Ghost Release: 5.34.0

TL;DR

Ghost 5.34.0 introduces significant improvements to the platform's webmentions system, now in private beta, allowing sites to send and receive mentions across the web. This release also fixes several critical bugs affecting email functionality, subscription visibility, image handling, and member filtering. The update enhances performance with new caching mechanisms and improves the overall stability of the platform.

Key improvements include a more robust webmentions implementation with rate limiting and notification controls, fixes for subscription display issues in the admin panel, and solutions for image storage problems that previously caused filename inconsistencies.

Highlight of the Release

• Webmentions system promoted to private beta, allowing sites to send and receive mentions across the web
• Fixed subscription visibility issues in Ghost Admin, properly handling incomplete and past due subscriptions
• Improved image storage system to ensure consistent filename handling for original and resized images
• Enhanced member filtering by tier ID instead of slug for more reliable results
• Added Redis-based caching adapter for high-traffic sites

Migration Guide

No breaking changes have been introduced in this release that require migration steps. The new features like webmentions are behind feature flags and can be enabled when desired.

If you're using custom themes or integrations, note that:

1. The {{price}} helper now renders empty instead of throwing an error when price data is empty
2. For developers using the Koenig editor directly, <KoenigComposer> now takes a fileUploader object in place of imageUploadFunction and a generic cardConfig object instead of unsplashConfig

These changes should not affect standard Ghost installations but may require updates if you've built custom functionality around these components.

Upgrade Recommendations

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

1. Have experienced issues with subscription visibility in the admin panel
2. Use email newsletters extensively and have encountered problems with recipient filtering or content display
3. Upload multiple images with similar filenames
4. Want to take advantage of the new webmentions feature (private beta)

The upgrade process follows the standard Ghost update procedure and should be straightforward with no breaking changes. As always, it's recommended to:

1. Take a complete backup of your Ghost installation before upgrading
2. Test the upgrade in a staging environment if possible
3. Schedule the upgrade during a low-traffic period

For those running high-traffic sites, the new caching mechanisms may provide significant performance benefits but require additional configuration to enable.

Bug Fixes

Email and Newsletter Fixes

• Fixed newsletter resending showing incorrect recipient data
• Fixed HTML escaping of feature_image_caption in newsletters
• Fixed email replacements without fallback values
• Fixed storing email failures with empty messages
• Fixed link to posts on audio cards in emails
• Fixed default email recipients always being "everyone" rather than matching post visibility

Subscription and Member Management Fixes

• Fixed subscriptions incorrectly showing as "Active" within Ghost Admin
• Fixed UI issues with 3+ subscriptions
• Fixed missing complimentary subscription when one subscription was incomplete/inactive
• Fixed sending paid subscription started emails for incomplete subscriptions
• Fixed members tier filtering by replacing slug-based filtering with ID-based filtering

Image and Media Fixes

• Fixed storing original files for images when multiple images with the same name are uploaded in parallel
• Fixed media thumbnail uploads in the Koenig Lexical editor
• Fixed saving and rendering of Lexical posts containing new cards
• Fixed email rendering of Lexical posts

UI and Editor Fixes

• Fixed emoji causing page jump in Safari
• Fixed padding bug on dashboard on mobile
• Fixed configUtils and adapter cache issues in E2E tests

New Features

Webmentions System (Private Beta)

Ghost now includes a robust webmentions system that allows sites to send and receive mentions across the web. This feature has been promoted to private beta status and includes:

• Job queue implementation for processing incoming webmentions outside the request/response cycle
• Rate limiting to prevent abuse of the webmentions endpoint
• Email notification settings for staff users when new mentions are received
• Support for updating mention metadata when source content changes
• Verification of mentions to ensure legitimacy
• Soft delete functionality for mentions

Caching Improvements

• Added public tags repository caching to improve performance of tag-related queries
• Implemented adapter-cache-redis package for Redis-based caching in high-traffic environments
• Added async cache support to the Tags repository

Milestone Emails

• Added initial framework for milestone email campaigns (behind alpha flag)
• Implemented in-memory repository for milestone tracking

Security Updates

Security Improvements

• Limited integrations triggering version mismatch emails to prevent unnecessary notifications
• Added rate limiting to the webmentions receiving endpoint to prevent abuse
• Prevented private sites from sending mentions to external sites, maintaining privacy boundaries

Performance Improvements

Caching and Performance Optimizations

• Implemented public tags repository caching to reduce repeated database queries from theme helpers
• Added Redis-based cache adapter for high-traffic environments
• Optimized link redirects handling by returning early if the URL doesn't start with "r/" prefix
• Improved job manager stability by removing delays that caused unpredictable test failures
• Reconfigured clean-expired-comped job to execute during morning UTC with randomized timing to prevent database hammering
• Performance improvement to storing delivered, opened and failed emails by replacing COALESCE with WHERE X IS NULL

Job Queue Improvements

• Used job queue for processing incoming Webmentions to ensure completion even if the process is closed
• Moved sending mentions to job queue for better reliability and testing

Impact Summary

Ghost 5.34.0 delivers significant improvements to the platform's stability and feature set, with a particular focus on the new webmentions system (now in private beta) and fixing critical bugs in email handling and subscription management.

The webmentions implementation allows Ghost sites to participate in the broader web conversation ecosystem, tracking mentions of content across different websites. This feature is carefully designed with rate limiting, verification, and notification controls to ensure a robust experience.

Several long-standing bugs have been addressed, including issues with subscription visibility in the admin panel, email personalization fallbacks, and image storage inconsistencies. These fixes will improve the day-to-day experience for both site administrators and content creators.

Performance enhancements through new caching mechanisms, particularly the Redis adapter for high-traffic sites, demonstrate Ghost's continued focus on scalability. The reconfiguration of background jobs to prevent database hammering during peak times shows thoughtful consideration of platform-wide performance.

Overall, this release strengthens Ghost's position as a reliable, performant publishing platform while adding new capabilities that enhance its connectivity with the broader web ecosystem.

Full Release Notes