The Backdrop community is proud to announce version 1.23 of Backdrop CMS, which was released on September 15th.
Entity Reference module in core
One of the most important changes to Backdrop CMS with this release, is the inclusion of the Entity Reference module in core (issue #1301). The Entity Reference module provides a new field type that can be used to reference one piece of content (or one entity) with another. Entity Reference helps site administrators connect content, categories, or user accounts with each other. A classic use case might be for a site that has an Event content type and a Venue content type and is now able to add a venue (Entity Reference) field to their events, which will connect that event with any available Venue on the site.
The Entity Reference module has been available as a contrib module in the past, but by including this module in core, the Backdrop CMS community is acknowledging the importance of this functionality and making sure that it is easily available, supported, and integrated with other core features.
New setting to allow the comment title to be hidden
In the past, Backdrop CMS either automatically generated a title for comments or provided an option to allow comment authors to create their own comment title. What has been missing was an option to disable titles completely on comments, which are often short pieces of text without any need for titles. In the past, this option was available through a contributed module, but starting with version 1.23 of Backdrop CMS, this option is available to all site administators (issue #4569).
Added new Date field widget to utilize HTML5 #date input type.
The date module now provides HTML5 date widgets. The HTML5 date widgets, previously only used for the system-provided created date and scheduled date, are now available for use on date fields as well (issue #4255).
Added a "Taxonomy term: Depth" Visibility condition for blocks and layouts.
Backdrop now includes a "Taxonomy term: Depth" Visibility condition for blocks and layouts (issue #2955). This condition will allow a different block or layout to be selected, depending on the depth of the term you are viewing. For example: a top-level term can have its own landing page layout, and child terms could use the default layout, instead.
As usual, the 1.23.0 feature release also includes a range of bug fixes and usability fixes that were also included in the 1.22.3 bug fix release.
As part of our commitment to deliver the most usable product, the "minor" releases come out like clockwork, three times a year. This also allows site maintainers to know when to expect updates, so they can plan accordingly. (See https://backdropcms.org/releases for more information on this).