12 new features of Hippo CMS 10 to look forward to

Hippo CMS 10 is a major new release of Hippo CMS. Many new features and improvements have been introduced with this release. We list here, in no particular order, top 12 new features/changes that we think are of the most importance.

12 new features of Hippo CMS 10

1. Versioning

   The last public version of Hippo CMS was 7.9.x. However, they have now changed to semantic versioning and the latest version is 10.0.1 FCS. The community version is already available whereas the enterprise edition will be rolled out in two phases in May and August respectively.

2. Hippo Essentials

   This is an easy way of adding components to your CMS build. For example; with few mouse clicks in the CMS you can add modules such as blogs, videos, faq, menus, banners, sitemap, taxonomy, Google Maps, etc... After building your cms locally for the first time just go to the path /essentials and configure the components that you want installed.

3. Java & Maven Versions

   The latest release of Hippo CMS requires Java 8 and Maven 3+. The lowest version of Maven that is supported is 3.0.5

4. UX[note]UX = User Experience[/note]

   The new CMS interface has been completely refreshed with user experience enhancements that include following changes:
   • A much more efficient placement and control of the document tabs
   • An improved page and menu management user interface
   • Drag-and-drop and multi file capabilities for uploading files
   • Multi-layered icons that can display multiple states.
   
   

5. Rendering templates on-the-fly

   Now the page templates can be rendered on-the-fly. What it means is that choosing a template is much more convenient with relatively less need for change of code or redeploy of application. It is achieved by having multiple versions of the templates within the setup. This kind of template rendering only works with freemaker templates. More info on template rendering can be found here.

6. Web Files

   The idea behind this is to have freemaker templates stored inside the repository as web files, instead of storing them in the webapp, giving developers more flexibility. What's more, this is the recommended way of templating in Hippo 10. The cms will automatically synchronise a file that is opened for editing and its version in repository.

7. Content Experiment

   This feature brings fully integrated A/B testing within the cms. It is fine grained to be used at a componnent level in a page. Upto 25 variants can be used for testing a component.

8. Audience Experiment

   This is one of the unique features of Hippo CMS. Hippo tests and reports whether an alternative configuration converts better for a specified targeting audience or for the general visitor. This powerful experiment is currently unique for Hippo and combines the Hippo Relevance engine with the new Experiments capability.

9. Trends

   This feature finds interesting/relevant trends within a stream of users. For e.g. which country they are from, which city and what sections of the sites they have visited. This feature is part of Relevance module that was introduced in Hippo 7.8.0.

10. Two-factor authentication option

    Hippo now provides optional two-factor authentication for user login. The process relies on second verification mechanism, apart from user credentials, like SMS or mobile-app.

11. Repository synchronisation add-on

    Mainly for Hippo's enterprise customers this add-on helps in upgrading/updating clusters with minimum of downtime.

12. Upgrade Verifier

    This is a very handy external tool for developers during upgrade of major Hippo versions. The verifier gives reports of conflicts in configuration between current version and the targeted version. It also provides upgrade instructions and relevant online documentation links.

Feature overview table

Community vs. Enterprise Editions

Feature	Community availability	Enterprise availability
Restyled UI	yes	yes
Drag-and-drop multi-file upload	yes	yes
Improved page and menu management UI	yes	yes
Experiments		yes
Trends		yes
Two-factor authentication for the CMS		yes
Repository synchronisation and replication		yes
Upgrade verifier		yes
LDAP support		yes
Switch template	yes	yes
Web files	yes	yes
Improved ‘selections’ tool in the Setup and Feature library	yes	yes
Improved configuration options in the Setup and Feature library	yes	yes
Google maps component in the Setup and Feature library	yes	yes
Switch template support and variants of many features in the Setup and Feature library	yes	yes

Sources:

• http://www.onehippo.org/library/about/release-notes/10.0.1-release-notes.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/trails/developer-trail/introduction.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/trails/getting-started/hippo-essentials-getting-started.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/library/concepts/template-composer/template-composer-containers.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/library/concepts/web-files/switch-template-support.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/library/enterprise/enterprise-features/targeting/trends.html
• http://www.onehippo.com/en/resources/blogs/2015/4/semantic-versioning-and-hippo-10.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/library/enterprise/enterprise-features/targeting/trends.html
• http://www.onehippo.org/library/enterprise/enterprise-features/synchronization/synchronization-add-on.html