Backdrop CMS version 1.13 was released on May 15th, 2019. Feel free to take it for a spin! 😄
New features
Dashboard
Speed up your workflow by enabling the new Dashboard module. Backdrop CMS now has an administrative dashboard, that will help everyone get a quick overview of the website.
Because we have based this feature on the Backdrop Layouts system, each new dashboard block is configurable. You can add your own blocks or views, move blocks around, or remove the ones you don't need. Chose a different layout if you like, and customize every aspect of your Dashboard experience!
We plan to add new dashboard-specific blocks in future Backdrop releases; so stay tuned!
Link attributes
You asked and the Backdrop team has answered. You now have the ability to add the following attributes to links in the Rich-Text editor: id, rel, target, and title.
Don't worry, these won't get in your way if all you need to do is to add a link, but if you want them, they are now only a click away.
Translations in Content Blocks
The ‘Existing content’ block can now automatically load translations of content if the translation module is enabled, and a translation is available.
Usability improvements
As always, Backdrop includes many usability improvements in every release. In this version Backdrop added vertical tabs to the taxonomy term edit form:
We have also moved all multilingual settings for content types to their own vertical tab, so they are now easier to find (previously under "Publishing settings"):
API Improvements
Backdrop's API is also growing. This version includes the addition of an entity_access() function, which will lead to Backdrop being more secure. We have also merged the functionality of the field_formatter_settings contributed module from Drupal, to allow other modules to easily alter field formatter settings forms, and the formatter summaries. This should help Backdrop core and contributed modules to improve their user interface, and ultimately make them easier to use.
Modern PHP Support
For those who were wondering when Backdrop would be ready for PHP 7.3… the answer is NOW! You can safely update your version of PHP knowing that you can run your site and take advantage of the security and performance improvements in 7.3.