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Upgrading from v7 to v8

v8.0.0 contains a number of breaking changes.

Feature templates

The plugin now uses virtual templates to enable common website features without the needing to create extra pages in your content folder.

A 404 error page is now generated by default. If you have already created a 404 page, you can now delete this file. You can configure the 404 page (or disable it) using the templates.error404 option.

RSS feed

It’s now easier to add and configure an RSS feed. If you have already created a page that uses the feed layout, you should delete this file and configure your feed using the templates.feed option instead.

Search index

It’s now easier to create a search index. If you have already created a page that uses the search-index layout, you should delete this file and configure your search index using the templates.search option instead.

Sitemap

A sitemap is now generated by default. If you have already created a page that used the sitemap layout, you can now delete this file. You can configure the sitemap (or disable it) using the templates.sitemap option.

Showing multiple authors for a post

The authors option for the post layout has been removed. You can instead use an array of authors under the author option:

  ---
  layout: post
  title: How we designed a service to manage juggling licence applications
- authors:
+ author:
    - name: Rod Gandini
      url: '#'
    - name: Sean Laver
      url: '#'

New Markdown features

Blockquotes are no longer styled using inset text, but instead use the design used for quotations on GOV.UK.

This design adds opening quotation marks to the start of each paragraph, and a closing quotation mark after the last paragraph. If you previously included these as part of a quote, you should remove these characters:
```
- > "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise."
+ > No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
```
You can now use GitHub-style alerts to emphasise critical information. If you were previously using the blockquote syntax to display content as inset text, you can now use the note alert type instead:
```
+ > [!NOTE]
  > No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
```
Quotations can now include an attribution. If you were previously citing an author as part of a quotation, you can now explicitly mark this as such by prefixing it with 2 hyphens (--):
```
- > No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise - Winston Churchill
+ > No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise
+ > -- Winston Churchill
```

See examples in the Markdown guide.

Configuration options removed

The feedUrl option had been removed. Use the RSS Feed feature to configure your feed’s URL instead.
The parentSite option has been removed. You can configure the header or service navigation components to provide links to a parent site.
The rebrand option has been removed.