Apostrophe 4.26.0: Introducing Styles and Enhanced SEO and AEO Options

[BoDonkey]

Apostrophe 4.26.0: Introducing Styles and Enhanced SEO and AEO Options

Hello Apostrophe Community!

Apostrophe 4.26.0 introduces the new Styles module in open-source core, adds structured data support to the SEO module, and provides a new OpenAPI specification generator for custom API documentation.

Watch the release video

Styles: Design Control for Everyone

We're excited to introduce the new Styles module in open-source ApostropheCMS. The feature is in beta for this initial release. This module provides visual style editing capabilities that were previously available only through our Pro Palette extension, and extends them with new per-widget styling functionality.

The Styles module allows content creators and designers to adjust colors, fonts, spacing, and other design elements directly from the frontend, with changes appearing instantly. Developers configure which CSS properties can be modified using familiar schema fields, and the module handles the rest.

What's new:

• Global Styles: Define site-wide design tokens that apply across your entire project
• Widget Styles: Create custom style variations for individual widget types, allowing editors to choose between predefined design options for each widget instance
• Zero Configuration: Access the styles interface from the admin bar without additional setup

For existing Palette users: Palette will continue to work, but we encourage migration to the new Global Styles feature. We've provided a migration task (migrate-to-styles) to help transition your existing palette configurations. While the new Styles feature is in beta this month, after Global Styles are declared stable the Palette module will be deprecated and receive only critical maintenance updates going forward.

Try it now: We've created styles-beta branches for both starter-kit-essentials and starter-kit-astro-essentials to make testing the new Global Styles module easy. You can also enable it in existing projects by following the documentation. We're actively seeking feedback on this new module, so please share your experience on our roadmap.

Structured Data for Enhanced SEO/AEO

The SEO module now includes JSON-LD structured data generation, helping your content appear in rich search results and improving discoverability by AI-powered answer engines.

This update adds comprehensive Schema.org markup for pages and pieces, with configurable structured data fields that give you control over how your content appears in search results. The module also generates anllms.txt files and updates robots.txt configurations to help AI systems better understand and reference your content.

Content managers can now configure organization information, article metadata, and other structured data directly through the familiar ApostropheCMS editing interface, without needing to understand JSON-LD syntax.

OpenAPI Documentation Generator

For developers building custom integrations and applications, we're releasing a new OpenAPI specification generator. This module automatically discovers all routes in your project—including custom piece types and Pro module endpoints—and generates comprehensive OpenAPI 3.1 documentation with zero configuration.

The generated specifications can be used to create client SDKs, test your APIs, and provide interactive documentation for your custom endpoints. This makes it significantly easier to build applications that integrate with your ApostropheCMS project's unique content model.

Additional Improvements

This release also includes several refinements to the editing experience:

• Enhanced Relationship Editing: Creating new content while editing relationships is now streamlined with a dedicated "New" button in the manager. Newly created documents are automatically selected for the relationship, reducing the number of steps needed to add related content.
• Rich Text Table Styling: Table styles are now available in the public build and can be customized through project-level stylesheets.
• Box Field Improvements: The box field type now displays units in the UI when provided and generates valid CSS properties.

---

These improvements are ready for you to explore! Update your projects with npm update and let us know what you think on our roadmap.

Want to test Global Styles? Check out the styles-beta branches in starter-kit-essentials and starter-kit-astro-essentials for pre-configured examples, or follow the documentation to enable it in your existing projects. Your feedback will help us refine this feature before we finalize it.

🚀 Happy coding!

---

Apostrophe 4.26.0

Adds

• Add new Global Styles and Widget Styles features
• Explicitly specify meta encoding="utf-8" to ensure browser auto-detection does not inadvertently cause problems in a very small percentage of cases. Note that utf-8 is the only official encoding supported for html5.
• Adds field unit to box input UI if provided
• When editing a relationship it is now much easier to create and select new content for that purpose. A "New" button is directly exposed in the manager, a newly created document is automatically selected for the relationship, and several relevant bugs were fixed.
• Rich text table styles are now available in the public build and can be overridden by project level modules/@apostrophecms/ui/ui/src/index.scss file

Changes

• Fix box field type to generate valid css properties
• set layout columns to min-width 0 to prevent automatic overflowing
• if no class provided for a rt style set it to null to ensure removal
• Updated dependencies

Pro Modules

@apostrophecms-pro/advanced-permission 3.0.7

This module provides more granular control over content permission. It allows the creation of custom groups with proscribed abilities and the ability to assign users to as few or as many groups as desired. Users and groups can also be assigned per-document and per-locale permissions allowing for fine control of who can edit and publish any document. Explore our documentation to learn how this extension can enhance your project. Once you’re ready, obtain a license and install it through Apostrophe Workspaces. For further details or inquiries, feel free to contact us or visit our pricing page.

