Our good friends at Skalfa announced the launch of professional services for Oxwall.

Skalfa is not the first company to offer commercial assistance for Oxwall software, but this offer is unique. It’s a service from the original Oxwall authors, since Oxwall was created as one of Skalfa projects. Also, it’s positioned as “Oxwall for everybody” and claimed to be “affordable for projects with any budget”.

All in all, emerging commercial services are a good sign and a valuable addition for the Oxwall project. We encourage other companies to take notice and fulfill the growing demand.

Feel free to check what Skalfa has to offer: skalfa.com/launchpad.

Oxwall team

Per our stated schedule, at this moment we should be preparing Oxwall 1.5.4 – a minor maintenance build with a few bugfixes. We decided to not release it and continue working on more important things. By skipping what can wait, we will not be distracted from what cannot wait at all – Oxwall 1.6.

Why is Oxwall 1.6 so important? It will have the long-awaited mobile browser version.

Like our facebook page or follow us on Twitter to be among the first to know.

At first, in Oxwall 1.6 only the platform and critical native plugins (newsfeed, photo, blogs, and such) will support mobile browsing. Other plugins come later. Third party developers and designers will be able to implement mobile support in their plugins and themes, too.

So, Oxwall 1.6 is expected to land in June. The exact release date will be announced later.

Show me preview!

Hold horses, buddy! Are you a fan of movie spoilers? Really? We suggest everyone to be as patient as we are, so it gets handsomely rewarded in the end.

We are really excited how mobile Oxwall is turning out, and we can’t wait to share it with you. As you know, mobile browsing already overtook desktop in some parts of the world, and is quickly moving to be the primary way to surf the web worldwide. We are very aware about the importance of superior Oxwall experience on mobile devices, so we are doing our best with it. This is why it’s taking so long. For good.

We hope to impress you with our work again. It’s a real pleasure to observe the growth of the project, the number of users, store items, and finally, high quality websites powered by Oxwall. This is what keeps us going day in, day out.

Thank you,

Emil, Oxwall team

• Fix for cron job notification in Admin Area (even if a cron command is setup right).

Note that the fix does not affect any of the third-party projects, thus the developers in the community are not required to make any changes in their plugins due to this update.

Don’t forget to check out the full list of goodies (new theme, plugins and platform improvements) released with Oxwall 1.5.2. As always, bу sure to backup your sites before attempting this latest update.

Right when you didn’t expect it, (oh wait, you did) Oxwall 1.5.2 hits the Earth. This is a scheduled maintenance release that you are recommended to use over all previous versions.

Available for immediate download: oxwall.org/download

The new theme

Meet Showcase theme!

Cloudflare

This new plugin is for connecting your website to your Cloudflare account. It allows you to decrease your page load time by 20-30%, decrease hosting server load time, and maintain your website up for static content when it’s actually down.

We recommend Cloudflare because we use it at Oxwall.org. They also have a free plan.

View setup manual.

IE8 support drop

With this release we decided to pull the plug on IE8 support. It’s an old, insecure, standards-be-damned, dead-on-arrival browser by Microsoft that clearly shouldn’t be used at this point.

Starting with 1.5.2, Oxwall no longer supports IE8, and this is good news for everybody: 1) if you are still using IE8, here’s a nice little reason #598453739842035609 to drop it and download a better, newer, more secure browser, such as Google Chrome or Firefox. 2) if you don’t use it, you will enjoy faster development cycles from our team.

- Changelog -

Platform

• run the cron job on page refresh
• redesigned tag input
• direct permissions management for index/dashboard/my profile widgets.
• fixed minor issues with the default Origin theme
• fixed glitch with single choice/drop down profile questions
• installation script now overwrites config.php if permissions are allowed
• fixed markup issue on Privacy&Permissions page in admin area
• fixed markup issue on Pages&Menus page when too many menu items are added to the main menu area
• rss widget: links now open in new window
• added default delimiters in toolbar for IPC decorator
• redesigned “Choose theme” page in admin area
• fixed an ability to remove account type if any profile questions are assigned to it
• fixed a glitch with too long titiles for widgets on site index/dashboard/profile view pages

Activity Notifications

• added an option for users to receive notifications immediately
• added notification when someone posts a status on user’s profile page

Import contacts

• added invitation by email
• fixed facebook invitation page
• added HTTPS support for facebook import configuration (Secure Canvas URL)

Photos

• added “Upload photos” button on “view photo album” page
• redesigned comment box – redesigned “Add photo” page

Other plugins

• Mailbox: fixed markup issues
• Blogs: added My Drafts button
• Events: redesigned attendance buttons
• Newsfeed: fixed a link to profile in birthdate entry
• Forum: changed the way attachments are named

- Upgrade -

As always, do not forget to back up your sites before launching the update, just in case, as an extra precaution.

