Breadcrumb
- Home
- News
- Announcements
- Convivial for GovCMS updates
Announcements
Convivial for GovCMS updates
Convivial for GovCMS is constantly being developed and improved. Over time new features are added, and bugs are fixed. From time to time the whole platform will be refactored to move with best practices.
Published date
Last updated
On this page
2026Q3
- Audience filter: A simple select list allowing users to select an audience.
- No code favicons: Favicons now configured with metatags. No theming needed.
- FOI listing: New collection with facets and search. FOI items are displayed as a summary.
- WYSIWYG Semantic HTML: Wider range of tags supported for abbr, time, address, dl, dt, dd, cite.
- Footer redesign: The footer is now more coherent.
- Banner Print and Listen: New functionality has been brought into the banner in line with common government patterns.
- Teaser icon: New view mode added to support compact lists with icons. Works for downloads, Nodes and Items.
- CTA design: Personalised CTA tweaked to have better button placement for more obvious interactions.
- Provide feedback: Button moved from a section (costly in space) to the footer.
- Theme Import libraries dynamically: More efficient management of theme libraries.
- Banner functionality: Support for background images and a variety of masks on the image.
- Related region: Page template updated to support a standardised related region for content.
- Image card Background is transparent: Better-looking cards allow background imagery to partly shine through.
- Sidebar nav parent: Stronger navigation with the parent link included in the menu.
- Background Image Modifier: The famous Ken Burns effect comes to images, allowing better storytelling with hero images.
- Datatable: A new component allows CSVs to be displayed as interactive tables.
- TOC Smooth scrolling: Page now scrolls smoothly.
2026Q2
- Modern framework: Tailwind and DaisyUI replace Bootstrap 5
- Single Directory Components (SDCs): Future-proofed components
- Theme settings: No-code theme configuration
- Updated layouts for better navigation
- Skins: Different look and feel per site section
- Colour palettes and textures
- Dark mode: Fully integrated colour switcher
- Overlays: Accessible background images
- Webform styling: First-class design for complex forms
- Internationalisation: Right-to-Left (RTL) text
- Enhanced GEO for AI results
- FAQ Pages for AI optimisation
- Phosphor icons
- Flexible menus
- New components: Diff and Slider
- Audience visibility switcher
- Search improvement: Autocomplete
- Content quality: Refined content model
- User dashboard
- Updated admin theme: Gin
- Prettier login screen
- Web vitals: top scores for Accessibility, SEO, and Best Practices
2025Q4
- Theme: Refactor and CSS Variables
- Colour UI
- Main menu display options
- Feedback form caching
- Updated colour palettes
- Colour palette swap modifier
- Dark mode
- Back to top button now includes visible text ("Back to top"), not just an arrow icon
- Quick exit link now sits in a dedicated region near the top of the tab order
- New components: Gallery, Lightbox, Model Viewer media and Content tabs
- New features: Information icons, Quick exit, External links, Privacy control centre
- Design refinements
2025Q1
- Personalisation with Convivial Profiler
- Content recommendations with Recombee
- Matomo analytics
- Quick exit
- Search improvements
- Resource (content type)
- Decision Flow (component)
- iFrame (component)
- Frontend theme improvements
- Backend theme improvements
- Privacy settings
- Fixes: Permissions and access control
- Fixes: Accessibility
2022Q1
- Rebuilt on GovCMS9 / Drupal 9 (previously targeted GovCMS8)
- New lightweight personalisation based on a single "intent" variable, driven by client-side JS and local storage (no third-party integration needed)
- Personalised homepage content: banner, promotion block, filtered articles and news, based on audience/intent
- Switched underlying design system from AuDS to Gold (the community fork, following DTA's withdrawal of AuDS support)
- Replaced starter content types with a new, purpose-built set: Section, Page, Topic, Audience, Article, Event, Person, FOI Disclosure
- Introduced a "listing" marker so any content (e.g. a Page) can act as a listing page for articles/events, avoiding over-engineered taxonomy
- Cleaner, decoupled core architecture separating components/patterns from the design system/theme layer
- New flexible header/hero banner (breadcrumb, H1, intro, optional background image, colour palette, callout links), inspired by the NSW Digital Design System
- Added Slick carousel as a new layout option for Node List and Item List components (alongside halves/thirds/quarters)
- Retained: GovCMS SaaS compatibility, Layout Builder–based layouts, Paragraphs-based components, AuDS-conformant editorial controls
- Continued focus on accessibility, responsiveness, SEO, and performance (Lighthouse-driven)
- Roadmap: upcoming Bootstrap 5 version of the platform; more advanced personalisation (geolocation, topic affinity, campaign integration) planned outside GovCMS, adaptable back into SaaS