.gz archive, but the compression format is more efficient and accordingly the .tar.xz archive is considerably smaller.

From textpattern.com

You can download Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.2 from textpattern.com using the following links,

From GitHub

• Textpattern v4.9.0-beta.2 on GitHub

Changes

There are no headline-grabbing changes since Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.1. Our developers have been working on user interface & user experience enhancements, along with housekeeping tweaks and third-party developer functionality.

There is, however, one major call for translators of German, Spanish and French to please comb through the pophelp packs in those languages. As part of our move towards improving multi-linguality of the admin interface, we have spent some of our generous donations on using CrowdIn’s Machine Learning tools to automatically complete these pophelp packs.

We would be enormously grateful for any feedback on how good the translations are. If the tool has made a reasonable job at translating the text (even if it’s not perfect), please provide feedback so we know if it is worth spending more on completing other language packs. As always, any updates and tweaks (to any language Textpacks or pophelp files) is massively appreciated. Thank you.

A list of changes can be found at GitHub in the Textpattern HISTORY.txt.

Feedback

We are particularly interested in feedback on these areas:

• User experience with Textpattern on MySQL 8.4.
• User experience with Textpattern on PHP 8.4.
• User experience with Textpattern multisite functionality.
• Compatibility and usability with end-of-life’d PHP releases, factoring in the Textpattern system requirements.
• Usability of the new tag attributes (refer to the Textpattern HISTORY.txt for details).
• Any unexpected issues appearing in the front-side of your Textpattern sites.
• Any unexpected issues shown in admin-side Diagnostics.

We have a dedicated support thread for Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.2 feedback where Textpattern users, experts & developers gather and address feedback. We are grateful for all feedback, even a short confirmation that your upgrade(s) completed as expected.

We maintain Textpattern issues at GitHub if you would like further insight into where we’re heading with this release and future work.

Thank you for your interest in Textpattern!

Beta releases are made available for testing as we approach the production-grade release of Textpattern. We appreciate real-world feedback from Textpattern testers, hackers, and enthusiasts before we make Textpattern 4.9.0 generally available as a production release.

Overview

Textpattern 4.9.0 is a feature release with support for PHP 8.4.0+, new functionality, security enhancements, general improvements and bug fixes.

Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.1 is the first beta release of this release process. We expect to release one or more additional beta releases as we approach the production release.

We expect to make Textpattern 4.9.0 available in December 2024. This will follow feedback from beta releases and the general availability release of PHP 8.4.0, scheduled for November 2024.

As with any software update, please ensure you verify working backups of Textpattern sites you are modifying before undertaking any upgrades.

Download

You can download Textpattern from textpattern.com or GitHub. Both locations provide the same files, along with checksums for validating your download.

To take advantage of Textpattern’s multi-site capabilities, please download the .tar.gz archive as it includes the multi-site scaffold.

From textpattern.com

You can download Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.1 from textpattern.com using the following links,

From GitHub

• Textpattern v4.9.0-beta.1 on GitHub

Changes

Headline changes include:

• Minimum system requirements increased to PHP 5.6 & MySQL 5.5 (PHP 8.2+ & MySQL 8.0+ recommended).
• Support for PHP 8.2, PHP 8.3.1+ and PHP 8.4.0+.
• SVG image support.
• PHPMailer for third-party SMTP delivery.
• Improvements to plugin upload and management.

A longer list of changes can be found at GitHub in the Textpattern HISTORY.txt.

We are particularly interested in feedback on these areas:

• User experience with Textpattern on PHP 8.4.0 beta releases & release candidates.
• Compatibility and usability with end-of-life’d PHP releases, factoring in the Textpattern system requirements.
• Usability of the new tag attributes (refer to the Textpattern HISTORY.txt for details).
• Any unexpected issues appearing in the front-side of your Textpattern sites.
• Any unexpected issues shown in admin-side Diagnostics.

We have a dedicated support thread for Textpattern 4.9.0 beta.1 feedback where Textpattern users, experts and developers will collate and address feedback. We are grateful for all feedback, even a confirmation that your upgrade went smoothly and no issues arose. We maintain Textpattern issues at GitHub if you would like further insight into where we’re heading with this release and future work.

Thank you for your interest in Textpattern!

