Grav 1.0.10, the previous stable version, was released Feb 11th 2016, and it has proved to be extremely solid and reliable. Over the past 5 months, we've not slowed development, in fact we have made over 3000 commits to fix bugs, add features, and generally improve Grav even further!

Grav 1.1 is a large update that You can get an idea of the amount of work that has gone into Grav 1.1 Core from the extensive changelog that covers what's been added, improved, and fixed. The admin plugin has received a similar amount of attention, with nearly 2000 commits between the last stable release and the new 1.1 version.

However a brief summary of some of the things you will find in Grav 1.1 is as follows:

Grav 1.1 Features

• New Advanced Form Blueprints. Read about this powerful new functionality in the documentation.
• GPM Versioning. You can now specify requirements of dependencies. Such as requiring a specific version of another plugin or Grav itself.
• GPM Channels. We now support a Testing and Stable channel in GPM. This allows us to release beta releases without affecting stable installations. Simply release your plugin/theme as a pre-release in GitHub and add the testing: true flag in the blueprints.yaml, it will then be handled automatically as a beta release.
• Core Grav Processor Refactor. Thanks to toovy for a great refactor of Grav's core processing to make things more readable and flexible.
• Multi-part Downloads. This offers resumable downloads and streaming/looping HTML5 video
• Twig Processing in Frontmatter. This optional setting lets you use Twig variables in your frontmatter for all sorts of powerful setups.
• Blueprints in Plugins. We now allow the option for plugins to provide blueprints, not just themes.
• Developer CLI Tools. This is broken out into a new plugin but allows a developer to quickly create a scaffold for a new plugin or theme.
• Authentication of Proxies. Grav now supports authenticated proxy servers.
• Override default Parsedown functionality. Thanks to maxlysenko for adding this functionality.
• Assets handling improved. You can now exclude external files, control the before/after order of the pipelined files and better support the absolute_urls: true option. Also cache is refreshed when files are modified.
• Improved Asset minification logic to ensure more reliable compression.
• Grav-served images support browser caching. Grav now automatically sets header variables to ensure images are cached properly.
• Individual localhost environments. Previously all localhost environments were handled by 'localhost', now we support virtual hosts as individual environments which allows for better mimicking of staging/production environments.
• More PHP Stream conversion. We've moved more hard-coded paths to streams to allow better multi-site support.
• Allow local themes outside of GPM. A new theme blueprint option gpm: false means you can have a local theme with the same name as a GPM theme and not have it overwritten or updated.
• Added Memcache and Redis Caching options.
• Improved GPM installation with dependencies. This whole process has been much improved.
• Added many more new tests. We've added many more new tests to better help us ensure compatibility with code changes. Feel free to contribute and add more! When it comes to testing, the more the merrier!
• Many Many Bug Fixes. Grav should be more reliable than ever with this new version that contains many bug fixes.

Admin Plugin 1.1 Features

• JavaScript Rewrite. Admin is now built in ES6
• Default Theme Refactored. The default theme has been heavily refactored and has much better mobile support. You can also no collapse the sidebar manually as well as auto-switching to smaller sidebar on narrow devices.
• Nested Lists. Often requested in the 1.0 release, you can now have any field inside a list form field type!
• Improved File Upload Field. You can now use uploads in pages, themes, plugins and configuration. Supports drag-n-drop too!
• Editor Rebuilt. Our CodeMirror based editor has been rewritten to be more flexible and also is available in any form, not just on pages.
• Color Picker Field. We've added a powerful new color picker field that you can use as needed.
• More Flexible File Upload Field. You can now use the file upload field pretty much anywhere in the admin.
• Ability to Prepend and Append Text Fields. Particular useful if you wan to add a some context to your input fields.
• Admin can now install dependencies. Previously only available with the CLI command, if you install a plugin with dependencies you will be prompted to also install any dependencies.
• Ability to filter and sort Plugins and Themes. Now you can locate themes easier than ever before.
• Improved Page Preview. Now there is a more consistent look to page previews that is pleasing to the eyes.
• Allow login via email. You now have the choice to login via email or username.
• Testing/Stable option. Configure this option dynamically in the Add Plugin and Add Theme pages.
• New Datepicker Field. The new one is more flexible and translatable compared to the previous version.
• Persistent States. We've added more persistent states for trees and tabs throughout the admin. So now those states are remembered after a page reload.
• Redirect on Login. Going to an admin login that needed authentication, you will now be redirected to your originally requested page, not just dumped into the dashboard.
• Admin Unique Cache. The admin's cache is now unique from the frontend site. This improves reliablility in several areas that was caused by front-end plugins and functionality corrupting admin data.
• User Profile Layout Improved. A UI cleanup on this page improves readability.
• Many Many Bug Fixes. Too numerous to count, but we've squashed many bugs in the admin in this version.

Upgrading

Upgrading to Grav v1.1 is an absolute doddle! If you already have the admin plugin installed, you simple click the Update Grav Now button to upgrade Grav Core itself, and then the Update button in the Maintenance section (or individually in the Plugins and Themes sections) to upgrade all Plugins and Themes.

If you don't have the admin plugin installed, you can use Grav's built-in package manager to update to the latest version of the Grav Core:

$ bin/gpm self-upgrade

This will download the 'update' package and install it automatically. After this you should also check for any updates to Plugins and Themes and install those as required:

$ bin/gpm update

Thanks to the Grav Community

We just wanted to give a huge thanks to our awesome community that has helped us identify issues, test fixes, provide pull requests, and overall helped Grav 1.1 to be a fantastic release packed full of good stuff you have asked for. If you have not already done so, please join us on our Grav chatroom.

Grav 1.1 is a huge part of our original 2016 Plans for Grav. Now it's out of the door, we are turning our attention back to the Admin Pro plugin and Gantry5 for Grav.