We are pleased to announce the release of SocialEngine Self-Hosted 6.0.0! This major release adds a new theme, new plugins, lots of improvements and fixes.
We’ve got some exciting new features with this release! There are quite a lot of amenities with the Elpis theme and new plugins. We have so many wonderful improvements, additions and fixes, we’ll include just one or two images for each in order to keep our blog from becoming too long. Please see our demo to fully experience Elpis and V6 features!
NEW
New Theme – Elpis!
Time to brush up on Greek Mythology and check out our new Elpis theme! Did you know the legend of Elpis? She was the spirit of hope and was generally shown with flowers in her hands. The future is full of Hope! With this Elpis theme and V6, your community will also be full of hope, peace and love.
Three color schemes included, with the ability to create your own unique color scheme to match your community vision.
Business Listings Plugin
Business listings are a great way for you to allow your users to showcase their business. Built from the Classified plugin, you are able to add Questions that will allow you to customize the details that businesses can provide. Widgets for Recent and Popular listings help to showcase the businesses.
Employment Plugin
These days, many people have turned to online resources in a hunt for employees or for work. This Employment plugin, built from the Classified plugin allows you to provide a way for businesses to list jobs to be filled. You can add Questions to allow your users to provide great detail for the jobs they are posting.
Improvements:
- Major Improvement – Update Zend via Custom Update. This custom Zend update allows for more improvements to translations, theme, Self-Hosted version, speed, optimization and much more!
- Major Improvement – Added Bootstrap for themes! This allows developers to create themes using Bootstrap.
- Major Improvement – Remove Mootools from the user front end. Instead of Mootools, we have used more user friendly libraries which will enhance not only the functionality but also the visual appearance of the features. The new code base we have used is much lighter than Mootools, so there will be a noticeable speed improvement in the user side pages.
- Improved – Mobile responsive browser widget consolidation. On mobile browsers, the widgets were in a very long line. This made a bad user experience. We consolidated this so users can click to expand/close the widgets.
- Improved – Improved options for drop down on cover photo. Added buttons for better design.
- Improved – Private Message improvements. This is improved when sending a message to one recipient from their profile.
- Added cancel or “X” in case a member does not want to send the message.
- It shows a message at the top that the member can select up to 10 recipients but there is no option to do that. We removed this message as it was confusing.
- Improved – Photos in various widgets and the activity feed, for the Album plugin, were improved to load the thumbnails instead of the main image. This speeds up page load.
- Improved – Profile Info for mobile browser view is improved to go under the title of the profile field.
- Improved – Show Upload Theme from Theme Manager to Super Admin only. This prevents Admins from causing issues from uploading unapproved themes.
- Improved – Breadcrumbs were updated to look better.
- Improved – Photos were being uploaded to the content table even without the user submitting the form. This caused space to be used on the server and in the database for non-content. We have improved this so that photos are only uploaded once the form is submitted. Photos now will be uploaded to a temporary folder first, and then moved to the final folder when the users submit the form.
- Improved – Removed old files from SE Self-Hosted that are not in use. This helps to lighten the load. We will improve this further in other updates. For now, we have removed the following:
- externals/autocompleter/manifest.php
- externals/calendar/manifest.php
- externals/soundmanager/manifest.php
- externals/calendar/manifest.php
- externals/moocomet/manifest.php
- externals/moocomet/request.comet.js
- externals/moocrop/MooCrop.js
- externals/moocrop/manifest.php
- externals/moolasso/manifest.php
- externals/musicbox-font/font.css
- externals/musicbox-font/manifest.php
- externals/soundmanager/manifest.php
- externals/fancymenu/fancymenu.js
- externals/fancymenu/manifest.php
- application/widgets/fancymenu/Controller.php
- application/widgets/fancymenu/index.tpl
- application/widgets/fancymenu/manifest.php
- Improved – smoothbox popup is improved to load better, UI is improved to match current designs, and accessibility is improved.
- Improved – Ads are now responsive.
- Improved – Plugins with categories can now have subcategories! We also added the ability to re-order the categories in admin via drag and drop!
- Improved – Added a member level setting to allow admin to set the amount of photos that can be uploaded at once.
Bugs Fixed:
Many of the fixes below were for compatibility issues with the Mootools removal and Bootstrap.
- Fixed – Member Browse Search for Only Online Produces error.
- Fixed – When on a friend’s profile and clicking to send a message, it doesn’t pick the friend as the recipient.
- Fixed – Message popup cuts off smileys.
- Fixed – Self-Hosted 7.4 enable dev mode and get magic quotes error.
- Fixed – Clicking any notification misdirects to the first notification on the user’s profile.
- Fixed – The core runs an sql update even when there is no sql update.
- Fixed – Search is not coming on login and signup.
- Fixed – Hashtags in items do not work.
- Fixed – Add New Custom Theme setting is not working in Elpis Theme.
