One Day Later - One More Beta
First, I knew the first beta release of gpEasy 2.4 was special, but I didn't expect the response it got. Thanks everyone for the incredible response and feedback.
Now, there haven't been many changes to the code since yesterday, but there was one rather annoying bug that I wanted to get fixed and out to anyone running tests. I don't plan on releasing a beta release each day, but it seemed like a good idea to do it this time.
First 2.4 Beta Release
Yes, we've been working on gpEasy over the holiday season and now have some new features that we'd love the community to test out in the first beta release of gpEasy 2.4.
Hierarchical Permalinks
As requested by our users hierarchical permalinks are now an option for all your pages. To accomplish this feature, a slight data structure modification was required so we hope to get some significant testing in before making it final.
Renaming Special Pages
Another slight change to our data structure was made to allow users rename special pages. In fact, new installations of gpEasy will no longer have the pages "Special_Contact" or "Special_Site_Map". These pages have all been renamed internally to simply "Contact" and "Site_Map".
Working Hard
I just wanted to check in and talk about some of the ideas driving current work in gpEasy.
Main Menu and Layouts
I've been very happy with gpEasy's current page manager. Our original page manager wasn't bad, it just didn't offer as much flexibility as the current one. And yet, there were some things we lost in the transition. The current page manager doesn't show users which layout is being used for every single page (it only shows a colored icon for titles that have a specific layout assigned to them). I chose to do this because it seemed less cluttered, a little more efficient and still gives the same information as long as users understand that child pages inherit the layout of a parent page.
The problem with this: "as long as users understand".
To make gpEasy as easy as possible, I want there to be as few "as long as users understand" situations as possible. It's unrealistic to think we can get rid of them all (gpEasy certainly has many) but we can work hard to make things as clean and intuitive as possible so that gpEasy "just works".
In the case of the page manager and layouts, a vertical line matching the icon color of the layout visually ties the child pages in with the parent page (image on left). It's a simple solution that immediately shows the user that child pages are directly affected by the changes made to a parent page. Just as importantly, it's clean and doesn't distract users from the rest of the page manager.
Small improvements like these don't generate much hype or buzz which is fine. gpEasy development isn't dictated by what has the potential to generate buzz. Don't get me wrong, I love it when we release exciting new features but, the small things are just as, if not more important. Taking care of the loose ends helps us get rid of those lingering "as long as users understand" situations and gives us more "it just works" features.
One down, and many more to come!
Official gpEasy 2.3.3 Release
There haven't been many changes since the developer release a week ago, but there are some important improvements since the last official gpEasy release. Most of the changes we've made are bug fixes and general coding improvements, but we always make sure include some feature enhancements to round things out. A complete list of changes can be found in the documentation on docs.gpeasy.org,
Among the improvements made for 2.3.3 are:
Easier access to the recently restyled administration home page via an icon on the admin toolbar. It's a small change with a big impact in usability.
Additional configuration options and explanations are now available in the gpconfig.php file. Configuration settings include login security options, data file permissions and more.
More Anti-Spam options will be available as of 2.3.3 with the addition of two new addon hooks: AntiSpam_Form and AntiSpam_Check. Until now, reCaptcha was the only anti spam method available.
Many thanks to everyone who has helped gpEasy along the way! It's always great to see the support and community grow. On that note, we'd like to welcome Paulo Nunes of Syndicatefx to the official development team. Paulo is an accomplished designer and in addition to developing some of the most popular themes for gpEasy, he's already helped us prepare for more HTML5 features.
gpEasy 2.3.3 Developer Preview
We're getting closer to the next release of gpEasy and we've made a preview release available so translators and addon developers can test their work with the latest gpEasy code.
The developer release is available in two formats and can be downloaded from sourceforge.net:
Please report any issues with this release as soon as possible so we can fix them before the final release of 2.3.3.
As always, a list of recent changes is available in the gpEasy documentation.
gpEasy 2.3.2
We don't want to inundate users with a constant stream of releases and updates, but in the end, updates are necessary to get the most up-to-date code out to everyone. No major feature enhancements in this release though. Just good 'ol bug fixes and small tweaks to the UI to make sure everyone is getting the best gpEasy experience possible.
You can find details about all the significant changes in version 2.3.2 in gpEasy's documentation.
Multi-Site Bug
For anyone using gpEasy's Multi-Site plugin, a bug was just found in version 2.3.1 that affects how gpEasy selects the appropriate data folder. The result can cause sites managed by the multi site plugin to display content for it's parent installation. If you are not using the Multi-Site plugin, your installation is not affected.
If you are using the Multi-Site plugin, there are two options:
- Use gpEasy 2.3
- Or, update the common.php file in your root installation with the fixed version.
Sorry for the trouble.
gpEasy 2.3.1 Released
A new batch of features and fixes is available in the latest release of gpEasy. While this release is considered a minor release, a look at the change log would suggest otherwise.
Design
Without affecting functionality, we looked at the design of a few admin area elements. The page rename dialog and the admin landing page both received face lifts designed to organize and make their existing functionality more usable.
Feedback
Progress continues to be made on the list of suggestions in the Feedback section of gpEasy.com. Included in this release is the ability to delete multiple files at a time from the trash, a menu list of pages "Not in Any Menu", and robot visibility options (nofollow,noindex).
And More
You can check out a full list of changes on our changelog or check them out by downloading gpEasy CMS now.
gpEasy CMS 2.3 (Detailed)
Yes, the newest version of gpEasy was released earlier with little more than a few short messages indicating it was out. There are just too many cool new features in gpEasy 2.3 to leave it at that...
Version 2.3 is, in fact, a pivotal release for gpEasy. It includes a number of exciting new features and represents a new level of maturity in the code that will allow the development process to focus more on user feature requests and feedback.
New Features in 2.3
Yes, version 2.3 includes some very notable feature improvements for our unique CMS.
Revert from Exported Archive
This feature can be used to back up your site data and easily recover if something should happen to your server or to easily move your site from one server to another.
Faster Page Loading
You'd think they were secretive tactics if you looked at how many CMSes implemented them. Or maybe speed is just that much more important to us. Either way we've added more speed enhancements to gpEasy to make your pages load faster.
User Interface
Taken directly from the user feedback, we've added the ability to dock the inline WYSIWYG editors and minimize the floating admin toolbar.
Security
Another feature you don't see very much is the ability to log in using encryption. Instead of sending your plain-text password over the internet, gpEasy can now send an encrypted copy further securing your web site.
Galleries
Your collection of Galleries can now be organized with drag 'n drop functionality.
Slick New Theme
We added the very attractive "Light Texture" theme to the package and made it the default theme for new installations.
More
We also added an option to hide the Left Editable Bar (via feedback), improvements to layout management and many more... You can see the entire version history in our documentation.