WeBlog 2.3 Released

WeBlog 2.3 has been released! You can grab the Sitecore packages from the WeBlog page on the Marketplace or grab the source from github.

Packages have been built against Sitecore 6.2, 6.4, 6.6 and 7.0. The 6.2 package is currently going through Marketplace approval and will be available shortly. You shouldn't have any issue in using a package built for one version for that version and any above it until the next build version package (you can use the 6.4 package on 6.5). Here's a quick list of the main updates:

• Sitecore 6.6 and Sitecore 7.0 support
• Support for multilingual comments - only comments for the context language are listed
• Ability to define the author and post date rather than using the Sitecore creator user and created date
• Page Editor updates for sidebar components
• Added guard to stop comments from being created multiple times when no CAPTCHA used on the comment form
• New jQuery version and JavaScript updates
• Updated News Mover module version
• Various other bug fixes

Warning: Breaking Changes (sorry)

There are some potential breaking changes in this release if you're updating. We've had to change the placeholder keys to fix issues with the page editor (thanks @Trayek). Please note the new placeholder keys and update your presentation definitions.

Why No Buckets?

If you give the Sitecore 7.0 build a go one thing you may be questioning is why we left the News Mover module in there and didn't change to using Item Buckets. The biggest issue is the fact that you can't use a field on the item to determine the item bucket folder structure. And because we want to base the URL on the post date (which is now a new field) and not the created date, we can't achieve that with Item Buckets.

On a side note, the more I use Item Buckets the more I realise that you shouldn't worry about the folder structure of the bucket or expose that folder structure to the world. See my previous post on Item Buckets and URLs. Though if you really want to use the new shiny things in Sitecore 7.0, there are a few helpers (and a config patch file) to help you out.