- Fixed – Can’t add banner image for ad campaign.
- Fixed – Notification Url issue redirecting to the same Url.
- Fixed – Maintenance mode does not work.
- Fixed – Poll cover and poll profile photo are missing on view.
- Fixed – Cover photo buttons broken upon upload.
- Fixed – View password missing from user password change.
- Fixed – Event date cannot be selected.
- Fixed – Chat room button font on hover is same as background.
- Fixed – Can’t select All in Task Manager.
- Fixed – Vertical header is showing if Logo option is unselected in Elpis theme.
- Fixed – Delete button issue in status box when uploading photos.
- Fixed – Recaptcha v2 is not working fine while directly logging in to Admin.
- Fixed – Album main image disappears on mouseover.
- Fixed – Messages are stripping html.
- Fixed – Closed Classified listings should not show in the browse page.
- Fixed – Umlauts Wreaking Havoc in Translator.
- Fixed – Past Event page mini menu issue. This was using the class “event_categories category_options generic_list_widget” which caused some extra blank space around the”Settings” mini menu icon in the header.
- Fixed – Mobile browser, member browse profile photo aspect ratio off. When viewing the member browse page on a mobile browser, the profile photos are stretched like a banner
- Fixed – Widget Corner Radius setting is not working on Elpis Theme.
- Fixed – Not able to convert mode to Production from Development in one click. It took several clicks sometimes.
- Fixed – Members Online Widget has double titles.
- Fixed – Recaptcha V3 added back now that MooTools won’t conflict.
- Fixed – Moving an ad to another position deletes the selected ad choice.
- Fixed – Viewing all notifications page and no links work to click.
- Fixed – Setting Landing Page of Elpis Theme is not working if selecting another landing page after setting one before.
- Fixed – Blocked members are invisible in the privacy setting page. No way to find them to remove the block.
- Fixed – Every time we load the page the IM sounds if we are in a chat. It should only ding when we have a new chat.
- Fixed – Various UI issues for sign up.
- Fixed – Hashtag not working in Employment.
- Fixed – Event discussion bulleted list formatting lost.
- Fixed – Cover photo skewed in mobile browser.
- Fixed – Mobile browser side menu ellipses overlaps site name.
- Fixed – Mobile login and signup page issues. In the Mobile Browser, when you are on either the Login or Signup Page, instead of showing “3 bars” for Main Menu, it is showing the whole Main Menu tabs due to global_left_panel class not being added to the body.
- Fixed – Cannot upload cover photo to group.
- Fixed – Remove and Add Friend not working.
- Fixed – Update Travel plugin for v6.
- Fixed – Text area lists not showing.
- Fixed – Error editing Employment plugin.
- Mobile App Issues Fixed:
- SES mobile apps filling error log.
- Fixed – Cover and profile photo drop down closing too soon.
- Fixed – Removed Viglink as the API is out of date and this is not used enough to warrant keeping it.
- Fixed – Forum mobile browser emoji shows code instead of emoji.
- Fixed – Blog drafts not marked as draft.
- Fixed – “Show on profile with link” setting doesn’t work consistently.
- Fixed – Two copies of jQuery are loaded with each request.
- Fixed – Comments on status updates need some padding between the status and the comment.
- Fixed – Invitation Sent phrase not working for Indonesian.
- Fixed – Task scheduler wasn’t working correctly with Cron.
- Fixed – HTML widget not working properly.
A complete changelog is available for more details about the changes and fixes implemented in this 6.0.0 release. Please view our demo and explore the new features!
Please note that with the addition of the new Elpis theme, the Serenity theme is no longer installed with fresh installs and is no longer supported. This theme will be available for download separately for those who want to use it and have someone update it.
You can download your copy of version 6.0.0 from our new client dashboard. Clients who purchased from November 25, 2021 until our stable release will receive the v6 unlock for free. Please send a ticket from within your account requesting the free v6 unlock. For clients who purchased more than 90 days ago, a fee is required in order to unlock this version. If you hadn’t requested to be moved to our new dashboard, please contact us.
Third party experts, please send a ticket from within your account to request a 20% discount for the v6 access.
As always we highly encourage all users to do a complete backup of both files and database before performing an upgrade. Please have the backup performed by your host or a developer if you’re not comfortable with performing it yourself.
Important: If you are on version 4.9.4p1 or below, you will need to follow the special steps in the upgrading documents linked below before upgrading and applying the patch mentioned.
Fresh installs should follow our installation tutorial or you can order an installation and our team will get it installed in no time.
To upgrade from a previous version to 6.0.0, please view our upgrade documentation. V6 has new requirements. Please be sure to read them and have your server updated.
If you find any issues with this release, please let us know by filing a bug report in our Bug Tracker. We’d also like to encourage you to stay connected with the community.
With Great Appreciation,
The SocialEngine Team
