Changelog

40 min

Purple is on the move - we are constantly working to improve our Publishing Suite to make it even more valuable to you. Here is a weekly summary of all the new features, improvements, updates and bug fixes included in the releases.

Deployment schedule

Purple Hub deployments are processed on Mondays, every two weeks, alternating between late night (23:00) and early morning (06:30) deployment times, both CEST.

Purple Content Cloud deployments take place every Monday between 10am and 11am CEST.

There are no deployments on public holidays in Berlin.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 26 October 2026, at 23:00 CET.

General Improvements

Newer models for AI image editing (DAM+ only): Two new GPT Image 2.5 models replace gpt-image-1, which OpenAI is retiring. The faster model is the new default, and the other gives you finer control over edits. Both support 16:9, 9:16 and the original image format. Allowed blocks per article type: You can now choose which Purple Blocks are available separately for each article type, including newsletters. Simpler user roles: Only roles that work in the Hub can be assigned: Administrator, Purple Editor and Purple Managing Editor. Legacy roles are hidden. Smart News feeds: You can now create Smart News feeds in the Hub feed settings, next to RSS 2.0, Media RSS and MSN RSS. A Smart News feed needs a language and a logo (700×100 px PNG), and the Hub shows hints for the settings Smart News checks. "Include content" has to be switched on for Smart News, but it is not forced, so paid articles are not published in full by accident.

Curator

Interface update In our last communication, we announced that the Curator interface update could be tested on Demo from 12 October. Since then, we have received your feedback and changed parts of the UI based on it. These changes include switching collections in one click, seeing all planned versions at once, resizing the query and collection side by side, and pinning articles directly in each row. The new Curator has full feature parity with the old Curator interface. On Monday, 26 October, we will roll out the renewed version on Demo for you to test. The renewed version is then expected to be activated on all production hubs on 9 November.

Technical Updates

WordPress update On 26 October, we will update the Hub to the latest version of WordPress (7.1). WordPress 7.1 has already been active on all Demo hubs this whole week without any problems, and we have tested the update extensively. You do not need to do anything, and we do not expect any impact on your daily work. If you notice anything unusual, please contact Purple Support through the usual channels. We are on standby and will take care of it right away. PHP update (Already deployed) As announced in the email sent to you earlier, we deployed a fixed PHP version on 21 October after a critical security vulnerability was published. No problems have occurred since, and your published content and apps were not affected at any time.

Purple Changelog

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 12 October 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General Improvements

Curator The Curator has a new interface that is in line with the rest of the Hub. Several editors can now open and edit the same collection at the same time, so collections are no longer blocked by another user, and every change is saved right away. The new Curator will be released for testing on the Demo environment on Monday, 12 October, and on Production on 26 October. A separate email with more details will follow. Article Status changes in MS Teams Status webhooks can now post a formatted message to a Microsoft Teams channel, including article title, status change, assignee and a link to the article. For this, Purple Status needs to be activated, which also allows you to use the Purple Planning boards as well. For more information contact Purple Support or your contact person at Purple. Purple Variants auto sync A new global setting automatically syncs content between all variants of an article on save. Last Update column The post overview gets a "Last Update" column showing date, time and the user who last edited the article. Next to that has there been a time stamp added to the Article Status column.

Purple DAM

Gallery management: Image metadata can now be edited after upload, and images can be bulk-selected and reordered. Unsplash integration (Purple DAM+ only):Unsplash can be searched directly from the media library, and photos are imported with their metadata and the required attribution. Please contact support to activate it. Picture Alliance (Purple DAM+ only): Picture Alliance image can now be imported multiple times, e.g. for reuse with a different caption. Default AI prompts (Purple DAM+ only): Default prompts are available for AI image generation and editing.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 28 September 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General Improvements

