Details

Category: News

Published: 07 April 2022

Last Updated: 07 April 2022

Hits: 2129

CB Paid Subscriptions (CBSubs) 4.6 comes with 10 new features and 14 minor bug fixes.
In this picture, you can see an example of an order with a staged discount, a markup and time-based sales tax.

CB Paid Subscriptions (CBSubs GPL) 4.6 is a compatibility and maintenance release.

CBSubs 4.6 includes 10 new features, of which the four most important are:

• Support for Joomla 4.1 and PHP 8.1.
  
  
• Possibility to display specific modules, including up-selling and cross-selling information (in content modules) and other modules in all payment phases, like for “Payment basket” display, “Invoicing address”, “Payment information entry”, “Payment complete” and “Cancel basket” pages. This is done through thanks to new Joomla menu items for CB Paid Subscriptions, leveraging the power of Joomla menus. Joomla menu items allow to display specific modules and content and to perform other menu-dependent actions on corresponding pages.
  
  To use this new feature, simply add new Joomla menu entries of type “Community Builder - plugin”, choose plugin “CB Paid Subscriptions” and for “Do” just below, choose one of the new “Internal” pages of CB Paid Subscriptions, listed above, for the menu item. The menu item does not need to be, and in most cases should not be, visible (it can be in a hidden menu). Then create or edit corresponding Joomla modules, and in “Menu assignment” tab, assign the menu items when the module should display. Modules will then automatically display as the user goes through the payment process.
  
  Hint: You can use the CB Content module to display conditional content that can depend on user profile fields, or include one of many substitutions and other possible conditions. This allows for a truly individual checkout experience.
  
  A big Thank you to our community member liaskas for his suggestion 3 weeks ago and to Kyle (krileon) for implementing this great new feature next day, that got immediately available in the nightly releases and now in CBSubs 4.6 stable.

For sites with auto-recurring payments, there are two noteworthy improvements in this release:

• A user can now cancel the auto-recurring payment without cancelling the subscription. There is also a new setting in main CBSubs settings, “Display”/“Unsubscribe” tab called `Show “Cancel Auto-recurring Payments” button', which defaults to ”Yes”, where you can disable this new feature if needed.
• From now on, when a user is deleted from the admin area or by our GDPR feature "Delete user account", all auto-recurring payment subscriptions on payment processors are stopped too.

CBSubs 4.6 also fixes 14 minor bugs and improves the compatibility and reliability with the QuickPay payment services provider.

CBSubs 4.6 is a recommended upgrade for all sites, and is very stable, as all changes were released continuously in our nightly releases. It is also a highly recommended upgrade for sites using the QuickPay payment processor.

CBSubs 4.6 requires latest Community Builder 2.7.2 release or later, and thus, as announced since a year, also requires Joomla 3.10+, PHP 7.4+, and MYSQL 5.6+ (or MariaDB 10.x). This will now allow for code modernization and exciting new features and add-ons.

CBSubs 4.6 is fully compatible with Joomla 3.10-4.1, PHP 7.4-8.1 and MySQL 5.6-8.0,

CBSubs 4.6 is available in our Downloads section and simply requires an active subscription to CBSubs or a Developer membership.

CBSubs 4.6 also deprecates the authorize.net and SwissPostFinance payment gateways, as authorize.net AIM and ARB are deprecated not supported anymore by authorize.net, and SwissPostFinance has completely changed its own proprietary payment providing system. Users are invited to consider other supported payment processors. This is a smooth task as CBSubs can handle multiple Payment Service Providers simultaneously.

Full changelog with the over 10 improvements and 20 bugfixes is available, and CBSubs 4.6 is also installed on our demo site. Last but not least, many thanks to Kyle for his help on CBSubs!

Details

Category: News

Published: 30 March 2022

Last Updated: 31 March 2022

Hits: 2847

Joomla 4.1.2 and Joomla 3.10.8 are here!

The Joomla! Project is ticking like a Swiss watch and agile like a leopard!

Right on schedule, Joomla 4.1.2 and Joomla 3.10.8 have been just released, 6 weeks after Joomla 4.1 and 3.0.6!

Both are security and maintenance releases for previous Joomla <4.1.1 and <3.10.7 releases.

It is delighting to see Joomla picking up momentum and confirming its dependability and agility.

With Joomla 4.2 alpha 1 around the corner, the future is bright. Kudos to the Joomla Production and Security Strike Teams (of which our Beat is also member)!

Joomla 4.1.2 includes 7 low level security vulnerabilities fixes (see full announcement below for security details) and addresses several bugs and improvements:

• Language strings behaviour fix in TinyMCE
• Fix switch for syntax highlighting in TinyMCE
• Show failed tasks in scheduler
• Correct usage of parameters of Jooa11y integrated accessibility and quality assurance tool
• Codemirror HTML text editor enhancements
• Several PHP 8.1 improvements (some contributed by Beat)

Joomla 3.10.8 contains 5 low level security vulnerabilities fixes (see full announcement below for security details) and several bugfixes and welcome improvements:

• Backport JQuery UI security patch for CVE-2021-41184 (Joomla core, CB and our add-ons were not affected)
• Disable Google Fonts setting for new Joomla 3.10.7+ installations only
• [Regression] Fixes redirect values updating automatically unintentionally changed
• Removes FLoC setting as FLoC has been abandoned
• E-Mail Cloak: TLDs longer than 10 are no longer truncated
• Privacy Consent wording clarifiaction: I agree/No reply is now: I agree / I do not agree.

