A new major release of CB Connect has arrived with quite a few significant changes and improvements. Some providers have gone away, some have been repurposed, and some new added. Check out the details below!

First up is the restructuring of how provider ids are stored. Previously they were all stored as fields and thus had columns in _comprofiler. The result was 25 columns and 25 indexes added to _comprofiler. This had a cost in that it ate through some of your field budget. These have all now been moved to their own database table _comprofiler_plugin_connect. This removes the bourdon off _comprofiler. The old fields will be safely migrated on install.

The fields still exist however, but with external storage so you can still use those fields and move them wherever you like. On new installs they'll all be placed under the new Linked Accounts tab to keep them all organized. This tab well let them link an existing account or unlink from a provider.

The following providers were removed due to them discontinuing their login APIs.

Foursquare
SoundCloud

The following providers were replaced with newer versions.

WindowsLive -> Microsoft

This is due to WindowsLive no longer existing. Sign in with Microsoft is a more generic implementation using their cloud APIs and works across all Microsoft account systems.

The following providers were implemented.

Discord

The following providers were rejected for implementation

Apple - They do not have free access to OAuth and requires paid development access. For this reason it was not implemented.

Epic Games - The OAuth implementation is meant to be used with stored products and not generic login so is out of reach for most.

There is a special note regarding Instagram provider. Instagram no longer has login API. It's just Facebook API. The button is still available, but this will just call Facebook API and requires a Facebook Application.

Next up is the redesign of the buttons. They've all be updated to latest design guidelines required by the various providers. Be careful when restyling them as you agree to those guidelines when turning these on.

All providers code has been standardized, updated to latest APIs, and made strict. This should make for an even more stable experience. Please be sure to check all your providers as some parameters have changed such as some fields may no longer be available and several permissions that didn't pertain to use data were removed from providers.

Addon: https://www.joomlapolis.com/addons/cb-connect

Changelog: https://forge.joomlapolis.com/projects/cb-cbconnect/issues?query_id=223