Major plugin and theme updates for February 21, 2016

The following plugins will receive major updates as part of the 1.9.8 release of the CUNY Academic Commons, scheduled for February 21, 2016:

  • Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps (1.4)
  • Custom Post Type UI (1.2)
  • FD Footnotes (1.36)
  • Inline Comments (2.2)
  • Jetpack by WordPress.com (3.9)
  • MailPoet Newsletters (2.7)
  • Media Library Assistant (2.24)
  • PressForward (3.8)
  • Subscribe2 (10.21)
  • ThreeWP Broadcast (28.0)
  • User Role Editor (4.23)
  • WP Accessibility (1.5)
  • WP Better Emails (0.3)
  • Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (4.3)

The following themes will receive major updates as part of the 1.9.8 release:

  • Canvas (Woo) (5.9)
  • Imbalance (wordpress.com) (1.0)

For more details on major update releases, please visit our release schedule and procedures page.

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Commons 1.9.5

I’ve just released version 1.9.5 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release is a major plugin/theme update release, including an update to WordPress 4.4.1 and BuddyPress 2.4.3. The release also includes a number of small bugfixes:

  • Fixed the positioning of Social Paper notification messages to avoid garbled text
  • Fixed the layout of multiple-group notices for forum posts to avoid overlap with forum text
  • Replaced some missing and incorrect elements on the sidebar of the News page

For complete details, visit the 1.9.5 milestone.

Commons 1.9.4

I’ve just released version 1.9.4 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release includes a number of notable fixes:

  • Prevent spam comments from being posted by anonymous users on public Docs
  • Show error notices when required fields are not filled in when editing profile
  • Fix People directory filters so that College correctly matches against Positions widget data
  • Don’t notify groups of connected draft papers

Major plugin and theme updates for January 21, 2016

Commons 1.9.5 will include a major update to WordPress (version 4.4.x) and BuddyPress (2.4.x), in addition to its normal major plugins and theme updates.

The following plugins will receive major updates as part of the 1.9.5 release of the CUNY Academic Commons, scheduled for January 21, 2016:

  • Alt checker (1.1)
  • Author Avatars List (1.9)
  • Better Search (2.1)
  • BuddyPress (2.4)
  • Collapse-O-Matic (1.7)
  • Email Users (4.8)
  • Front Page Category (2.0)
  • Google Calendar Events (3.0)
  • Media Library Assistant (2.22)
  • News announcement scroll (8.7)
  • PressForward (3.7)
  • Projects (1.5)
  • Rotating Tweets (Twitter widget & shortcode) (1.8)
  • Simple Staff List (1.19)
  • Table of Contents Plus (1601.0)
  • TablePress (1.7)
  • The Events Calendar (4.0)
  • The Events Calendar Category Colors (4.4)
  • Theme Check (20151211.1)
  • ThreeWP Broadcast (27.2)
  • User Role Editor (4.21)
  • WP Ajaxify Comments (1.4)
  • WP Retina 2x (4.4)
  • WP-Polls (2.72)
  • WPtouch Mobile Plugin (4.0)
  • Yoast SEO (3.0)
  • Zotpress (6.1)

The following theme will receive major updates as part of the 1.9.5 release of the CUNY Academic Commons, scheduled for January 21, 2016:

  • Canvas (5.9) (Woo)
  • Twenty Eleven (2.3)
  • Twenty Fifteen (1.4)
  • Twenty Fourteen (1.6)
  • Twenty Ten (2.1)
  • Twenty Thirteen (1.7)
  • Twenty Twelve (1.9)
  • WikiWP (1.8)

For more details on major update releases, please visit our release schedule and procedures page.

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Commons 1.9.2

I’ve just released version 1.9.2 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release includes a number of bug fixes:

  • Fixed a bug where hovering over buttons in the Docs editor would cause the layout to break
  • Improved performance of Social Paper “Readers” interface for users with large numbers of groups/friends
  • Fixed a bug that caused the description in the “Featured Paper” section of Social Paper not to be refreshed properly
  • Fixed a bug that caused post content to be improperly truncated in email notifications when containing more than one anchor tag

Because of scheduling problems related to the holiday season, there were no major plugin/theme updates today. The next major plugin/theme update release will be 1.9.5, on January 21.

Version 1.9.3 of the Commons will be released on January 2, 2016, rather than the normal January 1. Happy New Year 🙂

For complete details on the release, visit the 1.9.3 milestone.

Commons 1.9.1

I’ve just released version 1.9.1 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release follows up on a number of issues resulting from Wednesday’s 1.9 major release, including:

  • Improve performance of Readers interface when editing a Social Paper
  • Fix inconsistencies in the Wiki navigation
  • Improve the loading of certain stylesheets to ensure they’re properly cached by browsers

For complete details, visit the 1.9.1 milestone.

Commons 1.9

I’ve just released version 1.9 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This is a major release for the Commons; we aim for two feature-based releases each year, and this is our first one since 1.8 in May of 2015.

Major releases often coincide with the introduction of a brand-new major project for the Commons. For 1.9, our focus has been on the new Social Paper feature. With Social Paper, we hope to provide a space where Commons members can do their academic writing in a context that is natively connected with the other social spaces on the Commons, a tool that is as beautiful to use as it is powerful and flexible.

Social Paper is a heavily customized writing and reading environment for WordPress, powered in part by the WP Front End Editor and Inline Comments plugins, and integrating tightly with BuddyPress. In the future, we hope to make Social Paper available as a one-click installation package. But for the time being, you are welcome to experiment with this beta tool on your own WordPress site. Documentation and code is available on our public Github repo.

Commons 1.9 also features a number of critical improvements to BP Event Organiser, the BuddyPress calendar plugin that was the focus of our 1.8 release. For 1.9, we built the ability for users to subscribe, via their native calendaring applications, to group and user event feeds – whether public or private. We also made the BuddyPress integration tighter, by allowing group administrators to control who is allowed to attach events to their groups. In addition, we’re moving forward with plans to make BP Event Organiser content available outside of the BuddyPress context; sites in a WordPress Multisite network can now take advantage of a widget that embeds a calendar from any of their groups.

Version 1.9 includes dozens more small (and not-so-small) enhancements to the functionality and design of the Commons. For complete details on the release, visit the 1.9 milestone.