CMSB v3.81 Released (PHP 8.5 Support Upload Management Features & More)

Hi everyone,

We've just released v3.81! 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:

• Menu Groups
  • New option "Always show expanded" allows you to keep specific menu groups open regardless of accordion state.
• 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 16, 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
- Menu Groups: Added "Always show expanded" option to keep specific menu groups open regardless of accordion state
- 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: Server IP and PHP User changes now show in expandable lists of unique values with last seen dates
- Admin > Database Menu: Row counts now load asynchronously for faster page loads with very large tables
- Libraries: Updated HTMLPurifier from 4.12 to 4.19.0 (Released 2025-10-17)
- 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
- Error Log: Email alerts now include timezone in timestamps for easier debugging

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
- MySQL 8.4+: Fixed compatibility issue with removed have_ssl system variable
- Viewer Functions: Fixed "Undefined array key 'num'" error for tables using alternative primary keys (e.g., 'id')
- Misc code and other minor improvements

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

Please feel free to ask any questions or post any feedback or comments.

Thank you!