Tag: wordpress

Commons 1.6.0.1

I’ve just released version 1.6.0.1 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This is a security update, with updates to WordPress (version 3.8.3) and Jetpack.

Due to a calendar failure (my slip-up – many apologies), the 1.6.1 release scheduled for April 11 was skipped. That’s why this release is minimal, and given the 1.6.0.1 version number. 1.6.1 has been rescheduled for April 21.

For complete details, see the 1.6.0.1 milestone.

Commons 1.5.18

I’ve just released version 1.5.18 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release features a number of important platform updates. WordPress has been updated to the latest release version (3.8.1), which boasts a new Dashboard design. BuddyPress has also been updated to the latest version (1.9.2). This release is a major plugin release; see https://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2014/02/06/major-commons-plugin-updates-scheduled-for-2014-2-21/ for a list of plugins that were updated under this policy.

For more details on the release, see the 1.5.18 milestone.

Commons 1.5.2

I’ve just released version 1.5.2 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This is a maintenance release. Some highlights:

  • Users are now redirected to the public profile view after editing
  • New Positions fields now reflected in the Members Directory
  • Improved UX for the College and Title field deprecation notices
  • WordPress upgraded to 3.6.1 security release

For complete details on the release, visit the 1.5.2 milestone.

New Release Schedule and Procedures document available

Starting today, the Commons dev team is rolling out a new procedure to warn Commons members of certain sorts of WordPress plugin updates on the site. This policy is part of a response to some recent problems where one of our partner developers – members of the Commons who use our platform as a host for their organization’s website – found his site broken by a major (and buggy) upgrade to one of the plugins underpinning his site’s functionality. In response, we’ll now be announcing on the 5th of each month which Commons software (WordPress and BuddyPress, along with other plugins and themes) will be receiving major updates on the 21st of that month. For more details on this new policy, along with some other high-level discussion of the schedule and procedures we follow for releases here on the Commons, visit our new Release Schedule and Procedures page.

Commons 1.4.31

I’ve just released version 1.4.31 of the CUNY Academic Commons. 1.4.31 is the second of our monthly releases during the summer of 2013, and includes a number of fixes and small features. Highlights:

  • Security updates to WordPress and BuddyPress
  • Elegant Themes updated
  • A number of new plugins: Page Excerpt, Easy Rotator, Column Shortcodes, Next Page Buttons, Page Links Plus: Single Page, WP Post to PDF
  • New WP themes: Aggregate, Lucid
  • Fixed a bug that prevented recent groupblog posts from appearing on front page of the site
  • Improvements to reply by email functionality

For complete details, see the 1.4.31 milestone.

A reminder that, due to the summer schedule, the next maintenance release (1.4.32) is scheduled for August 11.

Commons 1.4.17

I’ve just released version 1.4.17 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Commons 1.4.17 is a maintenance release, whose major feature is an upgrade to WordPress 3.5. WP 3.5 has lots of nice new user-facing features, such as a revamped media manager, that the Community Team will be highlighting in the upcoming weeks.

For complete details on the release, see the 1.4.17 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.

BuddyPress Docs 1.1: Doc History

BuddyPress Docs History
BuddyPress Docs History

I’ve just released version 1.1 of BuddyPress Docs, my collaborative editing software for BuddyPress.

The big new feature in version 1.1 is the History tab. After upgrading, you’ll notice that what used to be a single Edit button has been reorganized into three tabs: Read, Edit, and History. History allows you to brows the entire revision history of a document, to compare the differences between two revisions side by side, to view a single revision, or to restore to any point in the document’s history. Access to the History tab can be limited in the same way that access to the Edit tab can be, on a doc-by-doc basis.

This new feature will, I hope, bring some of the best qualities of wikis to BuddyPress Docs, and make Docs an even better way to collaborate.

The feature will be live on the CUNY Academic Commons in the upcoming weeks.

Download BuddyPress Docs from the wordpress.org plugin repo or follow development at Github.