SocialEngine Self-Hosted 4.10 Release

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SocialEngine new 4.10 release

Our SocialEngine team is pleased to announce the release of SocialEngine Self-Hosted 4.10! We have been working very hard to bring you some great new features, improvements, bug fixes, and updates.

Improvements:

  • Flash removal – Removed Flash and added support for multiple uploads via javascript.
  • Profile Types – Updated to allow admin to map Profile Types to Member Levels.
  • Networks – Improved privacy in order to allow members to select a network to post to or multiple networks to post to.
  • Smileys/emoticon support – Added smiley support to status post. This will allow your members to express their emotions in a visual format as seen on many social networks. Super Admin user can also add, edit and delete emoticons! Many thanks to SocialEngine Solutions for their generous contribution of these super emoticon icons!
  • User Mentions – That’s right! We’ve added user mentions so that you can tag your friends in a status post by using the “@” symbol with the user name (such as @chiefevangelist).
  • Profile, Event and Group Banners – To help spice up your Profiles, Events and Groups!
  • Hashtags – Added hashtag support and tag cloud widget to display popular tags for easier searching. This allows members to find similar content and can increase user engagement. This includes adding hashtag support for photos.
  • Added required fields asterisks – This will improve the user experience when joining your site or filling in required fields on their profiles.
  • Updated Profile Question Fields – Removed AIM as a default question on new installs. AIM is still available as an optional question. Added these popular options:
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn Personal
    • LinkedIn Company
    • YouTube Channel
    • YouTube User
    • Soundcloud User
    • Spotify User
    • last.fm User
    • goodreads Profile
    • flickr Profile
  • Enhanced privacy on Member Browse – For private profiles, the profile photo in the member browse page will show a default “Private Profile” image. Added a “Block Member” button in order for members to be able to block members with private profiles.
  • Add SKU to Developer SDK – To make it easier for experts to create their awesome certified plugins!
  • Update requirements checklist to add “allow_url_fopen” and “openssl” for installs.
  • Added phrase in Settings > General Settings > Portal Page setting to add a description that the setting only controls the landing page and not individual modules such as blog, photo, etc.
  • Added Google Charts for site stats in Admin panel due to flash removal.
  • Improved “Quick Links” widget – added a setting in the widget edit screen to select whether to show the user name and photo in order to avoid duplicating those due to the “User Photo” widget that also has them.
  • Improved Notifications page – added date and time to show after each notification.

