Forum Software Update

[USAndretti42]

Well after 16 years of membership, I've achieved the rank of "Rookie!"  I think I'll give myself a pat on the back. 😝

[Bibs]

Just updated to the latest version, should be some nice improvents to the gallery application

https://invisioncommunity.com/news/invision-community/whats-new-in-gallery-r1270/

[Bibs]

And another upgrade

 

IPS Community Suite 4.7.8

Released 03/08/2023

---

Key Changes

This is our March maintenance release.

Key changes include:

• UI Polish
• Downloads updates, GraphQL enhancements and more

Additional Information

Core

• Added pagination to the Edit History screen.
• Added the core_api_logs database table to the support tools database checker.
• Added a noindex metatag to the poll voters page.
• Added the ability to reset 2fa security answers for all members.
• Added the time to the date form validator message when the time is also used.
• Changed the recommended MySQL version to 5.7.8, this will be the minimum version in future.
• Changed the Author and Update Check URL fields when exporting a language to an URL field to enforce valid URLs.
• Improved the error handling when a club node is missing.
• Show "Success" message above the form after a user changes their password.
• Achievement badges and rank icons are no longer squashed in the Recent Achievements widget.
• Items in the "Our Picks" widget carousel no longer have a cropped border.
• Upgraded Google Fonts API to v2 with improved performance using font-display:swap;
• Imported font-weight:500 for Google fonts resulting in improved font rendering.
• Redesigned the share/promote buttons so they sit on a single line on mobiles.
• Updated the background-color of some social icons to match their actual brand color.
• Sticky announcements will now always stick to the top of the window, instead of only being sticky within the header element.
• Widgets have received a IU polish, with a few alignment bugs solved.
• The alignment of topic prefix icons (pinned, featured, etc) has been improved.
• Breadcrumbs no longer truncate long titles. They will now wrap to a new line if necessary.
• Fixed a bug where members weren't able to opt in/out of custom PII data being shared with 3rd parties.
• Fixed an issue where banning a member with a banned IP address could accidentally remove the IP ban.
• Fixed an issue where content with no replies was being treated as solvable.
• Fixed an issue where the Admin CP Login Logs did not show the proper value in the Display Name column.
• Fixed an issue where the Admin CP Login Logs advanced search did not work properly.
• Fixed an issue where club areas may link to the wrong location.
• Fixed an issue where content being held for approval would show the wrong word as the reason.
• Fixed PWA Notifications causing an error if the remote service cannot be reached.
• Fixed an issue where the club_created Webhook wasn't fired when a club was approved.
• Fixed a race condition which could cause an error when an invalid timezone on an account is used.
• Fixed an issue where a group could have the maximum number of lines in a signature as 0, but the signature editor was still available.
• Fixed an issue where banning a member could generate an unnecessary member changelog entry.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to enable security question mfa without any questions.
• Fixed an issue where the theme templates list did not display properly in the ACP if an upgrade notice was visible.
• Fixed an issue where mentions did not use the color specified in the theme settings.
• Fixed an issue where managing the ACP - Share Handlers could cause an error.
• Fixed an issue where recounting the reputation points in the ACP could cause an error.
• Fixed an issue where stopping all email notifications excluded digests.
• Fixed an issue where the widget cleanup task could fail when the tasks were run via CLI.
• Fixed an issue where club pages would show members even if only set to show for Club Moderators.
• Fixed an issue where share links were using http protocol instead of https.
• Fixed an issue where hCaptcha challenges may not show on contact us dialog when another challenge exists on the page.
• Fixed an issue where tooltips could become very long. They now wrap text onto multiple lines when necessary.
• Fixed an issue that may occur when using search and MySQL read/write separation.
• Fixed an issue where saving widgets could fail.
• Fixed an issue where polls were not deleted when an application was uninstalled.
• Fixed an issue where editing content may not preserve the correct file storage location and revert to the base URL.
• Removed unused photos_url ACP search keyword.

Forums

• Relocated the forum title in the forum grid UI for forums, resulting in better contrast.
• Simplified the UI of the expanded view while viewing a topic list.
• Post controls (Edit, Quote, etc.) are now always vertically aligned to the bottom of posts.
• Fixed Solved Statistics throwing an error on some MySQL / MariaDB versions.
• Fixed an issue where topic hover previews would display "Guest anonymous" instead of the anonymous placeholder text.
• Fixed an issue where building search index permissions could fail.
• Fixed an issue where re-engagement email notifications were sent for non-solvable topics.
• Fixed an issue where changing the topic publish date to "immediately" did not publish the topic.
• Fixed an issue where "Users can choose best answer" in Questions forums was not being saved correctly.

Downloads

• Added the ability to allow the file submitter to delete pending new versions.
• Added a new category grid view.
• Fixed an issue where embedded free files were being displayed as not available for purchase.
• Fixed an issue in the downloads-file REST API endpoint where purchasing a file could result in an error.
• Fixed an issue where custom fields could not be marked to be included in topics.
• Fixed a missing language string on the custom fields edit page.

