CiviCRM version 5.27.0 is now out and ready to download. This is a regular monthly release. It is also a new CiviCRM Extended Security Releases (ESR), which will have support for security updates for the next six months.
Upgrade now for the most stable CiviCRM experience: https://civicrm.org/download
Important announcements and reminders:
- WordPress/WooCommerce compatiblity: During testing of 5.27.beta, there were some reports that the web-based upgrader had a problematic interaction with a common plugin (woocommerce_civicrm). The 5.27.0 release includes some mitigations. However, if you are not able to navigate to the web-based upgrader, please visit on https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/core/-/issues/1846 and https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/core/-/issues/1850.
- As of CiviCRM 5.25, the minimum supported version will be PHP 7.1. The recommended PHP version is PHP 7.3.
- End of Drupal 6 support (full announcement). Long live Drupal 6!
- WordPress users: Support for the WP REST API has been added in CiviCRM 5.25. If you had installed the CiviCRM WP REST API Wrapper Plugin, please deactivate the plugin before you update.
- Event Cart: help needed for testing the move of the Event Cart into an extension (the Event Cart will continue to be supported, but moving it to a core extension makes it easier to maintain and cleanup the code).
What's new in CiviCRM 5.27
This version changes the database schema, has changes to the API, as well as the usual bugfixes and minor feature improvements.
- Accessibility: Hide icon elements from screen readers and add handling for screen-reader-only text.
- Icons: On the contact record, the "stop" icon (displayed on email bounce, opt-out, or do-not-phone, do-not-email, etc) has been replaced by more specific icons. A few other old icons have been retired (stop-icon.png, TreeMinusWhite.gif, TreePlusWhite.gif), in favour of Font Awesome icons (which were already included in CiviCRM). Finally, on the public Event and Contribution pages, going to the "confirm" page now shows the "next" icon, instead of the "checkmark" icon.
- Administration console page: redesigned to have a simpler layout, display more information, dynamically include all enabled components, display responsively on small screens, and remove a slew of 15-year-old image icons.
- Advanced Search: The First Name and Last Name fields are now available on the Advanced Search form, and it ensures quick search filters are passed to the appropriate field.
- Search in contact reference fields (ex: from the New Activity form): added filters for Employer Name, First Name, Last Name, and Nick Name.
- Dedupe performance improvements (on sites with many financial transactions).
- Message Templates: domain tokens are now available as tokens for editing message templates.
- CiviContribute: HTML change that may have an impact theming of contribution pages: pre and post help texts on price fields are now wrapped in "span" elements.
- CiviContribute: The Find Contribution form now has a field to search by Contribution ID.
- CiviMail: New global setting which allows for setting the click-through and open tracking defaults.
- CiviMail:"extern" scripts (open.php, url.php) have been migrated to conventional routes. This improves Drupal8/Drupal9 and WordPress integrations, helps simplify webserver configurations.
- CiviCase: Ensures that when a follow up case activity is created the assignee is sent an email.
- Translation: Fixed bugs when installing CiviCRM in another language using the 'new' installer, civicrm-setup. Also fixed issues when adding/removing languages on a multilingual site.
- Import: fixes a popup issue in the Import Activity process, fixes importing of relationships for contacts, and improves the import of contribution custom field options.
- Api4: New entities: Priceset, PriceField, PriceOption, ContributionRecur, MembershipType.
- Api3: Contribution.repeattransaction now requires a recurring contribution. The default status is now 'Pending'.
- Error handling: Replaced all instances of CRM_Core_Fatal with throwing of the CRM_Core_Exception. Changes were also done to improve the error handling.
- System requirements: A new system check will now appear on sites that lack the PHP Internationalization extension. This is in preparation for changes that will appear in CiviCRM 5.28 and require the extension.
- System requirements: MySQL 5.5 and below will have a pre-upgrade message and a system check warning to say that CiviCRM 5.28 will require MySQL 5.6 or MariaDB 10.1.
- Drupal9 support: Allow for installation on Symfony 4.4.
- Joomla: a bug was found in the upgrade from 5.26 to 5.27-RC, which is now fixed. Big thanks to Kevin C, Eileen, Seamus, DaveD and Tim for all their work on handling this and other regressions.
This is only a short overview. You can read the full release notes here (it includes all Gitlab and Github references, with much more information). Big thanks to Andrew Hunt and Alice Frumin from AGH Strategies for putting up together release notes.
This release was developed by the following code authors:
a-n The Artists Information Company - William Mortada; AGH Strategies - Alice Frumin, Andrew Hunt; Andrei Mondoc; British Humanist Association - Andrew West; Caltha - Tomasz Pietrzkowski; Christian Wach; Circle Interactive - Pradeep Nayak; CiviCRM - Coleman Watts, Tim Otten; CiviDesk - Yashodha Chaku; CompuCorp - René Olivo; Coop SymbioTIC - Mathieu Lutfy; Dave D; Dominic Hargreaves; Electronic Frontier Foundation - Mark Burdett; Freeform Solutions - Herb van den Dool; Fuzion - Jitendra Purohit; Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe - Patrick Figel; JMA Consulting - Edsel Lopez, Seamus Lee; John Kingsnorth; Joinery - Allen Shaw; Kartik Kathuria; Lighthouse Design and Consulting - Brian Shaughnessy; Megaphone Technology Consulting - Jon Goldberg; MJCO - Mikey O'Toole; MJW Consulting - Matthew Wire; Palante Technology Cooperative - Morgan Robinson; Semper IT - Karin Gerritsen; Tadpole Collective - Kevin Cristiano; Wikimedia Foundation - Eileen McNaughton
Most authors also reviewed code for this release; in addition, the following reviewers contributed their comments:
Agileware - Justin Freeman; Artful Robot - Rich Lott; Betty Dolfing; CiviCoop - Jaap Jansma; iXiam - Luciano Spiegel; JMA Consulting - Monish Deb; Kartik Kathuria; Korlon - Stuart Gaston; Megaphone Technology Consulting - Dennis P. Osorio; Squiffle Consulting - Aidan Saunders.
Thanks to everyone for making this release happen!
Support CiviCRM
We are committed to keeping CiviCRM free and open, forever. We depend on your support to help make that happen.
- Make a donation or contribute to a Make it happen campaign.
- If your organization wants to support our work, please become a member today.
- If you are a CiviCRM service provider, please become a partner.
