Features¶

• Add Vietnamese translation by Hoai-Thu Vuong

• Don’t generate gallery index if the destination directory is site root and it would conflict with blog index (Issue #3133)

• All built-in themes now support updated timestamp fields in posts. The update time, if it is specified and different from the posting time, will be displayed as "{postDate} (${messages("updated")} {updateDate})". If no update time is specified, the posting time will be displayed alone.

• All built-in themes now support the DATE_FANCINESS option.

• Theme bundles are now parsed using the configparser module and can support newlines inside entries as well as comments

• Make bootstrap4 navbar color configurable with THEME_CONFIG['navbar_light'] (Issue #2863)

Bugfixes¶

• Use UTF-8 instead of system encoding for gallery metadata.yml file

• Do not remove first heading in document (reST document title) if USE_REST_DOCINFO_METADATA is disabled (Issue #3124)

• Remove NO_DOCUTILS_TITLE_TRANSFORM setting, this is now default behavior if USE_REST_DOCINFO_METADATA is disabled (Issue #2382, #3124)

• Enforce trailing slash for directories in nikola auto (Issue #3140)

• Galleries with baguetteBox don’t glitch out on the first image anymore (Issue #3141)

Removed features¶

• Moved tag_cloud_data.json generation to a separate tagcloud plugin (Issue #1696)

• The webassets library is no longer required, we now manually bundle files (Issue #3074)

Features¶

• New data_file option for chart shortcode and directive (Issue #3129)

• Show the filename of the missing file when nikola serve can't find a file (i.e. when an 404 error occurs).

• Better error messages for JSON download failures in nikola plugin and nikola theme (Issue getnikola/plugins#282)

• Use Babel instead of the locale module to better handle localizations (Issues #2606, #3121)

• Change DATE_FORMAT formats to CLDR formats (Issue #2606)

Bugfixes¶

• Fix listing installed themes if theme directory is missing.

• Watch correct output folder in nikola auto (Issue #3119)

• Fix post fragment dependencies when posts are only available in a non-default language (Issue #3112)

• Implement MARKDOWN_EXTENSION_CONFIGS properly (Issue #2970)

• Ignore .DS_Store when processing listings (Issue #3099)

• Remove redundant check for tag similarity (Mentioned in Issue #3123)

Important compatibility changes not mentioned previously¶

• You need <a class="reference"> (instead of image-reference) to activate the lightbox now

Features¶

• Add NAVIGATION_ALT_LINKS option, displayed on the right side in bootstrap4/bootblog4 (Issue #3030)

• Added documentation of Post objects to list of template variables (Issue #3003)

• Support featured posts in bootblog4 (Issue #2964)

• Add THEME_CONFIG setting that themes can use in any way

• Use youtube-nocookie.com for better privacy in youtube reST directive and improve the appearance of the player

Featured post details: https://getnikola.com/handbook.html#featured-posts

Bugfixes¶

• Improve appearance of bootblog4 on mobile (Issue #3069)

• Make smartjoin more flexible (Issue #3080)

• Make post-list and post_list synonymous (Issue #3083)

• Support CATEGORY_DESTPATH_NAMES with pages following destpath

• Make CATEGORY_PAGES_FOLLOW_DESTPATH more resilient (Issue #3081)

• Guard against null items in gallery meta files (Issues #3076, #3077)

• Respect USE_FILENAME_AS_TITLE in galleries with a meta file

• Fix gallery metadata for multilingual sites (Issue #3078)

Important compatibility changes¶

• Rename crumbs.tmpl to ui_helper.tmpl and the breadcrumbs bar function to breadcrumbs (your templates may need changing as well)

• Rename post.is_mathjax to post.has_math. Themes using post.is_mathjax must be updated; it is recommended that they are changed to use math_helper.tmpl.

