b2evolution 6.5.0
30 June 2015
b2evolution version 6.5.0 is now available (major release).
Upgrading to b2evolution 6.5.0
b2evolution 6.5.0 can be upgraded to (or installed) using any of Installatron's products. Use Installatron's optional Automatic Update feature to automatically apply b2evolution updates as new versions are released, or use Installatron's Clone feature to duplicate an existing b2evolution install to test the 6.5.0 upgrade prior to applying it live. Get started managing your b2evolution installations with Installatron
What's New in b2evolution 6.5.0
- Structural changes: There is no /blogs/ folder in the distribution ZIP file any more. Everything has been moved up one level. This makes it easier to just upload the ZIP file to the server and unzip it in place.
- Structural changes: We're now officially starting to call everything "collections" instead of "blogs", because in many cases it hasn’t much to do with a blog any more: Forums, Online Manuals, Photo Galleries…
- Structural changes: The installer will now install an additional collection of type "Main" as collection #1. This notably displays a Home Page for the site as well as the "About" page for the site. Of course you don’t have to use this if you want to continue as before).
- Collection/Blog Settings: Moved access related settings to the General settings tab of a collection. The first settings you will see is who can see the collection and where.
- Collection/Blog Settings: Private collections/blogs: it is now possible to require users to log in before displaying a collection. Furthermore it’s possible to give different memberships to different collections to make each collection accessible to different groups of users.
- Collection/Blog Settings: New search implementation that does not just look into posts but also looks into comments, category names and tags. It also ranks better matches with scores in order to present most relevant searches first.
- Skins: Enhanced site skin.
- Skins: Enhanced "Photo Albums" skin. It now contains a custom "category directory" page that can group your albums by category – you can use this a your front page. Also many visual enhancements.
- Skins: Enhanced "Bootstrap Blog" skin. For example you can now choose to have the side bar on the left or on the right. You can also use it in single column mode.
- Skins: New "Bootstrap Manual" skin based on the bootstrap framework.
- Skins: New "Bootstrap Main" skin destined to handle a site Home Page as well as common site functions (log in, messaging, user profiles, etc.)
- Widgets: New Breadcrumb Path widget.
- Widgets: New Content Hierarchy widget (for use in Manual skins).
- Widgets: Improved Universal Item List widget.
- Post editing: Updated TinyMCE editor
- Post editing: No more iframe for attached files. Attaching new files is now smoother and does not open a separate window.
- Post editing: Different blocks of the edit screen can be collapsed and expanded by a single click.
- Post editing: The Images & Attachments area can be resized with a mouse drag.
- Post editing: Extended: The [image:] Short Tag
- Post editing: New: The [file:] Short Tag
- Post editing: New: The [inline:] Short Tag
- Comments: Option to display/hide rating summary
- Messaging: It is now possible to configure renderer plugins to apply to private messages.
- Messaging: It is now possible to automatically send a message to people who have reported an account when that account is being deleted.
- User accounts: Invitation only access: instead of letting users register freely you can create invitation codes that are required to register. Different invitation codes can grant access to different user groups and different user levels.
- User accounts: Users now see a "successful registration" welcome message upon registering.
- User accounts: Notifications about closed accounts now say how long the account was active (time elapsed since account creation)
- User accounts: Tool to crop profile pictures.
- User accounts: Admin tool to forbid certain pictures from being used as the main picture (useful when you require the main picture to be a mugshot but still allow cartons or other pictures as supplemental pictures. When you forbid a picture from being a main picture, the user cannot put it back as his main picture.)
- User accounts: Temporary lock on user accounts in case of brute force password attack.
- Analytics: Improved Goals feature. Item displays (disp=single or disp=page) can trigger goal hits. Now it’s possible to associate a goal to an item directly from the edition form. Hits will be tracked on each goal every time their associated pages are displayed to a user through disp=single or disp=page.
- Marketing & Email campaigns: Introducing Email capture / Quick registration widget
- Marketing & Email campaigns: Redesigned email templates (with inline styles) so they display better on webmail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
- System: System log for auditing.
- Other: New param() function which can validate arrays
- Other: Changed wording of some back-office features to make things easier to understand.
- Other: Aggregated collections get their permissions checked based on permissions of each source collection.
- Other: Email sending using SMTP gateways is now a bult-in feature.