• We expect Textpattern 4.9.0 to be generally available (GA) from December 2024 at the earliest, though this may change if significant changes are encountered in the alpha, beta or release candidates of PHP in the run up to its general availability.
• We will release Textpattern 4.9.0 to ensure compatibility with PHP 8.4.0 & MySQL 8.4, add some new features, fix some bugs, and enhance the admin-side user experience.
• We are testing Textpattern on the alpha, beta and release candidate releases of PHP 8.4.0 prior to its general availability in late November 2024 and will continue to ensure compatibility.
• We will test the latest Textpattern development code against PHP 8.4.0 on its release, address any late-breaking bugs, and release one or more Textpattern betas for public testing.
• We are testing Textpattern with the current long term support (LTS) release of MySQL 8.4 and will continue to ensure compatibility.
• Based on feedback and further testing, we will then move to the Textpattern 4.9.0 general availability release cycle.

This article outlines our release plan for Textpattern 4.9.0, the successor to Textpattern 4.8, plus some information about the Textpattern development roadmap. It covers PHP and MySQL release cycles and the effect they have on Textpattern development.

Textpattern milestones

Textpattern’s current development is focussed on the Textpattern 4.9 release series, which commences with the upcoming release of Textpattern 4.9.0. We will release Textpattern 4.9.0 when we are confident of compatibility with PHP 8.4.0 and MySQL 8.4. We have good confidence of compatibility with MySQL 8.4 since its release in April 2024, and we are continuing to ensure compatibility moving forward with MySQL patch releases.

PHP 8.4

We will ensure that the general availability release of Textpattern 4.9.0 has support for PHP 8.4.

Minor releases of PHP are typically released annually in Q4:

• PHP 8.1.0 – November 2021
• PHP 8.2.0 – December 2022
• PHP 8.3.0 – November 2023
• PHP 8.4.0 – November 2024 (provisional, according to the PHP 8.4.0 preparation tasks page on the PHP wiki)

PHP releases continue to follow a defined roadmap of alpha, beta and release candidates. After the initial minor release (e.g. PHP 8.3.0), a patch release (e.g. PHP 8.3.1) is typically made available every 4 weeks thereafter. We expect this tradition to continue with the release of PHP 8.4.0.

The reliability of this patch release pattern ensures we have a framework on which we can develop, iterate, optimise and test against the changes made in PHP releases with Textpattern development code. We strive to include performance enhancements and optimisations, while maintaining backward compatibility for supported versions.

Our current testing of Textpattern running atop the alpha releases of PHP 8.4.0 is favourable, and we continue to track overall compatibility on our PHP 8.4 compatibility tracking issue at GitHub.

MySQL 8.4

We will ensure that the general availability release of Textpattern 4.9.0 has support for MySQL 8.4.

MySQL releases are less frequent than PHP, but equally important to Textpattern. The most recent MySQL LTS release series is MySQL 8.4, originally released as MySQL 8.4.0 in April 2024. It is the successor to MySQL 8.0, which is the previous LTS release series released in 2016. At the time of writing, MySQL 8.0 and MySQL 8.4 are supported by the vendor (Oracle).

We expect to have new patch releases of MySQL to test against approximately every two months during its lifecycle, and we continue to update Textpattern core code to ensure compatibility. Our current testing of Textpattern running on MySQL 8.4 is very favourable – you can check our MySQL 8.4 compatibility tracking issue if you’re technically-inclined.

Textpattern 4.9.0 release scope and schedule

Textpattern 4.9.0 will add support for PHP 8.4 and MySQL 8.4. At the time of writing, the PHP 8.4.0 timetable states November 2024 for the GA release. MySQL 8.4 is already generally available. Accordingly, we will release Textpattern 4.9.0 after the November 2024 milestone for PHP 8.4.0.

We expect to prepare multiple beta releases of Textpattern 4.9.0 prior to its general availability release.

In the meantime, we expect to release one or more beta versions of Textpattern 4.9.0 for testing. We have started the preparation process to release the first beta of Textpattern 4.9.0, the details of which can be tracked using our Textpattern 4.9.0 release flight plan at GitHub. This is a living document which is updated regularly, especially as we approach and start the release process.

Depending on the feedback of the beta testing, we will then prepare one or more betas for further test driving. Historically, minor releases of Textpattern have had up to 3 betas and sometimes a release candidate to ensure as many bugs as possible are squashed prior to the general availability release.

We expect to have the first beta of Textpattern 4.9.0 in August 2024.

We will announce each Textpattern beta release here on this blog with a call for testers and feedback. The more bugs we can squash before the production release, the better everyone’s experience will be overall.

What comes after Textpattern 4.9?

We expect to make multiple patch releases in the Textpattern 4.9 series.