• Reading reST docinfo metadata, including first heading as title, requires USE_REST_DOCINFO_METADATA now (Issue #2987)

• RSS feeds might have changed their places due to RSS_PATH behavior changes (you may need to change RSS_PATH, RSS_FILENAME_BASE)

• Atom feeds for archives and Atom pagination are no longer supported (Issue #3016)

• Sections are replaced by categories (Issue #2833)

Features¶

• Support hackerthemes.com themes and renamed bootswatch_theme command subtheme (Issue #3049)

• Add DISABLE_MAIN_ATOM_FEED setting (Issue #3016, Issue #3039)

• Add ATOM_FILENAME_BASE setting (defaults to index for existing sites, but feed for new sites) (Issue #3016)

• Add CATEGORY_DESTPATH_AS_DEFAULT, CATEGORY_DESTPATH_TRIM_PREFIX, CATEGORY_DESTPATH_FIRST_DIRECTORY_ONLY settings, as part of replacing sections with categories (Issue #2833)

• Tags draft, private and mathjax are no longer treated special if USE_TAG_METADATA is set to False (default for new sites) (Issue #2761)

• Replace draft and private tags with a status meta field (supports published, featured, draft, private) and mathjax with .. has_math: yes (Issue #2761)

• Rename TAG_PAGES_TITLES → TAG_TITLES, TAG_PAGES_DESCRIPTIONS → TAG_DESCRIPTIONS.

• Rename CATEGORY_PAGES_TITLES → CATEGORY_TITLES, CATEGORY_PAGES_DESCRIPTIONS → CATEGORY_DESCRIPTIONS.

• Produce a better error message when a template referenced in another template is missing (Issue #3055)

• Support captioned images and image ordering in galleries, as well as arbitrary metadata through a new metadata.yml file (Issue #3017, Issue #3050, Issue #2837)

• New ATOM_PATH setting (Issue #2971)

• Make crumbs available to all pages

• Allowing to customize RSS and Atom feed extensions with RSS_EXTENSION, ATOM_EXTENSION settings (Issue #3041)

• Allowing to customize filename base appended to RSS_PATH with RSS_FILENAME_BASE setting (Issue #3041)

• Use basic ipynb template by default for slightly better appearance and behavior

• Fixing behavior of RSS_PATH to do what the documentation says it does (Issue #3024)

• Add support for fragments in path handlers (Issue #3032)

• New METADATA_VALUE_MAPPING setting to allow for flexible global modification of metadata (Issue #3025)

• New smartjoin template function/filter that joins lists and leaves strings as-is (Issue #3025)

• Explain index.html conflicts better (Issue #3022)

• Recognize both TEASER_END and (new) END_TEASER (Issue #3010) (warning: if you perform manual splits, the regex change means new indexes must be used)

• New MARKDOWN_EXTENSION_CONFIGS setting (Issue #2970)

• Replace flowr.js with justified-layout.js by Flickr (does not require jQuery!)

• bootblog4 is the new default theme (Issue #2964)

• New bootstrap4 and bootblog4 themes (Issue #2964)

• New Thai translation by Narumol Hankrotha and Jean Jordaan

• Support for Commento comment system (Issue #2773)

• New PRESERVE_ICC_PROFILES option to control whether ICC profiles are preserved when copying images.

• Use baguetteBox in Bootstrap theme (part of Issue #2777)

• New default-config command to generate a clean configuration.

• New thumbnail shortcode similar to the reStructuredText thumbnail directive (via Issue #2809)

• Rewrite nikola auto with asyncio and aiohttp (Issue #2850)

• New listings shortcode similar to the reStructuredText listings directive (Issue #2868)

• Switch to reStructuredText’s new HTML 5 renderer (Issue #2874)

• Deprecate html4css1.css in favor of rst_base.css (Issue #2874)

• Add support for MetadataExtractor plugins that allow custom, extensible metadata extraction from posts (Issue #2830)

• Support YAML and TOML metadata in 2-file posts (via Issue #2830)

• Renamed UNSLUGIFY_TITLES → FILE_METADATA_UNSLUGIFY_TITLES (Issue #2840)

• Add NIKOLA_SHOW_TRACEBACKS environment variable that shows full tracebacks instead of one-line summaries

• Use PRETTY_URLS by default on all sites (Issue #1838)

• Feed link generation is completely refactored (Issue #2844)

