The 6.1.3 release is a maintenance release which includes usability, security and performance improvements.
Time Zone Support
Oqtane stores all date/times in UTC format.. however UTC is not the optimal format when displaying date/times to end users. This release provides the ability for an administrator to specify the default time zone for each site, and it also provides the ability for a user to specify their preferred time zone. This allows modules to convert UTC date/times into local date/time format for display purposes, and to convert from local date/time into UTC date/time for storage purposes. ModuleBase has been enhanced with methods to simplify these tasks: UtcToLocal(date) and LocalToUtc(date).
Module Header & Footer
When managing content, it is sometimes useful to be able to include additional content above or below a module instance on a page. This content could be text or HTML markup to display to users, inline styles to customize the appearance of module content, or even JavaScript. This release provides the ability for page administrators to include header and footer content in the Module Settings UI.
Module Import & Export
Oqtane contains an IPortable interface which modules can implement to include import/export functionality for content. Previously the administrative UI included only a very simplistic UI, allowing for the import and export of content in raw text format. In this release, the framework has been enhanced to allow a page administrator to import and export content from files as well.
IServerStartup
Oqtane is an extensible framework. It allows modules to dynamically register their services at run-time using the IServerStartup interface which provides methods corresponding to the .NET Startup methods. The order of service registration is important and this release moves the location of the IServerStartup logic so that it executes later in the Configure method. This ensures that middleware such as Tenant Resolution are executed before any module services and it also allows custom endpoints to be registered more easily.
Url Mapping
The Url Mapping capability is primarily intended for identifying broken links in a site. It is also very useful when migrating from another CMS to Oqtane as it allows you to map legacy urls to their new location. Yet another benefit of Url Mapping is that it can be used to generate custom urls for tracking engagement. For example if you have a link from your site to an external site, you can create a custom Url on your site which will track the number of times that users click the link to navigate to the external site.
Security
This release has been upgraded to the latest .NET SDK version 9.0.5 which includes security patches for any issues identified in prior .NET 9 SDK releases from Microsoft.
Open Source
To date, the open source project has recorded over 2900 pull requests from 58 contributors and has published 55 official releases, which ranks it among the most active open source projects within the .NET Foundation. The Oqtane framework continues to evolve at a rapid pace to meet the needs of the .NET community. The 6.1.3 release is available for download on Github and is running in production at https://www.oqtane.org, https://www.blazorcms.net, and https://www.blazorkit.net.
