Ghost Release: 0.11.8

TL;DR

Ghost 0.11.8 brings critical fixes for post editing collisions, subscriber management, and image handling. This maintenance release improves stability with numerous bug fixes and dependency updates, making it a recommended upgrade for all Ghost installations to ensure smooth content management operations.

Highlight of the Release

• Post update collision detection to prevent users from overwriting each other's changes
• Fixed deletion of posts that are referenced by subscribers
• Improved image size handling with configurable timeouts
• Better email sanitization for subscribers
• Fixed date comparison and handling issues
• Numerous dependency updates for improved stability

Migration Guide

No migration steps are required for this update. This is a maintenance release that can be installed directly over previous 0.11.x versions.

To update:

1. Back up your Ghost installation
2. Follow the standard update procedure for your installation method (Git, Docker, or direct download)
3. Restart your Ghost instance after updating

Upgrade Recommendations

This update is highly recommended for all Ghost installations, especially for sites with:

• Multiple editors working on the same content
• Heavy use of the subscriber feature
• Sites that embed or process many external images

The post collision detection feature alone makes this update valuable for any multi-user Ghost installation to prevent data loss from simultaneous edits.

Bug Fixes

Subscriber Management

• Fixed an issue where posts couldn't be deleted if they were referenced by subscribers
• Improved email sanitization for subscribers to handle all error cases
• Fixed importing subscribers with post_id references by properly stripping this property to prevent database errors on MySQL

Date Handling

• Fixed hasDateChanged helper to properly compare dates in Bookshelf
• Resolved issues with date comparison between client ISO format and server JS Date format
• Fixed UTC offset handling for scheduled posts when changing timezone

Testing and Development

• Fixed test URLs by replacing testurl.com with localhost URLs to ensure consistent test behavior
• Fixed the ability to run single tests in core/server/apps/.../tests
• Improved Grunt test functionality

New Features

Post Update Collision Detection

Ghost now prevents users from accidentally overwriting each other's changes when editing the same post simultaneously. This feature:

• Detects when two users are editing the same post
• Compares client and server timestamps to identify conflicts
• Runs editing operations in transactions to maintain data integrity
• Extends to tag management during post editing

Configurable Image Timeouts

Image size detection now has configurable timeouts, improving reliability when working with external images or in environments with slower connections.

Security Updates

No specific security fixes were mentioned in this release.

Performance Improvements

Database Operations

• Improved transaction handling for post updates
• Added options.forUpdate to prevent race conditions when multiple queries happen in a transaction
• Optimized scheduling operations with better transaction management

Image Processing

• Improved socket handling for image size detection
• Added proper socket destruction to prevent hanging connections
• Optimized error messages for image processing failures

Impact Summary

Ghost 0.11.8 is primarily a maintenance and stability release that addresses several important bugs and enhances the editing experience. The most significant improvement is the post update collision detection, which solves a long-standing issue (#5599) where multiple editors could accidentally overwrite each other's changes.

The release also fixes critical issues with subscriber management, image processing, and date handling that were causing operational problems for some users. These fixes collectively improve the reliability of Ghost's core publishing features.

While not introducing many new features, this release significantly improves the stability of existing functionality through both bug fixes and dependency updates. The numerous package updates bring Ghost's dependencies up to more recent versions, potentially improving performance and security.

For developers, the improvements to testing infrastructure and date handling make the codebase more reliable and easier to work with.

Full Release Notes