ocPortal 4.3 RC1 released!

Version 4.3 RC1 has now been released. This version is a feature release that introduces a number of bug fixes since the last release and some performance improvements and features. Upgrading is not immediately recommended for live sites due to a number of very complex core changes required for the performance improvements; these may have created some stability/compatibility issues (although it appears stable after testing so far).

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").
Please make sure you take a backup before uploading your new files!

» 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.

Performance improvements:

• CSS and Javascript files are now automatically minimised (compressed)
• You can now set an option from config_editor.php to make bots receive cached versions of pages, so that bot activity is less likely to slow down your site
• A new "self-learning" technology has been developed to reduce the number of language strings that need to be loaded for individual pages. ocPortal will automatically learn which pages use which strings, so it only needs to load those ones "next time around" (the technology is adaptive, so if the pool of strings is insufficient, it loads more, but learns)
• Extra compression of some of the PNG files (most were already well compressed though)
• Advanced users can configure ocPortal to spread theme images across a CDN(requires use of OcCLE and the Code Book, and a properly configured network of CDN servers)
• Re-ordering of how CSS and Javascript files are loaded to optimise client-side performance; ocPortal will also merge some Javascript files that are served to staff for a common case where they tend to appear together anyway
• A well configured ocPortal server can now get a "Green tick" on Google PageSpeed and an "A grade" on YSlow.
• Memory usage has been improved a bit
• The number of queries used has been improved a bit in certain areas
• The number of queries in general is reduced, by automatic pre-fetching of translate-table content
• Various small optimisations to improve server-side PHP performance have been made
• Removed some unused CSS
• The database connection/initialisation code is now "lazy" meaning that AJAX scripts that do not end up needing to use the database will not establish an unnecessary connection
• New installs will now use the 'HEAP' MySQL table type for the sessions table, minimising the need for queries that cause disk writes
• Support for persistent caching on APC

Usability improvements:

• The 'validated' checkbox will now only show if the user has access to bypass validation in at least one selectable category
• "Interest levels" are not shown within the administrative side of the newsletter system unless there is some variation of interest levels within the set of subscribers
• Some improvements made to the bookmarks interface– better URL detection, auto-closing of popup
• Fatal errors now have a much higher chance of resulting in a clean ocPortal error message, including with failed upgrades (e.g. if you left old cod overrides in place)
• The upgrader's "Alien file" finder will no longer show addon files as alien
• Improved the tree-list form fields so that they show proper labels for the default item selection
• Linked to Launchpad from the installer, so people can review translation progress whilst installing
• If background AJAX requests need to happen, and the network goes down, ocPortal will inform the user succinctly (rather than repeating the same complex error message over and over)
• Added form validation for forms on blocks and some miscellaneous screens
• Stopped double clicking on buttons for forms on blocks and some miscellaneous screens
• Improvements for developers, better AJAX API, cleaned up Javascript a bit, better integration API, better debug mode (the Code Book has been improved a lot recently also)
• Made the field validation error messages more user friendly
• Tailored message if you add a support ticket, rather than the stock 'success' one
• Clarified use of the 'master password' and 'FTP domain' fields during installation

New features:

• The "What's new" newsletter feature now allows you to easily re-order categories, change what categories are used, is better presented, and allows you to choose the reference date
• Added a link to ocPortal's bookmarks feature on the screen-actions block (commented out by default though)
• Added Guest forum searching to OCF

Dropped features:

• Removed the zone menu from the guest OCF bar (legacy navigation from ocPortal 3)

Bug fixes:

• After the first template edit, the "Edit this" icon is broken
• Fix to Comcode-tag-less 'semihtml' Comcode that contains symbols turning to 'html' Comcode and not working, after any edit
• Fixed filedump uploading
• Fix to Javascript sound API
• Fixes to OCF "posts since last visit" feature's tracking, and changed the order used for the posts
• Fixes to table column widths
• Fix to HTTP authentication bug for those with HTTP authentication off in ocPortal, but active on the server
• Fix to "open in new window" on dropdown and zone menus
• Some improvements to the Tempcode compiler and engine, to allow it to better handle complex Tempcode customisation cases (when pre-processable symbols interact with template parameters)
• Fix to the "keep_markers" feature
• Fix to missing language strings in the Comcode editor
• Various fixes to search result ordering
• Rewrite of the Comcode 'url' tag processing to fix various issues
• Stopped the download of unnecessary data when adding remote downloads (downloading first 2MB of files that are not search indexable anyway)
• When iframes are disabled (hidden option), the shoutbox will no longer malfunction
• Fix to links in video search results
• Fix to error message shown when entering chat rooms
• Fix to bug when you double change a permission in the Permission Tree Editor, and it doesn't change back
• Fix to links in gallery search results
• Fixed unnecessary inclusion of virtual root URL parameters in some links
• Fixes to how Comcode pages are given Comcode administrative permissions
• Fix when doing blank advanced catalogue searches
• Fixed XHTML validation error on query display screen
• Fix to tag feature on topicview screens
• Fix to URL generation on IPN-generated error e-mails
• Fix to the content tree feature when short-URLs are on
• Fix to IE6 issue when using the date chooser component
• Fix to OCF post-history button if the save page-request took more than a second
• Improved database compatibility
• Fixed display of times on the query view screen
• Fix MySQL strict-mode error on adding new support ticket types
• Fix to issue with setting member profile language on MSN's where not all sites had all languages
• Fix to .po (Launchpad file) support
• Fix to Admin Zone front page if RSS is uninstalled
• Stopped RSS uninstallation breaking the weather block
• Fixed error in Facebook API support
• Fixed error in theme image setting screen if GD not installed
• Fixed assumption about English when installing the panel_top redirect
• Fixed some bugs choosing languages in the language admin module
• Fixed bug editing catalogues
• Fixed some bugs when running on OCF MSN's with different table prefixes
• Fixed XML Sitemap error if polls have been added
• Fix to how addon directory on ocportal.com is probed
• Fixed problem on Atom feeds with no 'rel' attribute set for <link> tags
• Fixed error in utf-8 support with the mbstring PHP extension
• Re-enabled multi-lang installation (installing default content against all installed languages)
• Fixed problem with user language detection (read browser language even when this was disabled in ocPortal)
• Fixed some type-strictness errors, and some PHP-doc comment errors
• Fix to error messages from 'html_entity_decode' if webmasters set weird character sets
• Other very minor fixes

Update: Important fixes

The following files fix bugs found since 4.3 RC1 was released…

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sources/ocf_groups.php
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sources/ocf_members.php
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sources/urls.php
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