Oxwall: The Progress

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Zima

Oxwall: The Progress Ladies and gentlemen,

Today we would like to share some great news with you. Oxwall Foundation has reached several important milestones, which prove that we are moving in the right direction, steadily giving the community tools necessary for our common success.

First of all, Oxwall Software now boasts over 71000 source lines of code. Compare that with 64000 of the very first Oxwall iteration released in August 2010. Not bad, considering that this metric is a very important indicator of a project’s size, and shows the effort the development team puts behind it.

Now, that was the platform itself. Even more impressive is the rapid increase in the number of source lines of code for plugins developed by the Oxwall Foundation. Altogether they now take over 64000 LOC (30% growth from the times of Oxwall 1.0.1), which is really impressive, when you take into account the time-frame and the relatively small team size.

All of that, coupled with the success of the recently released Oxwall 1.3 helped to boost the platform downloads from the 250 per day average in 2011, all the way up to 350 at the start of 2012.

Finally, Oxwall Store also witnesses some stable evolution since its full-scale launch a mere year ago. By now, the gradually growing number of published items have passed 100, adding even more to the progress of the entire project.

With our joint efforts and great input from the international Oxwall community, these achievements have been reached in just under two years. This is the programming productivity and expansion rates we are quite content with, although we’ll be obviously looking to build on this success even further in the near future.

UPDATE

An unfortunate slip made its way into the above text. Of course we meant the DAILY download average (not monthly) in the fourth paragraph. So, the daily platform download average in 2011 was 250, boosted up to 350 since the release of Oxwall 1.3.

Oxwall Store Update

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Zima

We have a new batch of fixes and improvements for the Oxwall Store, check them out:

Improvements

You can now view all of your Store Items on a separate ‘My Items’ tab;

You can now see who and when bought licenses for each of your items;
You can now revoke licenses for any sold item or theme (useful for when a license is abused);

You can now reset the License IP for any bought item (necessary when the IP of a site with the installed item has changed);

Fixes

The last file on the list under Item’s Downloads can no longer be unchecked as Main;
Main Download option completely revamped under Item’s Download;
PayPal account details area is clearer defined while selecting payment method;

Oxwall Store Increased Quality Control

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Zima

Dear friends,

We are happy to report that Oxwall Store is coming along quite nicely, judging by the steadily growing volume of new items and sales. Unfortunately, quantity does not always translate to quality, and like everyone, we notice the appearance of mediocre-to-poor submissions.

This is not what we had in mind initially. We are also sure most Oxwall admins will agree that Oxwall Store should not become another online collection of second-rate mods of existing plugins and themes.

Oxwall Foundation always strove for improved quality for the end user and we anticipate the community will follow our lead. We all still have a long way to go to reach the desired level of excellence, but with small steps in the right direction we can do it.

One of such steps will be the introduction of stricter quality control for Oxwall Store submissions, in accordance with our Terms of Use. We hope everyone understands that this decision will benefit the project in the long run. Let’s make Oxwall better together.

Oxwall Store Improved

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Zima

We’ve got a couple more news we can push out before the holidays.

First of all, don’t forget to check out the updated Development Roadmap to see what to expect from our upcoming release. But while the team is busy with that, we decided to further tweak the Oxwall Store, seeing its growing significance and demand.

The changes are both, cosmetic and functional, streamlining and simplifying the Store’s presentation. We intend to introduce a more significant overhaul to the Oxwall Store in the future, but for now the changes include the following:

Store Search added;
Themes and Plugins separated into different categories;
Items and Listing Items display changed;
Item Lists simplified;

Oxwall 1.2.6 & Oxwall Store Update

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Zima

Your eyes don’t deceive you. The second Oxwall release in less than a week is indeed here. We thought that it’s worth pushing it out ahead of schedule. Here’s why.

With this release we open the doors of the Oxwall Store to all paid plugin developers out there. As you might know only free plugins were available for download until recently. Now any developer with a worthy product can set a price on their plugins and sell them at our store. Of course, said plugins (or any other goods in Oxwall Store for that matter) must comply with OSCL – Oxwall Store Commercial Licence.

Note that plugins not developed by Oxwall are sold as is – we are not responsible for any trouble they might cause to your sites, so check all the accompanying documentation very carefully.

To make sure everything is working as it should, please back up your site and then upgrade the software to 1.2.6. Alternatively, just wait for the Auto-update Button, which should appear in the Admin area of your network within 24 hours after the launch of the update.