- Bootstrap RWD now used also on: Back-office completely redesigned with Bootstrap (the old "Chicago" design is available as an alternative admin skin if you’re nostalgic ;)
- Bootstrap RWD now used also on: Installer / Upgrader
- Bootstrap RWD now used also on: Config error screen
- Bootstrap RWD now used also on: default.php
- Font Awesome is used almost everywhere.
- Back-office: new navigation structure
- Back-office: It is now possible to upload files directly into the post edit screen by simply dragging and dropping files into the attachments area.
- Back-office: Cleaner toolbars on edit screens.
- Post structure: Item/Post types are now fully configurable:
- Post structure: Every field of the post form can be enabled/disabled on a type by type basis.
- Post structure: Custom fields can be defined on a type by type basis.
- Post structure: Switching to a different post type now goes through a "select new type" page.
- Post structure: Admins / Moderators / Editors can now have a private discussion around posts ("meta comments")
- Site structure: It is now possible to set default collections to be used for displaying all login/registration and also for all messaging functions, no matter from which collection they are invoked. This allows a more consistent user experience across the site.
- Cleaner URLs: index.php now recognizes collection URLs like http://baseurl/shortname (requires mod_rewrite which should be enabled if you use b2evolution’s provided .htaccess file).
- Cleaner URLs: It's now possible to configure collection URLs like http://baseurl/shortname/ in a single click
- Cleaner URLs: the first/the default collection will now be assigned just the baseurl (without index.php appearing in the URL)
- Cleaner URLs: b2evolution no longer ships with Stub Files like blog1.php– Everything is handled transparently by index.php now (but you can still use stub files if you need them)
- Plugins: Markdown plugin now generates IDs for titles.
- Plugins: Wikilinks plugin now allows to add #anchors into links.
- Plugins: Current filters widget
- UI changes: New evobar design. Pure CSS (no Javascript).
- UI changes: New evobar menu structure. We like to think it's clearer and more efficient.
- UI changes: Cleaned up and improved Bootstrap Back-office.
- New skins: New Bootstrap Forums skin (used by default)
- New skins: New Bootstrap Gallery skin (not used by default, select it manually)
- Users: New design of the user profile screen (disp=user)
- Users: Extended User Fields now support icons (twitter, facebook, Linkedin, etc.) and colors when used with a font like Font Awesome.
- Users: User Links widget displays icons linking to some user's links. Especially useful for displaying social media icons of a blog owner. This is used by default on the home page and at the top of some skins.
- Users: New widget: Organization Members Widget. Use on the home page by default.
- Dev tools: Toggle on the Dev menu with $dev_menu = 1
- Dev tools: Enhanced Display Containers feature.
- Dev tools: Feature to Display includes (for skin development)
- Enhanced skin API: Skins can now declare whether they use the v6 or the v5 API (v5 is the default so old skins stay compatible)
- Enhanced skin API: Bootstrap based skins should use the v6 API
- Enhanced skin API: The v6 API uses different class names by default which follow a cleaner naming convention (some cleanup is still in progress at this point).
- Enhanced skin API: The v6 API uses HTML 5 semantic markup by default.
- Tag manager allowing to rename, merge and delete tags as needed.
- Tags are now becoming case sensitive and special-char sensitive ("changé" is different from "change" and from "Change"). This fixes an array of problems but creates sort of duplicate tags. The next step will be have tag aliases which will group related tags together.
- Enhanced Tag Cloud widget.
- Enhanced installer.
- Strengthened upgrade script.
- Enhanced DB normalization tool (UTF-8/ASCII).
- Enhanced and more responsive Bootstrap Forums skin.
- Enhanced widget editing screen.
- Enhanced plugin management screen.
- Better responsive user profile (disp=user)
- Bug fixes (many)
- Visual and functional improvements in the back-office.
- More settings, including color settings, for the Bootstrap Main skin.
- Enhanced Image/Logo widget.
- Support <figure> and <figcaption> in addition to other HTML 5 semantic entities.
- Custom post types can now use custom templates when they are displayed.
- It's not always possible to contact the site owner without having to log in.
- Not displaying tags on intro posts any more by default.
- Responsive images on all default Bootstrap skins.
- Enhanced collections list
- Enhanced user groups list
- Enhanced post edit screen
- Enhanced comment edit screen
- Enhanced Forums skin
- Widgets: Enhanced User Avatars widget
- Widgets: Enhanced Item List widget
- Widgets: New Image widget, different from Logo Title widget
- UI Cleanup
- It's now always possible to contact *any* collection owner, even when not logged in, or when contacting from a "main" collection.
- Enhanced DB normalization tool.