When Textpattern 4.0.0 was released in August 2005, it intentionally skipped versions 1 to 3. Textpattern creator Dean Cameron Allen was known for his idiosyncrasies, and so skipping a few version numbers right out of the gate was standard operating procedure for him. For nearly twenty years we’ve kept that ‘version 4’ moniker across 50+ alpha, beta, release candidate, and general availability releases of Textpattern. We adhered to semantic versioning within the bounds of backwards compatibility. We’ve used some creative ways to keep our pledge of making Textpattern upgrades as painless as possible.

After Textpattern 4.9 we’re retiring the ‘4’: the next big thing is Textpattern version 5.

We expect to focus on Textpattern 5 when we’re confident Textpattern 4.9 is in great shape.

For now, our focus is on Textpattern 4.9. When that focus switches to Textpattern 5, we will let you know our intentions.

We have opened a forum discussion thread for your Textpattern 5 ideas & feature requests and we’d really appreciate your advice on what you’d like to see in Textpattern version 5. If you’d prefer to communicate with us on Github, we’ve opened a discussion in a similar vein.

As a Textpattern user or administrator, you’re in a great position to tell us what could be considered for our next ‘big’ Textpattern release. While we can’t make any promises to specific idea submissions or feature requests, it’s really helpful to know how we can enhance or improve our content management system as we look forward to the next twenty years.

Thank you for your continued interest in Textpattern!

For new software, the awareness machine is cranked even harder. Videos. Social media campaigns. Billboards. Search Ads. Embedded video ads. The works.

Twenty years ago, the landscape was very different. There was advertising, sure, but nowhere near the scale of today. And, perhaps to celebrate the fact that Dean Allen’s newly created CMS was so small, nimble, lightweight, yet powerful – or perhaps because its creator was an eccentric genius – the fanfare surrounding the official birth of Textpattern was this:

Public Gamma 1.10 is up. I’m going to bed.

(from Textism)

That was it; the extent of the marketing campaign. Nothing more. Nothing less. A factual statement and an indicator that the road to reach it from the numerous alpha and beta releases throughout 2001 until its naming in 2003 and public release in 2004 had been arduous, yet worth it.

Since then, Textpattern has gone from strength to strength, and still we’re innovating. True to the form of Dean’s creation, we might not release a new version every few weeks like other CMSs, and we might not make as big a deal out of them. But each release is carefully crafted, built and tested for compatibility and performance. Even upgrades from fifteen-year-old versions go smoothly.

Pages are served lightning fast. Content and its presentation are still generally separated to make long-term maintenance and design refreshes a breeze. Alongside this, we have some truly unique and world-beating features to aid iterative site changes. And the clean and snappy administration interface still remains accessible to users of assistive technology – something we’re expanding with each successive version.

As Textpattern enters its twenty-first year and we’re gearing up for the 4.9.0 release – slated to be the last of the 4.x series – we all wish it a bright future and hope it continues to be the content management system of choice for enthusiasts, developers and lovers of the written word that it’s always been.

Happy Birthday, Textpattern.

If you have a Textpattern website, we recommend upgrading to Textpattern 4.8.8 to fix a reported security issue. Many thanks to Paul Ritchie at Pentest Ltd for responsibly reporting an issue relating to article preview and plugin upload functionality. We are grateful for Paul’s thorough report in outlining the issue, which allowed Textpattern developers to efficiently reproduce the issue, isolate a fix and resolve it. Versions of Textpattern prior to 4.8.8 are affected by this issue, and upgrading is highly recommended.

Pentest will be publishing an article on their site detailing the issue, we will update this post with further details when we have them.

Update: Pentest have published an article outlining the issue in more detail – Leveraging XSS to get RCE in Textpattern 4.8.7

As with all Textpattern upgrades, refer to the current Textpattern system requirements and ensure you have known-good backups of your site files and database, including all uploaded content such as images & files. Before you make any changes, please refer to the accompanying release notes in HISTORY.txt to ensure you understand what has changed in this release, along with any versions released beforehand that may have been skipped. You can check your current Textpattern version from the bottom of any page on the admin-side.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this patch release with reporting & resolving bugs, providing & improving language translations and overall improvements to the Textpattern ecosystem. We’re grateful to all contributors offering us their expertise, time, attention, words, donations, signal boosting, evangelism, cheerleading and all other activities that fuel our progress.

Textpattern’s infrastructure and continued development is kindly supported by DigitalOcean, 1Password and BrowserStack. We are grateful for their ongoing involvement & support for Textpattern, and our global community of authors, publishers, designers and administrators. Thank you!

There is no spyware, adware, user tracking or other junk in Textpattern. We work to keep things fast, nimble, secure and ready for pretty much anything you can throw at it. You can show your appreciation by sponsoring Textpattern on GitHub or supporting Textpattern on Open Collective. Alternatively, you can donate to Team Textpattern with PayPal.