Oxwall 1.2 Release

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Zima

(Dear users, remember to follow the UPDATE INSTRUCTIONS BELLOW precisely (even with autoupdate)!

Oxwall Foundation is proud to announce the long-awaited Update to 1.2.

We consider this a major step forward, as both admins and users will see the results of the Update across the entire platform.

You might already know that this release brings you an Advanced Photo Upload, More Privacy Options, an Enhanced Newsfeed, and Improved Text Input. (For more details on these features please refer to the wonderful post by Oxwall Founder Emil). Alternatively, you can read on for a point-by-point explanation of the changes we made to the software.

CORE CHANGES

Enhanced Text Input

Text Input

My Preferences now include subscription options for Mass Mailing
Mass Mailing now sent only to active (non-suspended) users
New option to create a customizable Welcome Letter
Javascript Code now available throughout the site for web statistics, special effects, and other purposes
Favicon change in page settings
New option to include Avatar Upload and ‘Terms of Use’ checkbox to Registration

NEW PRIVACY PLUGIN

Download and install this new plugin from Oxwall Store (but only after you upgrade the platform to 1.2). After the Privacy Plugin is activated in the Admin Area, network members will have several options for setting up their profile and content privacy. All other plugins across the platform will be affected correspondingly.

TWO NEW THEMES

‘Spring’ ‘Grunge’

IMPROVED FEATURES

Advanced Photo Uploader

Upload up to 100 photos at once
Rotate and auto re-size
Add tags and descriptions

Newsfeed

Now corresponds to privacy options
Improved news item relevancy system (promotes only member-related news items)
Improved news item dynamics (shows only recent actions related to news items grouped, as opposed to several news items for every similar action)
The long awaited Newsfeed content customization options for admins

Instant Chat

Sound notifications for messages
‘Friends Only’ or ‘View All’ modes

Misc

Mailbox captchas for sending bulk messages
Options to turn off file attachments and set allowed file sizes
Newsfeed birthday notifications
Various minor bug fixes

–

INSTRUCTIONS

Download

The new shiny Oxwall 1.2 in downloads section: www.oxwall.org/download

Update: File Permissions

IMPORTANT: There’s an old permissions problem that can affect your update process. Before you attempt to update your site (either manually or automatically) you need to set full permissions recursively on your ow_static folder. For example in Linux you need to execute chmod -R 777 ow_static command. If you work with an ftp manager here’s an article to help you.

Autoupdate

IMPORTANT: Upgrade to Oxwall 1.2 before upgrading any plugins! Seriously, you don’t need to end up with a broken website. Upgrading is easy, just hit that button in the admin area. After that feel free to update and install all other plugins. Even if after platform update your site seems to be broken, keep updating plugins. You should be fine in the end.

Manual update

If you want to update manually, grab the scripts in downloads sections as well.

Themes

Keep in mind, themes need to be updated too. ‘Graphite’ and ‘Club’ will be auto-updated since they are in the package but other themes require your attention. Download your updated theme from the Store. If you made any changes in files, you will have to merge them with the new ones since they contain important fixes and additions. If you didn’t change anything in files directly but in admin area only, feel free to overwrite the theme folder ow_themes/your-theme

–

Oxwall Foundation is truly grateful to the entire community for its support and understanding during the prolonged waiting cycle, as well as assistance and feedback during the actual development. We are really proud of our work and hope that our efforts will improve your Oxwall experience even further.

–

*UPDATE*: To kill some minor bugs that aren’t showstoppers (but are annoying to know about) we’ve just pushed 1.2.1 update. Apply it with all above instructions. If you already have 1.2 working just wait for autoupdate to popup and press it with no hesitation!

Instant Chat plugin

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Emil

Oxwallers rejoice!

The long-aiwated, much hyped, for centuries promised, and god-knows-what-else instant chat plugin just released.

With that release Oxwall just became more engaging, more interactive, and more capable of retaining users. We are very serious about making Oxwall more interactive and dynamic, and this chat is the very first step in that direction.

This is of course the basic version of the plugin. Zarif (the developer behind the plugin) already works on the next iteration – including for-everybody mode, sound notifications, and more.

Feel free to install the plugin and share your feedback.

Oxwall 1.1 + new plugins

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Emil

Boy look what we’ve got here! Oxwall 1.1 + plugin updates + new plugins + new themes — it’s like Christmas came early!

