product release
XperienCentral R38
It is the release everyone has been waiting for: R38, the ‘Customer Release’ part one. Yes, that’s right. Because there were so many good suggestions for improvements, we split it into two parts
Release overview
As of this month, the 38th XperienCentral release is available. In this special release, improvements were chosen by you, our customers. All wishes were prioritized, and today we’ll discuss the top 3 and several other fixes we’ve implemented.
SEO Improvements
We have made several SEO improvements. We have started with changes to the SEO tab in the properties channel. All SEO-related input for pages and articles is now in one place and labeled accordingly.
You can add an alternative URL marked as ‘canonical’ to ensure Google always has the correct page URL. Just make sure you include them in the <head> section of the page in your customer page presentations. We have also added feedback on the length of Meta Titles and Descriptions. Editors will see an alert when the Meta Title is over 60 characters and /or the Meta Description is more than 160 characters long.
And remember in R36, when we introduced generating URLs without an extension such as .htm or .html? As requested, we are also allowing ‘/’ as an ending character. Use the website setting ‘friendly_url_extension’ to choose the extension you want for your website. Your application manager can help you with this.
Links in Image and Media Collection Element
You can add a link in Image elements and, more recently, in (Dynamic) Content Overviews. And if the content is in XperienCentral, you can now select the destination for such a link directly from the element by using Advanced Search. In the second part of the ‘Customer Release’, we will expand this feature to include external links.
Bulk Delete Links & Versions
Another improvement is that you can perform bulk delete actions on content item versions and links. Go to the Properties panel under the ‘Versions’ and ‘Links’ tabs. Select all the links or versions you do not need and delete them with one click.
Language Labels
One of our oldest features is Language labels. And thanks to the reworked version we are presenting you with today, you have a bunch more options. You can directly create language labels from the panel or in a ‘properties’ file included with the presentation. This makes it much easier to ensure all Language labels have a value before being shown to your website visitors. Another new option is that you can also export and import Language labels using the new Language panel.
And, as you might have noticed, this panel is the first one to implement the brand-new design! We are working on a redesign and cannot wait to show you more. It is still a work in progress, but you can expect more improvements in the next release.
Lead Text and Image for Downloads, Lead Text for Images
There are brand new properties to enrich the content visitors get to see in media collection elements containing Downloads and/or Image content items. This means you can now define a Lead Text and Lead Image for Download content items and a Lead Text for Image content items.
Browser Spell Checks
Because of a bug, built-in browser spell checkers overlooked our WYSIWYG editor. But, no more, as the bug has been fixed. The spell checker now checks all content at the beginning of editing a content item – as long as spell check is on and you have selected the languages of your choice in your browser settings.
Anchor URLs in Media Items
Last, we fixed a bug in the anchor URLs of media items using HTTPS. From now on, anchor URLs are always returned correctly so that you can use them directly in your newsletters, for example.
With this, we conclude part one of our ‘Customer Release’; stay tuned for part two, which you can expect at the start of Q2 in 2023!
Want to upgrade?
Would you like to know how to upgrade your XperienCentral installation? Are you interested in our changelog or in-depth reviews of the new features? Please check out our documentation portal or get in touch with GX to implement the upgrade.