CMSB v3.81 Beta (PHP 8.5 Support & More)

Hi everyone,

We've just released v3.81 beta! We're already running this version (and PHP 8.5!) on our site.

In addition to PHP 8.5 support, this includes several convenience and developer-experience updates:

• Admin > Backup & Restore
  • Website Backup now shows an expandable list of excluded files/folders by category (and instructions on excluding folders)
  • Database Restore dropdown now shows relative dates (e.g., "just now", "5 min ago", "yesterday")
  • Website backups now allow up to 10 minutes for large sites (for multi-gigabyte backups)
  • Backup and restore operations are now logged to the audit log
  • Improved cross-platform reliability for database backups and restores (e.g., between newer and older versions of MariaDB and MySQL, etc)
•  Admin > General > Server Info > Recent Changes:
  • Multiple Server IP changes now show in an expandable list of unique IPs with last seen dates (fixes issue where load-balanced servers had a recurring list of IP changes)
• General code modernization and cleanup

Note: We still have a queue of pending user feature requests.  We're releasing what we have now so you can start using it.  Feel free to remind us what you'd like to see next. 

The full changelog for this release is as follows:

*** December 4, 2025 - Version 3.81 (PHP 8.5 Support)

SERVER REQUIREMENTS (Since Jun 2025): PHP 8.1+ and MySQL 5.7+ (or MariaDB 10.2+)

PHP 8.5 SUPPORT
- Comprehensive compatibility updates across core files and plugins to support PHP 8.5
- Added polyfills so new PHP 8.5 functions can be used on any PHP version

MINOR CHANGES
- Admin > Backup & Restore:
       - Website Backup now shows expandable list of excluded files/folders by category (and instructions on excluding folders)
       - Database Restore dropdown now shows relative dates (e.g., "just now", "5 min ago", "yesterday")
       - Website backups now allow up to 10 minutes for large sites (for multi-gigabyte backups)
       - Backup and restore operations are now logged to the audit log
- Improved cross-platform reliability for database backups and restores
- Admin > General > Server Info > Recent Changes: Multiple Server IP changes now show in an expandable list of unique IPs with last seen dates
- Libraries: Updated HTMLPurifier from 4.12 to 4.19.0 (Released 2025-10-17) - Moved to Composer /vendor/ directory
- Programmers: htmlPurify() updated with improved defaults, and better content preservation for invalid html
- Old File Cleanup: Automatically remove old CMS library files from previous versions during upgrade to reduce disk usage and prevent conflicts

BUG FIXES
- Plugins: Fixed issue where plugins were disabled after upgrading until you accessed the CMS admin interface again
- Cron: Fixed issue where duplicate "Aborting, task still running" log entries could be created for tasks running longer than 60 seconds
- Misc code and other minor improvements

You can download the latest beta here: https://www.interactivetools.com/download/

Please post (or email) any feedback, questions, concerns, or bugs you find.   Your help with beta testing allows us to release new features even faster.

Thanks. We look forward to your feedback! :)