Release Notes

“Move to Group” for group-switchers

Administrators have long been able to use “With checked items…” to find “Move to Group” for moving events, images, and more between groups. In LiveWhale 2.20.0, this behavior has been extended to all group switchers, whether or not you’re an administrator.

Auto height/width now allowed in data-image-size definitions

Since LiveWhale 2.17+ you can use data-image-size=”600x400” to only allow wysiwyg images of precisely that size to be inserted into an editable area. Now, you can use auto in those settings as well to lock just width or just height in your page template or content layout, allowing the other dimension to be filled proportionally with the image size. [docs]

<div id="my-image" class="editable" data-image-size="800xauto"></div><div id="my-image2" class="editable" data-image-size="autox450"></div>

New handler: onInputFilter

By default, LiveWhale will sanitize and strip certain formatting from POSTed variables, and accepting WYSIWYG data might be stripped. If you’re using LiveWhale Forms or native Custom Fields, this is handled automatically for you. However, you might have a custom module that includes its own custom fields, outside of the native config. In these cases, supporting WYSIWYG submissions will require adding your custom field to the input filter. This can be done using the new onInputFilter handler. [docs]

New calendar theming options

Hero image width and height

The “Use first image image as hero” functionality in LiveWhale Calendar has, for a long time, returned an 800px width version of your main image. This was enough for lots of calendar designs, but not very flexible (and some have already been using JavaScript workarounds to customize its width/height). Now, you can do so easily in your calendar’s widget settings: new options for hero_image_width and hero_image_height let you set precise dimensions for the hero image display variable. [docs]

Image ALT text

Calendar event details now support the image_alt variable, containing the ALT text for the main thumbnail image, and it’s also been added to the default event details component for when the image is set as a hero image. This ALT text was already available as part of the fully-composed image display variable, but having image_alt separately can help those wishing to craft more customized HTML designs. [docs]

New optional JSON endpoint values

Balloons

Add /response_fields/balloons to your JSON API query to see the precise balloon prioritization that your editors have configured for news, profiles, blurbs, etc. on the back-end.

Live/Hidden Status

Include /response_fields/status in your JSON API request to distinguish between live and hidden results (1=live, 2=hidden). As before, hidden results will only appear when using ?include_hidden=1 (requires being logged-in or using an auth token). [docs]

• Fixed an accessibility issue where the hidden “cancel” link for customized URLs could erroneously be tabbable, causing visible focus to disappear.
• Added title to widget preview iframe.
• Fixed timepicker scrolling when using keyboard.
• Made quick upload keyboard and screen-reader usable.
• Fixed labels on Settings page.
• Made “remove” places button keyboard/SR usable.
• Added checkbox screen-reader text to widget editor.
• Fixed keyboard issue when multiselect was only tabbable option in an overlay (i.e., places selector).
• Fixed ALT text on map images in locations manager.
• Updated status dropdown to use role=listbox always.
• Updated search results sidebar to use accessible multiselect.
• Added aria button states to widget editor option filters.

• Added aria-live announcements to the front-end calendar. The calendar now announces to screen-readers live results for each date, view, search, and filter change as they occur. (e.g., “31 events found from March 4, 2025 with tags ‘Alumni, Reunion’”). The mini-cal also announces which month is in view as the calendar gets navigated.
• Fixed an issue causing configured ALT text to not be used when generating calendar event listings for day/week/all views.
• Accessibility improvements to the back-end images editor and modal close button focus state.
• The public submission form’s submission_group field now support explicit labeling.
• Improved a few labels/ALT texts of images in the back-end image manager.
• Numerous accessibility improvements to the images manager, live/hidden switcher, and front-end calendar view selector.

• Add the year to the start date of a calendar event’s date range when it differs from the year of the end date.
• Added month and year variables to the calendar’s month day template.
• SiteImprove crawler is now permitted to bypass normal bot/scanner rules to refresh the page cache on its own, to ensure more up-to-date reporting for SiteImprove users.