General Improvements and Bug Fixes This release does not introduce new functionality. It focuses on stability, performance, and refinements across the existing feature set. We are currently working on bigger roadmap themes like improving the Curator and the Editor.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 14 September 2026, at 23:00 CET. Improvements Expanded AI capabilities in Purple Prompts Purple Prompts now also supports Claude's AI models, giving you more choice when creating and refining text. We've also made the connection more robust, so future model deprecations from providers like OpenAI shouldn't cause outages in your prompts anymore. Better overview for editorial planning There's now a dedicated dialog for planning new articles. Article status can also be tracked in a Kanban view with its own columns, and Curator Collections can be placed and reordered more freely on your pages. Images and media management In the Purple DAM, you can now search images by metadata such as source and title — even if you only know part of the term. Captions and photo credits from wire feeds are now automatically carried over to the featured image. Print files can now be processed as JPEG, GIF and other image formats in addition to PDFs. New in the editor Mathematical formulas can now be inserted directly in the editor. Newsletter The newsletter layout width has been adjusted, and if an article in a newsletter hasn't been published yet, the corresponding error message now links directly to that article. Further improvements This release also includes numerous bug fixes and stability work behind the scenes — including around reassigning articles to other publications, cropping images, scheduling wire content around daylight saving time changes, and various areas of the editor and settings.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 31 August 2026, at 23:00 CET. Improvements Refreshed interface elements We have brought the Purple Hub further in line with our design system. Input fields, checkboxes, dropdowns, buttons and icons now look cleaner and more consistent in many places — including the article and page overviews, issues, dossiers and newsletters, the settings pages, and the sidebar navigation. Nothing changes for your day-to-day work: all functions remain unchanged and in the same places. Some areas still follow the previous look and will be updated in upcoming releases. In addition, several messages and labels — for example when publishing and scheduling articles, and in the media library — now appear correctly in the language your Hub is set to. Clearer publishing: preview and release The "Publish to Release" option in the editor sidebar will be hidden by default going forward. This makes publishing unambiguous: Preview always publishes an article to preview Publish / Update always publishes an article live Previously, the additional option could cause uncertainty because it did not always reflect the actual state of an article. Both paths remain available to you — they are simply more clearly separated now. If you still need the option, you can show it again in the Hub settings. 😎 Coming up: a dedicated workflow module with Kanban boards We are currently building a dedicated workflow module for the Purple Hub. It will give editorial teams a visual overview of where every piece of content stands — from idea through editing and approval to publication — including Kanban boards. Development is making good progress. We will share details, a first look and a timeline in a separate announcement. Further improvements This release also includes numerous bug fixes as well as maintenance and stability work behind the scenes.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 17 August 2026, at 23:00 CET. General Improvements General Improvements and Bug Fixes This release does not introduce new functionality. It focuses on stability, performance, and refinements across the existing feature set. Improved performance and reduced loading times in various areas of the application Interface refinements for a more consistent user experience Increased stability during longer sessions and under higher load Fixed several issues that could lead to unexpected behaviour in certain cases Corrections to display elements and labels in several places Updated internal components and dependencies

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 3 August 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General Improvements

AI-Generated Image Metadata (Purple DAM+ only) When uploading an image, Purple DAM now automatically generates suggestions for title, alt text, description, and caption -based on the file's EXIF/IPTC data and AI image analysis. In the file detail view, pending suggestions appear as placeholder text with a ✨ indicator; you can accept them individually, accept all at once via the "Accept All" button, or trigger a fresh suggestion for any field at any time. The prompt that is used for the generation of suggestions of Custom Fields or Custom Taxonomies can be altered in Purple Prompts for better results. AI-Suggested Search Terms When Inserting Images (Purple DAM+ only) When opening the insert image dialog in the editor, the media library now automatically suggests search terms based on the current article text. The suggestions are generated in the article's language (German or English) and appear as clickable chips to start a search directly. Duplicate Image Detection on Upload (Purple DAM+ only) When uploading a file that already exists in the media library, a dialog now appears before the upload proceeds, showing links to the existing duplicate(s). You can choose to upload anyway (the new file gets a "-copy" suffix), cancel the upload, or, when uploading multiple files, skip individual duplicates and continue with the rest. The check applies across all upload methods: drag & drop into the editor, the media library, and the insert file window.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 20 July 2026, at 23:00 CET.

General Improvements

Picture Alliance Integration (only with Purple DAM + licence) Editors can now search and import images from Picture Alliance directly within the media library, without leaving Purple Hub. Images are imported along with their metadata (description, credits), and the feature is available as part of Purple DAM+. A Picture Alliance subscription is required. Image Usage Tracking (only with Purple DAM + licence) When opening a media item, the detail information dialog now shows where each media item is used across your content (articles, issues, dossiers, pages, newsletters). You can see usage counts per content type and navigate directly to a filtered view to review them. Within the media library you can apply a filter set: (e.g. photographer + date range) and then get all matching images. If you scroll down, you see the number of media items that match that filter and in how many places these images are used A tooltip breaks down usage into published and unpublished articles, giving editors a clear overview how much to pay to freelance photographers for example. Featured Image Drag & Drop Restricted It is no longer possible to drag the featured image into the article body text. This prevents accidental misplacement, as the featured image behaves differently from inline images, particularly in print workflows. Kordiam: Corrected Editor Label In the new interface of Kordiam, the link in Kordiam that opens the Purple Hub editor is now correctly labeled "Purple Hub" instead of "WP". This removes a recurring source of confusion for editors using both tools in their daily workflow.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 6 July 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General Improvements