Gallery

• Improved performance of image view when categories/albums are ordered by recently updated.
• Fixed an issue where promoted albums could break the achievements rebuild process.
• Fixed an issue where albums not in a club could be set to allow submissions from anyone in a club.
• Fixed an issue where users had the option to sort by reviews when reviews were not enabled.
• Fixed an issue where sorting by date could duplicate images in the carousel.
• Fixed a performance issue related to prefetching previous and next images.
• Fixed an issue where hidden images may appear in profiles.
• Fixed an issue where gallery video comment search results may show an error when no thumbnail is uploaded.
• Removed the background on the landing page title to be more consistent with other areas of the suite.

Events

• Fixed an issue where searching events on the overview page did not properly display a map.
• Fixed an issue where a user who responded "Maybe" could attempt to RSVP to an event after the RSVP limit was reached.
• Fixed an issue where searching events on the overview page did not properly display a map.
• Fixed an issue where the featured event cover photo may not display if the filename contains special characters.
• Fixed an issue where searching for events with a missing or invalid location wouldn't return any results.

Commerce

• Fixed an issue where checking out as a guest would not pass guest email to Stripe.
• Fixed an issue where the expiration date in custom product emails didn't work.
• Fixed an issue with Stripe where device (Apple/Google) payments may not work if transaction has a shipping address.
• Fixed an issue where PayPal Subscription task may throw an error if a customer doesn't have any subscriptions.

Pages

• Added support for past dates in records.
• Fixed an issue where stats in the record list would overflow on mobiles

Blog

• Fixed an issue where attachments may not be properly cleared upon deletion.

 

[Bibs]

Not a software update but hardware this time. At 11pm on Sunday we're having a batch of 4 new SSD's installed so there will be some downtime I'm afraid. The discs are end of life and showing some degredation, to be fair they've written over 150TB of data and their expectancy is 250TB so they've done well! This is why there have been some sluggish response time on the forum over the last week or so. 

[ChrisJ]

Has there been a hiccup or two today, as a couple of times has taken a long time to connect to the site (minutes)

[pete]

mines been doing that for the last couple of days

[Bibs]

3 hours ago, Bibs said:

This is why there have been some sluggish response time on the forum over the last week or so. 

That! It's been investigated and the cause and solution are in my post above. Should all be 100% again on Monday! 👍

[exeterjeep]

I just blame my old pc plus a poor broadband connection.

[ChrisJ]

Once the first page loads the forum is fine, it's the initial find the site and load that has been the issue. So thought it might be something else.

[Bibs]

Just a reminder that the work is scheduled for 11pm this evening and there will be several hours of downtime. 

[pete]

cant get in on the mobile so had to switch laptop on

[Bibs]

All done. Only took about 2 hours in the end! 👍

[C8RKH]

All seems to be working fine here @Bibs. You've earned yourself a lie-in....

[Bibs]

Version 5 is coming! 

 

[Escape]

Let's hope it doesn't make things worse. We've had a couple of software updates at work and they've only made things more complicated...

[Kevin Wheeler]

8 minutes ago, Escape said:

Let's hope it doesn't make things worse. We've had a couple of software updates at work and they've only made things more complicated...

That is my experience with every software update, ever!

Change is bad!

[Escape]

Keep the faith! There is usually room for improvement but yes, too often they're changing things that were working fine to begin with. 😉

[Kevin Wheeler]

And why do they move things that were already in a logical, sensible place?

Sometimes it just seems like change for changes sake!

[Bibs]

As an aside to this, we're also moving the forums to Invisions community cloud platform from self hosted. It should all be very painless with the forums to be accessed through forums.thelotusforums.com instead of /forums but it should be a quick and painfree exercise.  

[Kevin Wheeler]

Ah! That all makes perfect sense!

[Bibs]

Our hosting company are depreciating their dedicated server businesses and pushing us to a VPS for more money/less performance so using Invisions infrastructure (based on Amazon AWS) does make good sense. It's also nice that it's all in house with them and they are pushing a move from self-hosted licences to Cloud but it means that any issues are definitely theirs to deal with rather than blaming the server/hosting and we get all the latest bells/whistles included, some of which aren't going to self-hosted clients.

I've signed the agreements now so we're just scheduling the transfer.

[exeterjeep]

21 hours ago, Bibs said:

but it should be a quick and painfree exercise

just like all other software changes that the banks/building societies/big companies do...

[Bibs]

Lucky we are none of them and this is a couple of hours rather than a couple of years! 👍

[Escape]

2 hours ago, exeterjeep said:

just like all other software changes that the banks/building societies/big companies do...

Have some faith, TLF has been very reliable up to now, I see no reason why that would change. I'm sure @Bibs knows what he's doing with this update as well. 😉

[Bibs]

After 19 year, it's not the first time we've done something like this and it appears, on paper, to be much easier than the usual we do which is swapping to a whole new machine every couple of years. As this is self-managed, I have to do the migration myself and it can be a pain but in this instance, Invision will be doing all the heavy lifting and it's their hardware, their software so I've faith in them