We have a friendly forum for a Textpattern sites showcase – tell us what you’ve made with Textpattern, we’d love to hear from you. Even a ‘hello!’ or ‘thanks!’ helps us to gauge how far Textpattern has travelled, so don’t be a stranger.

Download

You can download Textpattern from textpattern.com using the following links, or from Textpattern v4.8.8 on GitHub. Please take a moment to ‘star’ Textpattern’s repositories on GitHub if they are of interest to you. This really helps us out.

Please note: to fully utilise Textpattern’s multi-site capabilities, please download the .tar.gz archive as it includes the multi-site scaffold.

The Textpattern demo has been updated to offer Textpattern test drives in complete safety. The demo sites are rebuilt every few hours using the Textpattern auto-installer.

System requirements

Textpattern 4.8 requires a minimum of PHP 5.5 as part of the system requirements, though a vendor-supported PHP version is highly recommended. At the time of writing, PHP 8.0 & PHP 8.1 have active and ongoing support. PHP 7.4 has extended security support until 28 November 2022. All PHP versions before PHP 7.4 are no longer supported by the vendor. Please refer to PHP Supported Versions for up-to-date schedules.

If you are upgrading Textpattern from a version prior to 4.8.0, please note the SimpleXML PHP extension is now required. Most PHP instances have this built-in and enabled already. Check with your web host if you have any doubts.

Please note: we will increase the minimum PHP and MySQL version requirements for Textpattern 4.9. More details will be provided in due course.

Installation and upgrade

Please ensure you log out of the admin side prior to upgrade, perform and verify a full site backup (database and files, including any file/image uploads), and refer to the README.txt file in the download archives for detailed instructions. The vast majority of Textpattern upgrades are smooth sailing and happen without incident, but on the rare occasion something does go astray it’s preferable to safely restore the known-good version from your full site backup and troubleshoot any issues while your site continues to be available.

What’s new in this release?

The Textpattern 4.8.8 HISTORY.txt outlines changes for this and previous Textpattern releases, along with their respective release dates. We recommend you read the list of changes to understand how this may affect your current sites, especially if you’re upgrading from older versions. Please note that while upgrades from very old releases of Textpattern are possible, you may need to perform a multi-stage upgrade.

If you require clarification on any aspect of the release notes, we recommend you seek advice before starting a site upgrade. The Textpattern support forum is an excellent place to start, and the Textpattern user documentation is regularly updated with examples, explanations and background information.

We have a forum thread dedicated to Textpattern 4.8.8 feedback. We gather field reports from fellow Textpattern administrators and users that may assist or guide you with upgrading.

Headlines

• Maintenance release with support for PHP 8.1, security enhancements, general improvements and bug fixes.
• Security: Fix reported cross-site scripting issue relating to article preview CSRF token (many thanks, Paul Ritchie at Pentest Limited).

Tag modifications

• Added: <txp:items_count /> tag.
• Added: Global limit, offset and sort attributes.
• Added: url_title attribute to <txp:article /> and <txp:article_custom />.
• Added: range attribute to <txp:article_image />.
• Added: date and time attributes to <txp:if_expired />.
• Added: calendar attribute to <txp:posted /> and similar tags.
• Added: Substring extraction via escape attribute.
• Added: Expanded conditional match attribute with comparison operators.
• Changed: <txp:category_list /> with children >1 attribute behaviour.
• Changed: Global escape attribute operates at the items level in lists.

Admin-side tweaks

• Fixed: Admin-side pagination when sorting by non-unique values.
• Fixed: Required parameters after optional in tag builder (thanks, phiw13).
• Added: UTC is now a permitted time zone.
• Added: Custom date formats.
• Added: Natural search mode.
• Added: Random form selection.

Internal tweaks

• Added: Support for AVIF image format, on PHP 8.1 or higher.
• Changed: Multi-site plugins directory defaults to site/admin/plugins.
• Fixed: More robust numeric searches.
• Fixed: Improved query efficiency of category operations.
• Accessibility: Additional aria-label attributes for some internal links.
• Internal: Removed FOUND_ROWS() which is deprecated in MySQL 8.0.17.
• Internal: Prefer is_readable() and is_file() to file_exists().

Developer goodies

• Developer: Added plugin lifecycle events upgraded and downgraded.
• Developer: Export new article IDs on duplicate.

Further notes

If you find anything not working correctly or wish to propose improvements, please file a report on GitHub. There are templates for feature requests and bug reports.

We hope you enjoy this release and it serves you, your sites and clients well!