AI Chat Admin Widget and Frontend Widget, DotNest has a new look - This week in Orchard (24/04/2026)
This week, you can see a demo by Mike Alhayek of the AI Chat Admin widget that adds a floating chat widget to the Orchard Core admin dashboard. A Frontend Chat Widget is also available, which allows site visitors to interact with AI chat directly on the frontend.
See the new IJSLocalizer infrastructure, which you can use to load the localization from the PO files and make it available in JavaScript.
Georg von Kries added new validation that warns against unsafe Liquid output in SQL queries. So, whenever you edit an unsafe SQL query, it will tell you not to utilize this kind of usage in Liquid.
Check out DotNest, the Orchard Core SaaS, which has a new look! The new site is built with Tailwind CSS and a much more user-friendly content management approach.
As we mentioned, we started publishing last year's Harvest recordings to YouTube. Check them out for some inspiration and apply to be a speaker for this year's Harvest!
Ready to explore? Let's dive in!
Orchard Core updates
Warn against unsafe Liquid output in SQL queries
A SQL query is actually a Liquid template. This allows your queries to be shaped based on the parameters it gets. But you could srew up with SQL and Liquid if you start by injecting Liquid in a value, as you can see below. Because in that case, you can inject any SQL and expose all your databases. So, do not inject user-provided values directly with Liquid output expressions, as this can lead to SQL injection.
Use SQL parameters (@name or @name:default) for all user-provided values, and only use Liquid templates to change the shape of the query.
This change by Georg von Kries adds some validation, so whenever you edit a SQL query like the one we mentioned, it will tell you not to use this kind of usage in Liquid. The SqlLiquidOutputExpressionDetector will detect the issues based on the resolved FluidParser. What matters here is the OutputStatementDetector, which inherits from AstVisitor in Fluid and lets you detect specific statements. Here you can see the VisitOutputStatement, which checks for curly braces; when it finds them, the ContainsOutputStatement checks whether they contain curly braces. And in this case, we emit a warning to let users know to be careful when doing that.
And we can easily try it out by navigating to Search -> Queries -> All Queries and adding the query we mentioned above. Once we hit save, Orchard warns us that potentially unsafe Liquid output expressions ('{ ... }') were detected in this query template.
Add IJSLocalizer infrastructure and framework-agnostic JavaScript localization helpers
This is about providing localization for JavaScript files. In a nutshell, this will load the localization from the PO files and make it available in JavaScript.
When a Vue, TypeScript, or plain JavaScript component needs translated strings, it cannot call IStringLocalizer directly. IJSLocalizer bridges this gap: each module registers one implementation that knows how to map a group name to a dictionary of localized strings, which a Razor view or layout can serialize and pass into a scoped module entry point before the script runs. Check out the documentation of the JavaScript Localization to see how you can register a custom implementation, pass localizations to the browser, use localizations in JavaScript or TypeScript, and more with examples!
Demos
AI Chat Admin widget and Frontend widget
Let's continue our journey with the AI suite, this time with the widgets!
If you head to Design -> Widgets and hit the Add Widget button for one of the defined Zones, you will find a new option called Artificial Intelligence Chat. Once you have it, you can select whichever profile you want to use with this widget. If you are not familiar with AI profiles, you can check out our previous post or head to the official documentation for CrestApps Orchard Core to learn more. Once you select your profile and navigate to the frontend of your site, you will notice the new AI Chat widget there, and you can start a chat with it.
The other new feature that we want to highlight today is called AI Chat Admin Widget, which provides a floating AI chat widget on every admin page, allowing users to interact with a predefined AI profile. You can enable it under Tools -> Features. Once you enable it, you can configure it under Settings -> Artificial Intelligence, where you will find a new section called Admin Widget. Here, you need to select the API Profile to use for the admin widget. Users with the appropriate permission can chat with this profile from any admin page. But you can also set the maximum number of previous chat sessions to display in the widget history panel and the primary color for the admin chat widget. After that, you will see a UI similar to the frontend, with the same capabilities.
And it's still not all of it! If you want to see these features in action, don't forget to head to YouTube for a demo by Mike Alhayek!
News from the community
Speaker application for Orchard Harvest 2026 and Orchard Harvest 2025 recordings
The next Orchard Core conference will take place in Vancouver, Canada, on the 10th and 11th of September.
Do you have an interesting Orchard Core-related topic that you'd like to present to the community? Development techniques, memorable case studies, and useful experiences that you'd like to share?
This year's leading themes:
- From CMS to content platform: where Orchard Core fits in 2026.
- Automation superpowers: AI tools, recipes, and workflows in everyday projects.
- Performance and reliability in Orchard Core.
- Looking beyond Orchard Core 3.0: what’s next for the platform and community.
Application form: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=Wt6elek45kStyIVVO-uCICDdeeZFbXdAlSWTkdgpZAtUQzA3UzVNUERJTk4zVlEwRUtXNkM2SlI4Sy4u
Apply to be a speaker by the 5th of May, midnight, anywhere on Earth! We'll notify you whether your talk is selected for Harvest in 1 or 2 weeks after the application period. The chosen speakers will receive complimentary tickets for the event.
The 8th Orchard Harvest Conference was held in Prague on the 11th and 12th of November, 2025. We recorded every session, and are currently publishing them on the Orchard Core YouTube channel. The videos are published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 4:00 PM UTC. If you haven't done so yet, subscribe to this YouTube channel for the Harvest videos and some inspiration if you are considering being a speaker this year! Here you can find the playlist for last year's Harvest recordings.
DotNest has a new look!
The previous site was starting to show its age. Not just visually, but also in day-to-day site management UX. So we took a step back and rebuilt the frontend from the ground up.
The new site is built with Tailwind CSS and a much more user-friendly content management approach. Our goal was a simple, straightforward UX that stays out of the way of the content, no unnecessary fluff, just clarity and focus. Stay tuned for an in-depth case study!
Take a look at this post here, and if you're curious, you can create Orchard Core sites here for free!
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