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Haiku is built using the CMS technology called Plone. As with all technologies, Plone has progressed significantly in the last few years. There is a newer version of Plone that comes with many great benefits, and improvements that we can utilise to make your editing experiences better, and also making for a better product that we can continue to develop and extend.

The upgrade that we are going to carry out will take a significant amount of development time. We are currently estimating that it will take six months of development. During this time period, we will not be developing any new significant functionality, so that we can focus on the upgrade and get it completed in a reasonable time frame. We will, of course, continue to fix any bugs that show up whilst we carry out the upgrade work. 

Whilst we will not be carrying out and significant new development work, the upgrade itself will bring with it a huge variety of improvements, not limited to:

  • Upgrade to the underlying code (Python) version - this ensures that we are using the latest and supported technology and security protocols.
  • Performance improvements throughout Haiku from how and what code is written by the developers, to how editors and anonymous users interact with the system. Faster and more streamlined in all areas for editors as well as anonymous browsers of the content.
  • Up to date and in line with the latest API's to ensure smooth and effective integrations.
  • Upgrades to the rich text editor which will bring vast improvements to the extendibility of the rich text editor, as well as a better content browser, vastly improved way of working with images in the rich text editor and much easier tools for editors to control the formatting and styling of the rich text content.
  • Significant editor user interface improvements including bulk editing actions for editing the items in a folder, easier portlet management, much more powerful widgets for content reuse and display, better history and change views for content, quick view of items and improved cover pages user interface.
  • Improved theming processes. This will allow for faster theme generation and more configurable and detailed theme management.
  • Advanced systematic testing.
  • Less system-wide dependencies ensuring that incidents can be isolated. 
  • Cleaner code and the removal of technical debt that can happen when trying to use more advanced technologies by backporting them from later versions, which brings complications but features that editors require.
  • Improvements to the Haicloud functionality.
  • Improved security, removing old dependencies on older and end of life systems to ensure that we can continue to effectively apply security updates.
  • Overall, a faster, more maintainable and extendible version of Haiku.

There are loads of other benefits that we will be able to gain from this upgrade at the same time. This essential work will provide you with a much improved Haiku that will enable us to grow it further with the needs and requirements of the users. Whilst carrying out the upgrade, we will stay in touch and show you some of the exciting new changes that you can expect to see.