• Let path handlers return absolute URLs (Issue #2876)

• Add BLOG_EMAIL to global context to make it available for templates (Issue #2968)

Bugfixes¶

• Fixes behavior for posts not available in default language (Issues #2956 and #3073)

• Always follow FEED_LENGTH for Atom feeds

• Apply filters to all Atom feeds

• Read file metadata if compiler metadata exists and prefer it over compiler metadata (Issue #3008)

• Rename DISABLE_INDEXES_PLUGIN_INDEX_AND_ATOM_FEED to DISABLE_INDEXES and DISABLE_INDEXES_PLUGIN_RSS_FEED to DISABLE_MAIN_RSS_FEED (Issue #3039)

• Make chart shortcode its own plugin and make the reST directive depend on it.

• Put post_list shortcode in its own plugin and make the reST directive depend on it.

• Don’t silence syntax errors and other exceptions that occur while reading metadata

• Use documented dateutil API for time zone list (Issue #3006)

• Handle trailing slash redirects with query strings correctly in nikola serve (Issue #3000)

• Fix w3c validation errors for itemscope entries in default themes

• Hide “Incomplete language” message for overrides of complete languages

• Handle '/' and other absolute paths better in POSTS / PAGES / TRANSLATIONS (Issue #2982)

• Fix loading non-default languages

• Support KaTeX for reST display math (Issue #2888)

• Use npm for asset management instead of bower, which was deprecated (Issue #2790)

• Properly handle SHOW_INDEX_PAGE_NAVIGATION with Jinja templates (Issue #2960)

• Prevent crashes due to Windows-specific code in auto running on all platforms (Issue #2940)

• Don’t run hyphenate on <pre> blocks (Issue #2939)

• Make errors in reST display in logs again

• Unquote paths given to link:// magic URLs (Issue #2934)

• Specify UTF-8 input encoding for Mako as default (Issue #2930)

• Don't trigger rebuilds in auto mode for files it's safe to ignore (Issue #2906)

• Fix padding for Jupyter code blocks (Issue #2927)

• Apply SCHEDULE_ALL to posts only (Issue #2921)

• Restore version number to Bootswatch URLs (Issue #2916)

• Do not strip trailing slash in slug magic links

• Ignore empty tags in HTML metadata reader (Issue #2890)

• Do not remove doctype if add_header_permalinks or deduplicate_ids are used

• Handle empty slug metadata (Issue #2887)

• Fix crash when compiling empty .html posts (Issue #2851)

• Make failures to get source commit hash non-fatal in github_deploy (Issue #2847)

• Less cryptic error when guessing format from extension in new_post fails

• Use Jupyter name more consistently in docs

• Support CODE_COLOR_SCHEME in Jupyter notebooks (Issue #2093)

• Language was not passed to title and link generation for page indexes

• Addressed issue with snaps not allowing certain functions to work properly.

Removed conf.py settings¶

The following settings have been removed. Nikola will now always behave as if the value was what is displayed afer the setting name.

• FEED_PREVIEWIMAGE = True

• SITEMAP_INCLUDE_FILELESS_DIRS = True

• USE_OPEN_GRAPH = True

• USE_BASE_TAG = False

Removed features¶

• Removed Colorbox, baguetteBox is used instead (Issue #2777)

• Removed googleplus comments (no longer supported) (Issue #635)

• Removed the slides directive for docutils, it will now be a separate plugin.

• Dropped Python 2 and Python 3.3 support (oldest supported version is 3.4)

• Removed nikola install_theme — use nikola theme instead

• Droppped insecure post “encryption” feature

• Stopped supporting all deprecated config options

• Dropped annotations support (annotateit.org closed down in March 2017)

• Removed taxonomy option also_create_classifications_from_other_languages (Issue #2785) and generate_atom_feeds_for_post_lists (Issue #3016)

• Removed old 7-line metadata format (Issue #2839)

• Atom feeds are now limited to one page (Issue #3016)

• Removed sections (replaced by improved categories) (Issue #2833)

zen modernized and uses new Font Awesome¶

The Zen theme was thoroughly modernized. The modernization means that:

