Content Blocks Q3 2025: Lazy Loading, Community Feedback, and the Road to v14

Between July and November, the team delivered ten maintenance releases for Content Blocks. We thank all contributors and especially Nikita Hovratov for handling the numerous issues and pull requests that came in during this period.

The most significant improvement arrived in version 1.3.12 with the implementation of lazy loading for ContentBlockData. This change addresses a critical performance issue in heavily interconnected database structures. Previously, Content Blocks loaded all relation properties recursively, which could exhaust system resources in complex setups. The new implementation stores relation properties in closures that execute only when accessed, typically in Fluid templates. This approach aligns with how TYPO3 Core handles relations and significantly improves performance in real-world scenarios.

Other notable fixes include proper handling of page-type-specific layout paths, correct localization of RawRecords, and the addition of the missing multiple option for Select fields. Version 1.3.16 introduced the ability to create new Content Blocks in any extension, removing previous location restrictions. The final release in this series, 1.3.18, addressed settings override issues.

Beyond the Content Blocks extension itself, Nikita resolved two Core issues that surfaced through community feedback. The RelationResolver now properly handles file translations, and the GreedyDatabaseBackend RuntimeCache no longer grows excessively large.

The community exchange remains a valuable part of our work. Nikita continues to respond to questions on Slack with quick turnaround times. The team maintained a presence at TYPO3 camps in Germany throughout the quarter, including Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, and Kamp-Lintfort. These events provided opportunities to present Content Blocks, answer implementation questions, and discuss the development roadmap.

We participated in the Dialog Day and delivered a Content Blocks Deep Dive session at Developer Days 2025. Seeing community members holding their own Content Blocks sessions, showing their implementations and hearing about the practical benefits they've experienced has been rewarding.

Questions about v14 integration come up regularly, so we want to address this directly. Content Blocks will not be fully integrated into TYPO3 v14 Core. Several foundational changes need to happen first, and some of these are already underway.

At the time of writing, certain improvements have been merged into v14, including TCA label enhancements and the System Resources API. This new API allows extensions to configure their public assets path in v14, which is an important building block for Content Blocks. We appreciate the work that Helmut Hummel, Benni Mack, Oli Bartsch, Benjamin Kott, Christian Kuhn, Garvin Hicking, and others have put into making these changes happen.

Significant work remains, and further integration is expected to continue into v15. The standalone extension will be maintained and improved in the meantime.

The team continues work on the Content Blocks GUI interface and will keep maintaining the extension based on community feedback and reported issues.

You can find Content Blocks on GitHub and install it via Composer with composer require friendsoftypo3/content-blocks. The documentation provides comprehensive guides for getting started and exploring advanced features.

Thank you for your feedback and continued testing. Your input helps us improve Content Blocks for the TYPO3 community. You can reach us at #cig-structuredcontent on TYPO3 Slack, or join our calls on the first and third Monday of the month at 20:00 CET (19:00 UTC).

The Content Types Team