Ghost Release: 3.35.4

TL;DR

Ghost 3.35.4 brings important bug fixes for content creators and email publishers

This minor release addresses several critical bugs affecting the editor experience and email functionality. Content creators will find that embedding WordPress content now works correctly, email personalization is properly rendered, and post previews display complete metadata. These fixes ensure a more reliable publishing experience without introducing any breaking changes.

Highlight of the Release

• Fixed broken embeds when pasting links to WordPress sites
• Fixed email personalization showing raw replacement text in emails
• Fixed meta attributes calculation on post previews
• Prevented duplicate newsletter deliveries to members with multiple subscriptions
• Improved webhook stability for developers

Migration Guide

No migration steps are required for this release. This is a patch release that fixes bugs without introducing breaking changes or requiring configuration updates.

Upgrade Recommendations

This release is recommended for all Ghost users, especially those who:

• Use the editor to embed content from WordPress sites
• Send newsletters with personalization tags
• Have members with multiple subscriptions who receive newsletters
• Rely on accurate post previews with proper meta attributes

As this is a patch release with important bug fixes and no breaking changes, upgrading should be straightforward and low-risk. We recommend updating at your earliest convenience to ensure the best experience for both content creators and email recipients.

Bug Fixes

Editor Improvements

• Fixed broken embeds when pasting WordPress links - Previously, pasting links to WordPress sites would result in broken embed cards. Now, Ghost automatically detects WordPress JSON oembed endpoints and falls back to creating bookmark cards instead, ensuring content displays properly.
• Fixed meta attributes calculation on post preview - Added missing "mapping" call to post objects in the internal preview controller, which now correctly handles meta attribute information and other important mappings (users, tags, etc.). A regression test was added to prevent similar issues in the future.

Email Enhancements

• Fixed email personalization showing raw replacement text - Corrected a destructuring issue in the recent email refactor that prevented proper replacement data from being passed to the Mailgun provider, ensuring personalization tags now render correctly.
• Fixed duplicate newsletter deliveries - Members with multiple subscriptions were receiving multiple copies of the same newsletter. Added a DISTINCT clause to the query used for generating email recipient lists to prevent duplicates.

Other Fixes

• Updated link to upgrade documentation to avoid unnecessary redirects
• Improved webhook stability by removing cleanup code, ensuring webhooks remain static for a site's URL lifetime

New Features

No significant new features were introduced in this release. This is primarily a bug fix release focused on improving stability and fixing issues with existing functionality.

Security Updates

No security fixes were included in this release.

Performance Improvements

• The fix for duplicate newsletter deliveries adds a DISTINCT clause to the member query, which slightly increases query time (2.7s vs 1.6s locally with ~94k paid members). However, this performance impact is temporary and will be mitigated in a future release when the members.paid column is implemented, allowing for the removal of this slower query.

Impact Summary

Ghost 3.35.4 is a targeted bug fix release that addresses several important issues affecting content creation and email delivery. The fixes for WordPress embeds and email personalization are particularly impactful for day-to-day publishing workflows.

Content creators will benefit from more reliable embedding functionality when working with WordPress content, while email publishers will see properly rendered personalization in their newsletters and elimination of duplicate deliveries to subscribers with multiple memberships.

For developers, the release brings improved webhook stability and several dependency updates. The added regression test for post preview functionality helps ensure these improvements remain stable in future releases.

Overall, this release improves reliability without introducing breaking changes, making it a recommended update for all Ghost installations.

Full Release Notes