4 months ago

v1.6 Hezekiah

  • New and improved preview system! 
    • Major overhaul of the existing preview system to reduce errors & crashes and improve preview editing experience
    • Draft changes update in real time to be visible anywhere on the site. "Real time" means within 10 seconds of the change being made in studio.
    • All homepage blocks respect preview:
      • These blocks did not previously load draft content, but now do: Latest Sermon (Single), Latest of Type, Featured Events, Child Page Links, Location Worship Block, Staff Embed, Latest Sermons, Featured Resources, Featured Series (new) and the Index Nav block.
      • You will see suspense (gray box outlines in the shape of the block) while the latest data is fetched. After this initial load, the updates will apply in real time like everything else.
    • Previewing entirely new documents:
      • In the past, previewing entirely new resources/pages/events caused issues and wasn't well accounted for. This has been fixed; new documents will preview with what they can.
      • If there's no draft matching the document you've requested to preview, you will see a "draft 404" page. Adding a slug and making sure your slug in the browser and slug in the studio line up will resolve this.
    • Areas of the site without preview:
      •  There are a few areas of the site still without preview. These are:
        • Index pages (e.g. /resources, /resources/authors/andrew-royce, etc.)
          • An exception is a series index page, like /series/coffee-mug-verses. The new series index page has added more to these pages so we took the time to implement preview here as well. 
          • Note: the resource grid still does not load preview data, but the series metadata does (description, hero image, etc.)
        • Event grids (e.g. /events)
        • More From This Series (new feature on individual resource pages)
        • Fallback Images for single pages
          • Events: e.g. /events/picnic-in-the-park would not show a draft fallback image, but the Featured Events block would
          • Single pages: e.g. /about-us will not show a draft fallback image, but Child Pages would
      • These areas do not have preview for one reason or another: some are that we don't see a huge use case for it (e.g. previewing the resource card) others are that it was going to be too much time for this release. We wanted to get the 90% preview solution (vast improvement over the previous) in place so it could be used.
      • If you'd really like one of the above items to load preview data, please let us know! We're not done with preview, and intend to keep improving it in the future. Check out this feature request for better card previews!
  • Error Reporting:
    • As a platform, Merechurch is young and we're actively improving it all the time. A part of that growing process is errors -- things on the site not working quite right, or crashing outright. With this release, we now have better error handling:
    • If the site encounters an error, it serves a "Sorry, something went wrong" page. Users can try again or submit an error report to help us debug it. Additionally, hitting this page sends us an error report automatically, so even if you don't submit anything we can investigate and fix the issue.
  • New podcasting RSS feeds that are publishable directly on your favorite podcast platform! (original feature request)
    • RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is the industry standard for podcasts. We've made it easy to set up a podcast feed for any resource type in the studio. Currently, only resource types are supported for this kind of "extended RSS" feed. If you'd like to publish a podcast around some other taxonomy, let us know with a feature request!
    • You will need to set up accounts with the podcast platforms you'd like to use to publish resources. The three we primarily support are Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. RSS is used by nearly everyone, though, so if there's another platform you're likely able to publish to it as well.
    • The RSS feed published by your Merechurch conforms to the iTunes (Apple Podcasts) standards for podcasts, which are also followed by most other podcast platforms. Once your podcasts are published, you can fill out the links for Apple Podcasts/Google Play/Spotify in studio so the index page (e.g. https://olivet.gospel.io/resources/sermons) also links out to the podcast on these platforms.
  • Improved RSS: More feeds available for more sections of your resource library
    • /resources/feed -- for all resources published on the site
    • /resources/authors/andrew-royce/feed -- for all resources authored by Andrew Royce
  • New “Featured Series” block to show off your latest sermon series automatically on your homepage (original feature request)
    • It's now easy to prominently display a series on your homepage or a secondary page. This block supports a title and two modes:
      • Use the latest series (by start date)
      • Select a specific series to feature here
  • New “More from this Series” section shows you related sermons on a single sermon page
  • Improved Series Index page (/resources/series) with series dates spans and resource counts
  • Improved Series archive pages (/resources/series/coffee-mug-verses) with description and thumbnail images before the grid of resource cards
  • New image features: cropping, set hotspot (image focal point), loading placeholders, and more efficient image file formats
    • Crop: Select a rectangle out of the image to display on the site, while preserving the whole image within studio.
    • Hotspot: Set the focal point of the image; if the image is the wrong aspect ratio for where it's meant to be displayed, the system will work to keep the focal point always visible.
    • Loading placeholders: While the page is loading, the image displays a blurred, low-quality version of the image in its place. This helps reduce layout shift (article on that if you're interested) and provides greater visual continuity while the page is loading.
    • More efficient file formats: Images should load faster and use less bandwidth!
  • People can now be part of multiple categories (original feature request)
  • Improved 404 not-found pages
  • Many more bug fixes and improvements throughout your site!
Full bugfix list:
  • Add promo image alt text on single pages
  • Fix proper fallback order for og:images on single pages
  • Fix Latest of Type to respect count and resource type
  • Add the Divider block to accordions
  • Make resource header background higher-resolution
  • Fix Accordions to have properly-proportioned text and headings
  • Fix Card topic link classname
  • Fix Acacia header items that were misaligned
  • Fix padding on Acacia Highlighted Links
  • Fix Image Gallery on Acacia mobile view
  • Update Latest Sermon block to have the same link styling as cards (Watch/Listen/Read)
  • Fix Acacia transcript font size and fade color. 
  • Fix transcript overflow issue (very long transcripts wouldn't be visible)
  • Fix Events classname so that block is styled correctly (all themes)
  • Fix PCO Events classname so that block is styled correctly (Acacia theme)
  • Improve performance of Acacia slideshow