Contao Open Source CMS 5.4.0

Contao 5.4.0, a new version of the Contao open source CMS, has been released.

Contao 5.4 has just been released. The most obvious change is the standardised icon set. In addition, the turbo was ignited in the back end. Have fun with the new features!

Standardized icon set for the back end

The icons in Contao consisted of various sources up to version 5.3 and have now been replaced by the new Lucide icons. Contao therefore presents itself in a new guise. This also reduces the workload for extension developers when searching for suitable icons.

Additional spam protection for forms

There is additional protection in the fight against spam bots. The open source solution from ALTCHA is used for this. As ALTCHA only works with an SSL connection, a fallback to the security question is issued for http.

Set ARIA label for navigation

You can now define an ARIA label for screen readers in the navigation modules.

The picker is no longer linked to the session

You may be familiar with the situation where you are working on a large website and have a specific page or article filtered by a subpage in order to finish faster. This filtering no longer has any influence on the picker, but all pages or articles are still displayed and not just the filtered ones.

Turbo ignited in the back end

Turbo bundles several techniques to create fast, modern, incrementally improved web applications without using much JavaScript. That's why Turbo is now also used in the Contao back end for faster output.

Template attributes can be easily overwritten by developers

html5 templates such as the fe_page can now be customised more easily using the attr() function.

$this->extend('fe_page');

$this->rootAttributes = $this->attr()
    ->set('data-turbo', false)
    ->mergeWith($this->rootAttributes)
;

$this->bodyAttributes = $this->attr()
    ->set('data-controller', 'foobar')
    ->mergeWith($this->bodyAttributes)
;

PageFinder::getCurrentPage() is the new $GLOBALS['objPage'] for developers

In future, please use PageFinder::getCurrentPage() instead of globals $objPage or $GLOBALS['objPage'].

$page = $this->pageFinder->getCurrentPage($request);

$pageId = $page->id;

$pageAlias = $page->alias;

Further improvements in the changelog

You can find a complete list of all changes in the changelog at the end of this blog post. The official release article on contao.org is also worth reading and the Contao Academy YouTube video is well worth watching.

trakked is compatible with Contao 5.4
As usual, trakked provides you with all known features for Contao 5.4. You can update from Contao 5.3 to 5.4 as usual via the Contao Manager.

Changelog of the fixed issues in Contao 5.4.0:

Changelog of the fixed issues in Contao 5.4.0-RC4:

Changelog of the fixed issues in Contao 5.4.0-RC3:

Changelog of the fixed issues in Contao 5.4.0-RC2:

Changelog of the new features in Contao 5.4.0-RC1:

Changelog of the fixed issues in Contao 5.4.0-RC1:

About Contao 5.4

The first stable version of Contao 5.4 has been released on 15 August 2024 and was the successor of Contao 5.3. 5.4 has been updated until 17 February 2025, after which it was replaced by Contao 5.5.

Bjarke Ammann

Bjarke takes care of the website and support. If you like reading, you might have come across his Contao Two Month Review or found an answer to your question in the official Contao user manual. He also makes sure that Contao enthusiasts from Switzerland meet regularly to exchange ideas. He loves culinary delights, good music and exercise in the fresh air.

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