ocPortal 7.1 released

This is ocPortal 7.1, which is a major usability improvement and bug fixing release, also with beta support for HTML5 and schema.org microdata.

In past releases we have fixed the obvious usability challenges with ocPortal, done extensive team reviews, and acted aggressively on solving issues reported by the ocPortal community. The problem with this approach is that there is a strong correlation between people who find computer software easy to use and people who engage in online communities and give feedback. Put another way, we rarely hear the feedback of the more casual and less-experienced users, because they would move on rather bringing anything to our attention. This problem of 'unknown unknowns' (as Donald Rumsfeld would call it) is a big one, because even the presence of such issues would go completely under the radar even with the active engagement effort we have run over the years.

To solve this problem, for 7.1 we sought-out people with no website management experience, no ambitions to make websites, no training, and polar-opposite personal traits to our typical user – and we sent them wholly unprepared and unassisted through a number of extended trial scenarios covering all the most important kinds of ocPortal management task (17 extended scenarios in total, and 5 testers). This has been very fruitful, leading to a long list of improvements that make this release of ocPortal truly user-friendly even for untrained beginners. We're pleased to say all stumbling blocks the users found were resolved.


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 (created via the form below) during step 3.




The Usability Improvements are:

• The CMS zone icons now say how many entries there are for each content type
• Block re-editing is now done via buttons liked to forms in WYSIWYG, rather than manual Comcode changes
• Made timezone selection consistent with Microsoft Windows TM (thanks to temp1024!)
• Added word-count feature
• Improved usability of the permission preset selector
• Major reorganisation of the usergroup add/edit form, for usability
• Added link between frontend search and Admin Zone search, for newbie admins trying to find admin features via the frontend
• Change the Add Comcode Tag icon to include our standard Comcode icon in it, for usability/consistency
• Improved usability of private-room creation and display significantly (better default permissions, skipping of mention of room deletion if disabled, display of which rooms are private, display of who is in what usergroups when adding room, automatic permission for admin to go to any private room, neater room list, better display of when nobody is in a room)
• Improved text explaining the 'disable_lost_passwords' privilege
• Improved labelling on some do-next menus
• Increased the font size on form field descriptions
• Changed some 'Proceed' buttons to be more specific and clear
• Renamed the member 'Wide' option to 'Opt to hide the left/right navigation' for clarity
• Added inline links to add/edit forums, and add/edit usergroups, and edit forum groupings
• Rearranged member profiles to include less in the right-column and more in the main space, so it is less cluttered
• Renamed 'Links' on Admin Zone front page to 'External links' to make it clear they are not a key navigation
• When adding a Comcode tag changed the 'Wrapped Comcode' label to be much more clear.
• Made the function of the dashboard more obvious for new users (that it is not a menu)
• Made forms look prettier: dotted-border around them, and tidier 'required field' markers
• No longer refer to 'CRON', refer to 'Scheduler'
• Removed faded zone menu in admin sections, as confused users and made them get lost
• Made the 'edit' buttons on Theme Images only apply to larger images, and stick around for as long as the popup is still there (when re-clicked, it will re-focus to the popup, to help the user understand how the windows are related)
• Reworked the 'choose picture' interface, as some users thought the faded non-selected items and the backgrounded selected-item were all disabled
• Made the choose-theme-image-to-edit screen not have internal scrollbars
• Provided link from the Logo Wizard to edit the logo theme image directly
• More help on what personal topics do when you are starting a personal topic
• SEO keywords are now inputted in a more user-friendly way (no need for user to understand what a comma-separated-list is)
• The CSS editor now explains in the help panel how to find a theme image for editing
• Changed 'The source this entry is from, perhaps you.' to simply 'The author of this entry.'
• Changed 'This field supports Comcode' to 'You can use Comcode'
• Made the 'Add Block' tooltip better explain what a block is
• Added accessible-writing-guide to news module
• When going to 'Module Management' the 'Blocks' choice stands out better from the Zones
• Google Analytics no longer runs for staff, for more accurate statistics
• Noted in the interface that the 'Add Theme Image' feature is 'Advanced'
• Made the do-next navigation a bit prettier
• Defaulted 'collapse user zones' option to on, so by default here is no welcome/site-zone difference
• When previewing some Comcode in the Comcode editor, or some content from a content-chooser-table, the preview now shows in a box titled 'Preview' rather than floating alone
• When you use the 'Add Comcode' or 'Add Block' buttons, it now tells you what it has done at the end, so you know you still need to save before the action takes effect
• The block 'zone' options have been put under 'Advanced', and documented better.
• The catalogue 'Auto-fill' option is now labelled 'Auto-fill with categories', and now accepts comma-separation as well as pipe-separation (precedence goes to pipe separation though, as the user may want commas in their category titles)
• The multi-moderations are now grouped as such in the topic actions dropdown
• The 'global.css' editor in the footer now mentions it is the main place to make style changes
• The CMS zone menu now says 'Content Management Zone' rather than just 'Content Management', to help the user understand it is a zone
• In the menu editor the 'Add branch' action is now 'Add branch (e.g. another link)' so the user knows it can be used to add links
• In choose-to-edit tables, the 'Edit' link is now bolded so the user knows it is the primary link
• Changed 'Add one' to 'Add an entry' (etc) in do-next icons
• Improved 'main_content' and 'main_multi_content' block help for various parameters
• Made the zone editor save button more prominent, and put in a hint to it's position
• Added tooltip to explain what the ticks (checks) on the staff checklist block do
• Added search synonyms between 'multi-moderations' and 'multimoderations'
• The multi-moderation and post-template management is now placed under 'Forums', rather than on their own menu spots
• The 'include' Comcode tag can have it's page selected visually, rather than having to type in the zone and page name
• Renamed 'Add member' to 'Add member account' (etc), to clarify things better
• Put 'Open Site' on the default admin checklist
• CSS3 fading effect for hover actions