• Font Awesome v5 is used by default, you can switch to Fork Awesome v1 by installing zen-forkawesome

• Your conf.py needs changing to reflect new icon names and classes (Font Awesome v5 examples: 'fa fa-tags' and 'fab fa-twitter')

• the zen-ipython theme is not needed anymore, zen and zen-jinja handle Jupyter posts correctly (as do the built-in themes)

• the theme internals were rewritten to more closely match built-in themes (notably, galleries Just Work™)

DATE_FORMAT changed¶

DATE_FORMAT uses different tokens. If you customized DATE_FORMAT, you need to change it to use CLDR formats. (Hint: the new default value is YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm)

babeldates plugin obsoleted, LocaleBorg internal API changed¶

The babeldates plugin is obsoleted by the changes. If you were using it, rename BABEL_DATE_FORMAT to DATE_FORMAT and remove the plugin.

In addition, the LocaleBorg extension API was simplified. The new API expects extension authors to create functions matching the signatures and assign them to the following names:

• LocaleBorg.datetime_formatter(date, date_format, lang, locale)

• LocaleBorg.in_string_formatter(date, mode, custom_format, lang, locale)

Translation help wanted¶

However, this means that we needed to reorganize translations. In order to have things in a working state, I used some guessworks and tried to produce a working form. However, not all languages will have grammatically correct output at this point. This is why we need help from our community around the world.

So, if you have the time, please help us check if our translations (on Transifex or GitHub) are correct. Specifically, we need to know if the date tags (in “Posts for XX” messages) are correctly placed. We also need to know if the translation for those fits the required form. To find out, you can run the test script and check how all the forms look for your locale. If they don't fit, they can be overridden: for example, Polish uses “Posty z {month_year:MMMM yyyy}” and takes advantage of the last bullet point.

As a bonus, the use of Babel means that it's even easier to use "human-friendly" dates on your blog — try setting DATE_FORMAT = 'long'.

Changes to posts¶

If your posts are using the section metadata field, you should rename it to category. Nikola will do this conversion automatically if no category is specified, while also issuing a warning.

Changes to configuration¶

• POSTS_SECTION_TITLE has been merged into CATEGORY_TITLES (whose name has changed from CATEGORY_PAGES_TITLES)

• POSTS_SECTION_DESCRIPTIONS has been merged into CATEGORY_DESCRIPTIONS (whose name has changed from CATEGORY_PAGES_DESCRPTIONS)

• In order to activate the path-based behavior, enable CATEGORY_DESTPATH_AS_DEFAULT

• To control what is used to generate paths, you can set CATEGORY_DESTPATH_TRIM_PREFIX and CATEGORY_DESTPATH_FIRST_DIRECTORY_ONLY (old sections behavior/default values are False and True respectively, but flipping them makes the feature much more flexible)

• POSTS_SECTION_NAME is now CATEGORY_DESTPATH_NAMES

• POSTS_SECTION_COLORS is not supported by default, but you can replace it with some manual tinkering

• CATEGORY_ALLOW_HIERARCHIES, CATEGORY_OUTPUT_FLAT_HIERARCHY are heavily recommended if you use CATEGORY_DESTPATH_AS_DEFAULT, and required if you use CATEGORY_PAGES_FOLLOW_DESTPATH

Recreating the old behavior of sections¶

CATEGORY_ALLOW_HIERARCHIES = True
CATEGORY_OUTPUT_FLAT_HIERARCHY = True
CATEGORY_DESTPATH_AS_DEFAULT = True
CATEGORY_DESTPATH_TRIM_PREFIX = False
CATEGORY_DESTPATH_FIRST_DIRECTORY_ONLY = True
CATEGORY_PAGES_FOLLOW_DESTPATH = True

Colorizing categories (or anything, really)¶

The colorization feature is now available for anything, not only sections. Templates can use the colorize_str(string, base_color, presets) function, like so:

${colorize_str(post.meta('category'), theme_color, category_colors)}

You need to add category_colors to the global context manually — this expects a regular (untranslated) dict mapping category names to hex colors.