With the release of Altis v8, we’re excited to welcome several key changes that will enhance the user experience and editorial capabilities on the digital experience platform. Altis v8 includes powerful new functionality to improve publication workflows and accelerate content creation, streamlining editorial processes to empower agile teams.
Global Content Repository and Global Media Library
Users can now share assets across different language sites or other sub-sites across their network, including images, videos, and documents with the new Global Media Library. This allows brand assets and common images to be managed centrally, avoiding duplication and speeding up translation and global processes. The Global Media Library exists alongside the existing per-site media library, providing flexibility to manage assets in a way that suits your workflow. Plus, sites can apply overrides to best suit their exact case.
Under the hood, the Global Media Library is powered by two new frameworks available to developers: the Global Content Repository, and the Asset Manager Framework. The Global Content Repository is a central site on the Altis multisite network where content can live, ready for distribution and usage across other sites. The framework provides functionality to copy and synchronise content seamlessly across the network, letting developers focus on building end-user functionality.
The Asset Manager Framework adds the ability to integrate with external Digital Asset Management (DAM) providers, integrating seamlessly into the media library. All the heavy lifting of synchronisation and interface building is handled for you, providing a rapid path to DAM integration.
Yoast SEO
The Altis SEO module is now proudly powered by Yoast SEO, taking Altis’ content marketing abilities to the next level. Yoast is the industry leader in SEO for WordPress and has built the most popular WordPress plugin ever created, with over 12 million installs.
The SEO module provides a suite of advanced tools for enhancing and managing your pages’ rankings and visibility in search engines and across social platforms including Facebook and Twitter. As an official Altis partner, we’re delighted to bring Yoast and the best in SEO to our digital experience platform.
Existing Altis users moving from prior versions can retain their stored settings and post metadata using a migration script included in the new Altis migrate WP-CLI command.
Drafting amendments of published content
Altis v8 introduces significant improvements to the editorial workflow by introducing a new amendment system, adding the ability to edit, revise, and save drafts of an already published post or page without affecting the published content. Amendments allow content creators to work on major iterations to content without going live immediately, staging changes to content at a granular level.
Within the Altis Editor, simply click “Create Amendment” and begin working on your changes. Just like other drafts in Altis, you can iterate and collaborate to work on major changes to existing content, using all the tools you’re familiar with. When you’re ready to go live with your changes, hit “Publish Amendment”, and the original published content will be seamlessly replaced with your new iteration. You will also get the opportunity to save and compare the amendments with the original version prior to publishing.
Amendments work seamlessly with other Altis workflow functionalities, including the publication checklist and editorial comments, letting you author and edit content in a familiar way. While working on an amendment, the original content stays unchanged, and can still receive minor content updates, letting you correct minor errors in parallel with the next iteration.
Amendments are powered under the hood by Yoast’s Duplicate Posts plugin, and the Altis team is working with Yoast directly to improve the experience for all users across the WordPress ecosystem.
Local Avatars
Profile pictures can now be uploaded and managed directly through Altis, without requiring a Gravatar account. This simplifies the process of setting up user accounts for non-technical users, while still providing a fallback to Gravatars for users who have one already.
The local avatars feature is powered by the open-source Simple Local Avatars plugin.
Upgrading
As with every Altis release, all the latest changes are fully documented in the Altis Developer Documentation. Our upgrading guide covers all the steps needed to upgrade to version 8.
In v8, we’re also introducing a new wp altis migrate CLI command to simplify migrating content and settings, including SEO metadata and setup for the Global Content Repository.We’re constantly working in the background to bring innovative new features to the Altis digital experience platform. Get in touch to find out more, or book a demo with us below to find how Altis can take your content and digital experiences to the next level.