AI Image Editing in Purple DAM+ Purple DAM is getting native AI-powered image generation and editing, removing the need to rely on external tools like Photoshop for everyday image work. Editors will be able to generate new images from a text prompt, create variants of existing images, combine multiple images into one, and apply AI-based edits directly within the Media Library. The feature includes built-in undo and restore-original controls.

Purple Growth Sidebar improvements The keyword coverage and entity recognition engine in the Purple Growth sidebar is now fully integrated into Purple Hub, no longer running on a separate server that requires a separate login. The related articles functionality is no longer supported. As a result, the overall performance of the Growth sidebar has been improved.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 22 June 2026, at 23:00 CET.

General Improvements

New Taxonomy UI Categories, tags, and custom taxonomies now have a modern overview and edit/add page, consistent with the post overview. The new UI supports search, filtering, language variants, ACF fields, Yoast SEO, and bulk actions.

Improved Article Locking Dialogs When a session times out due to inactivity, it was previously not always clear why access to an article was lost — and any unsaved content could no longer be saved. Purple Hub now shows a non-dismissible dialog explaining what happened, with targeted actions depending on whether another user has edited or is currently editing the article. Content can always be copied to the clipboard before leaving.

Custom taxonomies in RSS feed configuration Custom taxonomies can now be included in RSS feeds via the RSS custom field configuration in Purple Hub. A taxonomy type and a custom output tag name can be configured per feed.

Per-block custom metadata Custom metadata can now be defined on individual content blocks — such as headlines, images, and paragraphs — rather than only on ACF widgets. This enables use cases like time-based visibility rules per block or link annotations with custom attributes. Block metadata is supported in the Hub import API and exposed via the Catalog API.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 8 June 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General Improvements

Custom fields in Planning view Custom metadata fields (ACFs) of type text and dropdown can now be viewed and edited directly in the Planning quick edit modal, both when opening an existing post and when creating a new one. Fields are configurable to appear in the quick edit via a dedicated "Show in Nelio Content" toggle in the ACF settings.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Tuesday, 26 May 2026, at 6:30 CET. General Improvements

RSS Feeds Enhancement The RSS Feeds Tool now supports advanced filtering with AND/OR logic, allowing more granular content selection. Additional fields are being added including custom post type identification, a dedicated paywall indicator, and media copyright information from custom fields. This provides more control over feed content and metadata output. Relative Date Filter in Post Inserter for Newsletters A new feature enables layouts to use relative date ranges that automatically update each time an article is opened. This will eliminate manual adjustments and therefore speed up the workflow. Purple DAM We have implemented various small improvements for the new Purple DAM. If you want to have Purple DAM activated for your Hub, contact Support or your contact person at Purple.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 11 May 2026, again at 23:00 CET.

Editor Improvements

Most Used Blocks A new "Most Used" category in the block menu allows editors to pin frequently used Purple Blocks to the top of the block list in the left sidebar for faster access. Most Used blocks can be configured on the Purple Blocks settings page. Inline Links The default behavior for inline links (open in new tab / same tab) can now be configured on the Purple DS Hub settings page. Custom Block Icons All custom blocks now have a standard icon based on their type, instead of the default generic "block" icon. Removal of "Publish to Release" checkbox The "publish to release" checkbox has been removed from the sidebar as it could lead to confusion Preview always publishes to preview, Publish/Update always publishes to release.

General Improvements

Purple DAM Several improvements have been made to the Purple DAM. Images can now be found by searching for a filename substring, and improved PSD file support has been added - particularly useful for PPI customers. Upload errors and general stability have also been improved. If you want to have Purple DAM activated for your Hub, contact Support or your contact person at Purple. Interstitials Interstitials can now be easily set up as a dedicated menu item in the Hub sidebar, with all required configuration included out of the box. If you want to learn more about Interstitials or want a demo, contact Support or your contact person at Purple. RSS Feeds RSS feeds now support tag-based filtering, allowing only posts matching selected tags to appear in a feed. WordPress core tags are also included in the feed output going forward. Newsletter The Newsletter Post Inserter now displays custom taxonomies as filter options when a post type is selected, and Newsletter Ad blocks support filtering by ACF select fields for more targeted ad placement.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 27 April 2026, at 23:00 CET.

