6 handy Episerver updates you probably missed
Episerver's continuous delivery policy provides tweaks and features that make editors' lives easier. Did you catch all of these?
Expired pages now return HTTP 404 (not found) instead of HTTP 302 (moved temporarily)
Found in: Update 134, Episerver.CMS.Core 10.0.1 (CMS-1320)
Expired (unpublished) pages used to return a HTTP 302 redirect to the login screen. This is not desirable, as an unpublished page is essentially intended to be gone from the public facing web. The URL no longer has any content for visitors nor search spiders, and the new HTTP 404 code reflects that more accurately.
(SEO side note: You may, however, want to override the 404 in favor of a 301 redirect to another more relevant landing page, in order to reduce bounce rate and "crawl errors" in your site analytics...)
More granular options in the built-in Import/Export tool
Found in: Update 140, Episerver.CMS.UI 10.2.0 (CMS-4114)
This update gives site admins more control over exactly which content structures are exported, and how it's imported. It also improves the merging logic between existing and imported content.
Export: New option "Include sub items" lets you export just the selected node, or all its sub items. This helps you export (and import) just the content you need. The node selector is also now an on-page expanding tree, instead of 'a pop-up window.
Import: New language selector option allows you to extract a specific language from a multi-language export package, if preferable. (Language selector only shows languages that are enabled on the destination site.)
Also handy: If one of the languages in the export package does not yet exist on the destination site, the import will automatically create that language branch for you!
Selecting multiple assets at once
Found in: Update 140, Episerver.CMS.UI 10.2.0 (CMS-1670)
In previous versions of Episerver, you could only manipulate single nodes in the asset pane - i.e, you could select one node (and its subnodes) for copying, moving or deletion at a time.
It's now possible to select multiple nodes using standard keyboard inputs, like SHIFT+mouse click to select a list of adjacent nodes, or CTRL+mouse click to select multiple non-adjacent nodes.
Improved Scheduled Jobs interface
Found in: Update 143, Episerver.CMS.Core 10.3.0 (CMS-4525)
Visitor Group cookies now expires within a year
In compliance with the new EU data privacy laws, cookies used by the Visitor Groups personalisation feature now automatically expire within a year (compared to several years in previous versions).
Internal links can now contain query strings
Found in: Update 151, Episerver.CMS.UI 10.6.0 (CMS-6328)
Sometimes, we need to link to an internal page, with query string parameters, or link to an anchor or another internal page. Until now, the internal link tool only allowed you to select the target page, but no query strings - the hacky solution was to create an external link, pointing to your site, with query strings and all. What a hassle!
(In addition, if you edited that link afterwards, it would be converted to an internal page link, and query strings would be stripped away. Doh!)
To fix all this, a new "Remaining URL" field has been added to the link tool. This is where you paste your query strings or anchors, and it will be appended to your link, whether it's an internal or external target.
Which Episerver version are we running?
To find your Episerver version, go to Admin mode (probably requires extended permissions, talk to your site admin), then hover your mouse pointer on the browser's title tab: