Ghost Release: 5.92.0

TL;DR

Ghost v5.92.0 introduces Tips & Donations for one-off payments, enhances the Stats dashboard with new charts and filtering capabilities, improves Portal link behavior, and includes various build optimizations. This release focuses on monetization options, analytics improvements, and developer experience enhancements while fixing several UI issues.

Highlight of the Release

• Added Tips & Donations feature for one-time payments without requiring membership
• Enhanced Stats dashboard with new charts, filtering options, and technical details
• Improved Portal links to avoid homepage flash when clicking within the same site
• Added date filtering and audience segmentation to the Stats page
• Optimized build processes for faster development and smaller bundle sizes

Migration Guide

Build Script Changes

If you're a developer working with Ghost's codebase, note that ghost:build has been renamed to ghost:build:assets. This change was made to prevent duplicate builds of TypeScript projects. If you have any custom scripts or workflows that rely on the old script name, you'll need to update them.

Lodash Import Changes

For developers working with AdminX apps, note that the lodash import method has changed to support treeshaking. Instead of importing from lodash, you should now import from lodash-es for specific functions:

// Before
import { functionName } from 'lodash';

// After
import { functionName } from 'lodash-es';

Upgrade Recommendations

This release includes valuable new features like Tips & Donations and significant improvements to the Stats dashboard, making it a recommended upgrade for all Ghost users. The performance improvements and bug fixes also enhance the overall experience for both site administrators and visitors.

For developers, the build optimizations will improve development workflow efficiency. There are no breaking changes that would prevent upgrading, and the new monetization options could be beneficial for content creators looking to diversify their revenue streams.

Upgrade at your earliest convenience to take advantage of these new features and improvements.

Bug Fixes

UI and Interaction Fixes

• Fixed unsaved changes modal appearing incorrectly when title had leading/trailing whitespace
• Improved date notation when scheduling posts - if a post is scheduled for today, it no longer shows the full date
• Fixed URL encoding for Twitter sharing, ensuring the URL sits on a new line for better readability

Testing and Build Fixes

• Fixed Admin tests including removing .only on stats tests that prevented other tests from running
• Fixed publish flow related admin tests
• Removed unnecessary return statements from async setup functions
• Fixed eslint config for proper test linting
• Removed SQLite skip in recommendation email test

New Features

Tips & Donations

Added support for one-time payments through Tips & Donations, allowing content creators to receive financial support without requiring visitors to become members.

Enhanced Stats Dashboard

• Added comprehensive charts to the Stats tab including KPIs, Content, Sources, Locations, and technical data
• Implemented audience filtering by member status (logged-in vs. logged-out)
• Added date filtering capabilities to the dashboard
• Expanded technical details section with browser, device, and operating system breakdowns

UI Improvements

• Added icons to Activity items for better visual scanning
• Added support for badges to APAvatar component
• Added static design for Replies feature

Security Updates

No significant security fixes were included in this release.

Performance Improvements

Build Optimizations

• Renamed ghost:build to ghost:build:assets to prevent duplicate builds of TypeScript projects
• Removed concurrently from building apps to improve build times when used with Nx
• Switched build and build:ts scripts to improve build performance
• Implemented treeshaking for lodash in AdminX apps, reducing bundle size by approximately 500KB per app
• Enabled treeshaking for validator in AdminX design system, saving around 75KB

Portal Performance

• Converted portal links to relative paths to avoid homepage flash when clicking links within the same site, resulting in faster and smoother user experience

Impact Summary

Ghost v5.92.0 significantly expands monetization options with the new Tips & Donations feature, allowing content creators to receive one-time payments without requiring visitors to become members. This provides a lower friction way for audiences to support creators financially.

The Stats dashboard has received substantial enhancements with new charts, filtering capabilities, and technical details that provide deeper insights into site traffic and audience behavior. The ability to filter by member status (logged-in vs. logged-out) and date ranges makes the analytics much more useful for content strategy decisions.

For developers, the build optimizations result in faster development cycles and smaller bundle sizes, improving both the development experience and end-user performance. The conversion of Portal links to relative paths enhances the user experience by eliminating the homepage flash when navigating within the site.

Overall, this release balances new revenue features with performance improvements and quality-of-life enhancements that benefit both content creators and their audiences.

Full Release Notes