Ghost Release: 5.16.1

TL;DR

Ghost 5.16.1 is a maintenance release that addresses several important bugs affecting user experience and functionality. Key fixes include resolving issues with deleting users who have draft posts, improving product card display conditions, fixing confusing error messages when publishing with member limits exceeded, and ensuring content CTAs correctly reflect whether content is a page or post. This release improves reliability for content creators and site administrators without introducing any breaking changes.

Highlight of the Release

• Fixed user deletion when users have draft posts
• Improved product card display conditions
• Allowed free signups regardless of Portal settings
• Fixed confusing error messages when publishing with member count over hosting plan limit
• Updated content CTA messaging to correctly reflect page vs post content

Migration Guide

No migration steps are required for this release. This is a patch release that can be safely installed without any additional configuration or migration steps.

Upgrade Recommendations

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

• Manage sites with multiple contributors where user deletion is common
• Use product cards in their content
• Have themes with custom signup forms
• Are approaching or have exceeded member limits on their hosting plan
• Use content access restrictions with both posts and pages

As this is a patch release with only bug fixes, there are no breaking changes, and the upgrade should be straightforward with minimal risk.

Bug Fixes

Fixed User Deletion with Draft Posts

Previously, when attempting to delete a user who had draft posts, the operation would fail because the post model had a default filter to only return published posts. This has been fixed by ensuring the system can properly handle draft posts during user deletion, allowing for the private tag to be correctly assigned to all of the user's content.

Fixed Product Card Display

Product cards would not display when configured with just an image and button. This has been resolved by updating the @tryghost/kg-default-cards dependency to include updated "should render" dependencies. Now, product cards will render if any of these conditions are met:

• Title is present
• Description is present
• Button URL is enabled and button text+URL are present

Allowed Free Signups Regardless of Portal Settings

Fixed an issue where free self-signup was only possible when 'free' was enabled in Portal settings or when Stripe was disabled. This was causing compatibility issues with themes like Edition that include free signup forms. The system now allows free signups regardless of Portal settings.

Fixed Confusing Error State for Member Count Limits

When attempting to publish content while over the hosting plan's member limit, users would encounter confusing error messages. This has been improved by:

• Adding a limit check for members when constructing the PublishOptions class
• Setting a publishDisabledError property if the limit check fails
• Disabling all publish options in the publish flow when limits are exceeded
• Displaying the proper underlying error message instead of the generic "Host limit error, cannot edit post"

Fixed Default Content CTA Message

The default content CTA message always used "post" terminology even when displaying pages, causing confusion for subscribers. The message now correctly reflects whether the content is a page or post.

New Features

No new features were introduced in this maintenance release. This version focuses exclusively on bug fixes and minor enhancements to existing functionality.

Security Updates

No security fixes were included in this release.

Performance Improvements

No specific performance improvements were included in this release. The changes focus on bug fixes and user experience enhancements rather than performance optimizations.

Impact Summary

Ghost 5.16.1 is a targeted bug fix release that addresses several pain points in the user experience. The fixes for user deletion with draft posts and product card display improve content management reliability. The update to free signups enhances compatibility with themes that include signup forms. The improved error messaging for member limits provides clearer guidance to publishers approaching their plan limits. Finally, the content CTA terminology update creates a more polished experience for subscribers. While none of these changes introduce new features, together they represent meaningful quality-of-life improvements that enhance the overall stability and usability of the Ghost platform.

Full Release Notes