TYPO3 v13.1 — The Surfer’s Starterkit

Our catchphrase for the TYPO3 v13 release series is “Minimizing repetitive tasks and simplifying day-to-day work of administrators and editors”. TYPO3 v13.1 already demonstrates how building websites with TYPO3 will become easier, faster, and more straightforward in the future.

Following the principle “build once, use often”, you can now bundle and reuse various site and extension configurations. A new TypoScript content object lets you build Fluid-based frontend pages in no time by putting conventions over configuration.

Let’s have a closer look at the main changes of the new release. For more in-depth information with detailed technical insight, see the v13 changelog.

TYPO3 is famous for its capability to be highly flexible through configuration. In TYPO3 version 13.1, you can now consolidate configurations in sets. Sets let you package a predefined configuration (or multiple configurations) in an extension that you can include in a site.

The TYPO3 backend module Site Management → Sites offers a simple way to select one or more sets in the scope of a site.

With Site Sets, you can share configurations across sites and/or installations. We will optimize and extend the user interface and functionality further in upcoming v13 sprint releases.

Find out more about this feature in the changelog entry.

Today, most TYPO3 installations use Fluid templates to generate the website frontend output. We introduced a new TypoScript content object in TYPO3 v13.1 that significantly reduces the TypoScript code an integrator or developer needs to write.

The cObject PAGEVIEW renders a full page and automatically resolves template path and backend layout names. Several useful variables are passed to the template by default, for example, site and language data, page details, and TypoScript settings.

The new cObject has fewer configuration options than the more comprehensive FLUIDTEMPLATE cObject. This simplification makes PAGEVIEW an ideal replacement candidate for sites not requiring complex customization.

See the changelog entry for more details.

The page/file tree in the TYPO3 backend is an essential component for backend users. It provides a visual representation of the site structure (known as the page tree) and is utilized for tasks like file management, category/record selection, and navigation.

In TYPO3 v13.1, we introduce a heavily modernized and reactive tree that is built on contemporary web standards, resulting in a more streamlined and user-friendly experience. Key changes include native drag-and-drop, improved API endpoints, enhanced virtual scroll, and user preferences for light/dark mode and writing direction. Read the changelog entry for full details.

TYPO3 integrators and developers can now also highlight and annotate specific pages in the page tree by applying a label and/or a color code (User TSconfig or PHP). To add even more details to a page in the page tree, developers can leverage a PSR-14 Event and add arbitrary status information including a label, severity level, an icon, and an overlay icon.

TYPO3 v13.0 added support for configuring hotkeys for backend users. TYPO3 v13.1 delivers the powerful and long-awaited hotkey, Save and Close. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + S on the keyboard to save your work and move on to your next task.

The Doctrine DBAL (database abstraction layer) allows TYPO3 to interact with the databases without needing to know specific details of the underlying database system/engine. Developers use a unified interface to perform database operations, regardless of the actual database being used.

TYPO3’s ExpressionBuilder class is one of the components that is responsible for dynamically creating SQL query parts. The class is based on Doctrine DBAL’s ExpressionBuilder and only uses a subset of all available expressions.

In TYPO3 v13.1, additional expression methods are now available to build advanced database queries. This includes concat(), castVarchar(), castInt(), leftPad(), rightPad(), and more.

For a list of the new expressions and how to use them, see the changelog entry.

The TYPO3 backend now supports three new languages: Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, and Maltese. The ISO 639-1 codes are “gd”, “ga”, and “mt” respectively, which are how TYPO3 accesses the language internally.

It is now possible to download translated backend labels from the TYPO3 translation server and CrowdIn for these languages, switch the backend interface, and to use these languages in site configurations.

TYPO3 v13 requires at least PHP version 8.2, which will receive security updates until December 2025.

We will support each TYPO3 sprint release (v13.0 to v13.3) until the next minor version is published. The long-term support version TYPO3 v13 LTS (aka version 13.4) will receive bug fixes until 30 April 2026, and we will provide security patches for TYPO3 v13 LTS until 31 October 2027.

Read more about the requirements and dependencies on get.typo3.org.

You will find all the details about the release and how to download and install TYPO3 at get.typo3.org. Detailed installation instructions are documented in the Installation Guide. We recommend using Composer to set up your TYPO3 environment.

The next release on our roadmap is TYPO3 version 13.2, scheduled on 2 July 2024. The primary focus of this sprint release is on content blocks—a brand new way to build, manage, and edit content elements.