Fixes

• Must tolerate the presence of group permissions in the database for content types that no longer exist.

@apostrophecms-pro/cypress-tools 1.0.0-beta.25

Automated functional browser tests are an important part of quality assurance for enterprise websites and web applications. Cypress is an industry-standard, open-source library for carrying out automated functional browser tests. This module provides a collection of conveniences for testing the ApostropheCMS admin UI within Cypress. Explore our documentation to learn how this extension can enhance your project. Once you're ready, obtain a license and install it through Apostrophe Workspaces. For further details or inquiries, feel free to contact us or visit our pricing page.

Adds

• Add adminBarStylesTrigger selector.
• Add useLayoutItemOperation support for styles operation.

Changes

• Mark adminarBarPaletteTrigger as deprecated. Use adminBarStylesTrigger instead.
• useWidgetAdd and useAreaAdd now check for visibility after the item has been found and scrolled into view.

Fixes

• Force findFieldHolder and the depending sub-commands (findField and findFieldError) to always find the first matching field holder by label or field name.
• addPage and addPiece commands are now retrieving a new instance first before posting the actual data, to avoid issues unexpected UI confirmations about unsaved changes.

@apostrophecms-pro/palette 4.12.0

A beautiful visual interface for styling your website without writing any code. @apostrophecms-pro/palette allows content creators and designers to adjust colors, fonts, spacing, and other design elements directly from the frontend, with changes appearing instantly. Developers configure which CSS properties can be modified, and the module automatically injects the updated styles into every page. Explore our documentation to learn how this extension can enhance your project. Once you're ready, obtain a license and install it through Apostrophe Workspaces. For further details or inquiries, feel free to contact us or visit our pricing page.

Adds

• Add migrate-to-styles task.

Changes

• Updates README to indicate deprecation and document migration task.

@apostrophecms-pro/seo-assistant 1.2.3

The SEO Assistant module generates SEO page metadata automatically through the use of AI. It comes configured for use with the OpenAI models. It is also possible to configure your own providers, see related section. This extension requires that the project also have the @apostrophecms-pro/automatic-translation and apostrophecms/seo extensions installed. Explore our documentation to learn how this extension can enhance your project. Once you’re ready, obtain a license and install it through Apostrophe Workspaces. For further details or inquiries, feel free to contact us or visit our pricing page.

Changes

• Changes convertDoc() to ignore requirements in nested fields.

Free modules

@apostrophecms/apostrophe-astro 1.8.0

This module integrates ApostropheCMS into your Astro application.

Adds

• Add global styles and widget styles support
• Adds onBeforeWidgetRender hook

@apostrophecms/import-export 3.5.2

This module enables import and export of pages and pieces, with or without related documents such as files, images and other related types.

Adds

• Support for testing with or without pro modules available (without, by default)

@apostrophecms/openapi-generator 1.0.0

This module automatically generates custom API documentation and client SDKs for your ApostropheCMS project. It discovers all routes—including Pro module endpoints—and creates comprehensive OpenAPI 3.1 specs with zero configuration.

Adds

• initial release

@apostrophecms/seo 1.4.0

Comprehensive SEO module providing meta field management and Schema.org structured data generation (JSON-LD) for all pages and pieces.

Adds

• Adds Structured data and the related fields to page and piece types.
• Adds basic organization information to all pages.
• Adds unit tests.

Utilities

@apostrophecms-openapi 1.1.0

The official OpenAPI 3.1 specification for the ApostropheCMS REST API. Explore endpoints interactively, mock the API for rapid prototyping, or generate type-safe SDKs in your preferred language.

Adds

• Adds @apostrophecms/styles endpoints
• Adds _copyingId request body property

Fixes

• Removes examples from endpoints

postcss-viewport-to-container-toggle 2.2.0

A plugin for PostCSS that allows to toggle between viewport and container units based on the presence of a container data attribute.

Adds

• Add standalone pure JS transformer export (no postcss dependencies)