• The calendar “home” view will now only render if the enable_home_view option is set to true.
• LiveWhale now strips username from group weather_id field when saving, since browsers can sometimes erroneously autofill.
• The events ICAL parser now honors X-WP-IMAGES-URL the same way it interprets image ATTACH syntax. [docs]

• Updates to front-end event date displays
  • Changed the date and time format for multi-day events on the front-end calendar (list and details views). The complete date range is now reflected more elegantly: instead of “until March 14,” the full “March 7 - 14” is shown, for example.
  • Events that repeat every X days/weeks/months/years now indicate the repeat pattern in details view (“Repeats every other day,” “Repeats every three weeks,” etc.).
• Prevented themed copies of important core functionality (livewhale/theme/core/scripts) from being overridden in theme folders. If found, they are skipped on the front-end and flagged as warnings on the Diagnostics page.
• Removed a restriction preventing linked calendars from loading all events from another LiveWhale installation.

• Re-enabled backspace and delete in Content Layouts when WYSIWYG editing (disabled in LiveWhale 2.18.0). Instead, if any typing would result in merging or removing editable areas (class=”mceEditable”), undo that action.

• Added robots.txt overwrite protection for LiveWhale-managed robot rules.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the group calendar url from appearing in the canonical URL for individual events.
• Fixed an issue that could cause an erroneous redirect on a tag details request.
• Fixed an issue, introduced in 2.16.0, that could unintentionally affect the default formatting of /live/rss/ API endpoints. This fix restores the normal RSS syntax unless you’ve specifically chosen to override it using _ingredients/templates/widgets/events.rss_default.xml.
• Upgraded the clean-css-cli npm module to version 5.6.3, fixing an issue where styles in :not() declarations could become malformed.
• Fixed an issue that prevented async curl requests from being able to bypass the load balancer.
• Removed defunct “Hide Details” toggle from image uploader modal.

• Fixed an issue where line breaks or whitespace inside of calendar settings could result in pagination not appearing for “All Upcoming Events” lists.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a javascript error in the frontend calendar when displaying multi-day events that also repeat over a range.
• Fixed an issue causing event times to display in the wrong timezone in the “RSVP confirmed from waitlist” notification email.
• Fixed an issue where lw_layout_block actions (add/remove/reorder) weren’t always being properly shown and hidden for Content Layouts on the back-end editors.
• Fixed an issue where Content Layouts didn’t appear in alphabetical order by title in the insert dropdown.
• Fix a bug that removed a script tag from a wysiwyg field when it was the only content in the field.
• Fixes for bugs introduced in 2.19.0
  • Fixed an issue that can sometimes erroneously disable nested widgets when rendering a page.
  • Fixed an issue affecting LiveWhale Calendar widget links to events.

• Updated the auto-generated ICAL links for “only this event” vs “all events in series” to properly return the correct event/series even from an event in the middle of a repeating event.
• Fixed an issue where replacing an image file with one of different dimensions wasn’t always clearing custom thumbnail selections. Those thumbnail dimensions are now reset when the image size changes.
• Fixed an issue that could affect Linked Calendars ability to immediately refresh events after Customize checkboxes have been unchecked. Added clarified help text to editor when Customize gets unchecked (e.g., “Note: Original location from feed will sync when you save this event. This may take up to 10 minutes. In the meantime, the current location may still appear here and on the public-facing calendar.”).
• Fixed an issue that prevented single-sign-on AUTH_ATTRIBUTES from being properly passed from stored cookies into custom LW modules.
• Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause a delay before a hidden item became visible to the public after setting it as live.
• Fixed an issue that prevented trashed items from restoring their custom field values when restored.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a prior version of an updated URL to be shown in widget/api results instead of the most current URL.
• Fixed an issue in LiveWhale Calendar where links to event tags were sometimes going to /live/tags rather than the calendar filtered-by-tag view.
• Removed details template customizations from the LiveWhale Calendar group editor since they are a CMS-only feature.
• Fixed an issue where events from Day View (multi-day events overlapping or ending today) were being excluded from only_today/true API and widget results.
• Fixed an issue where clicking a link to dynamic content on a site where a LiveWhale login has recently expired could erroneously cause a session timeout error to be shown.
• Fix bug that inserted the user’s group in the calendar’s subscription menu header on non-group calendars.
• Fixed the submit button label on the multiple image upload screen to properly reflect plurality of images.
• Fixed a PHP8 error that could cause issues with the Page Error manager.
• Fixed an issue where a failed database connection could result in a redirect loop when attempting login, instead of correctly pointing to the database error page.
• Fixed location labels in the calendar’s now showing menu. Now, even if you don’t use the locations dropdown filter, you can hard-link to /all/locations/place_id and show calendar results matching that saved location (including the location title).
• Fixed an issue with admin auth tokens that prevented them from returning certain hidden results when requested from the API (?include_hidden=1).
• Fixed an issue with AP Style where duplicate am/pm flags weren’t always correctly being removed, depending on whitespace in the time format settings.
• Fixed an issue where tags in public submissions could erroneously be split by spaces when only one tag was submitted.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Content Layour UI for class=”lw_layout_block” (buttons for add, remove, move up, move down) from appearing in back-end editors when cursor was placed inside of a content layout.
• Fixed an issue that could cause LiveWhale Calendar pages to generate event links starting with // erroneously when loading calendar views within an iframe.
• LiveWhale CMS Only
  • Fixed an issue where file upload fields weren’t loading properly when in a LiveWhale Form attached to an event RSVP.
  • Fixed an issue where Event RSVPs with extra LiveWhale Forms attached could fail Recaptcha validation.
  • Fixed an issue where requesting a custom details template that was missing (404 error) would fail to redirect to the working default template.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause problems with gallery widgets nested inside the format_widget setting of another widget.
  • Fixed an issue with LiveWhale Blogs that could prevent certain group template variables from being correctly populated on a blog post with a customized URL.
  • Fixed an issue where shared blurbs could sometimes erroneously show a broken link icon in the manager, even if they don’t have any underlying details URLs.
  • Fixed an issue where custom blog post templates could not display custom variable values.
  • Silenced broken-URL warnings when saving blurb types that don’t have details pages (no front-end linking exists). Also updated the editor page to link to the back-end editor for such shared blurbs instead of any front-end URL.
  • Fixed an issue where using a /path/to/custom/template at the end of a details URL could get dropped if redirecting to a newer version of that same URL.

