Community plugin repository updated

Thanks to some serious code refactoring by Cash, we have a new version of the plugins repo running on the community site. This release is mostly code cleanup, standardization, and reorganization, but there are some nice features added and bugs fixed:

• A "Report this" link has been to the sidebar of all projects.  See spam or dodgy plugins?  Be sure to report it with a detailed message!
• Categories are shown correctly by friendly name instead of ID.
• Plugins with 0 downloads show 0 instead of an empty string.
• Comments settings are saved correctly for releases.
• Multiple project sidebar enhancements and UI fixes.
• Removed uncommon licenses.

Read more

Elgg 1.7.3 and 1.6.3 security releases

Georg-Christian Pranschke from Sense Post discovered a vulnerability in Elgg that could potentially allow SQL injection attacks using crafted URLs or POSTs. Versions 1.7.3 and 1.6.3 correct this and are highly recommended for all Elgg users.  Download 1.7.3 or 1.6.3 and upgrade now.

1.7.3 also includes additional bugfixes for problems found in 1.7.2:

• Entering an invalid captcha now forwards to the referring page instead of the front page.
• "Edit details" and "Edit profile icon" only show up on user's own profile.
• get_objects_in_group() works correctly.
• Legacy wrapper functions correctly support multiple owner guids.

Introducing Evan

If you've been around the community or mailing lists lately, Evan Winslow will need no introduction.

Evan's the developer of a number of plugins, the most popular of which is Plugin Manager, which streamlines the plugin administration page with a compact view and adds drag and drop plugin reordering. He's also done a great job writing the Ajaxify lib plugin to expose crucial JavaScript functions to developers. With such great plugins, I'm excited to announce that Evan is the newest core Elgg developer.

Evan will focus on bringing Elgg's JavaScript and Ajax up to latest expectations and requirements for a web 2.0 application. You'll start seeing his work in Elgg 1.8, but he'll be around helping out in community, wrangling bugs in trac, and making a blog posts before then.

Welcome to the team, Evan! We're looking forward to working with you to help continue Elgg's growth and evolution as one of the best social networking platforms available!

Elgg 1.7.2 released

Elgg 1.7.2 has been released!  Grab it now from the usual place.  As always, be sure to backup your installation and follow the included upgrade instructions of the newer version of Elgg when upgrading.  This upgrade requires an update to the .htaccess file, so please be sure to read the upgrade instructions!

1.7.2 was primarily a bugfix release.  Some of the more annoying bugs that were squashed include:

• Saving drafts and previewing blogs works as expected.
• Page titles can now be edited in the Pages plugin.
• Group names no long show up in Friends Collections.
• Added a group member listing page.
• Group forum topics can be edited.
• User data for usernames with UTF8 characters are correctly migrated to the new data scheme.

Read more

Elgg 1.7.1 released, Security updates to 1.5 and 1.6

Elgg 1.7.1 has been released!  This version has many improvements to 1.7 including:

• Speed improvements for large and active sites.
• UTF8 migration bugfixes for servers experiencing corrupt strings after migration.
• Pagination bugs fixed in core and plugins.
• Search enhancements for group and members plugins..
• Legacy API backward compatibility improvements.
• Widget UI improvements.
• Security enhancement for IE users.

Read more

Elgg project wins prestigious award

Congratulations to the team at Headshift Australasia who, together with their client, the Institute of Executive Coaching (IEC), have won a Platinum Award for “Best use of Social Learning Tools” at the prestigious LearnX Asia Pacific 2010 E-learning and Training Awards.

IEC provides education around leadership development and executive coaching in the Asia-Pacific region.  Its programs offer professional coaches a mix of pre- and post- training exercises, as well as face-to-face training. IEC was looking for a way to extend client engagement at the pre- and post-training stages of their programs and encourage participation with other learners. They engaged Headshift to create a series of customised community platforms based on Elgg. 

Read more

Elgg 1.7.1 beta released

Elgg 1.7.1 beta has been released.  1.7.1 is a bugfix release for 1.7 that addresses problems including:

• UTF8 database migration corrupts strings in certain server configurations.
• Pagination doesn't work in core and 3rd party plugins.
• get_entities_from_annotations() doesn't correctly rewrite for the new API.
• Slow loading times because of the elgg_is_admin_user() function.

You can find 1.7.1 beta at the usual location.  Though we believe this is a stable release, as always, do not run beta code on a production server!

Following a successful beta test, Elgg 1.7.1 will be released next week.

This release of Elgg was championed by Cash Costello, so if you see him, be sure to say thanks!

Downtime on March 27, 2010

On March 27th there was a full hardware failure on the server that powers our elgg.org domains.  All of the data for all servers hosted on the machine was preserved.

Though we have been happy with our current provider, we are in talks with other hosting companies to develop a high-availability and failure-tolerant solution that will be the basis of our Elgg.com hosted service launching in May.

I want to apologize for the downtime--I know how frustrating it is for an interruption of a regular service.  Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Redhill Learning Space

Chris West has been using Elgg in the UK school sector for several years. In the following interview Chris describes how Elgg is being used as a learning space for secondary students in his school. He also discusses the challenge of getting buy-in from the other teachers with a new technology that has already been embraced by his students.

Read more

Changes to Elgg SVN and Trac

The transition from separate repositories to a single repository went well.

The core and extensions Tracs have been consolidated into a single Trac installation, now located at http://trac.elgg.org/. Previous Trac tickets for extensions have been merged in and special rewrite rules will make sure that links to the old extensions trac tickets and changesets will keep pointing to the correct places.

Read more