Even though this release is called an incremental release, there are several new features to improve the overall site administration experience.
We have completely rewritten the installation and upgrade routines to be much more user friendly and provide better feedback if there are environment issues or problems are encountered.
You also have the ability to select which plugins are installed and whether you want to have the sample content loaded.
We have completely redesigned how you install plugins. What was once a very cumbersome process is now handled with just a few mouse clicks. You no longer need to FTP the plugin, instead you will use an integrated upload system.
On the Plugin Administration screen, you’ll see a new area where you can select a plugin to upload. Once it is uploaded, glFusion will validate that it has the proper permissions to copy all the files, create any needed configuration files and install the plugin. You can also upgrade existing plugins as well. We’ve made some changes to the plugins themselves to support this new auto installer. The following plugins have been updated to work with the latest version of glFusion:
The installer will also help you install old style plugins by copying the necessary files to the proper location, but you will still have to select the Install link for the plugin administration screen. Not only does this make installing plugins almost painless, it will give us the ability to easily distribute upgrades to the bundled plugins without having to wait for a full glFusion release.
We have enhanced the handling of system maintenance configuration options:
and also added 2 new options:
All of these are now set in the siteconfig.php using $_SYSTEM[] variables instead of $_CONF[], which means they will not be cached.
$_SYSTEM['site_enabled']
If this option is set to false, all visitors to your site will be presented with a Site not available message. You can control the contents of this message in the online configuration setting called Site Disabled Message or URL. You enter the text to display, or the full URL to a HTML page to display.
The default setting for this option is true.
$_SYSTEM['maintenance_mode']
This option places your site into a special maintenance mode. Only users who are a member of the Root group will have access to the site. All other visitors will be greeted with the Site not available message. Maintenance mode uses the same site disabled message as the site_enabled option.
This mode is useful if you have some maintenance work to do like installing a new plugin, reorganizing content, etc. If you are making system changes, such as restoring a database or other maintenance which would interrupt the operation of your site, you should use the site_enabled option instead.
The default setting for this option is false.
$_SYSTEM['no_cache_config']
This option will disable caching of the site configuration data. Generally you should use the caching feature as it provides a significant performance improvement. But, when you move a site or accidentally enter incorrect data via the online configuration system, having the option to disable the cache can come in handy.
The default value for this setting is false.
$_SYSTEM['rootdebug']
This option will enable additional debugging information in the event the site experiences the An unexpected error has occurred message.
This option should not be enabled on production sites since it will display configuration options and other details that could expose confidential data such as database logins, etc.
The default value for this setting is false.
$_SYSTEM['no_fail_sql']
This option will cause glFusion to ignore any SQL related errors. This option can be enabled when you receive the ‘An SQL error has occurred’ message. This will temporarily disable the crash and allow you to debug or resolve the issue.
The default value for this setting is false.
A long standing problem with glFusion has been the session database table. If your database server crashes, many times it would leave the sessions table in a ‘crashed’ state which prevents your site from loading. We have added some additional functionality to detect when the sessions table is marked as crashed and we attempt to automatically repair it.
We have upgraded the advanced editor, FCKeditor, to the latest production release of 2.6.4. This new version introduces the WebSpellChecker integration, a zero-installation solution for spell checking provided by SpellChecker.net. You will now have a wonderful spell checker running out of the box, requiring no server side installations and configurations.
Several bug fixes and new features have been added, especially to the table support, including the ability to define header rows and columns in tables.
One of the drawbacks to using the advanced editor in a shared environment is that during the image upload process there is only one library of files that is shared by all users, including the site administrators. We’ve implemented an experimental feature that will now give each user their own library space, so they will only see their own images. Site administrators (users with the story.edit permission) will still see all libraries.
To enable this feature, set $_CONF_FCK['editor_images_by_user'] = true; in the siteconfig.php file.
The default value for this setting is false.
If you manually create a new user, you now have the option to send the user their login credentials via email at the time you create the user.
We have modified the routine to generate random passwords so it no longer uses characters that are easily mistaken. For example 1, I, and l are often difficult for user to distinguish.
A new option is available from the Story List view that allows you to clone an existing story.
If you have a plugin's files loaded, but have not installed or have disabled the plugin, glFusion will now force a HTTP 404 (Page not found) error instead of dying with a SQL error. You can easily override how the access is handled by defining your own CUSTOM_404() function in lib-custom.php. See lib-custom.php.dist for a sample implementation.
We found a few areas that didn't work well in IE8 RC1, specifically the advanced editor due to a bug in IE8. We've made some changes to how the JavaScript is handled with improves IE8 RC1 interactions.
We've optimized the SQL that generates the main page resulting in much quicker load times. This is very apparent when you have several thousand articles. In one of our test sites we loaded 35,000 articles into the system. The query optimizations cut the index page load time by 40%.
We’ve enlarged the text entry box for all email functions when you are using the plain text format.
Upgraded Bad Behavior2 to the latest released version 2.0.26.
We have rewritten the submission system for both the Calendar plugin and the Links plugin. The problem with the previous version was if there were any errors on submit (incorrect CAPTCHA or missing fields), all entered data was lost. This is no longer the case.
We've added the ability to turn off calendar submissions for non admin users. To enable this feature, set Only allow Admins to Submit to true from the Calendar's Online Configuration screen.
You now have the ability to specify a remote URL to a file, instead of a local file, for download.
You now have the ability to store the files outside of the webroot area.
An email notification will be sent to the filemgmt Admin group when a new file is uploaded to the submission queue.
You can now easily move a forum to another category.
We've added a New Posts tab to the forum view that tracks the forums / posts you've subscribed to and when you login it will display unread posts since you're last visit.
We have added a new option to allow links to open in a new window.
We have rewritten the submission system for both the Calendar plugin and the Links plugin. The problem with the previous version was if there were any errors on submit (incorrect CAPTCHA or missing fields), all entered data was lost. This is no longer the case.
If you have enabled Media Gallery's Member Album functionality, you can now have a link to a user's member album placed in the My Account block.
To enable this feature, set $_MG_CONF['link_to_member_album'] = 1; in the Media Gallery config.php file (private/plugins/mediagallery directory).
Gallery Remote has been enhanced to work with F-SPOT gallery. This allows F-SPOT users to directly export media from F-SPOT to Media Gallery.
We have added 2 auto tags to Site Tailor: vmenu and hmenu. This will allow you to easily include menus in static pages.
Usage:
– This will insert a vertical-cascading menu
– This will insert a horizontal-cascading menu
You now have the ability to specify that no logo be displayed. This can be useful when you are using a header background image that already contains a graphic image.
New option to remove static pages
We’ve enlarged the size of the Static Pages edit window when using the advanced editor.