Software Update: Bolt 3.0.0

Version 3.0.0 of Bolt has been released. Bolt is an open source content management system and is in some ways comparable to programs such as WordPress and Drupal. Bolt is easy to use, for both installation and management, has several good looking templates that work with Twig are customizable, and is optimized for both desktop and mobile environments. Recently there is also a website on which Bolt themes live to try out and also a site with an overview of all available extensions. The most important improvements that have been made in version 3.0 are listed below for you.

Clean structure, easy updates
The default installation of Bolt is now a pre-packaged composer installation.
In practice this means you can simply download a .tar.gz or .zip file to get started, and keep that updated by simply renaming one file, and running composer update.
We provide a bunch of other installation options too, like ‘composer installs’, ‘regular FTP’, ‘cloning from git’. As an added benefit, the default installation now keeps all PHP and configuration files outside of the webroot.

PHP version requirement
We dropped support for PHP 5.3, and fully support PHP 7.x.
Bolt 3 requires a minimum PHP version of 5.5.9. We’re following suit with the underlying components we use, like the Symfony Framework.

New Storage layer
We’ve refactored the Database storage layer. Going forward this will allow us to provide more specific and specialized functionality, like fine-grained caching and more efficient complex queries.
Right now, it already allows for some of the improvements in the Extensions layer and the Repeater Fields.

New Extensions structure
Bolt 3 has a brand new extension layer, with a large focus on making Bolt’s use as a framework much more powerful and developer friendly.
It is important to note that version 2 extensions will not work with version 3, but for most extensions the work to port them to Bolt 3 should be straightforward and well documented.

Repeater Fields
You’ve always been able to specify your own content-types in extensions, but Bolt 3 adds to that. When using Repeater fields, you basically define a block of fields that can be added to a page multiple times, as needed. Together with the revamped template-fields, this allows for more fine-grained control over your contenttype definitions.

Backend (admin) UI refresh
The Backend user interface had a bunch of touch-ups. A more thorough redesign will come later this year, and this release lays the foundation for that.

Widgets
In both in templates and extensions, you can now make use of widgets: Self-contained pieces of code, that provide a specific functionality.
Extensions can now add widgets, both in the front- as well as in the backend. This allows extension developers to provide components that can be used in different templates and for different usecases.

Web Asset Queues
Bolt handles assets (CSS, JavaScript, Widgets, and static includes) far more smoothly now, with a focus on improving performance.

Base theme
Bolt 3 has a new base theme, that is very tinker-friendly: You can tweak a few colors in the css, restructure the entire thing, or anything in between.

Documentation
We’ve done a lot of work on the documentation for Bolt. Installation, configuration, theming, as well a lot docs describing how to build extensions for Bolt.