TYPO3 v9 End of Free Support Announcement

We published TYPO3 v9.0 in December 2017. In four consecutive sprint releases between January and September 2018, we improved and optimized the system and released TYPO3 version 9.5, also known as TYPO3 v9 LTS, on the 2nd of October 2018. The long-term support release of TYPO3 v9 was jam-packed with amazing enterprise features and a wide range of modern technologies. This combination made the major release of TYPO3 a huge success.

Today we announce the upcoming end of free support and maintenance of this version, almost three years after its release.

The following sections summarize the key highlights of TYPO3 v9 LTS and how they shaped the future of the content management system.

An outstanding feature of TYPO3 v9 was the native routing for frontend pages. The page-based URL handling (also known as “speaking URLs”) did not require any complicated configuration and was easy for backend users to adjust if required.

The system extension “SEO” introduced a wide range of important features for search engine optimization. This included, for example, canonical tags, XML sitemap generation, and OpenGraph support.

Since TYPO3 v9, developers have been able to meet very specific SEO requirements by leveraging the Meta Tag API and the Page Title API.

The new backend modules, “Site Configuration” and “Redirects” were added to the TYPO3 v9 Core. Integrators define the frontend entry points to the TYPO3 instance, languages, error handling, and routing details in the site management (also known as “site handling”) module. TYPO3 stores each site configuration as YAML files in the file system.

Implementing the page tree based on the SVG technology resulted in a major performance boost for the v9 backend. This technology was the successor of ExtJS that we used in previous TYPO3 versions.

TYPO3 v9 and newer versions now use modern modal popups that have replaced browser windows/tabs in many places to improve the user experience (UX).

Functions of the Install Tool were embedded into the TYPO3 backend in TYPO3 v9. This included maintenance tasks such as cache clearing and the database schema check. Dedicated areas for system settings, upgrades, and system environment details provided easy access for system maintainers. The “Feature Toggles” function was also added.

This function is especially used by developers today to build new features next to their legacy version, and let integrators control if and when to switch to the new function.

A fundamental rework of the Admin Panel led to a deeper insight into the internal processes of TYPO3 at run-time for integrators and administrators. The new Admin Panel allowed authenticated backend users access detailed information about every frontend request and to debug issues.

The system extension “Form” received conditional variants. They allow the manipulation of form element values, validator and finisher options, etc. based on conditions.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that regulates data protection and privacy in the European Union,  came into effect in May 2018. The enterprise content management system TYPO3 v9 gave site owners and administrators everything at hand to implement measures to comply with EU law.

Apart from the new Context API and the Symfony Expression Language, a set of state-of-the-art standards were introduced in TYPO3 v9, namely PSR-3, PSR-7, and PSR-15. The latter standard in particular paved the way for a top-modern and highly performant system architecture using middlewares.

The introduction of the Doctrine DBAL in TYPO3 v8 let us connect TYPO3 with a wide range of database engines. With TYPO3 v9, we pushed this even further and officially supported TYPO3 with SQLite (a popular lightweight and file-based database solution supported natively in PHP). Also with TYPO3 v9, the database schema analyzer became much smarter. Most of the system-internal fields are now created automatically allowing developers to focus on the business logic.

To make upgrades from a major TYPO3 version to the next as easy as possible, we added the Extension Scanner to the TYPO3 v9 Core. This interactive tool enabled administrators to scan extension code for the usage of removed or deprecated TYPO3 Core APIs.

Today, the Extension Scanner plays an important role as part of every TYPO3 upgrade process, identifying possible issues before an upgrade is executed.

As security has always been one of our top priorities, we raised the security standards in TYPO3 v9 even higher.

Depending on the setup, non-public files were located outside of the web root. We dropped plain text and MD5 hashed passwords, and TYPO3 v9 used state-of-the-art and industry-strength password hashing algorithms such as Argon2i and PBKDF2.

TYPO3 v9 also brought us a wide range of new libraries and packages from the open-source universe. At the same time we also raised the system requirements to PHP version 7.2 or higher, and moved towards using more Symfony components.

The TYPO3 community will not provide further security updates for TYPO3 v9. If you operate TYPO3 instances using this version, we highly recommend an upgrade to the latest stable TYPO3 release. This is currently TYPO3 v10 LTS which receives security patches and bugfixes until April 2023. The release of TYPO3 v11 LTS is scheduled for October 2021 and will be supported for three years, until October 2024.

Although we discontinued the free maintenance of TYPO3 v9 LTS, you can buy extended long-term support (ELTS) from the TYPO3 GmbH. ELTS offers three more years of security, compliance, and compatibility. You should consider this offer if you need more time for an upgrade to TYPO3 v10 or v11 and have to stay legally compliant and up-to-date. Through ELTS you achieve a total of 6 years support per major version.

We would like to thank all the amazing contributors of the TYPO3 and open-source community who made this release possible. The list of experienced and motivated developers who contributed code to the TYPO3 v9 Core is extensive. However, this list would be far from complete. Experts from many different knowledge areas have been involved in the development, design, testing, documentation, marketing, certification,  and coordination of the system. They are all part of the TYPO3 universe and can be proud of what we collaboratively achieved with TYPO3 v9 LTS.