• The user setting “Disable minimization, concatenation, and client-side browser caching of all scripts and stylesheets” now applies to back-end resources as well as front-end styles/scripts.
• Custom fields that are configured without a unique name now appear as a dashboard configuration warning.

• You can now use “url” in the event_share_icons calendar component to create custom share links for other services.
• For custom /live/ endpoints in subdirectories, folders before /live/ are stripped when processing LiveURL requests.

• Unmapped X- attributes in the iCAl parser are now passed through to the saved data buffer where they will be available to custom module code.
• Updated default 404 page for installations where it has not been customized.

• Performance Improvements
  • Removed hidden “summary” field from calendar month view to improve loading times.
  • Custom fields are now only loaded on event listings if they are included in the event theme component.
  • Variables that are commented out in calendar components are now skipped when pulling event listings to improve loading times.
  • Improved search page performance by adjusting the handling of exact phrases and by improved segmentation of search index data by content type.
  • Improved caching of calendar results in cases where multiple themes or timezones may be used.
  • Improved performance by increasing caching of per-group timezone settings.
  • Improved performance of front-end events requests by indexing certain hide_repeats information.
• LiveWhale CMS only: Added some security checks to prevent spam submissions in LiveWhale forms.

• Back-end ES6 files have been moved to JS files, to take advantage of increased browser support for ES6.
• Performance Improvements
  • Extends search stopwords (small words skipped in search queries) to another context as a performance improvement.
  • Blocked /live/ requests with a massive REST depth (more than fifty instances of /) which we’ve seen correspond to malicious and spam requests.
  • Fixed an issue where Barracuda user agent link scanners aren’t properly processing url-encoded ampersands before making requests to the web server.
  • Fixed a performance issue when loading backend managers for installations that have enabled the drafts-based workflow feature.
  • If a database is temporarily unavailable and unable to connect, prevent repeated attempts from the current process which can slow down the server.
  • Improved cache performance for requests using &li_ or &trk tracking variables.
  • Updated security filters for malicious requests and move some of them earlier in the cache process for a faster error response.
  • Adjusted search handling of numeric search terms.
  • The hourly profile sync now skips the Midnight–4am window when other resource-intensive nightly tasks take place.
  • Optimizations to profile syncing to reduce CPU load.
  • Miscellaneous performance improvements especially to 404 page handling.
  • Updated database optimization to improve performance of pulling current and upcoming events.
  • Optimization to the getUrl function when performing async requests.

• Improved performance of logic that generates front-end checkboxes for calendar categories.
• Adjusted the timing of some overnight database optimization to improve performance.
• Fixed an issue where the SiteImprove scanner was being blocked from generating new image variations, which could cause false positives when scanning for 404 errors.
• Fixed an issue with SAML integrations in cases where the IdP sends duplicate values for FriendlyName in its SSO response.