Purple DAM

New Interface Purple DAM is the newly by Purple developed media file handling in your Purple Hub. We have improved the user interface, making uploading more efficient, filtering more effective, bulk edit more intuitive and selecting images easier. We optimized managing your Media's meta data, including custom fields, taxonomies and industry data standards like IPTC and EXIF. Editing images with intuitive focus point setting and cropping is working the same. We have also improved the handling of print files. Important to know: What was possible in your Purple media library before, will still be possible after the release. If you want to know more about Purple DAM, please read further in our Documentation. Roll out After Purple DAM has been released on Monday 27.4, 23:00, we will roll it out step by step to all of our customers in the days after that. So don't worry if your Media library has not been upgraded to Purple DAM immediately. If you already have questions about the Purple DAM upgrade, or want to understand what this means for your specific situation, please get in touch with Support. Purple DAM+ Purple DAM + is the paid upgrade to the Purple DAM module. With Purple DAM+ you can for example link external sources like a DAM, but soon also Picture Alliance from DPA to be loading inside your Purple Hub. Another feature for DAM+ users is 'Target article'. With this functionality you can smarter organize your media collection with your planned/published articles and improve collaboration between photographers and editors. Currently we are further working on AI-image editing tools to be included in DAM+, as well as image-usage-tracking and AI written metadata based upon image recognition. If you want to learn more about Purple DAM+, want to give suggestions or want a demo, contact Support or your contact person at Purple.

General improvements

Social Media Plugin We have updated our Social Media plugin to include some new functionality. It is now possible to send videos and multiple images to your social media channels. Another improvement we introduced is the ability to push your Social Media messages to the Buffer queue. Buffer is a social media automation tool. When a social media message is in the Buffer queue, you can then tag for example Companies and Profiles from your Linkedin profile. Other than that, Buffer selects the best time to publish messages to your socials.

The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 13 April 2026, at 06:30 CET. Purple Control Center Go visit the new Purple Control Center, a dashboard for all your admin tasks on https://controlcenter.purplepublish.com . In this new environment you can find the following functionality.

Important Links Links to the Purple Manager, the Content Cloud, your Ingest imports, Coupons, Experience Builder, System Status and Support. Soon to be added: links to your Hubs and Purple Analytics. Further development The Purple Control Center will be the environment where we introduce all our admin tools for you as a customer admin. Currently we are working on improving the create and manage new user flow. The Control Center has the same accessibility levels as the old Purple (DS) Manager.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 13 April 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General improvements

Auto suggestion of all Related Articles + All Articles Types It is now possible to have related articles suggestions for your articles. This will be displayed in the tab called 'Similar'. This functionality is not automatically displayed. If you want to enable this for your team, go to Settings > Elastic Press > Features > Core Search > Related Posts and toggle on the Related Posts option. Another improvement is now that all post types will be found in the related articles search field, not only default articles/posts. Purple Prompts Purple prompts has been extended with an option to generate Taxonomies (Categories/Tags/etc). Define a new Purple Prompts and select: Generate Taxonomy terms. You can then select wether you want the prompt generate new terms, or only use existing terms.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 23 March 2026, at 23:00 CET.

General improvements

Purple Variants Several improvements have been made to the Purple Variants feature in the Hub. There is now greater flexibility in how Purple Variants can be set up and configured, including support for custom post types across the board. A bug was fixed where the Variants settings icon and sidebar were not visible when editing articles in custom post types. We have also implemented some UI changes, removing the online/print/default description from the title and improving colors. As a result, Purple Variants can be now be better used to manage multiple brands and websites from a single Hub. Purple Digital Asset Management The Purple team has further worked on the new Media library, also known as Purple DAM. The first results will be presented during our Quarterly Review this Tuesday, 24th of March - 10:00 CET.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 9 March 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General improvements

Filtering subcategories There has been a small improvement in the filtering of subcategories. Hovering a chip in the category filter (or any other taxonomy) now provides the user with a tooltip that also displays its parent categories. Purple Newsletter It is now possible to send mails through Maileon with the Purple Newsletter module. The mechanism of autofilling your newsletters with written articles from the website has also been improved. Implementation of the Newsletter module can be requested by contacting your project manager or our support helpdesk. Purple Digital Asset Management The Purple team has further worked on the new Media library, also known as Purple DAM. The first results will be presented during our Quarterly Review at the end of the Month, 24th of March - 10:00 CET.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 23 February 2026, at 23:00 CET.

