4.3 RC3 released

Version 4.3 RC3 has now been released. This is a release candidate for version 4.3. Upgrading is not recommended for live sites, as this is a pre-release.

To upgrade follow the steps in your website's http://mybaseurl/upgrader.php script. You will need to copy the URL of the attached TAR file as one of these steps ("3: Upload an upgrade TAR for extraction").


» alternatively (but not recommended), you can manually upload the files inside the attached TAR file over existing files (7-zip is just one of many tools for tar files). This is not recommended because it will bypass the upgraders addon-aware extraction algorithm and potentially cause problems.



For more details, see our upgrading tutorial.

RC3 is later coming than expected, and this has been because it's been the first version we've released under our newly expanded team, and after our recent international-team meetings – a lot of extra testing has been performed, and as a result we have over 100 bug fixes in this release. It's generally been a busy period of transition over the last 1-2 months: the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that we updated our website last night with some new bling, new content, and a new video about our companies services (link).

Summary of changes

New features:

• Wordpress importer (both from database, and from Wordpress XML export)
• Joomla importer
• HTML website importer
• iCal exporter
• Quiz responses CSV exporter
• New "importer redirects", so that when you go to import it'll easily redirect you to the correct place in ocPortal for cases when import is done natively through modules (e.g. CSV importing)
• New Comcode 'pulse' tag (as seen on our website, where we write ocProducts (it's configurable with parameters)
• Added submit-URLs to the side_news block and main_forum_news block and side_forum_news block
• Added reply counts to the side_forum_news block
• Added new parameter to main_leader_board block, to filter out staff from the points leaderboard
• Added CAPTCHA support to the main_contact_simple block and main_contact_us block
• The search will now auto search for expanded day selection if it can't find results for the default days selection (and tell the user it did)
• Allowed the download A-Z index to support ocFilter notation

New features for developers:

• Generalised shared-installs support so it is more flexible for people (although it is not an official feature)
• Improved shared-install functionality, so that theme files and Comcode pages may be shared between sites also, if desired
• Added memory debugging functions for developers
• ocPortal can now run without a database (the inbuilt database is now a bundled feature, although not completely supported or recommended for production sites)
• Added new developer feature for the quick addition of language strings, written (temporarily) in-line into the code
• Added support for running a server behind a proxy server (having to connect via proxy to access external resources)

Documentation improvements:

• The Tempcode tutorial now gives examples of how to use each kind of symbol
• The multi-site support is now better documented
• Setting up the scheduler on Windows Vista is now documented

Bug fixes / usability improvements / performance improvements:

