Ghost Release: 5.85.1

TL;DR

Ghost v5.85.1 brings important bug fixes to the editor experience, particularly addressing issues with the "Are you sure?" modal appearing unnecessarily and fixing internal link search problems. This release also includes significant improvements to the admin search functionality (behind a labs flag), enhanced comment pagination, new language support with Bosnian and Greek locales, and various performance optimizations. The update focuses on improving user experience and fixing several Sentry error reports.

Highlight of the Release

• Fixed editor 'are you sure?' modal displaying when no user changes occurred
• Fixed internal link search sometimes showing latest posts after pasting URL
• Added improved Admin search behind labs flag with better indexing and matching
• Increased default comments count from 5 to 20 before pagination
• Added Bosnian and Greek locales with comprehensive translations
• Added content visibility feature flag

Migration Guide

No migration steps are required for this release as it primarily contains bug fixes and enhancements that don't break existing functionality.

Upgrade Recommendations

This release contains important bug fixes for the editor experience and internal link search functionality, along with performance improvements and new features behind feature flags. We recommend all Ghost users upgrade to v5.85.1, especially those who have experienced issues with the editor "Are you sure?" modal or internal link search functionality.

The upgrade should be straightforward with no breaking changes or migration steps required.

Bug Fixes

Editor Experience Fixes

• Fixed the "Are you sure?" modal appearing when opening a post and attempting to navigate away immediately without making any changes
• Added a dirty check to ignore the direction field from the lexical object which is set dynamically and shouldn't be serialized
• Fixed a bug where the modal wouldn't display when leaving the editor if the post had no revisions

Internal Link Search Fixes

• Fixed internal link search sometimes showing latest posts after pasting URL
• Addressed issues with debounced searches overwriting "Insert URL" state of the results popup

Validation and Error Handling

• Fixed validation error handling before previewing a post, ensuring validation errors (e.g., excerpt length) are properly handled
• Fixed an undefined error that was thrown when a validation error occurred
• Ignored posthog-js and ember-concurrency cancellation errors in Sentry that don't affect application functionality

Data Generation

• Fixed data generator not setting posts.plaintext value, which prevented generated excerpts from being added to responses
• Ensured posts are published in the past so that comments can be created after

New Features

Improved Admin Search

A new improved admin search functionality has been added behind a labs flag. This enhancement:

• Uses flexsearch as the underlying index for better indexing and matching compared to the previous exact-match search
• Maintains consistent result output format
• Improves search index request ordering using updated_at for optimized database queries
• Has been integrated into the internal linking beta

Enhanced Comments System

• Increased the default comments count from 5 to 20 comments before pagination kicks in
• Updated the pagination UI
• Added new helper for easier addition of multiple comments in testing

New Language Support

• Added comprehensive Bosnian (bs) locale with informal addressing of users as is widely accepted in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Added complete Greek locale for comments, portal, signup-form, and ghost core functionality

Content Visibility Feature

• Added new content visibility feature flag (ref MOM-221)
• Wired up the contentVisibility flag to be passed to Koenig from Ghost/Admin

Security Updates

No specific security fixes were mentioned in this release.

Performance Improvements

Search Performance

• Improved search index request ordering by adding an order parameter to posts/pages requests
• Switched to ordering by updated_at to use a simple order with an optimized index in the database

Error Reporting Optimization

• Removed unnecessary Sentry message when Lexical save is slow but successful
• Bumped Sentry message to error level only when Lexical is slow and fails
• Removed Sentry error on multiple request attempts as these are not user-facing errors and requests are retried automatically
• Ignored posthog-js and ember-concurrency cancellation errors in Sentry to reduce noise from non-critical errors

Newsletter Improvements

• Adjusted title and excerpt length of latest posts in emails
• Updated truncateHtml() to handle the horizontal layout on both desktop and mobile
• Made spacing adjustments to improve readability

Impact Summary

Ghost v5.85.1 delivers a focused set of improvements that enhance the content creation experience and site administration. The fixes to the editor's "Are you sure?" modal and internal link search address frustrating issues that could interrupt the content creation workflow.

The improved admin search functionality (currently behind a labs flag) represents a significant enhancement to the content management experience, with better indexing and matching capabilities that will make finding content much easier.

For international users, the addition of comprehensive Bosnian and Greek locales expands Ghost's accessibility to more communities. The comment system improvements with increased default comment count and updated pagination provide a better experience for both site administrators and end users.

Overall, this release demonstrates Ghost's commitment to refining the user experience through targeted bug fixes and thoughtful enhancements across the platform.

Full Release Notes