Bug fixes and cleanups:

• Zone editor panel widths optimised for fixed width
• Comcode conversion tester script improved
• Fixed layout issue on redirects editor on fixed width
• Fixed Zone Editor tab navigation on Firefox when WYSIWYG on
• Turned off Zone Editor animations on IE6 (too slow)
• Fixed bug with Zone Editor previews
• Fixed display of 'current position' on tree menus
• Improved Comcode cleanup for SEO meta descriptions and text-only emails
• Results browsers now scroll up when navigated when working in frames
• Fixed bug with custom profile field management on multi-site-networks (since v7)
• Fixed email addresses being wiped when importing member edits from CSV if email addresses not provided in CSV
• Fixed domains-for-zones feature on non-standard HTTP ports
• Tidied up breadcrumb labels in Theme Wizard and Logo Wizard
• Fixed theme CSS inheriting option in Theme Wizard
• Fixed tiny font size for embossed menus
• Fixed possible image overflow for news category images larger than 100px
• Fixed superfluous .editfrom files when creating an inherited theme from a non-default source theme in the Theme Wizard
• Altered upgrader so it can take upgrades from full TARs as well as custom upgrade TARs
• Fixed stack trace browsing for a catalogue category to edit in a catalogue with no categories
• Added missing 'The number of points awarded for adding a video' option
• Fixed issue with error messages for certain implicitly chosen usernames with external user integrations (by turning off the ocPortal configured restrictions for these)
• Filtered out module and block authors from the author list
• Fixed Comcode 'img' and 'thumb' tags on multi-site installs where the image comes from the master site
• Resized all default avatars to consistent dimensions
• Fixed some possible problems with failure on bad parameters during bootstrapping sequence
• URLs with '…' in no longer produce a hack-attack notification as they can be easily generated by mistakes between services with written URLs and URL auto-detection
• Fixed stack trace in HTML site importer when there are no pages to import
• Suppressed Javascript error message coming up due to change in Google Chrome conflicting with some third party addon
• No longer put the WYSIWYG suppression Comcode marker into blank Comcode fields when the WYSIWYG editor is disabled
• Fixed anomalous presence of 'addon_name' CSS class in some unrelated templates
• If an online member is reading RSS, the online-members page now says so, rather than a blank title
• Fixed formatting issues in the Comcode help page
• More flexibility in the changes that may be made to default OCF rank-set usergroups
• Fixed Setup Wizard in our XML database driver
• Fixed site zone module being missed out of backup if collapsed-zones option is on
• Removed anomalous sorting URLs on catalogue columns that are not sortable
• Tidied up the page-links provided by the site-tree for catalogues, as well as the breadcrumbs
• If there are broken URLs in Comcode, they are now used, and an error is shown (previously they were skipped and an error was put into the rendered Comcode
• Fixed error message when first loading real-time rain on IE
• Fixed timezone conversion for RSS files
• Worked around bug on some PHP versions when going to the Privileges
• Blank catalogue Username fields no longer show as Guest
• Suppressed error message on PHP installs without GD where users probe for the GD script
• By default multi-moderations now apply to all forums, not none
• When choosing a catalogue to work in, it now says 'Catalogue' rather than 'Codename', and same for Galleries
• Fixed usergroup and custom-profiling-field order changing from the choose-to-edit screen
• Fixed error on match-key-permissions screen
• Fixed error in Setup Wizard if no blocks are chosen for a panel/start-page
• Allowed longer filenames for uploads
• Fixed problems with HTTP resuming on attachments and catalogue files in Google Chrome
• Fixed hack attack mail downloading some catalogue files
• Fixed error choosing a catalogue entry to edit
• Tidied up choose-Comcode-page-to-edit screen
• Fixed sorting of numeric catalogue fields after '10'
• Fixed breadcrumbs for pages with hyphens in the name
• Fixed CAPTCHA images on feedback blocks
• Empty catalogue fields no longer show by default
• Neatened up default feedback page
• Tidied up rendering of zone menu a little if there are too many zones to fit on one row
• Tidied up upload fields for fixed-width
• Fixed nasty stack trace if realtime-rain is wrong installed