What’s new:

CORE:
- Jquery 1.5
- Cron run check and notification
- Authorization mechanism enhancements (affects all plugins!)
- Avatar display change, requires new decorator use (affects all plugins!)
- User console refactored for adding elements by plugins
- Language handling refactored to enable plugins to add global language keys
- User and config tables cache enabled for better performance
- Platform version in admin dashboard
- URL highlighting for all user content for easy clicking (finally!)
- SEO-oriented meta page information in all plugins to allow better and deeper indexing of your site by search engines. If you have incoming links to your site that should do great job for its promotion.
- Avatar labels for particular user roles. You can have specific user roles like “admin”, “staff”, or even “pro” or “gold”, so users can show them off on avatars. Configure user roles and color-code avatar labels on your community!
- Display type disabled for index page comment wall
- Comment form now has posting user’s avatar
- User list selection for plugins’ needs optimized
- Suspended users can now edit their profiles
- Multiple ‘untranslatable’ spots eliminated
- Custom pages access issues solved

… and more small enhancements including killing pet peeves constantly reported on support boards. Too much to list here so we let you discover and enjoy those one by one.

NEW PLUGINS

Virtual gifts:

- User can send each other public and private virtual gifts with optional personal messages in them.
- Gifts can be customized and divided into categories.

User credits:
- User credits can be purchased through payment gateways (such as PayPal), earned by activity on site, and spent on things like virtual gifts.
- Complete customization;

NEW THEMES

‘Club‘ and ‘Rainy‘ themes. Enjoy.

EXISTING PLUGINS ENHANCEMENTS

Newsfeed:
- ‘View more’ without page refresh
- Feed context highlight: groups, profiles
- Unlike;
- Comments and Likes expand/collapse
- Optional status update on Index page
- Profile comment wall support

Links:
- Voting interface enhancement

Events:
- On-site event invitation notifications
- Past events list
- An event is now still ongoing until the end time
- Chronology problems in event widgets corrected
- Event authorship problem substitution when edited by moderator is solved
- Event icon is now optional
- Inactive ‘invite’ button problem solved

Friends:

- Multiple friend requests problem solved
- Suspended users no longer show up in friends lists

DISCONTINUED PLUGINS

‘Last Activity’ and ‘Status Updates’ plugins are now discontinued and no longer will be updated. They are replaced by Newsfeed.

IMPORTANT!

Those impatient can download the new release, new plugins, new themes, and updates manually for now. Tomorrow we are unleashing auto-update upon you so you will be able to update right from the admin panel.

PLEASE UPDATE PLATFORM CORE FIRST. Only after that you can update everything else and install new plugins. PLEASE UPDATE THEMES MANUALLY AS WELL – they contain important additions and corrections.

Thanks for creating with us!

Events plugin

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Emil

Here’s another free native plugin for your needs. Grab the new Events plugin from the Oxwall Store while it’s still smoking!

It’s pretty simple and straightforward – create a public or a private event and invite your friends there. They can post stuff on the comment wall. We will iterate to make this plugin more powerful so we’re waiting for your feedback.

Here is the demo.

Oxwall 1.0 stable + plugin updates!

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Emil

What is the best way to start 2011 in your opinion? Right, install the new shining Oxwall 1.0 stable!

On the day when my son was born it’s fascinating to finally officially give birth to another child – our new social software hit.

Core changes:
- Overall system performance improved;
- HTML sanitizing and XSS filtering improved;
- development API extended: Javascript events added, optional parameters in routing interfaces;
- You can now change default avatar from admin area;
- Numerous language changes (spelling and other);
- Total user count in admin area;
- Occasional usability improvements for admin area;
- Javascript can now be disabled when editing widgets if incorrect scripting breaks the page;
- User can now remove all comments on their profile wall.
- fix: some hosting setups reported error: “Message: SQLSTATE: General error: 2014 Cannot execute queries while other unbuffered queries are active. Consider using PDOStatement::fetchAll(). Alternatively, if your code is only ever going to run against mysql, you may enable query buffering by setting the PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_USE_BUFFERED_QUERY attribute”. It should be gone now but we need you to verify this since the error was rare and we couldn’t reproduce it.

New plugin, Newsfeed:

The much awaited feature brings likes and comments to status updates and user activity events. It has the potential to become the central place of interaction on any Oxwall-powered site. Newsfeed plugin now replaces two plugins: Status updates and Latest Activity. Those plugins will not longer be shipped in downloads and will be pulled from Oxwall Store.

Other plugin changes

- Groups, fix: it’s no longer possible to create groups with the same names;
- Mailbox, new: you can now attach files;

IMPORTANT: Since we also introduce numerous plugin updates you should _apply platform update before installing plugin updates_. This is important because otherwise it can make your site temporarily broken.