Bugs Fixed

  • Fixed – super admin or staff not able to see private items in the feed when settings are set to allow viewing private items.
  • Fixed Poll truncation issue – Increased characters displayed from 80 to 150 characters.
  • Fixed IM footer chat CSS issue that caused a scroll bar and caused the text not to show in Firefox browser when typing.
  • Fixed File & Media manager – Added support for https URLs.
  • Added support for missing languages.
  • Fixed photo deletion issue where “likes” and “comments” were not being deleted with the photo deletion.
  • Fixed issue with auto-detection of Locale and with blank language packs being created when no support for that pack exists. If there is no support for the selected locale, a notice will show in the Language Manager and the pack will default to English.
  • Fixed hard coded phrases:
    • Events > topic > “said”
    • Group > widgets > profile-discussion > “View all %s Topics”
    • Activity Feed > “edited”
    • Messages > “No Results” and “message matches your response”
    • User > Profile Info widget > “Profile Type”
    • Group – fixed “Delete Category” and “Are you sure that you want to delete this category? It will not be recoverable after being deleted.”
    • Albums > Photo View > “Added”
    • Blogs > “%s Comment”;”%s Comment”;”%s Comments” and “%s Like”;”%s Like”;”%s Likes” added to core.csv for use in other areas when needed.
    • Forum:
      • in the topic %1$s
      • in the forum %1$s
    • Core:
      • « First
      • Last »
    • User Privacy Settings:
      • _ACTIVITY_ACTIONTYPE_EVENT_COVER_PHOTO_UPDATE
      • _ACTIVITY_ACTIONTYPE_GROUP_COVER_PHOTO_UPDATE
      • _ACTIVITY_ACTIONTYPE_COVER_PHOTO_UPDATE
    • File Manager:
      • File already exists. Please %s before trying to upload.
  • Fixed – issue where MaxCDN url in description was breaking secure lock in Admin Panel “General” settings.
  • Fixed – Removed privacy setting from First Name/Last Name fields due to confusion as this privacy was only for the user profile display. As these are intended to be the displayed names on the site, this was the best option we had in order to preserve site functionality. To have private name fields, we suggest you make your own and set them to “Hide on Member Browse” and “Hide on Profile” and this will allow only the member and admins to see the data.
  • Fixed – blog thumbnail CSS issue with images cutting off.
  • Fixed – blog CSS issue with list numbers/bullets not displaying on mobile.
  • Fixed – blog paragraph spacing issue.
  • Fixed – blog quote issue by adding “blockquote” to allowed tags. This will only update for member levels on fresh installs. For upgrades, you will manually need to add the blockquote tag to allowed html per member level in the blog settings if you want to allow this. We felt this was the best option for upgrading sites in case admins had already set allowed html tags.
  • Fixed – blockquote issue in group discussions.
  • Fixed spelling error at: ~/admin/payment/settings => “Do you want to enable subscriptions immediately after payment, before the payment passes the gateways’ fraud checks?”
  • Added link to Wiki definition for “grandfather” at ~/admin/payment/package/create => “Can members choose this plan? Please note that disabling this plan will grandfather in existing plan members until they pick a new plan.”
  • Fixed issue with notification popup not opening due to “DetectMobileQuick is not defined” error.
  • Fixed issue in IE 11 with notification mini menu icons that were not showing.
  • Fixed – issue with 2checkout not cancelling cancelled subscriptions.
  • Fixed – photos in albums were showing in ASC order. Changed to DESC order so that new photos could be seen easier in large albums.
  • Fixed – small CSS issue with plugin menu tabs if plugin has second row of menus.
  • Fixed – notification background issue on active status.
  • Fixed – file manager UI issue when uploading files. Added border.
  • Fixed – user icon in “Quicklinks” widget.
  • Fixed – added required asterisk to Events and Videos where needed.
  • Fixed – photos uploaded from iPhone were showing sideways on mobile devices.
  • Fixed – updated compatibility with Self-Hosted 7.2.
  • Fixed – notifications for private groups were still being sent to members who left the group.
  • Fixed – new profile type showed as “female” upon creation.
  • Fixed – sessions were not being deleted for users when they logged out, causing a large session table. Added a task “Session Maintenance” in task manager to clean engine4_core_session table from old values.
  • Fixed – empty choice in video drop down selection at Video Source.
  • Fixed – “Report” menu was not showing for Events or Groups.
  • Fixed – AWS S3 HTTPS connection breaking secure lock.
  • Fixed – forum subscribe not checked when quoting or clicking the “reply” link.
  • Fixed – Event RSVP not working.
  • Fixed – if Photo albums disabled or not installed, profile photos could not be deleted. Added a Delete Profile Photo page in the user Profile Edit page.
  • Fixed – issue in private message with code showing from editor.

Atlas Update:

The official SocialEngine responsive theme, Atlas, has received some attention as well in order to be compatible with version 4.10 and fix some bugs. For those that have purchased it, you’ll want to download the new version and update. We’ve also updated the tutorial to include how to edit the landing page to have widgets, a requested improvement. You can view the changed file list in the “Release” tab when viewing the Atlas listing and click “View” under the ‘Options’ column.

A complete changelog is available for more details about the changes and fixes implemented in this 4.10. Take it for a test spin at our live demo!

As always we highly encourage all users to do a complete backup of both files and database before performing this upgrade. Please have the backup performed by your host or a developer if you’re not comfortable with performing it yourself. Always check with third party experts for compatibility with any products you use before upgrading.

Important: If you are on a version below 4.9.4p1, you will need to follow the steps in this blog before upgrading and apply the patch mentioned.

You can download your copy of version 4.10 from your client dashboard. Fresh installs should follow our installation tutorial or you can order an installation ticket and our team will get it installed in no time! To upgrade from a previous version to 4.10, please view our upgrade documentation or, if you’d rather we take care of the hard stuff, you can order an upgrade and we’ll do it for you.

NOTES:

  • This version requires your server have a minimum Self-Hosted 5.6.31 or above.
  • The “Fancy Menu” widget has been removed from our supported core files for fresh installs. For those using it or wanting to use it, please see your favorite third party expert for customization assistance.
  • Attention third party experts: OFC library is deprecated. You need to start using Google charts in your plugins too where you may have been using flash as we’ll be removing OFC in an upcoming release.
  • Regarding private messages: Due to Zend parser, a few formatting codes may still show such as font size. This will be improved in future updates.

If you find any issues, please let us know by filing a bug report in our Bug Tracker. We’d like to encourage you to stay connected with the SocialEngine community.

From everyone here at the SocialEngine team, thank you for your enduring support and we really hope you love SocialEngine Self-Hosted 4.10 as much as we do!
With Great Appreciation,

The SocialEngine Team