6.0.0 🎉

[lcharette]

It was a long road, but UserFrosting 6 is now officially out ! 🎉

UserFrosting 6.0 represents a major evolution of the framework, replacing the aging Jquery, Handlebars and Bootstrap frontend stack with a modern Vite + Vue 3 + UIkit 3 architecture. This evolution makes this the second most significant updates in UserFrosting's history, right after the initial release of 5.0 which saw a complete rewrite of the PHP codebase.

This update also includes a complete restructuring of the codebase for developing UserFrosting itself, consolidating what was previously spread across six separate repositories into a single, unified monorepo.

Introducing a brand new UI architecture means the upgrade process might not be strait forward. Thankfully, the upgrade guide is available on the Documentation website to guide you.

Quick Overview

UserFrosting 6.0 brings several major improvements:

• Brand new UI: A fresh, original and modern design with improved usability and accessibility
• Modern Frontend Stack: Transition from Webpack Encore to Vite with Hot Module Replacement
• Vue 3 & TypeScript: First-class support for modern JavaScript development
• UIkit 3: Updated UI framework replacing Bootstrap (in AdminLTE theme)
• Improved Developer Experience: Faster build times, better error messages, simpler configuration
• PHP 8.1+ Required: Leveraging modern PHP features and improved performance
• Brand new Learn documentation: Replaced Grav with a custom-built documentation site based on UserFrosting 6 (this site you're on right now!) for better performance and maintainability
• Unified Monorepo for developing UserFrosting: All components (Framework, Core, Account, Admin, AdminLTE) consolidated into one repository

Frontend Modernization

Before (5.1):

• Webpack Encore for asset bundling
• jQuery for DOM manipulation
• Bootstrap for UI components
• Handlebars for client-side templating

After (6.0):

• Vite for lightning-fast asset bundling with HMR
• Vue 3 for reactive components
• UIkit 3 for modern UI framework (in AdminLTE theme)
• TypeScript for type-safe development
• Native ES modules

Development Experience

• Faster builds: Vite's instant dev server startup vs Webpack's compilation
• Hot Module Replacement: See changes instantly without page refresh
• Better errors: Clear, actionable error messages
• Simplified config: Less boilerplate, more intuitive

Base Requirements

• Minimum PHP version: 8.1 (up from 8.0)
• Recommended PHP version: 8.4
• Node.js requirement: 20.0+ (LTS 24 recommended)