The Backdrop community is proud to announce the release of version 1.30 of Backdrop CMS! This is our 30th feature release in the course of the past 10 years.
As part of our commitment to deliver the most usable product, new "minor" releases come out three times a year, on a regular schedule. This allows site maintainers to know when to expect updates, and they can plan accordingly. See https://backdropcms.org/releases for more information on our release cycle.
New Features in Backdrop 1.30
Backup and Restore Functionality
Basic backup and restore functionality has been added to update.php (Issue #2409). This feature replaces the previous manual steps required in order to back up the database and configuration of your Backdrop site, and allows creating these backups on-the-fly, via a convenient button on the same interface that is used to perform the update. This streamlines the backup process and makes it a seamless part of the update process.
Besides being able to create backups, Backdrop 1.30.0 introduces a new restore.php file as well, to restore these backups that were created before updates. This allows for a recovery if an update fails, and takes us one step closer to being able to enable automatic core updates.
Streamlined Login Pages
In new sites that have been installed with Backdrop 1.30.0 or higher, users will be greeted with a new simplified login page. This login page matches the administrative theme that is used on the site, rather than the front-end theme. This is great for sites where only administrators are logging in.
Existing sites that upgrade to version 1.30.0 can opt-in to the new login pages under Configuration → User Accounts → Login Settings. There is also the option to continue using the front-end theme but convert the "Local Tasks" (a.k.a tabs) into links, which lines up better with the experience on most websites today and is easier to theme.
For more information on this feature, see Issue #6570.
Fast Token Browser
The legacy core token browser has been replace by the Fast Token Browser, to allow faster and more intuitive token management (Issue #6143) (See change record).
The new Token Browser looks similar to the old one; it still opens in a modal and you can still click on a token to insert it to fields that support tokens. However, now the token browser loads the tree of tokens dynamically as each nested token is expanded. This makes it so that the browser opens instantly, no matter how many fields, content types, or references you might have on your site.
More SVGs and Hero Block Enhancements
The default homepage of Backdrop received a few updates in Backdrop 1.30.0.
- Added a new SVG image for the hero block in the Basis theme (Issue #6752).
- Preview background images in the Hero block configuration forms (Issue #6736).
- Placement of the messages area improved in Basis (Issue #5769).
Moreover, a solution was reached that allows Basis (the core default theme) to receive CSS updates without any risk of impacting existing sites. This change will unblock updates to Basis in upcoming releases, while at the same time allowing backwards compatibility for sites relying on older CSS code (Issue #4782).
Menu Enhancements
Managing and moving menu items is now much easier thanks to separately selecting the parent menu from the parent menu item. (Issue #6390
API Improvements
Backdrop 1.30.0 improves some underlying systems as well.
Alternative Database Connection Format
Since Backdrop 1.0, the database connection string in settings.php has been a the standard MySQL connection string, such as
$database = 'mysql://user:pass@localhost/database_name';The simplified configuration string could be problematic in certain use cases (for instance, if the password contained special characters, it needed to be url-encoded). The new format (below) solves these problems, allows support for emoji characters by default, and it more cleanly supports database prefixes as well as other settings.
Fresh installs of Backdrop 1.30 and beyond with use the following simple array syntax by default:
$database = array( 'database' => 'database_name', 'username' => 'user', 'password' => 'pass', 'host' => 'localhost', );
For more information see Issue #2231 and the change record.
Form API Enhancements
There were several other significant changes to Form API elements, including Improved flexibility for the new link_field (Issue #6693), and new options to set the location of #description text on form elements (#Issue #1403).
Updated Components
Several of the bundled libraries have also been updated in this release.
- CKEditor 5 updated to v44.1.0 (Issue #6695).
- The OpenSans webfont was cleaned up and updated to the latest version (Issue #6728).
Changes to requirements
The minimum MySQL version supported has been raised to 5.5 (Issue #6724) (See change record).
More
For more of what's in Backdrop CMS 1.30, see the Release notes on GitHub.
Thank you Community!
Thank you so much to our wonderful Backdrop CMS contributors and the other Open Source communities that we rely on to make these releases happen! Backdrop 1.30.0 was truly a collaborative accomplishment, with many individuals writing code, testing, and providing feedback. The next minor release of Backdrop (our 31th) will be on May 15, 2025.