Aimeos 2021.07 release

The newest stable version of the Aimeos e-commerce platform was released in 2021. The most noticeable change is the beautiful new default theme, but this release has many more enhancements, especially for multi-site environments. Here are the key highlights:  

New Default Theme

The fresh default theme has an appealing design that works well for all online stores, not just fashion. You can build custom page content and insert product lists using the powerful Aimeos CMS extension. This enables full content commerce with custom URLs on content pages. The theme also fully supports right-to-left languages and is optimized for top Google Lighthouse scores.

New Admin Settings Panel  

There is a new settings panel in the admin backend to configure options per site, like images, shop and theme settings. This is very useful for multi-site setups, allowing site admins to configure basic settings themselves. With multi-site Laravel installs using custom domains, admins can also set their domain name. You can extend this panel with custom subparts.

Order Notification Emails

Previously, order confirmation emails to customers were BCC'd to the shop owner, causing many emails. Now there is an "Email" delivery service provider to send order summary emails on a schedule. The content and attached order files are customizable.

Enhanced Order Management 

The order detail view has new warehouse fields for partial deliveries, tracking what was already sent. A private "notes" field and customer-visible "Delivery in" field allow order status communication.

Multi-Site Improvements

Many multi-site and marketplace enhancements were added. Most notably, a new scheme for storing uploaded files by site ID enables identifying which files belong to which site. Merchants can easily remove all files when closing a shop.

Increased Security

Activating Content Security Policy by default protects the frontend and admin backend by restricting external sources for code and content. This prevents cross-site scripting and malicious code execution. Further security tightening is planned for the next LTS release.

Upgrade Notes

Some key upgrade notes: Composer 2.1+ is required. Official Aimeos extensions were moved from "./ext/" to "./vendor/aimeos/". Upload file directories were restructured by site ID. Laravel theme path changed to "./public/vendor/shop".

In summary, the new release brings an improved default theme, settings panel, order emails, order management, multi-site capabilities, security and more. The next LTS version will build on these advances.