Curverider released a second release candidate for Elgg 1.5 today. It can be downloaded as a tarball from their site, or you can get it from the subversion library. Release Candidate 2 brings about 40 new revisions to Elgg code since the release of the first Release Candidate last week.
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Elgg 1.5 will bring a number of enhancements large and small that will improve usability for both users and admins. Here are a few more things to look forward to with its impending release.
As Elgg changed versions, many of the plugins have become incompatible. Developers have had to update them in order to make them work with new incarnations. In some cases, there are various versions of the plugins floating around making things confusing for admins.
Now you can see if the plugin is compatible from the Tools Administration interface. The plugins displayed above have no versions specified. Plugin developers can now add another tag to their manifest.xml file.
This value corresponds with the value specified as follows in the version.php file in the Elgg core.
If the value match up, all is okay.
Another enhancement is the addition of categories. Uploading the Categories plugin to the mod folder and activating gives a Categories option in the Aministrative interface.
Simply add categories separated by commas and save so that they appear as options when creating content such as blogs.
While we are viewing the blog interface, you may notice changes beyond the presence of categories in the left column area. You will have the ability to enable or disable comments to blogs posts, as well as, save drafts. In general, throughout the user interface you will notice several enhancements to the left column navigation.
Another new module that users will find useful is members. Members lists all the members of the site and includes their latest post to their wire.
Note the options in the left hand navigation. Also note the tabs over the main area. You will see this feature appearing in many views within Elgg 1.5.
These represent a grab bag of new enhancements users and admins can look forward to seeing in Elgg 1.5. Stop back for more information in the near future.
Tags: categories, Elgg, elgg 1.5, members, versions
The Curverider team continues to update Elgg at a furious pace with nearly 360 commits since early January. It appears Elgg 1.5 will arrive as promised this month. I’ve been watching the progress unfold with an SVN trunk installation (NOT recommended for production!). I have also been given a preview of Elgg 1.5. If I were to try to cover all the changes that I have observed, I’d never get this post out, so I’ll focus on notifications, external pages and the frontpage.
One of the promised improvements on the Elgg 1.5 roadmap is “Notification hooks and delivery.” This change has probably been lurking under my nose for a little while, because I haven’t been checking into the Settings much lately. When I did, I saw some new options.
We now see options for configure tools, notifications, and group notification. Configure tools will give users an interface to configure extensions added by admins. Click on notifications and you get a number of options.
You now have a variety of options for email notifications when actions are performed on your content, the content of friends, or any collections of friends. In addition, the Group Notification allows you to make similar settings on notifications regarding any groups you belong to. Note all the white space to the right of email notification icons. There appear to be more options on the way.
There is still more space. What else could be coming?
Next is an unexpected little gem, External Pages. Curverider has long had About, TOS, and Privacy links on their site’s footer–something users have long wanted. They have delivered with an External Pages plugin. Once enabled, the links appear in the site’s footer as does an External pages option in the left side menu in the Administrative interface.
Note the tabs highlighted above. Click on any of these and you have a convenient text editor to add whatever content you need to any of these pages. Not mentioned is the Front page panel. That puzzled me briefly until I installed the Custom Index plugin.The two fields allow you to enter text into the right and left hand panes without delving into source code.
I imagine this external page editor could be applied to any number of other uses in Elgg in the future.
This is a round up of a few of the many enhancements we can look forward to with the release of Elgg 1.5. There are, of course, many more, and I hope to have more posts outlining new features in the near term.
Tags: Elgg, elgg1.5, external pages, notifications
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