Author: Boone Gorges

Commons 1.3.3

I’ve just released version 1.3.3 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Commons 1.3.3 is a bugfix release, on the heels of Commons 1.3.2’s WP upgrade. Highlights:

  • In group Files areas, file descriptions are now visible.
  • A fatal error when attempting to edit a BuddyPress Doc has been fixed.
  • Support for Pages added to the Featured Content widget.
  • Login redirects for private pages are fixed.

For full details on the release, see the 1.3.3 milestone.

Commons 1.3.2

I’ve just released version 1.3.2 of the CUNY Academic Commons. The 1.3.2 release is dedicated to upgrading WordPress from 3.2.1 to the latest, WP 3.3.1. Making this move also required that we migrate from our old, BP-dependent admin bar (what you see across the top of every page of the site) to the new WP toolbar.

Check out the 1.3.2 milestone for full details on the release.

Commons 1.3.1

I’ve just released version 1.3.1 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Commons 1.3.1 is a bugfix release, with the following issues addressed:

  • Improves HTML document titles throughout main site
  • Fixes ability to uncouple a groupblog from a group
  • Fixes issue that caused edited blog posts to appear at the top of the activity stream
  • New WP plugins: WP-Print, WP Hide Post, Custom Sidebar
  • New WP theme: Modularity Lite

For complete release details, visit the 1.3.1 milestone.

Commons 1.3

I’ve just released version 1.3 of the CUNY Academic Commons. 1.3 is a major feature release for the Commons. Various technical and extra-technical hurdles have held up v1.3 for a bit longer than the team may have liked, so it feels particularly good to announce its release.

You can read a nice round-up of highlights at our News blog. Here is a quick list, from the development point of view:

  • Upgraded to latest BuddyPress, including all BP-dependent plugins (among others, a large rewrite of much of BuddyPress Groupblog)
  • New directory filters for Members
  • Autosuggest for wiki tags
  • Icon display of social media fields on user profiles
  • Sorting/posts-per-page dropdowns for individual forum topics
  • Auto-invitations to the Group for Group Admins for group admins/mods
  • Infrastructure for the invitation of non-CUNY site members, via admin-supplied signup code
  • Save rich text editor preferences in MediaWiki
  • Non-network-activate Viper’s Video Tags WP plugin
  • Better handling of LaTeX in group email notifications
  • Prompt for forcing the filling in of “Role” on user profiles
  • IE styling fixes for BP theme
  • Improvements to groupblog activation during group creation
  • Better custom image support for Featured Content Widget plugin
  • Dashboard Widget cruft removed
  • Autocomplete for adding users to blogs
  • New WP plugin: FD Footnotes

Keep an eye on the Codex in the upcoming days for posts highlighting some of these features.

For complete details on the 1.3 release, see the milestone.

New WordPress plugin: Add User Autocomplete

Add User Autocomplete
Add User Autocomplete

Site admins on a WordPress Network can add existing network members to their site on the Dashboard > Users > Add New panel. But the interface requires that one know either the email address or the username of the user in question. My new plugin, Add User Autocomplete, makes the Add Existing User workflow a bit easier, by adding autocomplete/autosuggest to the Email Address/Username field. Just start typing, and the plugin will return matching users; arrow down or click on the intended user to add her to the Add User list.

A few additional bonuses provided by the plugin, aside from autocomplete:

  • In addition to return email address and username matches, the plugin also checks against the display_name and user_url fields. So if my username is ‘admin’, and my email address is ‘bgorges@boonebgorges.com’, but my display name around the site is ‘Boone Gorges’, you’ll be able to find me by searching on ‘Boone’.
  • You can add many users to a blog at once. Search for one user, select and hit Return, and then search for another.
  • Prettier success messages. When you submit the Add New User page, your success message will give you a list of the users invited, instead of a generic “Invitations have been sent” type message.

Add User Autocomplete requires WP 3.1 and JavaScript. The plugin was developed for the CUNY Academic Commons. Check out the plugin at wordpress.org or follow its development at Github.

Commons 1.2.5

I’ve just released version 1.2.5 of the CUNY Academic Commons.

Commons 1.2.5 is, nominally, a bugfix release. But because of a few personal issues (two new daddies among the team members!), the release got held up in the pipeline for a lot longer than anticipated. During that time, a fair number of improvements got rolled into 1.2.5 than we’d originally planned.

Chief among these improvements is a major WordPress upgrade. We’ve gone from WP 3.1.3 to WP 3.2.1. If you have a Commons blog, you’ll notice the change right away – in WP 3.2, the Dashboard was given a bit of a facelift. WordPress 3.2 also means a beautiful new theme (Twenty Eleven), a great fullscreen writing experience in the Dashboard, and a host of other performance improvements and new features. Read more about WordPress 3.2.

A few other highlights of Commons 1.2.5:

  • New WP themes: Twenty Eleven, ThreatToCreativity, Byline, PressWork, Brunelleschi, Chunk
  • New WP plugins: Disable Trackbacks, Google Plus One, Facebook Page Photo Gallery, Spam Free WordPress, WP-SyntaxEvolved, Fancybox, Text Expander, Soundcloud Embedding
  • Some bugs fixed in BuddyPress Docs

You can read more about the release at the 1.2.5 milestone.

New BuddyPress plugin: BP Better Directories

BP Better Directories is a new BuddyPress plugin that will turn your (kinda boring) member directories into something a lot slicker. Site admins select which fields they’d like to be filterable in member directories. Site visitors can then use a nice AJAX interface for narrowing search results.

This plugin is being developed for the CUNY Academic Commons, and is in early beta. Don’t use on a live site. There’s also a pretty good chance that the technique I’m using in the guts of the plugin won’t scale all that well without proper caching. You have been warned! (Also, it requires at least BP 1.5.1.)

Download the plugin or follow its development on Github.

Commons 1.2.4.2

I’ve just released version 1.2.4.2 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This is a stopgap bugfix release until we can release the (rather large and overdue) Commons 1.2.5. Commons 1.2.4.2 highlights:

  • Modified the way that the Featured Content widget on the home page selects an avatar for featured Blogs and Blog Posts
  • Removed the WordPress Hit Counter plugin, which was causing performance issues with some sites.
  • Updated the TimThumb script where necessary

Full release details are available at the 1.2.4.2 milestone.