Version 4.2 (April 2019)
Release Notes tell you what’s new in Academic. As always, we welcome your feedback. You can also file a bug report. Want to update to this version? Refer to the update guide in conjunction with the parameter changes mentioned in the Breaking Changes section below.
See what’s new in Academic!
Welcome to the v4.2 release of Academic. There are a number of exciting updates in this version that we hope you will like, including:
- Improved Widget System
- Improved Widget Pages
- Utilizes Hugo’s new headless page mode
- Added Preprint, Thesis, and Patent as publication types
- See the Publications section below
- Improved appearance of Experience & Accomplishments widgets on mobile devices
- Significant improvements to the documentation, especially on using widgets to build the homepage
- Auto update the copyright year in the site footer
- See the Other section below
- Several bug fixes (see below for details)
- New option to customize homepage section spacing

Breaking changes
Here are some considerations to make when updating Academic from the previous version, v4.1.0:
- Download the new homepage file and move it to
content/home/index.md
- This file now forms the parent of all your homepage sections (without it, your homepage will no longer render)
- Add
headless = true
to the front matter of all homepage sections (i.e. all files incontent/home/
) and any widget page sections - Convert any widget pages by:
- Deleting their
_index.md
file - Creating an
index.md
file with the new widget page front matter
- Deleting their
Publications
- Added Preprint, Thesis, and Patent as publication types (#769)
- View the new list of mappings
- Note that previous “Manuscript” type was renamed to “Preprint”
Widgets
- Improve appearance of Experience & Accomplishments widgets
- New mobile first approach improves style of widgets on small devices
- Add option to customize section spacing
- Fix citation view not working in Pages or Featured widgets (#961)
- Fix tag and category filters not working in Pages and Featured widgets (#989)
- Fix
exclude_past
andexclude_future
not working in Pages or Featured widgets - Fix custom sorting not working in Pages or Featured widgets
- Fix “See More” link in Pages widget not appearing
- Fix Citation View - do not colour authors as links
- Fix Hero text color when
text_color_light = false
Other
- Add ability to auto update the copyright year in the site footer
- To use, add
{year}
toCopyright
option inconfig.toml
. Displays current year.
- To use, add
Language Packs
- Update Chinese translation (#979)
Thank you
Last but certainly not least, a big Thank You to all the folks that helped to make Academic even better.
Has Academic helped you? Please consider supporting Academic.