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Yves
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Subject: UNB 1.6.4 released
(Deutsche Version der Ankündigung im nächsten Beitrag)
Hello everybody!
I wanted to do this a few weeks ago, but I was so busy (and I still am) that I often just forgot about it. But here it is: The brand new version 1.6.4 of the famous Unclassified NewsBoard.
It is a long-awaited update of the "stable" series and contains all of the new features that have been added during the last 15 months. And of course, all the bug fixes are included, too. Some of you have already upgraded to a "development" branch version meanwhile so not all of this may be new to those.
I'd like to take the chance and recommend everybody to switch to the development branch version of UNB. It's easier for me to release a new "devel" version and in fact, this site is always running the latest UNB version. A more lengthy explanation of the situation is described on the download page.
Go here to download the latest and greatest UNB since ever: http://newsboard.unclassified.de/download
About future development:
As you may have noticed, the development of UNB 1.x is not as fast anymore as it has been in the past. One of the reasons for that is that there is not so much work anymore. UNB 1.6.4 is now a quite stable forum system that does its job well and is extensible and customisable. While the roadmap for UNB is still available online on this site, I doubt that I will ever implement all its entries in that way. But of course, I'm going to continue to support UNB 1.6.x in the future and there will still be updates should a serious (or maybe also not so serious) bug be discovered. During the last one or two years, my ideas for a second generation of the UNB have gotten more detailed and I hope that I can start working on it this winter or in spring 2008. Just a few words on that: UNB2 will be more of a components collection that can be dropped into a (PHP-based) web site, enabling it for group communications much like a web forum. Of course, it will still come with an (example) front-end so that you can use it as a (not-so-)conventional stand-alone web forum.
Notes for the upgrade:
There have been changes to the database layout and/or the configuration file since version 1.6.3 that require the UNB auto-upgrade script to run. After updating all PHP files on your web server, UNB will show a warning message that an upgrade must be run, including a link to do so. Normally, the installation script is locked after an installation run, so you’ll need to unlock it first. Do that by deleting the file “lock.conf” from UNB’s root directory (this is where forum.php is located). This lock file will normally be created after the upgrade.
Most important changes in version 1.6.4 since 1.6.3: (the date refers to the change log item)
Features added or changed:
Bugs fixed:
Other changes worth noting:
Happy upgrading and a lot of fun with the new UNB version.
Hello everybody!
I wanted to do this a few weeks ago, but I was so busy (and I still am) that I often just forgot about it. But here it is: The brand new version 1.6.4 of the famous Unclassified NewsBoard.
It is a long-awaited update of the "stable" series and contains all of the new features that have been added during the last 15 months. And of course, all the bug fixes are included, too. Some of you have already upgraded to a "development" branch version meanwhile so not all of this may be new to those.I'd like to take the chance and recommend everybody to switch to the development branch version of UNB. It's easier for me to release a new "devel" version and in fact, this site is always running the latest UNB version. A more lengthy explanation of the situation is described on the download page.
Go here to download the latest and greatest UNB since ever: http://newsboard.unclassified.de/download
About future development:
As you may have noticed, the development of UNB 1.x is not as fast anymore as it has been in the past. One of the reasons for that is that there is not so much work anymore. UNB 1.6.4 is now a quite stable forum system that does its job well and is extensible and customisable. While the roadmap for UNB is still available online on this site, I doubt that I will ever implement all its entries in that way. But of course, I'm going to continue to support UNB 1.6.x in the future and there will still be updates should a serious (or maybe also not so serious) bug be discovered. During the last one or two years, my ideas for a second generation of the UNB have gotten more detailed and I hope that I can start working on it this winter or in spring 2008. Just a few words on that: UNB2 will be more of a components collection that can be dropped into a (PHP-based) web site, enabling it for group communications much like a web forum. Of course, it will still come with an (example) front-end so that you can use it as a (not-so-)conventional stand-alone web forum.
Notes for the upgrade:
There have been changes to the database layout and/or the configuration file since version 1.6.3 that require the UNB auto-upgrade script to run. After updating all PHP files on your web server, UNB will show a warning message that an upgrade must be run, including a link to do so. Normally, the installation script is locked after an installation run, so you’ll need to unlock it first. Do that by deleting the file “lock.conf” from UNB’s root directory (this is where forum.php is located). This lock file will normally be created after the upgrade.
