Ghost Release: 4.47.2

TL;DR

Ghost v4.47.2: Performance Improvements for Email Processing and Bug Fixes

This minor release focuses on improving email processing performance and fixing critical bugs. It optimizes the handling of large email batches by disabling model auto-refresh, fixes an issue with EU Mailgun endpoints not properly reporting email statistics, and ensures Ghost can boot properly even with incorrect limit configurations. These changes improve reliability and performance for newsletter publishers.

Highlight of the Release

• Fixed email stats not working for EU Mailgun endpoints
• Improved performance when processing large email batches
• Enhanced error handling for limit configurations

Migration Guide

No migration steps are required for this release. Simply update to v4.47.2 to benefit from the bug fixes and performance improvements.

Upgrade Recommendations

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

• Using EU Mailgun endpoints for email delivery
• Sending newsletters to large subscriber lists
• Experiencing issues with Ghost not booting due to limit configurations

The update contains important bug fixes and performance improvements with no breaking changes, making it a safe and beneficial upgrade for all installations.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed email stats not working for EU Mailgun endpoints

  • Email statistics were only being updated for the first page of stats from Mailgun
  • Added proper handling for EU endpoints to ensure complete stats collection
  • Closes issue #14640

• Fixed incorrect usage of limit config causing Ghost not to boot

  • Ghost now properly handles incorrect or missing limit configuration values
  • Errors in limit-service are now transformed into warnings for IncorrectUsageError cases
  • System continues to boot even with configuration issues
  • Added tests for the limit-service

New Features

No new features were introduced in this release.

Security Updates

No security fixes were included in this release.

Performance Improvements

• Disabled model auto-refresh when processing email batches
  • By default, the model would auto-refresh when saved, causing performance issues
  • For MySQL (which doesn't support RETURNING), this meant executing a SELECT query after each save
  • The email_recipients table is very large and processed_at is not an indexed column, resulting in slow queries
  • Auto-refresh is now disabled using autoRefresh: false since the results aren't needed
  • This significantly improves performance when processing large email batches

Impact Summary

This release focuses on improving the reliability and performance of Ghost's email functionality. The fix for EU Mailgun endpoints ensures that all users can properly track email statistics regardless of their Mailgun region. The performance optimization for email batch processing will be particularly beneficial for sites with large subscriber bases, reducing the load on the database when sending newsletters. Additionally, the improved error handling for limit configurations makes Ghost more resilient to configuration issues, preventing unnecessary downtime. Overall, this release enhances Ghost's stability and performance for newsletter operations without introducing any breaking changes.

Full Release Notes