08.01.00 RC 2
Pre-releaseThe Official Community Forums Module for DNN CMS
IMPORTANT!!! This is a Release Candidate (RC). Please do not use this installation/upgrade package for any production websites of any kind. This release is not supported and is only provided for test purposes, to allow others to test their websites first.
IMPORTANT: Upgrade Notes
The release notes will follow, below these important notes.
New Bootstrap 4 & 5 Forum Theme
Please be sure to test this and report any issues you may find. It's a brand-new feature!
If you are using a Bootstrap 3 theme - including DNN Xcilliin - use the community-default
theme rather than the community-bootstrap
theme
New Languages Added!
Dutch already had a language pack, but now there are language packs for German, French, Spanish, and Italian. They were generated though, so we could use your help from the community to make sure the translations are indeed accurate.
We recommend that you use Peter Donker's translation software (below) to make things easier for you.
- Blog: A Central Hub for Language Packs, by Peter Donker
- Download: DNN Translator
- Related Pull Request: Add Azure Cognitive Services (Microsoft Translator v3) as a Translation Service
Upgrading? Reindex Your Search
There have been significant updates in the way the forums module integrates with the DNN search engine. This includes a handful of bug fixes. It's important to reindex your DNN search as soon as possible after the upgrade.
NEW CSS Loading Order (since 8.0)
CSS loading has been improved to deliver robust CSS both within the module, across all themes, and then theme-specific with a custom override.
New Community Forum's CSS Load order:
~/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/module.css
(already existing)~/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/themes.css
(new name and CSS content / used across all themes)~/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_currenttheme_/theme{.min}.css
(already existing / new name). Can now have a.min.css
variant.~/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_currenttheme_/custom/theme{.min}.css
(new) has been updated. Can now have a.min.css
variant.
Orphaned Web.Config Update (since 8.0)
If you have previously installed the Community Forums module --and its URL rewriter in order to use friendly URLs-- that process inserted the attribute runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"
into the <configuration><system.webServer><modules>
tag in the main web.config
.
Per Microsoft documentation, this attribute is obsolete if you are running IIS 7 (plus a patch), or IIS 8+.
Since you may have other modules that require it, we have chosen to NOT remove it automatically. If you have no other modules that require it, you many remove it manually.
Release Notes
What's to follow are all of the relevant updates that have occurred during the development cycle of this release.
If you wish to see all of the development work (including updates related to internal testing), you can view the milestone for this release in GitHub.
08.01.00 RC 2 (NOT FOR PRODUCTION!)
New Features & Enhancements
- NEW: Adds a new Bootstrap 4 &; 5 theme/template for the forum (Issue #734, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- NEW: A new process queue has been added to offload front-end page loads from running backend logic (Issue #376, thanks @johnhenley!)
- NEW: Now able to independently inherit security settings into forums from the forum group (Issue #611, thanks @johnhenley!)
- NEW: Added a button to allow a person to easily subscribe to all of the forums (Issue #593, thanks @johnhenley!)
- NEW: Major enhancements made to how the module caches data (Issue #724, thanks @johnhenley!)
- NEW: Adds 'ban user' options to forum moderation (Pull #800, thanks @johnhenley!)
- NEW: Adds Announcements and Unresolved topic views to the toolbar (Issue #701, thanks @johnhenley!)
- NEW: Add subscriber counts to topics / topic view in Bootstrap Template (Issue #707, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- NEW: Added language pack files to support German (Pull #811, thanks @johnhenley!)
- Thank you so much to Michael Tobisch (@MaiklT) for checking this language pack!
- NEW: Added language pack files to support French (Pull #812, thanks @johnhenley!)
- Thank you so much to Daniel Valadas (@valadas) for checking this language pack!
- NEW: Added language pack files to support Spanish (Pull #813, thanks @johnhenley!)
- Thank you so much to Vicenç Masanas (@vmasanas) for checking this language pack!
- NEW: Added language pack files to support Italian (Pull #814, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATED: Updated language pack files to support Dutch (Pull #815, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATE: Improved moderator notifications when banning a user account (Issue #721, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATE: Adds support for
[GROUPNAME]
&[FORUMGROUPID]
tokens in the[GROUP]
section in ForumView (Pull #795, thanks @johnhenley!) - UPDATE: Numerous usability improvements to Mark as Answer features (Issue #400, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATE: Added subscriber counts to topics / topic view in community-default theme (Pull #706, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATE: Replace
NavigateUrl()
with anINavigationManager
implementation (Issue #378, thanks @johnhenley!) - UPDATE: Removed the now legacy mail options from the view (all notifications now use the forums mail queue) (Issue #635, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Change
Filters
in the toolbar toFiltered Topics
(Pulls 810, thanks @johnhenley!) - USABILITY: Numerous improvements to the overall experience when working with topic ratings (Issue 398, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Moderator actions were not styled as buttons (Issue #661, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Adds the ability for end-users to change which forums they're looking at (Issue #703, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Replaced login message with a login link for unauthenticated users (Issue #781, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Updated confusing verbiage when subscribing/unsubscribing to/from a topic (Issue #756, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Moving post while moderating required scrolling to see the move dialog (Issue #679, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Topic reply & reply editor improvements to labels (Issue #717, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Improved experience when attempting to view 'unanswered' forum threads (Issue #660, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Show current Theme when editing Templates (Issue #569, thanks @johnhenley!)
