I'm happy to announce the availability of the next jCore version 0.8 with some of the notable features being Template Exporter, Shopping orders Summary page, Manual gettext support, Posts at Glance section, User Groups, Auto email response on dynamic forms, Redirect with 301 Permanently Moved for www and non-www same domains, Ogone.com payment option and more.

 

With this release we are pretty close to the state of how 1.0 will look/work, there is only one big change pending on the todo list for the 0.9 which will affect how the Menus/Menu Items are created so you won't have to create a new page just to have the same menu item in a different menu block but on the rest only some new features will be added and mostly fixes/code cleanups will be the main focus.

License Changes

jCore's license has also be changed, starting from 0.8 it is now released not just under GPL but under LGPL and MPL too so it should give you even more possibility to use jCore in your projects, also a commercial license is on the way with a professional support package.

Both Empty Template and Example Modules have been released under Unlicensed License so you can do whatever you want with these codes and this allows you to write modules that you can encode and not be forced to share with the GPL license requirements.

Donations

We are now also accepting donations so if you would like to say Thank You or just support this project in a financial way you can do so in our new Donate page and all your donations will go towards development, hosting, new features and more.

Fixes in this release

  • Fixed invalid ajax requests to display a nice error message
  • Fixed check all posts in Moving Posts to only check boxes that belong to the selected list
  • Fixed deleting dynamic form field
  • Fixed quick search if SEO_FRIENDLY_LINKS disabled
  • Fixed picasa gallery paging when ajax paging turned on
  • Fixed option to preselect Dynamic Forms checbox and radio box fields
  • Fixed preselect multistep Dynamic Form field values
  • Fixed html5 and local video playback
  • Fixed tax calculation for shopping cart if shipping information left empty as it's the same as billing information
  • Fixed permissions for sub folders/categories/pages/blocks as before they weren't shown if you haven't had a permission to the toplevel folder/category/page/block
  • Fixed colorpicker to hide on input fields without id attribute.
  • Fixed comments ratings to show the amount of down or up rates instead of the rate status in a 1-10 scale.
  • Fixed show same content if page has the same path even if SEO_FRIENDLY url's are disabled, also show posts from all pages that have the same path.
  • Fixed shopping item required custom options to be really required before adding to cart
  • Fixed skipping generating thumbnail not just only if original file is smaller then thubnail size but also when it's equal
  • Fixed user permissions to make items read only if write access only given to a suboption of the item. For e.g. when you give write access to a defined folder in filesharing but only to filesharingattachments it will make the folder as read only as you only have write access to the attachments.

New Additions include

  • Added Orders summary page aka Dashboard which can be used to check sales, most viewed products, bestsellers and orders within a specified date range
  • Added option to search/limit shopping orders list by status
  • Added option to search posts/shopping items list in admin
  • Added possibility to define the Owner of posts, file sharing folders, photo galleries, polls, shopping categories / items and video galleries
  • Added nice error message if dynamic form has no fields with Value Type set but set to save data to DB
  • Added manual gettext support (https://launchpad.net/php-gettext/) to have jCore work on systems that don't have the gettext extension activated.
  • Added check for mod_rewrite and if not found deactivate SEO_FRIENDLY_LINKS on install.
  • Added Template Exporter which make so easy to export and port templates over to other websites
  • Added preview picture caching for Video and Photo galleries if YouTube or Picasa used so the galleries will be loaded instantly
  • Added Posts at Glance section where you can easily and quickly crete posts and manage all of them at one place
  • Added focus status to frame containers (fc) so you can expand/collapse them using the keyboard too
  • Added option to create pages with dynamic posts for defined keywords just like you do with Categories in other CMS-es.
  • Added description option for newsletter lists
  • Added Instnat User Registration option to global settings so when it's turned on new users won't have to activate their accounts on registration
  • Added User Groups option with group permissions so you can create group with predefined permissions and once a user is in that group it will automatically inherit the group's permissions
  • Added option to select language locale directory from a list of available locales
  • Added option to load modules from directories so you can write complex modules without having to put all your code into one file
  • Added Auto Response option to dynamic forms
  • Added referer tracking and we use this when an order is placed so you can keep track of websites that referer real buyers to you
  • Added Select, Calendar (Date/Time), Password and Color setting input types
  • Added check globally if a module is installed or not so you don't have to do this in your module manually as a developer.
  • Added a simple code style format with max-height and scrollbars
  • Added paginating to Photo/Video Galleries, File sharings and sort them by TimeStamp if order id is the same
  • Added option to use/define custom .mo files for the dynamic forms this way allowing for cleaner translation files as you won't have to put everything in your messages.po/.mo file
  • Added option to link dynamic forms to pages just as easy as modules
  • Added option to store the searchin parameter for keywords this way when clicked on a keyword that was used to search shopping items it will immediately search shopping items again.
  • Added new star rating system which is half the size as the old one and uses a lot cleaner html code which can't be picked up by bots.
  • Added on the fly update to voting polls when a vote is received
  • Added redirect with "301 Permanently moved" if site loaded with www. but not specified so in the SITE_URL and vice versa so we don't duplicate content
  • Added "New Post" to the quick links so you can add a new post with just one click for quick blogging.
     
  • Added Ogone.com payment option, the followings may help you set up the system right:

    - Login to your Ogone.com account
    - At "Technical information -> Transaction feedback" you will have to turn on "Direct HTTP server-to-server request" by checking "Online but switch to a deferred request in intervals when the online requests fail." and define the "URL of the merchant's post-payment page:" for e.g. http://yourdomain.com/?request=modules/shoppingorders/shoppingordermethodogone&ajax=1
    - Leave request method to POST
    - Set up both "SHA-IN Pass phrase" and "SHA-OUT Pass phrase" and define the same in your Shopping Cart settings.

    NOTE: if you get "unknown order/1/r/" error messages just make sure you have your website url defined in the "Technical information -> Data and origin verification" see the "URL of the merchant page containing the payment form that will call the page:orderstandard.asp".

New jQuery plugins

Updates and Changes

  • Moved css above js for parallel/faster page loading
  • Made textareas 90% wide for descriptions/contents so it's easier to manage more texts
  • Renamed Menu Items to Pages as its more logical and understendable how the system works. The sql tables have been also changed.
  • Generate a more secure sha1 cookie for logged in users so it can't be found out on a shared server
  • Extract combined classes into separate class files so they can be easier overwritten from API
  • Make banners/ads randomly rotate it limit set for the block in which the ads are shown
  • Changed all strstr to strpos as it's faster and less memory intensive
  • Filter out most popular bots from attachment downloads, picture and video views so they don't get count when a bot is visiting them. This only affected those numbers where for e.g. the attachment was smaller then ~50kbyte.
  • Made display post on all pages and display on main page to be always at the top of the list, also if no pageid assigned to a post (like when blogging) it should be always at the bottom of the list as posts directly placed in a page should always have higher importance.
  • Use jCore server's path for locale if not available on client side this way allowing to store all locale files in one place and still use them all ower your clients.

Updated jQuery plugins

  • AjaxForm
  • BMap
  • carouFredSel
  • Cycle
  • Data Link
  • UI
  • imgAreaSelect
  • Keypad
  • Nivo Slider
  • Orbit
  • Slides
  • Snippet
  • Sudo Slider
  • Transform

Updated ckEditor to 3.5.3 (revision 6655)
Updated jQuery to 1.5.2

Hope you will like the release, work has already began on the new one, you can follow all the development process on our Forum or subscribe to our Github repository and please don't forget to share your thoughts/ideas so we can reach 1.0 asap.