• Fixed scrolling when animations have been disabled
• Fixed auto-focus for OcCLE and login forms
• Fixed problem of lack of proper error message when submitting a form where an upload is required but missing
• Fixed error with main_multi_content block if efficient permission checking is not enabled
• Fixed incorrect tooltips on menu items
• Minor code quality cleanups
• Fixed issue with quiz marking
• Fixed issue with quiz question number rendering
• Fixed search system forgetting what content types were ticked (checked) when repeating searches
• Fixed side_stored_menu caching across zones
• Fixed member template-search specificity when there are spaces in the search term
• Fixed that the 'prohibit_username_whitespace' option appeared never to be disabled
• Fixed the add-new-page wizard to preselect the welcome zone if the collapse-zones option is on, and tidied up menu selection
• Fixed Comcode management button area rendering on IE6
• Allowed Windows-character RSS feeds to work when they use characters that are not meaningful within unicode
• Fixed problem with RSS feeds with no item dates, in side_rss block
• Fixed issue with very long content titles that prompt emails causing stack traces
• Fixed incorrect 'Choose the block that you'd like to add' label when adding a Comcode tag
• Fixed issue showing RSS feeds with quote marks in article titles
• Fixed the bookmark/menu buttons in the footer on Google Chrome
• Fixed minor rendering issue on permission copy buttons
• Fixed database validation in installer
• Fixed IOTD decaching when IOTD deleted
• Fixed Javascript error on IE6 on forms
• Disabled IE6 PNG-hack for input fields, as they were becoming invisible
• Worked around problem with buggy proxy cache layers interfering with AJAX script behaviours (windows saying just '0' reported by some users)
• Worked around caching of installer scripts on aggressive proxy cache layers
• Fixed the 'Set whole column' permission buttons to set '(Custom)' for the permission preset on the left column
• Worked around bug in IE6 when using Add Comcode and Add Block buttons
• Disabled main_greeting caching for Guests, and fixed incorrect redirect URL generation
• Member action links are now sorted within their sections
• Stopped large theme images spilling out of their display area
• Removed 'Stumbleupon' and 'Digg' social media buttons by default, as these services are less popular as they once were, and space is needed for fixed-width
• Fixed automatic presentation of screen-actions block on catalogue screens
• Fixed catalogue A-to-Z index on catalogues with complex title fields
• Fixed problem with nested-frames auto-resizing
• Made better inline display of third-party addon descriptions
• Blocks inside addons now auto-install
• 'Disk quota exceeded' error mails no longer go to ocProducts
• Staff are less likely to be told there are too many online members to view
• The delete-account link no longer shows if there is no permission to use it
• Allowed members who may manage their own Comcode pages to reach the Comcode-page choose-to-edit screen
• Improved ergonomics of the username input fields
• Fixed extra space around fractional-editable field links on Chrome and Opera
• Fixed CSS error that comes up in the Opera error console about the .global_middle class (repeated image background colour)
• Ensured we consistently say 'Forum grouping' and never 'Forum group' (as gets confused with 'Usergroup')
• Fixed auto-detection of WYSIWYG editor colouring
• Fixed Comcode tooltips for non-staff
• Worked around problems with Comcode insertion into WYSIWYG editor on Opera, due to 2 opera bugs
• Worked around Firefox 3.6 Javascript bug
• Fixed hidden usergroups showing up on OCF forum view
• Fixed stack trace when complex Custom Profile Fields were added, in some circumstances
• Fixed rendering ugliness with checkboxes on results tables (typo in code)
• Worked around a problem with corrupt Tempcode (from an automated error email, not reproduced)
• Fixed breadcrumbs on shared-installs if the breadcrumb definition is not overridden
• Fixed bug with main_sitemap block on shared-installs
• Fixed problem with Comcode-page choose-to-edit screen on shared-installs that have shared pages
• Fixed bug with theme editing on shared-installs
• Fixed bug with theme management on shared-installs
• Allowed CSVs in Mac format to be uploaded
• Disabled the OcCLE footer button on shared-installs
• Fixed issue on old version of IE with breadcrumbs display