General improvements

Purple Newsletter There have been significant improvements in the configurability of templates and the usage of scheduled articles for our Newsletter module as well as other small improvements. Implementation of the Newsletter module can be requested by contacting your project manager or our support helpdesk. Purple Prompts We have solved some bugs (including reactivating our German translations) and implemented a simplification of the Rewrite Article dialog. The rewrite dialog is now standard and always set to what was previously called the 'Visual Split' view. Seeing the underlying html code can be done by clicking 'Show Code'. Purple Wires fetching Article Updates Purple Wires can now be configured to automatically fetch and overwrite an article when it has been detected that the source has been updated. Read more how to set this up in our documentation. Updates & Bugs fixes. We have updated our PPI plugin to the latest version and we have solved various bugs.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 9 February 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General improvements

Article Overview: Open Article in a Tab You can now open an article in a new tab by clicking the icon next to the article title, instead of opening it in the current tab. Update Menu items We have updated the configuration possibilities for (sub-)menu items. If you want to hide an item, or move that item to the settings page, please get into touch with our support helpdesk. This could be useful in the case when certain article types (legal documents, contact info, etc) should not be displayed in the menu interface for all employees.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 26 Janary 2026, at 23:00 CET.

General improvements

Curator: Collection visibility Articles in the curator now display which collections they belong to at a glance. A new column shows collection membership with clickable tooltips, making it easy to avoid duplicate assignments and understand article usage across collections. Flexible Dossier Publishing Dossiers containing draft or scheduled articles can now be published with only the already-published articles included. The system provides a clear warning modal showing which articles are unpublished, allowing you to either proceed with partial publication or cancel to review the content first. Default Language Settings Users can now set their preferred default language for creating new articles directly in their profile page. This ensures new articles are automatically created in the author's preferred language, eliminating the need to manually select the language each time.

Purple Cloud + Manager Purple Cloud + Manager deployments take place Monday 26 January 2026 between 10am and 11am CEST.

General improvements

App Store Naming Purple Manager now separates the internal app name from the name displayed on users' devices. You can configure platform-specific app store names while maintaining clear, searchable names within the Manager. Unified TTS Configuration Text-to-speech settings are now consolidated at the publication level in one central location. This eliminates confusion between different configuration sources and ensures consistent TTS generation across all import methods. Enhanced Webhook Notifications Webhooks now include publication date information and scheduling status for content. Systems can automatically distinguish between immediately published and scheduled content, with optional notifications when scheduled content goes live.

Purple Hub The Deployment for the Purple Hub is planned for Monday, 12 January 2026, at 6:30 CET.

General improvements

Curator: Deblock Collection Access Editors can now manually unlock blocked collections directly in Curator using a new takeover button. When a collection is occupied, hovering over the button shows who's editing and allows you to take over with a confirmation modal, immediately restoring editing access. Faster Custom Post Type Switching Switching between Custom Post Types in the sidebar menu is now significantly faster using content filtering instead of full page reloads. Improved Timezone Support Users working in different timezones can now edit both Hub time and local time fields interchangeably in the scheduling dialogs. The "Now" button correctly sets the current local time, and both time fields automatically sync when either is changed. Newsletter as Main Menu Item Newsletter is now a top-level sidebar item instead of a submenu under Articles. It includes two subitems: Newsletter and Ads, making newsletter management more accessible. Only available for customers who have the newsletter module active. Configurable Default Access Levels Admins can now set default access levels (free/paid) per Custom Post Type in PurpleDShub Settings. This includes an option to completely hide the Access Level field for specific post types, reducing manual work and preventing errors. Variant Type Filtering The Variant type field, that is used by some of our customers that have the PPI plugin activated, is now filterable in the Post Overview. This needs to be configured first in the Post Overview settings. Dossier Page Enhancements The new Dossier overview page now display publish status with dates for each dossier and issue. Article lists within dossiers show post status as text (published/draft/scheduled) instead of visibility icons for better clarity and consistency. Bug fixes We fixed critical issues including author information being incorrectly changed when duplicating articles, autosave problems with online headlines and teasers, and multi-select actions now working correctly on the All Articles page with appropriate options displayed.

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