Finally it's here, happy Christmas everyone! The new version is ready for your pleasure with changes like Template Manager to easily switch between site templates even set them for administration section, Shopping Item options like item color, size and so on, Enhanced Dynamic Forms with multistep options, HTTPS compatibility, Picasa and YouTube implementation and a lot more.

UPDATED (Dec 28): fixed max 8 entries/page limit for Picasa and YouTube galleries (only the two Photo and Video gallery modules have been changed).

As promised for Christmas I would like to wish you all the bests for the next year and Happy Holidays to everyone with this release. I heard you on your votes and implemented the long awaited Template Manager with two of the most popular GPL templates already ported over, added support for separate Admin design but still kept the option to set the same template for your admin too, added even more jQuery plugins and downloadable translations are on the way.

I'm also happy to say we are close to a milestone with the overall almost reaching 100,000 downloads and with the new changes I hope we can reach this milestone soon, so download the new version right now.

Detailed list of Changes

  • Added favorite links dropdown button to admin so the navigation gets even faster (you can customize these links of course)
  • Contact form will be automatically completed if logged in
  • Hide modules when attaching to menu items if they don't have display() function (could be good for admin only modules)
  • Added IfModule to .htaccess files so they work even if module can't be found
  • Added reordering possibility to languages
  • Added reordering possibility to menus
  • Made shopping item number optional and have it autofilled from title
  • Renamed shopping order form NameOnCard field to FullName
  • Removed search notification message when Similar items are shown in shopping cart
  • Show ip of posters in comments if logged in as admin
  • Show menu title if there is no post in a menu (this should be usefull when creating menu items only for modules, for e.g. Contant as this way you don't have to add a post just to have a Contact page title)
  • Added option to define custom success text message for dynamic forms
  • Added option to send to a different email address the result of a dynamic form
  • Added option to encrypt emails using PGP (to create PGP public key(s) use the popular linux GPG program. To generate a key run "gpg --gen-key" and copy the "pubring.gpg" file to a public location to which apache has write access too)
  • Changed ini_set(include_path) to set_include_path which should cover a wider hosting services as some disable the ini_set functions
  • Rewrited dynamic form fields so values can be added directly from there using textarea (one value per line) also you can set default value with asterisk (*) like *One. This should make setting up dynamic forms a lot easier.
  • Added dynamic form field option to be shown only for admins, guests, members or everyone
  • Added option to check field is searchable for dynamic form fields (if checked field will be also added to the index list on the database side)
  • Added dynamic form recepition select field (this should come handy for forms like: send to Tech Department = tech@domain.com and so on)
  • Added option for multi step dynamic forms (using Page Breaks type fields)
  • Added dynamic form option to set a field as data preview when browsing form's data
  • Added option to disable Admin Favorite Links from Global Settings
  • Added option to mass activate/suspend/delete users
  • Added option to edit protected dynamic forms and/or fields
  • Made new user accounts to be automatically activated if payment process completed and confirmed trough IPN
  • Cleaned up CSS again for both template/modules
  • Added option to disable username changings
  • Fixed continue shopping if item added using Similar Items when showing shopping cart
  • Fixed generating teasers with hr tag in the description
  • Added option to define first weekday and edit date/time format
  • Added option to modify all emails sent out by the system (Notification Emails)
  • Added posibility to search for exact phrases using quotes (for e.g. "exact phrase")
  • Added posts calendar that can be used to limit posts for a defined date. (you can invoce it with the {posts}calendar{posts} content code)
  • Changed posts to use dynamic forms (this will allow you to add any amount of custom fields to a post even limit them to show only for members or guests and more, also fields checked as Searchable will be used when searching for posts)
  • Added shopping item custom options so you can define any amount of option like color, size or even engraving text. Also options can have fixed or percentage prices (it works just like in Magentocommerce).
  • Added option to Hide subgroup items for shopping categories
  • Added option to show Related products when shopping item selected
  • Added shopping item special price with start/end date
  • Added option to define currency position (left or right) for shopping module.
  • Added option for shopping items to check if Taxable or not
  • Added option to define shopping item weight (also you can define the weight unit in shopping cart settings)
  • Changed shopping item to use dynamic form (this will allow you to add any amount of custom fields to your items, also fields checked as Searchable will be used when searching for items)
  • Changed video playback to iframe where possible (YouTube, Vimeo) which allows now video playback on pcs without flash like iPad
  • Added reordering possibility for poll answers
  • Added option to close votings for a poll
  • Added option to define shipping/handling fees using item weight
  • Fixed checkout form prefill if user logged in (there was a bug that prevented prefilled informations to be modified)
  • Added VAT/Tax settings for shopping cart/orders
  • Rewrited shopping orders admin to use inner javascript when setting up a new order cart
  • Added css selectors to master layout block containers (divs) so you can easily specify css rules for different browsers, see: http://www.bastian-allgeier.de/css_browser_selector/
  • Added option for user avatars using Gravatar and they can be globally disabled from admin or users can opt out to have their avatars displayed separately.
  • Added option to define email when posting guest comments so poster can receive notification of replies and also email is used for the avatars
  • Made menu items to mark alias menu items selected too (for e.g. of you have two menus with the "about" path both of them will be marked as selected if about page loaded)
  • Added multifile upload using input type file multiple which should be supported by all new HTML5 browsers (tests were made with Chrome 7)
  • Replaced qtip with tipsy as with tipsy we are able to do the same thing and it saves +30k in javascript size.
  • Added option to limit posts keywords cloud and calendar (using content codes) to specified menu items by specifying the menu item path first (for e.g. {posts}menu-item-path/keywords{/posts} and for calendar {posts}menu-item-path/calendar{/posts} and you can show for all posts both keywords and calendar by dropping the menu-item-path).
  • Added https compatibility so it won't bother you with content loaded from unsecure source messages :)
  • Added option to limit blocks to be shown only or except in Administration Section
  • Added option to set Menu Items and Blocks to be viewable only by Admins too

