Craft CMS 5.10: Safer Deletion and New Editor Features

Version 5.10 gives Craft CMS a safeguard that saves a lot of trouble in day-to-day editorial work: when you delete content, the control panel now shows you what stands in the way. Alongside it comes a long list of smaller improvements for both authors and developers.

Deletion blockers: check first, then delete

Until now, deleting an entry gave you little indication of where that entry was still being used. Craft 5.10 changes this. When you delete an element, a modal window lists every blocker that needs to be resolved first.

If the element is related to other entries, those entries are shown - together with two options: replace the relation with a different element, or remove it altogether. Only once every blocker has been dealt with does Craft allow the deletion to go ahead.

Two extensions already make use of the mechanism. The CKEditor plugin reports elements referenced inside CKEditor fields, and Craft Commerce 5.7 reports users who still have orders or subscriptions attached to them.

Source: https://craftcms.com

Improvements for authors

A series of smaller changes affects everyday work in the control panel:

  • Collapsed Matrix blocks now show more meaningful preview text
  • Matrix and Addresses fields support Paste above actions
  • An entry's post date is no longer set automatically - it is set when the entry is first saved as enabled
  • A new "Save as a new draft" action is available
  • Element editor slideouts refresh themselves automatically when the same element is edited in another tab
  • Each user can set their own time zone preference
  • If an uploaded image carries alt text in its metadata, Craft populates the alt text automatically

What's new for developers

The release also brings a handful of technical additions:

  • The custom field used by an existing field layout element can now be replaced
  • Twig 3.24 adds support for the null-safe operator
  • New Twig functions heading() and h1() through h6() make structured headings easier
  • Elements can be hard-deleted via GraphQL
  • Origin verification for requests is available as an opt-in - a more modern alternative to classic CSRF protection

Conclusion

The real highlight of Craft 5.10 is the deletion safeguard. It prevents exactly the kind of mistake that costs the most in editorial work - content deleted while it was still needed somewhere else. Instead of discovering a broken relation after the fact, Craft surfaces it beforehand and offers a clean way to reassign it.

The remaining changes are smaller, but they add up: fewer clicks in Matrix fields, more predictable post dates, and alt text that no longer has to be typed in by hand.

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