Ghost Release: 5.21.0

TL;DR

Ghost 5.21.0 introduces two major features: audience feedback and member growth source tracking, allowing publishers to collect reader sentiment and understand where members come from. The update also adds the Ghost Explore app to Admin, fixes issues with member management, and improves the overall user experience. This release enhances analytics capabilities for publishers looking to better understand their audience and content performance.

Highlight of the Release

• New audience feedback feature allows publishers to collect reader sentiment on content
• Member growth source tracking provides insights on where new members are coming from
• Ghost Explore app now available in Admin for discovering Ghost features
• Improved analytics interface with new visualizations and filtering options
• Fixed issues with complimentary membership creation via Admin API

Migration Guide

Audience Feedback

The audience feedback feature is disabled by default for existing newsletters. When creating new newsletters with the feature enabled, the backend will ensure feedback_enabled is set appropriately based on the audience_feedback flag status.

Member Source Tracking

Member source tracking is enabled by default but can be disabled through the new analytics settings page. When disabled, the attribution script won't be loaded, preventing the capture of post/page or external source attributions.

Analytics Settings

The newsletter tracking setting has been moved from the newsletter settings page to the new analytics settings page to consolidate tracking-related settings.

Members CSV Importer

The "products" column in CSV imports is now ignored, as it has not been functional since at least version 5.20.0. The "tiers" column will still be present in exported CSV files, but there is no logic attached to it. The only columns that can affect the "tiers" state of a member are "complimentary_plan" and "stripe_customer_id".

Upgrade Recommendations

This release introduces significant new features for audience engagement and analytics, making it a recommended upgrade for all Ghost users, especially those focused on understanding their audience better.

For developers, the update includes important bug fixes and API improvements that enhance the stability of member management and authentication flows.

No breaking changes have been identified in this release, making it a safe upgrade for most users. However, as always, it's recommended to backup your data before upgrading and test the new features in a staging environment if possible.

Bug Fixes

Fixed Comped Member Creation via Admin API

Fixed an issue where using the legacy method of comped:true to add complimentary subscriptions to a member along with a label would fail with an "Internal Server error". The member was being added as free instead of receiving the complimentary subscription. This has been patched by ensuring the options sent for fetching the default product only pick the relevant keys.

Fixed Missing Unsaved Changes Modal for Member Newsletters

Resolved an issue where the unsaved changes modal wasn't appearing when making changes to member newsletters. The fix manually handles relationship changes detection for labels and newsletters and adds a dirtyAttributes controller property to track newsletters and labels dirty attributes status.

Fixed Redirect to Signin Modal Not Shown When Logged Out

Fixed authentication flow issues where the re-authenticate modal wasn't consistently shown when needed. The update improves the re-authenticate modal toggle to show every time a user saves (ctrl/cmd + s) and prevents unnecessary redirection to the sign-in page when a user is already logged in on another tab.

Fixed Stripe Checkout Issues

Resolved an error that occurred during Stripe Checkout due to improper handling of the window.location.assign function, which doesn't return a value. The handling of the redirectToCheckout promise has been improved.

Fixed Default Feedback Enabled When Flag is Disabled

Fixed an issue where feedback was enabled by default for newsletters even when the audience_feedback flag was disabled. The backend now prevents setting feedback_enabled to true when the audience_feedback flag is disabled.

Fixed Labs Not Working on Posts Page Initial Load

Resolved an issue where labs settings wouldn't work when reloading the posts page due to settings not being loaded yet.

New Features

Audience Feedback

Ghost now allows publishers to collect feedback from readers on their content. This feature enables readers to provide positive or negative sentiment on posts, helping publishers understand which content resonates with their audience. The feedback data is visualized in the new analytics interface with pie charts and detailed breakdowns.

Member Growth Sources

Publishers can now track and analyze where their members are coming from. This feature provides insights into acquisition channels, helping publishers understand which sources drive the most sign-ups and conversions. The analytics interface includes visualizations and filtering options for this data.

Ghost Explore App

The Ghost Explore app has been promoted from alpha to general availability and is now integrated directly into the Admin interface. This app allows users to discover Ghost features and capabilities more easily.

Enhanced Analytics Interface

The analytics page has been redesigned with new tabs, visualizations, and filtering options. Publishers can now view:

• Audience feedback metrics with pie charts
• Member growth sources with attribution data
• Click events with aggregated data
• Email performance metrics

Data Generation Tools

A new command has been added to generate demo data for testing and development purposes. This tool creates data for over 20 tables in Ghost, suitable for testing most features of the dashboard and making guided product tours.

Analytics Settings

A new dedicated analytics settings page allows site owners to control tracking preferences, including:

• Member source tracking (on by default)
• Email tracking options

Security Updates

Added X-Robots-Tag Header to Redirect Responses

Added X-Robots-Tag headers to redirect responses to prevent search engines from indexing redirect URLs, addressing an issue where some redirect URLs were being indexed by Google.

Performance Improvements

Improved Filter Support in Activity API

The activity feed API now has improved filter parsing, allowing for better pagination and more complex filtering options. The filter is now parsed early to a MongoDB filter and split in two parts, enabling the use of grouping and OR operations inside filters.

Improved Cache Invalidation Handling

Cache invalidation handling on link edits has been updated to be more specific to email links patterns, preventing unnecessary cache invalidation of the entire site on every link edit.

Removed Bluebird Dependencies

Several components have been refactored to remove dependencies on the Bluebird promise library, using native Promise functionality or Ghost's sequence method instead. This helps reduce external dependencies and potential deadlock issues.

Impact Summary

Ghost 5.21.0 significantly enhances the platform's analytics and audience engagement capabilities. The addition of audience feedback and member growth source tracking provides publishers with powerful new tools to understand their readers and content performance.

The audience feedback feature allows publishers to collect sentiment data directly from readers, helping them identify which content resonates most with their audience. This data can inform content strategy and improve reader satisfaction.

Member growth source tracking gives publishers visibility into where their members are coming from, enabling more effective acquisition strategies and marketing efforts.

The new analytics interface brings these features together with improved visualizations and filtering options, making it easier to derive actionable insights from the data.

For developers and site administrators, the release includes important bug fixes that improve the reliability of member management, authentication flows, and the overall user experience.

Overall, this release represents a significant step forward in Ghost's evolution as a comprehensive publishing platform with robust analytics capabilities.

Full Release Notes