New Payment methods added

  • Authorize.net - to get the IPN working you will have to define the "Silent Post URL" in the Account -> Settings section once logged in to your Authorize.net account. The url should look like: http://yourdomain.com/index.php?request=modules/shoppingorders/shoppingordermethodauthorizedotnet&ajax=1
     
  • 2CheckOut - to get the INS working define the "Global URL" at Notifications -> Settings section once logged in to your 2CheckOut account and Enable all notifications. The url should look like: http://yourdomain.com/index.php?request=modules/shoppingorders/shoppingordermethod2checkout&ajax=1 also you will have to define a "Secret Word" at Account -> Site Management in your 2CheckOut account.
     
  • MoneyBookers.com - to get the IPN working you will have to define the "Secret Word" at Merchant Tools for your Merchant account once logged in to your MoneyBookers account.

Picasa and YouTube

  • Implemented Picasa galleries to Photogallery module, it even supports private galleries with GData Auth Token, and you can create galleries for Featured, Community searches, tagged photos, sort them by Date, limit them by Aspect Ratio, Size, Faces, License. Adding photos from your own album just requires you to copy/paste your album's url and that's it. (Pictures are updated on the fly so your gallery is always up to date).
     
  • Implemented YoTube galleries to Videogallery module just like Picasa for photogalleries, you can define a chanel and all videos will be automatically displayed and updated on the fly. Also you are able to do searches, favorites, discussed, order them by views, list categories and so on, so almost everything is possible to generate an automatic gallery from YouTube just like you would search on YouTube.

New Template Manager

Added new Template Manager where you can easily upload and activate templates for your website. This will now allow you to have separate design for your website and for your admin but also you are able to set a templata as the default for your admin section too. Additionally templates support custom codes using the system's API (partial classes) meaning you can rewrite jCore's code on template basis by adding your own code to your templates lib/ directory.

New jQuery Plugins added

jQuery Upgrades

Upgraded CKEditor to 3.5 (revision 6260)

Installer Changes

  • Added check for out of memory error which should print out a nice message if you don't have enough memory to install automatically
  • Added option to use extracted jCore system already available in the install path. This will allow you to install jCore just like any other CMS meaning you can manually extract jCore server or client to it's place and then run the installer which will set up the website for you and use the extracted system you uploaded.
  • If using manually extracted jCore for installation only config.inc.php or jcore.inc.php has to have write access, so this is the recommanded way of installation if you don't have suPHP on your server.
  • Do not save downloaded SQL file to disk (which required write access on the install path you set) instead it is saved to memory so no additional write access is required.

Next on the todo list is to start putting together downloadable translations with all the texts needed to be translated filtered out, we already have members who will provide translations in German, Italian, Hungarian, Arabic, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, French and Romanian. If you would like to help us with even more translations or making jCore even better please register at the Forum and share your thoughts/ideas/commits.

Once again Happy Holidays, enjoy the new release and keep liking us!