Tag: events

Commons 2.1.1

I’ve just released version 2.1.1 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release features the following fixes:

  • Improved appearance for Event featured images
  • Add venue map to Event pages
  • Navigation fixes following from 2.1.0 release
  • Fixed broken scheduled task in broken-link-checker plugin
  • Improved date appearance for recurring Events

For complete details, visit the 2.1.1 milestone.

Commons 2.1.0

I’ve just released version 2.1.0 of the CUNY Academic Commons.

Version 2.1.0 is one of our twice-yearly “feature releases”, and includes the following improvements:

  • Redesign of the top-level Events interface
  • Overhaul and consolidation of the Commons’s “About” page and subpages
  • Overhaul of the “Activity” page to replace the old “News” page, with features pulled from “My Commons”
  • Redesign and simplification of the ‘Create’ page

With these changes, we bring the redesign first launched in version 2.0.0 to more areas of the Commons.

In addition, Commons 2.1.0 is a major-release update for plugins and themes.

For complete details, visit the 2.1.0 milestone.

Commons 1.16.0

I’ve just released version 1.16.0 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Version 1.16.0 is our “major release” for Fall 2019, one of two yearly releases that focus on the introduction of new features.

Major features for 1.16.0 include:

  • An overhaul of the Courses tab. This includes a Featured Course slider at the top of the page, a set of tools for fine-grained filtering and searching of the Courses directory, and display improvements for the items in the directory.
  • Group calendar subscription and import tools. It’s now possible to perform a one-time event import to a group calendar, by uploading an .ical file. You can also configure a group calendar to subscribe to an external calendar feed, so that new items on that external feed are automatically detected and added to the group calendar.
  • A tool that enables users to request membership to a non-public site. Previously, these sites could only be joined via invitation, an obstacle for student onboarding.
  • Interface improvements to the Reckoning plugin, including the display of post categories when viewing user summaries.
  • Improvements to the group file folder interface, including a tool to delete folders.
  • Design improvements to Sites and Groups directories.

For complete details, visit the 1.16.0 milestone.

Commons 1.10

I’ve just released version 1.10 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Version 1.10 is a major feature release for the Commons. Watch our news blog in the upcoming days for more details on the highlights of the release. In the meantime, here’s a very brief summary of some interesting projects that the development team has worked on for 1.10:

  • Improved email notifications – Email notifications have been migrated over to the new BuddyPress 2.5+ system, which features better support for third-party plugins, better appearance on mobile devices, and more.
  • Rich text in forum posts – We’ve introduced a rich-text editor when creating a new forum topic or reply. Rich-text forum content should integrate nicely with email notifications and Reply By Email.
  • Group calendar shortcode – Display a calendar of a specific group’s events in the content area of a WordPress site with our new shortcode. Documentation is in process.
  • Registration nudges – When a user registers for the Commons but doesn’t click the link in the confirmation email, we now send an automated follow-up 24 hours later.
  • Improved upload privacy for non-public sites – Sites whose privacy settings limit readership to Commons members now have their file uploads protected in the same way.
  • Events UX improvements – We’ve added a Room Number field, and an improved datepicker.
  • Social Paper group interface improvements – Group paper directories now have some improvements to layout and messaging, for better consistency with the top-level directory.

For more details on these and other improvements, visit the 1.10 milestone.

Commons 1.8.9

I’ve just released version 1.8.9 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release features a few important fixes:

  • Fixed email notifications for events created in private groups
  • Prevented auto-linking in certain portfolio fields
  • Fixed bug that prevented new Quick Links from being saved

For complete details, visit the 1.8.9 milestone.

Commons 1.8

I’ve just released version 1.8 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Version 1.8 is a major feature release for the Commons. Features of note:

  • An events calendar for Commons groups and users. The calendar allows users to create events and link these events to one or more groups. Users can then view events on individual or group calendars. Group-linked events are also hooked into our group email notification system. On the technical side, this feature is powered by a plugin called BP Event Organiser, written by Commons team members Raymond Hoh, Christian Wach, and Boone Gorges. BP Event Organiser is, in turn, an add-on for the popular Event Organiser, by Stephen Harris. Event Organiser is freely available in the wordpress.org repo. BP Event Organiser is available via Github, though please note that it’s still in beta form; a cleaned-up version for general use is planned fo the future.
  • When creating a new forum topic in a bbPress-powered group forum, users can optionally cross-post the new topic to other groups that they’re a member of. This custom functionality was developed by Daniel Jones of the Commons development team.
  • Users can now search through the contents of a single bbPress-powered group forum. This is powered by a custom plugin, bbp-single-forum-search, written by Ray Hoh of the Commons dev team.

The Commons 1.8 news post has a more complete round-up of new user-facing features in this release.

Commons 1.8 is also a major plugin/theme update release, including an upgrade to the WordPress 4.2.x series.

For complete details on the release, visit the 1.8 milestone.