- USABILITY: Add link in Control Panel forum editor to quickly go to parent Forum/Forum Group (Issue #669, thanks @johnhenley!)
Bug Fixes
- UPDATE: Added the missing control panel toolbar to the My Settings view (Issue #686, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATE: Resolved several bugs when splitting a topic (Issue #780, thanks @johnhenley!)
- UPDATE: Topic Subscribe/Quick Reply Subscribe checkboxes have different labels (Issue #649, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Site Search returning incomplete URLs when using Friendly URLs (Issue #643, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Forum topics not included in DNN search results for unauthenticated users (Issue #808, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Now any related journal items are also removed when banning a user (Issue #741, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Improved user workflow when deleting a topic with no replies (Issue #390, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: NullReferenceException when saving module settings on upgraded sites (Issue #774, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Avatar alignment was wrong in Bootstrap 5 themes (Issue #791, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Alignment display issues in Bootstrap 5 themes for sub-forums (Issue #805, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Borders were inconsistent in Bootstrap 5 themes (Issue #803, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Forum collapse doesn't work in a Bootstrap 5 theme (Issue #788, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Quick reply layout incorrect in Bootstrap 5 themes (Issue #789, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Error occurs when attempting to delete a post from the Activity Feed (Issue #798, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Fixed friendly URLs for the latest posts in the Forums View (Pull #794, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Next topic button incorrectly aligned in Bootstrap 5 themes (Issue #786, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Quick Reply not posting (correct) ReplyId to Process Queue (Pull #782, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Resolved data retrieval issues with search results (Pull #770, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: TopicsSubscriber view has extra whitespace (Issue #772, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Resolves several display issues with the default theme/template (Issue #764, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Properly aligning the Subscription options in the default theme/template (Issue #765, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: TopicView template uses a class
fa-prev-next
, while this should have beendcf-prev-next
(Issue #742, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!) - BUG: Resolves several display issues in the new Bootstrap theme/template (Issue #762, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: Changed
activeforums_EmailNotificationQueueId
(identity) column fromint
tobigint
/long
to prevent possible overflow (Pull #758, thanks @johnhenley!) - BUG: Resolved a 'null' value for PortalSettings when search crawling (Issue #754, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Default Community theme uses an incorrect
dcf-topic-content
CSS class (Issue #732, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!) - BUG: Prevent overwriting custom theme CSS during upgrades (Issue #729, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!)
- BUG: In some upgraded scenarios, adding a single instance of the module can add two instances to the page instead of one (Issue #520, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: URL prefix (vanity name) not saved for Forum Group in Control Panel (Pull #716, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Editing a template generates template files in the wrong folder (Issue #711, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: JavaScript error when using moderator tools in topics view (Issue #699, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Companion
viewer
module was displaying the wrong view to end-users (Issue #692, thanks @johnhenley!) - BUG: Error from the browser while subscribing to a new topic (Issue #697, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Missing spaces in the
08.01.00.SqlDataProvider
file causing installer error (Issue #696, thanks @johnhenley!) - BUG: ModuleId not populated in activeforums_Content for replies (Issue #680, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Incorrect results on 'Most Liked' page (Issue #666, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Broken header image in the Control Panel (Issue #657, thanks @johnhenley!)
- BUG: Unable to see labels on posts when editing as the moderator (Issue #654, thanks @johnhenley!)
Tasks / Development Updates (and Technical Debt)
- UPDATE: Updated the copyright year to 2024 (Issue #634, thanks @WillStrohl!)
- MAINTENANCE: Remove deprecated code files (Pull #637, thanks @johnhenley!)
- MAINTENANCE: Moved default template's
_less
folder into a_src
folder (Issue #693, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!) - MAINTENANCE: Refactored some properties for a more simplified implementation (Pull #682, thanks @johnhenley!)
- MAINTENANCE: Updated NUnit & Moq for Unit Test Project (Pull #687, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Code was refactored in many areas (Issue #264, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Use constants for
register
tags (Pull #638, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Use DNN API constants rather than hard-coded strings for
all users
andunauthenticated
users (Pull #663, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Remove unneeded
app.config
file (Pull #665, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Removed
activeforums_Security
and related code/database artifacts (Issue 662, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Made
dbtypes
for forum/group keys consistent (Pull #536, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Refactoring string query parameters into constants (Issue #690, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Removed obsolete timezone offset settings and related code (Pull #704, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Replace hardcoded strings like
Administrators
with constants (Issue #684, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Removed now unused legacy mini pager control (Pull #705, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Improved security & logic in topic and reply Web APIs (Pull #745, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Replaced legacy email code with newer, more contemporary code that utilizes the DNN API directly (Issue #164, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Updated the
dcf-subscribe
CSS class todcf-topic-subscribe
(Issue #769, thanks @Timo-Breumelhof!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: Refactored & modernized entities and controllers (Issue #266, thanks @johnhenley!)
- TECHNICAL DEBT: Removed unused variables, and duplicate file references in
csproj
(Pull #777, thanks @johnhenley!) - TECHNICAL DEBT: LastPostId needs to be a calculated property in the ForumInfo entity (Pull #793, thanks @johnhenley!)