Perch 2.3

Today sees the release of Perch 2.3, the latest free update to Perch 2. It includes some big new features and a number of smaller fixes and enhancements to make your experience using Perch even better than before.

Repeaters

Back in July we asked what you wanted to see added to Perch the most. The top request, far and away, was the ability to have nested multiple items. To be able to have a number of items, and within those to have, for example, a variable number of images or files. The best way we could think to solve that was to have sections of the template that could be repeated. We call them Repeaters (obvious, right?).

New login screen

As part of our plan of rolling UI improvements and updates, we’ve revisited the login screen to give it some love. Our poor old login screen hadn’t changed much since Perch 1, and while we’re not into change for change’s sake, there were issues that needed addressing. When you upload a custom logo, it sits on the grey sidebar within Perch, but on the login screen it still sat on top of the coloured header from Perch 1. That made it difficult with some logos to create one file that went well with both backgrounds. (Not all clients have modern PNG versions of their logo available!)

The new login screen fixes this by setting the logo on the same grey background as the sidebar, as well as generally looking and feeling much more up to date.

Roles and privileges

We’ve made some enhancements to user roles and privileges. Perch 2.3 introduces Role Actions, which enable you to make bulk changes to site-wide region and page options to grant or revoke role permissions to edit. This is useful if you’re adding new roles to an existing site and need to update the site to reflect the new role’s purpose.

There are new privileges too. Roles can now be granted (or not) permission to create top-level pages, and a role which does not have permission to delete pages can now be selectively granted permission to delete pages they created themselves.

And more!

There are lots of small CSS fixes to make the admin pages work better on small screens. We’ve spent time updating the Maps field type to work better with responsive pages, and when maps are initially hidden on page load. Primary admins can now change a region template from within the region options, which helps in those early stages of a site when you’re still figuring out your approach.

Check out the full update notes for the blow-by-blow on what’s changed.