Release notes/14.0.0

Convention Master version 14.0.0 represents a significant improvement to the underlying code powering CM. Much of the development work has focused around ensuring that modern best practices are used where practical, without causing significant interference with the everyday operations of conventions.

Summary of Changes

Kiosk Rewrite

The entire kiosk system has been rewritten from the ground up, with substantial changes to both the backend and user interface.

Notable changes include:

File-based kiosks are now fully deprecated in favor of database-managed kiosks. Existing database-managed kiosks will automatically migrate to use the new system and should largely require no changes to operate.
The kiosk system now uses an updated design powered by the same theme engine as the console, including AdminLTE 4 and Bootstrap 5.
The user session for the kiosk is now fully separate from the console session (so logging out of one will not log you out of the other).
The header image above kiosk pages can now be selected from system images, avoiding the need for any filesystem changes.
A new and improved "smart" multi-user landing page (currently available if using E-mail OTP login) that adapts based on what type of kiosk is in use.
All kiosk steps support responsive display on mobile devices and use translated strings to support additional languages.
Kiosk names and step descriptions have been updated to be easier to understand.
Many, many more small tweaks and bug fixes.

New Theme System

Convention Master 14.0.0 introduces a new theme engine powered by AdminLTE 4 and Bootstrap 5. This continues the improvements from version 13.x and adds new features like built-in dark mode support across the application, which is enabled automatically based on your operating system's theme preference and can be toggled from the header navigation menu.

The Console, Kiosk and other sections of Convention Master all depend on this new theme engine. Existing themes are not compatible with the new engine and will need to be updated.

Technical Changes

A significant number of technical changes have been made under the hood to improve the quality of life and performance of Convention Master, including:

A new caching system which supports flat file caches for all installations and Redis/Valkey where available for improved performance.
Improvements to how licenses, badge images, and other common components are cached for higher performance.
Significant improvements to automated code testing and analysis, allowing us to catch entire categories of bugs much earlier.

Migration Guide

Convention Master 14.0.0 maintains the previous minimum PHP version of 8.1 and the same set of required extensions as 13.0.x.

File Kiosks

File-based kiosks (kiosks defined solely on the filesystem in the kiosks folder) are no longer supported and will not render correctly in Convention Master 14.x. We will alert users if any file kiosks are detected, and we recommend that any be removed before migrating.

Database-based kiosks will automatically migrate into the new 14.x kiosk system and the step order and configuration will be preserved.

The following steps are now deprecated, as they have been replaced with newer versions:

Ask/Set Security Question
First/Last Namesearch Login (Get UID V2)

If your existing kiosks have these steps in use, they will continue to work for those existing kiosks. However, for new kiosks, you will be unable to select or use these steps as they won't appear on the editor interface.

New Cache & Log Directories

In order to support the new caching and logging components in 14.x, two new directories exist in the code structure:

var/cache - Used for storing caches, compiled templates and object proxies
var/log - Used for storing system logs

Both of these folders should be writeable by the user that is running PHP.