Oxwall 1.7 release

Today is July 8, and as promised, Oxwall 1.7 sees the light of the day. This is another big milestone for the product: an important platform update, plus completely redesigned photos and messages.

Oxwall 1.7 is available for download immediately. All details about this release can be found here.

Backup!

If you are running Oxwall of any previous version, you are encouraged to wait until the auto-update prompt appears in your admin area (that make take up to 24 hours). 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 completes;
  • Install theme update right after the platform update completes.

If you don’t want to perform the update yourself, our friends from Skalfa can do it for you. Also, check other companies specializing in Oxwall support.

Theme support

With this release we drop support for the following themes maintained by Oxwall Foundation:

  • Grunge
  • Basic
  • City
  • Green
  • Pastel
  • Graphite
  • Graphite+
  • Club
  • Rainy
  • Spring
  • Stars
  • Silent

If you use one of these themes, please be aware that they are not getting updated to Oxwall 1.7. Feel free to choose another theme in the Oxwall Store (check 1.7 compatibility), or apply the changes by yourself if you have the skills. The reason for this decision is simple: focus. In order to concentrate on iterating critical product components, we have to cut off non-core ones.

Have fun and tell us how you like the new Oxwall. We hope to impress you once again, not less than we do with every release.

Emil & the Oxwall team.

Oxwall 1.7 on July 8, beta today

Finally, we have definite release date for the next version. Oxwall 1.7 will be out on July 8, with developer beta available today.

As you know, we first planned to have 1.6.1 release with a lot of improvements and fixes. However, a few distinct platform changes creeped in, so this release is shaping up more important than just a new build, and we call it minor version advance, namely Oxwall 1.7.

Important changes

Attention, developers, designers, and admins! Apart from some updated plugins, there are platform changes that require your attention:

  • New option to assign specific user roles for each account type;
  • New option to assign separate list of profile questions for each account type;
  • Modified user permission check (developers, you need to adapt your plugins!);
  • Attachments for all media (messages, forums, comments, etc) are redesigned (designers, you may need to adapt your themes!);
  • Comment box redesigned (designers, you may need to adapt your themes!);

For all changes see complete changelog.

Apart from that there are two major advancements to highlight:

Complete photo redesign

We’ve been working on the new photo plugin for the last 6 months. Hopefully, it works better than the current one, so your community enjoys easier and more effective photo sharing facilities:

Photo list

Single photo view

Newsfeed photos

Among the most notable features are:

  • New advanced bulk photo upload;
  • New photo list view;
  • New photo album view;
  • Optimized photo preview (info and comments in sidebar);
  • Search by keywords, users, hashtags;
  • Full-screen slideshow;
  • Photos posted to newsfeed are now collected in a photo album.

There are a lot of hidden gems in this one, so we’ll leave them for you to discover when Oxwall 1.7 gets released to the public.

Mailbox + Chat = Messages: complete redesign + mobile version support

The new Messages plugin comes to replace the two old plugins: Instant Messenger and Mailbox. When you install the new plugin, it will migrate the data from the Mailbox and deactivate it automatically.

Oxwall messages

 

Messages  Messages

What’s in it?

  • Chat only mode, mail only mode, or both;
  • Additional on-page interface for chat with saved history;
  • Now possible to send a message from mailbox to any recipient;
  • Revamped attachments for both chat and mail;
  • Inline images and video in chat;
  • Chat and mail is now also in Oxwall mobile browser version.

We hope you will appreciate the interconnectedness and easiness of the new way of sending messages in Oxwall.

This plugin is deeper than a few screenshots could show, so we invite you to explore its capabilities.

Developer beta

It’s available for download now. If you signed up for beta testing, you will be able to obtain it from the private beta release forum. Check it out.

If you are a developer or a designer but haven’t signed up for it yet, you are recommended to do that right away. There’s a high chance that you need to update your work to make it compatible with Oxwall 1.7. Developer’s guide to the platform changes is packed with the beta.

We are eager to send the new bulk of awesomeness your way. July 8 is the day it hits the ground, together with the updated versions of plugins by 3rd party developers.

All hail Oxwall!

Emil & the Oxwall team