In the TYPO3 community there is a clear roadmap when we can expect new versions of TYPO3. For year we can rely on those data so for a long time, October 2, 2018 was marked in my calendar for the release of TYPO3 CMS version 9 LTS. And it is that day is just 2 days away. I know what is coming and I really can’t wait to use it in projects! I will tell you why.
As you might know, TYPO3 CMS version 9 LTS is the first version where I did contributions on a regular base myself. With our SEO Initiative we integrated a lot of new features regarding your search engine optimization. So from now on your have API’s for the pagetitle, and metatags. Besides that, TYPO3 will render all metatags that are set in the backend automatically so no 3rd party extension is needed for that. Do you have a multi-language setup? Than we got your hreflang tags covered as well! Again: no 3rd party extension is needed. Last but not least, we have the XML Sitemap feature. It is possible to let TYPO3 render your XML sitemap. It is even possible to add your configuration for your own extensions. But there is more. A lot more!
As you might know, TYPO3 CMS version 9 LTS is the first version where I did contributions on a regular base myself. With our SEO Initiative we integrated a lot of new features regarding your search engine optimization. So from now on your have API’s for the pagetitle, and metatags. Besides that, TYPO3 will render all metatags that are set in the backend automatically so no 3rd party extension is needed for that. Do you have a multi-language setup? Than we got your hreflang tags covered as well! Again: no 3rd party extension is needed. Last but not least, we have the XML Sitemap feature. It is possible to let TYPO3 render your XML sitemap. It is even possible to add your configuration for your own extensions. But there is more. A lot more!
A lot of people talked about this for years. TYPO3 itself didn’t had a URL routing solution. You had to use 3rd party extensions like RealURL to create speaking URLs. Although a lot of people had complaints about RealURL, I really want to thank Dmitry Dulepov for his work. I do know we had issues with the extension but to be honest: you can’t please everyone and every usecase. So, thanks Dmitry! Without your work, TYPO3 wouldn’t be used this much.
In version 9, finally some people from the core team accepted the challenge to create a solution within core. And to be honest: the solution is even better as hoped!
To be able to create a sustainable solution a lot of things had to be changed before they can even start creating a solution. I will not handle all those things in this blog-post and will do separate posts on each individual topic. Think about subjects as site configuration, bootstrapping and language handling. I really like the decision to implement PSR-15 for handling the requests. By using concepts from outside the TYPO3 world, it will lower the barrier for non-TYPO3-developers to onboard in TYPO3 projects.
From now on it is possible to set the slug of a page. A slug is the part of the URL that identifies the page. So for example from the URL yourdomain.com/about-me is the /about-me the slug. By default this is based on the page title and the parents of the current page. It is even possible to override this default slug and specify your own slug. Also for extensions it is possible to create speaking URL’s. More on how to do this in a new blog-post.
A lot of work is done is this area and I really want to thank some people for all the work in this: Benni Mack, Oliver Hader, Susi Moog and all other people involved: thanks for making our awesome product even better!
There are a lot more features and enhancements in this release. A short list of things that are included in this update:
More information about all the changes can be found in the what’s new slides that will be available in a couple of days.
Especially the routing and SEO features makes me happy. It will definitely shorten the start of a new TYPO3 project. By moving those functionality to core, it will make the product more sustainable and more interesting for new clients.
October 2, 2018 will be the day we’ve all been waiting for. So clear your calendar for the day after, and start trying TYPO3 CMS version 9 LTS!
Do you have a question? Do you want to work together? Just send me a message and I will get in touch as soon as possible.
