CMS Made Simple 1.9.x Upgrade Problems

After upgrading CMS Made Simple 1.8.2 to 1.9.2 I noticed:

• pageloading lasted longer as in Version 1.8 on the same server,
• problems with Umlauts and special characters and
• CSS-problems in the menu.

CMSms 1.9 slower than 1.8?

After some investigation and help from mike-r in the CMSms-Forum I could specify the brake shoe. The problemmaker in question is the obsolete tag {stylesheet}. This tag is responsible for loading the CSS styleshhets from the database and integrate them into the HTML code. In version 1.9 however it loads the CSS every time from the database on every page request and not from the cache. This results in rather long pageloadings. Sometimes it doubles the time.

Fixing the problem is pretty easy: Just replace the old {stylesheet} with the new tag {cms_stylesheet} in all of your templates. But be advised that you have to replace all relative paths with absolute ones in all of your CSS stylesheets. A better way is putting the prefix [[root_url]]/ in front of your relative paths. E.g.:

background: white url([[root_url]]/images/titel.jpg) no-repeat;

If you have a lot of paths in your stylesheets this task could be a pain in the ass. An alternative way is – after a backup of your stylesheets – to copy the CSS code in a text editor and use the “find and replace” function:

Find: url(

Replace: url([[root_url]]/

After, paste the CSS code back. Do this with every stylesheet you use.

This task must be done by all users using older CMSms installations or themes in whose templates the old tag {stylesheet} is still used.

Problems may occur on SSL-pages. Please refer Correct understanding of SSL option and cms_stylesheet in the CMSms-Forum for details.

Problems with Umlauts and Special Characters

After the upgrade to 1.9 I noticed that umlauts and special characters were displayed wrong (question marks in black rhombs). To fix this if your database delivers UTF-8 output you have to check the following entries in your config.php:

$config['locale'] = 'de_DE.UTF8';
$config['default_encoding'] = 'utf-8';
$config['admin_encoding'] = 'utf-8';
$config['set_names'] = true;

If your site does not run in German you have to adjust “$config[‘locale’]” of course. E.g. “no_NO.UTF8” for Norwegian or fr_FR.UTF8 for French.

CSS-Problems in the Menu

This mistake may be present on very very less CMSms installations. But however I decided to point out this mistake because if it is present it is hard to find. The mistake was visible in version 1.9 primarily even though the mistake was already existent in the system for a long time.

After the 1.9 upgrade some of the CSS styles were not applied to the menu as in prior versions. Double-checking the stylesheets did not show any mistakes.

The problem was in the Menu Manager. A long time ago I switched the menu template from file- to database-driven management. Unfortunately I did not fixed the {menu} entries in the page templates. The entry was still:

{menu template='simple_navigation.tpl'}

Die suffix .tpl shows that the menu template is file-driven. As already mentioned I switched to database-driven management. After the upgrade there must be some changes happened in the used menu template file so the CSS styles might not fit to the template. But I have not checked it carefully.

Changing the {menu} attribute “template” to the used template name (deleting the suffix .tpl in my case) solved the problem:

{menu template='simple_navigation'}

Do not forget to make this change in every page templates {menu} is used.

Related Links

• “(Deutsch) Seite sehr langsam” im CMSms-Forum
• “Correct understanding of SSL option and cms_stylesheet” im CMSms-Forum