• New error message if code tries to add the same file to a TAR archive twice
• Fixed HTML-validity of default donate and rules pages
• Fixed bugs in newsletter sending using CSV files
• The newsletter now automatically restricts itself to HTML sending if HTML is entered directly into it (previously it would try and interpret as Comcode unless you told it not to)
• Stopped old versions of the Facebook addon causing big ocPortal crashes
• Fixed quiz display problem
• Fixed quiz preview display problem
• On upgrade, version numbers of uninstalled addons are now upgraded too, to avoid confusion
• Worked around stack trace in permissions editor if the CSS is decached
• Removed "Calendar event:" prefix from calendar event screens
• Worked around stack trace caused by URL probing that a penetration-testing company was doing
• Fixed performance of the IMAGE_WIDTH/IMAGE_HEIGHT symbols
• The CEDI 'tree' page now supports virtual roots
• The CEDI 'edit tree' page now no longer shows the tree twice
• Fixed permissions bug choosing an image to edit
• Worked around invalid CSS resulting in ocPortal emails having lots of attached images referenced in that CSS
• Fixed display of eCommerce product images (error in default templates)
• Fixed stack trace if ocPortal was installed on hosting with '~' in the URL
• Fixed issues if the redirects addon was uninstalled (two issues in the Site Tree Editor)
• Worked around stack trace on all screens if the flagrant addon is not uninstalled correctly
• Fixed ocp_sitemap.xml showing as a corrupt file in the upgrader
• Fixed stack trace if uninstalling an addon twice (refreshing)
• Moved 'enable Scheduler' to the correct section of the admin checklist
• Fixed bug if the points-per-visit option was enabled
• Fixed bug if the main_comments block was used on a page name containing '-' in the name
• Fixed auto-focusing of form elements on login screen and OcCLE
• Fixed the wrong theme images being used when referenced from templates
• Fixed error managing addons on some rare PHP environments
• Fixed menu editor changing menu tray expand/collapse status when reentering
• Worked around when css_custom directories are missing from themes
• Fixed wording of the help for the main_contact_us block
• Fixed the 'Add Comcode Tag' popup if the custom_comcode addon is not installed
• Fixed issue with the 'contents' tag linking correctly to 'title' tags, when pages are first rendered via appearance in search results
• Reverted changes to how Comcode is rendered/manipulated in the WYSIWYG editor, due to browser problems
• Renamed 'Download the contents of the gallery' to 'Download gallery files' to make it align better on fixed width layouts
• Proper error message if using a forum block when the ocf_forum addon has been uninstalled
• Correct language now used for emails sent to members when their subscription is activated
• Fixed mp3 audio playback in galleries
• Fixed jwplayer bugs on IE
• main_multi_content block archive and submit links are now optional (claimed this before, turned out it got missed)
• The side_news_archive and side_tag_cloud blocks can now take a 'title' parameter
• jsmin can now be deleted if people are concerned about Open Source licensing issues (the original author did a prank in his license, causing controversy)
• Delayed chat AJAX loading until DOM load, in case of browser synchronisation issues
• Put button next to the staff actions list in the footer, for accessibility, and ease of opening up different staff action popups
• Fixed minor gallery video display issue
• Fixed issue with video length in galleries for h264 files
• Worked around problem with mysterious buggy user agents corrupting the 'type' parameter and causing hack-attack alerts
• The help panel no longer auto-moves to the bottom for thin browser windows when fixed-width is enabled
• Fixed block layout preview if an install profile was not used
• Fixed America/Caracas timezone entry (special thanks for temp1024 for looking into timezones)
• Added JS confirmation if user asks upgrader to auto-merge in CSS changes
• Fixed issue of helper panel showing on some staff-action popups
• Fixed youtube tags to work with the new shortened youtube URLs
• The Admin Zone link list is now numeric, to make it less harsh on the eyes
• The gap between the header and Admin menu has been removed
• (Fixed issues with Google user-map addon, and improved lightbox2 addon)

It is also interesting to note, weeks later we still seem to be the only CMS to provide support for schema.org.