Flame

12.0 - Released May 1, 2024

The twelfth major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 24 closed tickets for this release.

Named after the Flame Nebula which is designated as NGC 2024.

Notable Changes

• Nebula Sass compiler now works with Blocks (and any other plugin/additional locations)
• Temporarily store invalid CF7 form submissions (and optionally spam) for context
• Detect and cross-link related CF7 form submissions
• Early Hints replace HTTP2 Server Push
• Speculation Rules API integrated
• Major GA4 data improvements
• Full PHP 8.2 support

Screenshots

CF7 Invalid/Spam Form Submission Capture

Carina

11.0 - Released May 1, 2023

The eleventh major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 26 closed tickets for this release, and many more improvements outside of opened Issues.

Named after the Carina Nebula– one of the first objects photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope which launched during the development of this release. This WordPress Nebula framework is now 10 years old as the initial development started in 2013, and has now been active for half of the lifetime of WordPress itself.

Notable Changes

• Implementation of Google Analytics v4 (GA4)
• Native CF7 submission storage system (with notes)
• Attribution tracking (server-side and client-side)
• Upped minimum PHP version support to 7.4
• Option to track JS errors in a log

Screenshots

CF7 Storage System

Cygnus X

10.0 - Released May 1, 2022

The tenth major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 51 closed tickets for this release.

Named after the Cygnus X emission nebula which also contains the "Tulip Nebula".

Notable Changes

• Upgrade to Bootstrap 5
• Upgrade to Font Awesome 6
• Switched from CDNJS to jsDelivr
• Removed Mmenu (in favor of Bootstrap Offcanvas)
• Upped minimum PHP version support to 7.3
• Additional anonymization
• Added user feedback system
• Added Safe Mode
• Major overhaul to provided Adobe XD template

Screenshots

User Feedback System

Cat's Eye

9.0 - Released May 1, 2021

The ninth major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 152 closed tickets for this release. Minor note that the documentation website has been migrated to AWS and switched to using the subdomain https://nebula.gearside.com (rather than the former subdirectory https://gearside.com/nebula).

Named after NGC 6543, or Cat's Eye nebula.

Milestones

• 100 stars on GitHub
• 1,500th commit
• 2,000th closed issue
• First perfect score in Google Lighthouse

Notable Changes

• Dropped support for Internet Explorer 🎉
• WP JavaScript Hooks API implemented
• Dynamic imports added for JavaScript modules
• All jQuery AJAX functionality changed to Fetch
• Drag & Drop File Upload Helper
• Overhauled Performance Dashboard Metabox
• Service Worker optimization (HTTP2 Server Push)
• New Nebula Options for easily scanning and dequeuing assets on the front-end
• Administrative log feature added to the Diagnostic tab of Nebula Options
• Additional advanced Google Analytics events (including "Browser Navigation" detections)
• Drastically improved the usefulness of Nebula's DataLayer events
• Major Workbox version update (including addition of Workbox Window)
• Major Mmenu version update
• Minor overhaul of the Nebula Autocomplete Search functionality
• Removed jQuery version selector
• Removed Autotrack library
• Removed Device Detector library

Screenshots

Drag & Drop File Upload Helper

Updated Performance Dashboard Metabox

New Advanced Asset Dequeue Options

New Administrative Logs

Last IE11 Supported Version

This is the last version of Nebula that supports any version of Internet Explorer. Any security or essential patches for IE-supporting Nebula versions will be made on a new branch from this release (however, hopefully none is needed).

Nebula theme updates have been disabled.

For more information about Nebula and IE11, review this issue: #1396

Eight-Burst

8.0 - Released May 1, 2020

The eighth major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 89 closed tickets for this release.

Named after NGC 3132, or Eight-burst nebula, which is a distance of 2,000 lightyears away and was discovered in 1888.

Notable Changes

• Internationalization support via localization functions
• Supports Native Lazy Loading
• Nebula functions now live within the Nebula JS object
• Cookie notification
• Moved Design dashboard metabox to core (from Companion plugin)
• Rage Click detection
• Nebula now sends custom events to the DataLayer (for GTM)
• New design resources for Adobe XD (and CC library file)

Screenshots

Cookie Notification

Orion

7.0 - Released May 11, 2019

The seventh major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 198 closed tickets for this release.

Named after the Orion Nebula.

Notable Changes

• Automatic child theme installation and activation
• Allows for re-installation of same Nebula version from GitHub
• Gutenberg Blocks
• Third-party security audit and patches
• Performance dashboard metabox (with WebPageTest API and Google PageSpeed API integrations)
• Nebula GA event listeners
• Predictive Prefetching (not just for service workers anymore)
• Readable color Sass function with contrast ratio calculator
• Lazy loading functionality
• Service Worker now uses Workbox by Google

Screenshots

Nebula Option Detail

Performance Dashboard Metabox

Design Metabox w/ New Contrast Ratios

Ant

6.0 - Released May 19, 2018

The sixth major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 407 closed tickets for this release.

Named after the Mz 3 nebula, nicknamed the "Ant Nebula" because of it's unique shape.

Milestones

• 1,000th commit

Notable Changes

• Re-overhauled Nebula Options interface
• HTTP2 Server Push support
• Service Worker support makes this the first version as a Progressive Web App
• Major Customizer improvements
• "Form Flow" tracking added
• Load abandonment tracking option added
• Improved exception tracking
• Bootstrap 4 and Font Awesome 5 major upgrades
• Replaced the Nebula Visitors Database with improved Hubspot CRM JavaScript integration
  • Includes real-time (pre-submit) data capture and Dashboard metabox for most recent contacts
• Introduced the Nebula Companion plugin for more niche features/option
  • This includes the new Audit Mode feature
• Sass processing no longer errors fatally (when using PHP 7.0+)
• Critical CSS can be output directly in the <head>

Screenshots

Dashboard

Options

Lagoon

5.0 - Released May 1, 2017

The fifth major release of Nebula.

There were roughly 302 closed tickets for this release.

Named after the Lagoon nebula which is 5k lightyears away from Earth.

Notable Changes

• Changed from Gumby Framework to Bootstrap 4 (alpha).
• Changed to object-oriented programing model.
• Reorganized directory structure.
• Enhanced Customizer support.
• 1,000th closed issue on GitHub.
• Visitors database and Hubspot CRM server-side API integration.
• Began using proportional font sizing with rem units.
• Nebula Options interface overhaul

Screenshots

Home

Dashboard

Options

Last Procedural Nebula Version

This is the last version of Nebula before it moved to Object-Oriented Programming. This is also the last version that supports PHP 5.3.

This tag is more for a reference point rather than an official release.