• Memory optimisation - less RAM usage on a number of screens, and in general. To be realistic, stated memory requirements for ocPortal have been raised from 16MB to 20MB - we have reduced memory requirements in this release, but some PHP installs consume more memory than others, and we are being stricter in our measurements.
• Fixed problems with forum search - it was not including subforums correctly
• Made Comcode error screen show nicer line numbers (starts from 1 now, not 0)
• Fixed bugs and usability problems in broken URL checker
• Fixed problem creating thumbnails on servers without working self-URL access
• Fixed bug if you add your first blog post whilst choosing your blog as the secondary category
• Improved news meta description detection
• Fixed small problem with URLs in error emails for servers running on a non-default web port (a port other than 80)
• Fixed a bug with block cacheing, which made redirect-links go to wherever a block was first cached at
• Changed the usergroup listing API, to order usergroups in a better way (minor change)
• Improved usability of quotes editing - new edit link, and proper success message
• Fixed problem with the main_countdown bug if precisions were used (new bug, since Javascript count down was recently introduced)
• Reduced the chance of referenced external RSS feeds that are down slowing down the site
• Various usability improvements and bug fixes to the main_newsletter_signup block
• The main_count block will now jump up if the 'start' parameter is altered after initial usage
• Made the main_count block look pretty
• Major performance improvements to viewing large catalogues
• Improved the 'not a zone' error message to be specific
• Fixed an infinite regress problem if a fatal error occurs whilst showing an attached error
• Fixed numerous problems with Comcode page cacheing
• Fixed misc type-strictness errors
• Added sales-tax support to the Paypal eCommerce gateway
• Removed requirement for fsockopen working on the PayPal eCommerce gateway (now can use anything that works, via ocPortal's download API)
• Fixed bug in receiver email detection, in the shopping cart
• Fixed errors if the eCommerce catalogue is edited in unexpected ways
• Fixed bug in SMF importer, importing word-filter
• Fixed many problems with date catalogue fields, and added support for 'now' as the default for a date
• Fixed problem with the auto-increment catalogue field type
• Fixed MySQL cleanup tool (broken in 4.3 RC1)
• Fixed problem in Comcode page searches regarding hyphenation (did not find as much as it could and did a poor job of highlighting the resultant Comcode page portion)
• Fixed it so that catalogue entry counts do not count non-validated entries
• Fixed a message about invalid Comcode that gives the wrong cause
• Fixed error on forum front page if a deleted user was recently online
• Fixed that the smart language cache no longer worked correctly (since 4.3 RC1)
• Fixed minor problem with multi-language support, regarding precedence
• Fixed chat room recency checking problem
• Proper error message if a shoutbox to a non-existent chatroom is set up
• Rewrote the meta keyword auto-detection algorithm to be smarter
• Added support to call up pages where the linked CSS/Javascript is not minimised (useful for debugging)
• Improved display of child entry/category counts when browsing through categories
• Added the poll images to those images that the theme wizard re-colours
• Made the logo wizard choose theme-appropriate colours for the text of the logo
• Fixed a number of problems with the Theme Wizard and theme images, when running with multi-language sites
• Removed the defunct 'PREPARE_FRACTIONAL_EDITING' symbol (Tempcode pre-processing is now far stabler so it's not used/needed)
• Created a 'magic keypress' for fractional editing that works on all platforms, and updated UI to suggest it
• Fixed problem that stopped the lazy-database-connection code working correctly (bug since 4.3 RC1)
• Made it so error messages parsing CSS or JS files continue to show until the errors are fixed (previously they only showed on initial-compilation)
• Possible workaround for clients with broken system clock settings
• Fixed class of error mails generated by bots trying weird URLs
• Fixed bug that stopped sessions ever expiring if LDAP was being exclusively used for logins
• Renamed a calendar template that had a very confusing name before
• Fixed bugs in the messaging-systems message-list UI, and improved usability
• Properly put in "Create personal topic" as an entry-point that the menu editor can access
• New error message shown if you try to post a topic to a forum to which you do not have access (previously it would only give an error after submitting the post)
• Added some more words to the disclude-from-searches list ("its", "such", "also")
• Added username to the edit-avatar screen, to make it more clear who you are editing if you're staff
• Fixed some problems with tab-key order on screens with more than one form
• Fixed small error on member profile screens (since 4.3 RC1), happened due to problems with the new Tempcode optimisations when combined with Tempcode loops
• Fixed bug of incorrect URLs showing for the 'post' Comcode tag, when previewing Comcode
• Added a warning if creating a subforum with access permissions the parent forum does not have
• Fixed 'undispatched orders' eCommerce feature
• Added new synonyms to improve the Admin Zone search feature
• Fixes to catalogue CSV importing
• Fixed some problems in do-next menus
• Usability improvement in logo wizard, explains where the logo will be created
• Small usability improvement in the naming of submission specific permissions
• General improvements to stats performance
• Fixed incorrect page-load times being shown in the stats
• Fixed problems with search-hit detection in the stats
• Fixed unclear date-range selection screens for downloads and demographics stats
• Improved operating-system detection for stats module
• Fixed performance issue in page-stats drill-down screens
• Stopped multiple recoverable errors resulting in multiple lookups of the errors on ocportal.com (slow down)
• Improved how error messages in frames look
• Fixed a race-condition
• Fixed bug in topic post counts for comment topics
• Fixed bug with IPN requests from PayPal sometimes being blocked by security (possibly only happened to users who changed security configuration settings)
• Fixed upgrade bug, which caused some incorrect file skipping if addons had been uninstalled
• Removed extraneous messages about files that have excessive permissions, in the upgrader tool
• Stopped map.ini changes being looked at in the upgrader's integrity check
• Removed incorrect edit links on code generated menus
• Improved permission check logging for zones
• The add block tool will now used the compressed form for the 'param' parameter, for consistency with the default Comcode pages
• Improved atom/RSS reader flexibility with respect to HTML encoding
• Fixed various CSS issues in the search block and form
• Fixed issue with floated avatars in the chat room
• Fixed issue with image scrollbars in the gallery on IE
• Worked around issue with missing abbreviation CSS in the default Safari stylesheets
• Fixed the improved panel box interlock CSS on some IE versions (issue since 4.3 RC1)
• Fixed some display issues with dropdown and popup and zone menus, with edited menus
• Fixed that the Admin Zone search current-search text is not prepopulated after conducting a search
• Fixed some problems with the AJAX icons and the page-action dropdown in the footer, on some browsers
• Added block help and full Comcode documentation links on the Comcode page editor screen
• Fixed error message on posting forms if Firefox 3.6 has Google Gears installed
• Improved stability of the Comcode ticker/jumping tags
• Added a 'working' animation on tree lists
• Fixed typos in the FLV player templates
• Fixed bug on the flow-mode gallery screen (issue since 4.3 RC1)
• Fixed minor tree-list display error on IE
• Stopped OcCLE problem of failed commands locking up the command prompt submit button (issue since 4.3 RC2)
• Fixed a display issue on OcCLE on IE6, as well as a Javascript error
• Fixed excessive error messages about the 'networking being down' from AJAX (issue since 4.3 RC1)
• Fixed intermittent tooltip doubling-up problem
• The 'see a stack trace' link can now be used directly on screens for which forms are posted
• Improved installer usability w.r.t. asking about the forum database name on an OCF M.S.N.
• Referred to chat room deletion time in user-friendly time, instead of large quantities of minutes (100's)
• Improved usability of the Twitter config options
• Clarified how the main_content block is not automatically decached when things are added/edited, except automatically after 1 day
• Clarified what the dir/en_left/en_right language strings are for
• Clarified how to add a new menu when using the side_stored_menu block using the Add Block tool
• Clarified the difference between the Add Box and Add Block buttons, in the tooltips
• Made the 'x comments' language string singular/plural-aware
• Small improvement to the flexibility of the eCommerce product API (field functions may now return NULL)
• Fixed the inline "edit gallery" link so it checks proper permissions (it was only showing to administrators regardless of permissions)
• Fixed polls that are being viewed but were never live so that the Dublin Core date is not shown as '0'
• Fixed error in news archive if there is news in a category that has been deleted (this error was only possible if there was database corruption / manual database changes)
• Fixed some API bugs in the SWF-uploader (did not happen with default features), and allowed eCommerce purchase products to use file-uploads in the forms
• Improved the styling for image choosing in IE
• Changed the colour of blocks in the WYSIWYG editor (no longer red, as it looked scary)
• Stopped Javascript error messages relating to an unloading page showing (some browsers leave Javascript in a weird state as a page navigates away)
• Made the Javascript setInnerHTML function more stable for complex cases (no default bugs were here, but it could cause problems for addon makers)
• Fixed the CEDI "expand images" feature on IE
• Fixed a bug in the download A-Z index, all downloads with titles starting with numbers were put under '1'