• Back up your site
• Update the platform (Instructions)
• Update all of the installed plugins
• Update your themes.

Since we have to make sure that Oxwall long term development is warranted, it would be fantastic if you (yes, you) could help us pay for coffee and hosting bills. In the end of the day, it’s in the interest of every Oxwall community member: store sellers, plugin and theme buyers, and free users.

Donate here: oxwall.org/donation

Oxwall Attribution link

As you remember, Oxwall is CPAL-licensed, which requires to have Oxwall attribution link in place. We are receiving dozens of requests for removal every day. To create a legal way for removal (but to still keep the license policy meaningful and working), we decided to allow it as an optional perk for donating funds to the project.

Please note, that we do not intend to “productize”, encourage, and mass-scale selling link removals, because we still think it’s bad for the community and useless for the site owner. Read our reasoning.

By somewhat backpedalling on our original policy, we only try to meet public demand. We came to Open Source to serve people’s needs. If allowing to remove the attribution is a part of it, so be it.

Donate here: oxwall.org/donation

Thanks,
Emil

Crayon

City

Stars

Silent

Pastel

This line of themes can be applied to a variety of niches, representing a particular mood of a given online community. All five templates are already available through Oxwall Store; enjoy them and let us know what you think in the comments bellow. In the meantime, we are happy to tell you that more regular updates for our collection are planned, and we are already hard at work creating new themes for future releases.

• Profile questions are no longer removed alog with deleted account types;
• Site activity notifications are now sent to users who haven’t logged in for more than two days;
• Slideshow preloader improved;
• Blogs routing bug fixed;
• Resolved Cron error for theme processing;

Of course, it’s not a proper Oxwall release without a new theme, and this time we are joining the dark (but fun) side, with an all-original Darklets social networking template. Expect more quality themes in the future. Enjoy!

As always, do not forget to back up your sites before launching the update, just in case, as an extra precaution.

1. Back up your site;
2. Update the platform (Instructions);
3. Update all of the installed plugins;
4. Update your themes.

You will probably not hear from us on December 31 and January 1. You can see us posting on forums and answering questions again on January 2.

Happy holidays!

Instead of anticipating the end of the world, we offer you to start the new world with Oxwall. Now your community project can really start living with the new release from our team.

Oxwall 1.5 is available for immediate download. What’s in it?

Important: If you are already running Oxwall of any previous versions, you are encouraged to wait until it’s there in your admin area for autoupdate. Before you attempt it, make sure to:

• Back up your website. Seriously, folks, better safe than sorry.
• Install all available plugin updates right after the platform update.
• If you use a third party theme, update it manually via FTP.

We hope you enjoy Oxwall 1.5 as much as we did while making it. We hope the Internet will now have more quality websites, thanks to your and our work!

Yours infinitely,

Oxwall team

I mean, we have just completed development and internal testing for our upcoming release, Oxwall 1.5. This is going to be our most important release this year. What’s so great about it, you ask?

Origin: the new default theme

Oxwall gets the new look’n'feel so it really becomes a whole lot of a different software, especially when Origin works with the new…

Features

• We redesigned user console, so now it’s less obtrusive, more efficient, and more functional. It can be used by various plugins to enhance user experience and interaction. Now those plugins can get important functions at your disposal within a click or two on every page.

• As a result, we are introducing real-time on-site notifications, so you’ll be able to find out instantly that someone commented on your photo, or invited you to an event – all while you are chatting or playing games.

• Instant chat redesigned from ground up to make it more comfortable to chat with friends online.

• Watchdog, the new native anti-SPAM plugin. It’s functionality is a little limited at the moment, but we commit to make it a valuable part of Oxwall, available out of the box.

• Very important improvements, including:
  • the ability for admin to edit users’ profile info and view hidden entries;
  • smoothly removing old unused newsfeed items thus improving performance;
  • default rating system improvement;
  • and a million others.

More themes coming soon

We plan to make many new free modern themes based on Origin. You can count on those appearing in the Oxwall Store pretty soon.

Developer beta

… is available immediately. All developers and beta testers will be notified to receive access and start testing the platform and their plugins and themes for compatibility.

Release

For the rest of us, Oxwall 1.5 hits the ground on December 19. That’s what I call stealing thunder from Christmas. Keep tight!

Emil,
Oxwall Foundation team