Most important changes in version 1.6.4 since 1.6.3: (the date refers to the change log item)
Features added or changed:
- Added support for avatar/photo URLs relative to the current domain (2006-07-16)
- home_url protocol ist matched to current SSL usage. (2006-09-30)
- Added new user group property: Public group. Normally a user cannot set his own group memberships, but now he can with the new public groups. To the user, the UI looks like to an administrator, only that the user can only set and unset membership of selected public groups, all others remain read-only. (2006-10-05)
- Poll block is displayed on every page of a thread now. (2006-10-21)
- Added config option “nouserdesign” to prevent non-admin users to select another board design. (2006-11-13)
- Added the plugin hook session.newuser that’s good to initially copy a user profile from another source when the UNB session has been externally authorised (like when integrated in another application, CMS, ...) (2007-01-21)
- Outgoing e-mail have now the “Precedence: bulk” header (2007-01-21)
- Thread views of the thread starter himself are not counted towards the ‘thread views counter’ (2007-01-21)
- Added the configuration option “path_with_overview” that, set to 1, always shows the “Overview” item in the forum/thread path line, with a link on it. (2007-01-21)
- Changed user option for the date format to a drop-down selection where they can choose from examples of common date formats, instead of reading the PHP date() documentation. (2007-01-21)
- Added configuration option “jabber_tls”. Set this to 1 if you want the integrated jabber client library to use TLS to connect to Jabber servers. This feature is now turned off by default as it seems to cause some compatibility problems. (2007-02-11)
- When visiting the board after a while and being loged in with the auto-login cookie, no session IDs will appear in links for the second request. (2007-03-17)
- A warning will be displayed on the overview page if the user account is not fully validated yet, which can lead to some features (like posting) being disabled without any obvious explanation. (2007-04-20)
- The maximum signature length is displayed in the user settings, post options, in the explanatory text. (2007-04-20)
- “Reply to #...” notices above a post now feature a link to that post (2007-05-27)
- Added browser detection (for the board log file) for Windows Vista and fixed Windows 98 detection. (2007-07-13)
- Upgraded FeedCreator class to support ATOM 1.0 (requires code modification though) (2007-08-30, 2007-09-09)
Bugs fixed:
- Finally added the check for already sent HTTP headers, a problem that was reported every once in a while. (2006-07-25)
- Fixed XML error in the log viewer (2006-08-22)
- The file board.conf.php is written with file mode 0666, this means it’s readable and writable for everyone. (2006-09-30)
- Splitting threads no longer allows moving the newly created thread into the “Overview” (top-level) forum or directly into forum categories. (2006-10-21)
- Fixed Unicode characters display in the search results when no search terms were specified (2006-10-22)
- Fixed wrong username checking for new registrations. (2006-11-26)
- Editing posts does regard the maximum allowed post length, too (2007-02-04)
- Moving a post to another thread cannot move it to a thread that doesn’t exist (2007-02-04)
- Removed @ characters from function calls in veriword.lib.php to make GD errors visible (2007-02-15)
- Disabled the use of IE7’s new rendering capabilities by default. Even the simpler design is too heavy for IE7 which shows a considerably lower performance then IE6. (2007-02-20)
- “Create new thread” link from within a thread view didn’t work (2007-02-27)
- Improved multi-platform line ending support. This should resolve the mail() header bug and make UNB’s log files look nicer on Unix-like systems. (2007-03-17)
- Renamed “smilies” to “smileys” (2007-04-20)
- Fixed a bug that the forum descriptions in the forums list disappeared when the board option “Count threads and posts for forums” option was deselected. (2007-04-20)
- Fixed an ABBC parser bug with automatic URL detection. This also fixed bug #309: URLs are auto-linkified to "wwww" (2007-05-22)
- Search function now correctly searches for words with backslash characters in it. (2007-05-23)
- Fixed the \0 bug, finally. (2007-05-24)
- The “thread moved” note wasn’t kept as long as it should be. (2007-08-03)
- Deleting a forum is not allowed when it contains posts that must not be deleted, too. (2007-08-03)
- When a user is renamed, the new name is tested for uniqueness like when registering a new user. (2007-08-09)
- Single sent Jabber messages could be empty (2007-08-30)
- And a lot more...
Other changes worth noting:
- Altered page footer to make clearer that I am not the webmaster of all those boards out there. German police and other users from foreign countries keep phoning/e-mailing me about illegal content or membership issues in some board found on an arbitrary domain which is provably not under my authority. I encourage all board administratos to adapt the change in the template file “_foot.html” which now includes the common term “This board is powered by ...” instead of the software name alone which could confuse users if the board admin didn’t change the top logo. (2007-02-17)
- Replaced the Jabber library with class.jabber2.php from the Flyspray project. This should be more reliable, according to the authors. (2007-08-03)
Happy upgrading and a lot of fun with the new UNB version.
♪ ...nanananah, all in all we’re just brilliant thieves, nanananah... ♪♬
