Content Tree Module, Orchard Core Admin UI experience renewal survey - This week in Orchard (06/06/2025)
This time, you can see a fascinating demo of the Content Tree Module! But first, let's look at our other topics, like adding GraphQL support for querying content items by status from the Content Picker Field, fixing binding form input in the Coming Soon theme, and improving the Register User Task. Don't forget to fill out our Orchard Core Admin UI experience renewal survey to help shape the future of Orchard Core!
Orchard Core updates
Add GraphQL support for querying content items by status from the Content Picker Field
This change allows content items from a Content Picker Field to be retrieved based on their status, not only the published versions, as before.
If we set up our site using the Blog recipe, we will have an Article content type by default. Let's say we attach the Content Picker Field under Design -> Content Definition -> Content Types -> Article. This Content Picker Field supports displaying all content types; it doesn't matter now. Once we set it up, we can edit our predefined Article called About and use the Content Picker to pick the predefined Blog Post content item.
Once we have it, we must ensure that the predefined Blog Post content item has a published and a draft version. We just edited our Blog Post and added the DRAFT word at the end of its title. We saved this as a draft to have a published and a draft version, too.
Now, we can fire up GraphiQL under Tools (make sure that the GraphQL module is enabled). Here, we said, give us some properties of the draft versions of the content items attached to Article content types via the Content Picker Field. As you can see, the display text here ends with the word DRAFT.
Fix binding form input in the Coming Soon theme and improve the Register User Task
This is about updating the registration form on the Coming Soon theme to utilize the input tag helper and ensuring the correct binding of form values when redisplaying the page during validation errors.
The input tag helper is now used in the registration form to improve value binding during validation errors. The Register User workflow activity has been modified to accommodate input name changes. Previously, the email address and username were hardcoded to be extracted from the request form. This update allows the values to be retrieved from the workflow context, providing greater flexibility in user creation tasks.
Let's set up our site using the Coming Soon recipe! As you can see, it gives you one Coming Soon content item: the current homepage. On this page, you can see a form where users can enter their email addresses. If they do that, we will trigger the User Registration workflow, which validates the form fields and registers a new user based on the email address entered.
Demos
Content Tree Module
The Content Tree Module allows you to manage content like a file system. It means you have a tree-view structure for navigating content items. The repository for the module can be found here.
You can easily try out this feature by just cloning the repository. First, please navigate to Tools -> Features and enable the Content Tree module to add a content tree to manage content in a hierarchy. We must decide which content types we want to display in our content tree. We must attach the Parent Part to our content type under Design -> Content Definition -> Content Types. When you edit the attached Parent Part, don't forget to tick the Show checkbox to show this part on instances of this type.
Let's say we attached this part to our Page content type. We have created some Page content items and set their titles to My page, My page 2, My page 2.1, etc. If we edit one of the page content items, you will see an editor called Parent Content Item. Here, we can define the parent element of the currently opened content. The screen below shows that we are editing the Page with the title My page 2.1. We also said that the parent of this content item will be the one with the title My page 2.
It's not the primary place where you would set the parent; it's just a way to test this currently. The end goal would be to set this through the hierarchy, which you can see if you click the Hierarchy option from the menu. If you do that, you will see our content tree. You will see here all of our page content items, taking into account the parent items.
And that's not all of it! To learn more about the current state of this module, watch a recording on YouTube!
News from the community
Orchard Core Admin UI experience renewal survey
At the beginning of this year, we started a discussion about renewing the admin area with the help of a UX professional. We aim to have a modern admin UX that’s functional, convenient, unobtrusive, and something that ordinary contributors can extend by following patterns. The point is to improve the usability of the admin, not just making it prettier (though making it prettier would be nice too). The first step of the admin area renewal is to explore how people use the admin UI of Orchard Core and what their needs look like. Combined with contributor input, this will help us improve usability, guide design decisions, and align with long-term platform goals.
For that, we have conducted a survey. Please take a few minutes to fill out our survey and help shape the future of Orchard Core. Feel free to share it with anyone you know who uses or has used Orchard Core, including colleagues, clients, or contributors you've worked with.
Be a speaker at Orchard Harvest 2025
After last year, the Orchard Harvest Conference will be held again in 2025. Last year, it was held in Las Vegas, and we had a really great time there. We would like to try to organize it again in Europe this year. The first step was to assess the potential interest and what would be needed. We created a survey, and we had the results!
The Orchard Harvest 2025 conference will be held in Prague, and we look forward to seeing you all this autumn in the Czech Republic, in the heart of Europe. Our confirmed dates for this year are the 11th and the 12th of November. To make our conference happen, we need our unreplicable speakers. Do you have an interesting Orchard Core-related topic you'd like to present to the community? Development techniques, memorable case studies, and valuable experiences that you'd like to share? Click on this link now to apply as a speaker! Selected speakers will receive complimentary tickets!
As we move forward, we will keep community members informed of the details, and you will also find every detail in this newsletter! We also updated the official website with the latest information about Harvest.
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