IPS Community Suite 4.1.0

Released 10/27/2015

This is a security release and we recommend all clients upgrade as soon as possible.

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Key Changes

The next major release for IPS Community Suite 4 is now in the final stages of development. We have added dozens of new features, enhancements to existing features, fixed the majority of 4.0 bugs, and made large performance gains. See our blog entry for full information.

Changes and New Features Include:

• New menu structure and drag-and-drop menu manager
  • Ability to have two menu levels
  • Option to create both custom-link menu items and embed preconfigured menus
  • Preview before publishing
  • All menu items support group permissions
• Discovery system that allows for both admin and user created Activity Streams
  • Admin-defined streams always visible to users. Users can edit and save admin streams to create their own, custom copy.
  • The main show-all stream automatically tells you when there is new activity
  • Users can create custom streams
  • User streams can be shared but viewer will only see content based on their permissions
  • Filter options include:
    • All content or specific apps. Some apps support further refinement into categories or content-type.
    • Unread content
    • Ownership
      • Content I posted in
      • Content I started
      • Content by specific members (user can create a list)
    • Content I follow
      • Areas I follow
      • Specific content I follow
      • Posted by members I follow
    •  Time Period
      • Any time
      • Since my last visit
      • Specified number of days
      • Specific date range
  • Activity Streams that reference features not available to Guests such as unread tracking and follow system will auto-hide
• Option to serve images via a local proxy script (useful for SSL sites)
• Option to globally disallow remote images in posts
• Ability to preview email template wrapper
• Version number in AdminCP header
• Selective quoting to highlight a bit of a post and quote just that
• Pages application enhancements
  • Now installs with better default content to help new users
  • Pages menu manager removed in favor of Suite-wide menu manager. Upgrade system will attempt to preserve menu items.
  • Blocks
    • New blocks
    • Members block, Blog comments, Blog List, Download comments, Download reviews, Poll block
    • commentFeed/itemFeed based widgets have date limit (today, 7 days, etc)
    • RecordFeed has a customisable title
    • Calendar widget has a calendar selector to restrict events to specific calendar(s)
    • Better selectors for open/pinned/featured selection
    • External Widgets: Ability to add blocks to other websites via generated iFrame code
  • Pages
    • Larger editor box when editing/creating pages
    • More tags in sidebar when editing/creating pages
    • Custom error page configurable
  • Fields
    • Simple relational field added
    • Ability to place fields above or below record content
    • Simple Name: Value display format added
  • Media Manager
    • Ability to upload media for use within Pages pages, CSS, templates and blocks
    • Compatible with designers mode
  • Templates
    • New templates for when viewing the record homepage as 'articles'
    • Ability to export and import templates to share with other IPS4 communities
• Gallery application enhancements
  • New upload image process
  • Images and movies are submitted to the same upload field
  • Image reviews
• Editor updates
  • Uses div-mode which is much faster and more reliable. Clicking into the editor is now pretty much instant.
  • Auto-linking and member mentions to use new APIs for better reliability
  • Quotes, code boxes, and spoilers can be dragged and moved and there is no more "red line"
  • When cmd/ctrl right-clicking: options to remove or break-out of quotes, edit links and edit image properties
  • Pasting asks if you want to convert to plain text
  • Totally new code plugin with syntax highlighting as you type
  • Option to make enter behave as a new line rather than with spacing
  • Editor is responsive, and ability to have small editor show in areas with less space
  • Member @mentions in posts can now be selected by tab key
• Upgrade process
  • New upgrade process where new files are downloaded and installed automatically when possible.
  • Option to set email address for notifications when an upgrade is available
  • Banner shown to admins on the front end when an upgrade is available. It can be dismissed except for security updates.
• Design and interface enhancements
  • Improve typography for titles
  • Better contrast for user-entered text (posts/comments/etc)
  • Brighten background colors
  • Pre-select text in when share popup is opened
  • Make positive/negative colors consistent across all uses
  • Better hover highlighting of 'blended' links
  • Better styling of mentions in posts (both the username, and the menu to select a user)
  • Better contrast for ipsAreaBackground
  • Flatten the default photo image
  • Checkbox/radio buttons now use custom styling, giving themers more control of their style
  • Improve popular/selected post styles
  • Change popular post icon to heart for consistency with likes
  • Make date a permalink for sharing
  • Improve sidebar contrast and block styles
  • Remove tab bar 'stretch' option and use CSS approach
  • Improve attachments dialog
  • Add more IDs to the user bar template for hook use
  • Add X to close mobile nav menu
  • Upgrade FontAwesome to 4.4
  • Select messages for multiple deleting in messenger
  • Make leaving a conversation clearer
  • Improve warning panel in user profiles
  • Move content status icons (pinned, hidden etc.) to start of row
  • Improve cover photo so it automatically puts it into position mode after uploading
  • Android title bar inherits theme header color
  • Added date uploaded to Downloads version dropdown
• Browser notifications for completed actions (such as large file uploads)
• Option to prompt users to re-consent to Terms and Conditions and/or Privacy Policy when you change them in AdminCP
• Search
  • The main search box defaults to the app you are currently browsing unless you are on home page where it searches all
  • New default interface
  • Results now highlight and skip to search term in preview
• Retina emoticons
• Ability to uncheck all when adding Moderators in AdminCP
• Instant Notifications
  • Receive notifications via your Browser Notifications of new Personal Messages and anything in the notifications menu
  • Intelligent auto-polling that only polls when needed to reduce server traffic
  • Browser local storage used, to allow for cross-communication if you have multiple tabs open to further reduce resource use
• We now require a minimum PHP version of 5.4 though we do suggest at least 5.6. Version 5.4 will be supported for a short period of time as it is also EOL.

 

No Longer Included

• Areas such as View New Content, My Content, My Followed Content, Status page and so on are replaced by the new Activity Streams
• Sphinx is no longer supported as an alternative search engine. We are evaluating alternative search technology for a future release.
• Changes to the eAccelerator made it incompatible with IPS Community Suite so support has been removed.

Additional Information

The security update in this release fixes an issue that could possible allow for commands to be executed by an administrator. The issue requires social engineering and clicking on unsafe links so is not considered critical.