As previously mentioned, both Joomla 4.1.2 and 3.10.8 are security releases and highly recommended upgrades. If you are still on Joomla 3.9 or below, or 4.0, it is time to upgrade to Joomla 3.10.8 and 4.1.2, both versions being smooth upgrades for their respective series.

Community Builder 2.7.2 and all Joomlapolis add-ons run just fine on all of these new Joomla releases.

You can learn more about these new features by reading the Joomla 4.1.2/3.10.8 announcement.

You may ask: what happened to 4.1.1 and 3.10.7? A few hours after release a last-minute regression for a small minority of websites using alternate authentication plugins for logins has been reported. The 4.1.1 and 3.10.7 releases got quickly removed from the updates servers, the Joomla team worked hard to fix the issue, and a few hours later Joomla 4.1.2 and Joomla 3.10.8 have been released without the corresponding change, thus fixing this regression in a safe way! Community Builder is using Joomla's standard APIs, and was thus not affected by this regression of Joomla 4.1.1 and 3.10.7.

A few personal words about the 4.1.1 and 3.10.7 short-lived Joomla releases: Bugs and mistakes can happen in great teams. But what sets aside an awesome team, like Joomla, from a great team is how mishaps are handled. Joomla has quickly and openly acknowledged its bug, and swiftly fixed the issue, provided a FAQ to help the very few people that got affected by the regression bug. Additionally, discussions are looking into how to improve the processes. While very few loose time pointing fingers or laughing, we can only say: Kudos Joomla! Team! and then continue moving ahead full speed on our next CB Paid Subscriptions release 4.6 which should come soon, with a nice surprise included!

Details

Category: News

Published: 01 March 2022

Last Updated: 03 March 2022

Hits: 2789

Community Builder 2.7.2 can be freely downloaded by all registered members

We just released Community Builder 2.7.2, with 8 improvements and 8 bug fixes.

CB 2.7 is compatible with Joomla 4.1.0 and Joomla 3.10.6. It fixes a small bug when editing of Joomla user parameters with new Joomla 4.1.0.

Community Builder 2.7.2 starts leveraging the new PHP 7.4 prerequisite. This allows us to upgrade included third-party open-source libraries, starting with the Guzzle library used for HTTP/HTTPS accesses, in CB for version checks and upgrades, and by CB add-ons. Guzzle received a big boost from version 4 (the last one that was PHP 5.6-compatible) to latest version 7 thanks to the new prerequisites. We could also update Bootstrap to latest Bootstrap 4 version and have minified CSS core files.

Finally, we added to the user management a batch task to mass-set or reset the user status requiring a password-change. This is useful to automatically ask users to change their password on next login.

The new features of this release are:

• Added full support for Joomla 4.1.0
• New batch button to mass-set or reset user-password-change-request status.
• Additional e-mail fields validation option
• Minified core CSS files
• Updated Bootstrap to latest Bootstrap 4 release
• Updated HTTP/S fetching library from Guzzle 4 to Guzzle 7.
• Reminder: Minimum system requirements are now: Joomla 3.10+, PHP 7.4+, and MYSQL 5.6+ (or MariaDB 10.x), as announced since CB 2.6.0 release, 10 months ago.

Our full CB 2.7.2 changelog is available for details.

Community Builder 2.7.2 is a recommended upgrade for all CB sites on Joomla 3.10.x and 4.0.x and highly recommended for Joomla 4.1 sites.

Our demo website has already been updated to Community Builder 2.7.2, so you can see it in action along will all our Joomlapolis add-ons.

Details

Category: News

Published: 16 February 2022

Last Updated: 16 February 2022

Hits: 3404

Joomla 4.1 is here!

The Joomla! Project is thrilled to announce the features-packed and timely release of Joomla 4.1.

Joomla 4.1 brings new features for bloggers and authors, web designers and extension developers, web agencies or multinationals. The highlights are:

• Tasks Scheduler to automate your periodic tasks, e.g. to trigger a CB Auto Action.
• Child Templates allow to fine-tune your templates, and still be able to keep the template updated.
• Accessibility Checker checks your article's accessibility with a click near the Preview button
• Syntax Highlighting in the integrated editor brings clarity to your HTML source view
• Inline Help displays at the click of the Toggle Help button in the Joomla Configuration
• PHP 8.1 compatibility

This release sets new standards in accessible web design and brings exciting new features, highlighting Joomla's values of inclusiveness, simplicity and security into an even more powerful open-source web platform.

In addition to Joomla 4.1, the project team has also released Joomla 3.10.6, which mainly brings PHP 8.1 compatibilty.

Beat has contributed to Joomla 4.1 and 3.10.6 with  PHP 8.1 compatibility (with actually half of Joomla 3.10.6's pull requests, which were also applied to Joomla 4.1.

Community Builder 2.7.1 (and latest nightly build for Joomla 4.1) and all Joomlapolis add-ons run just fine on these new Joomla releases.

You can learn more about these new features by reading the Joomla 4.1/3.10.6 announcement, and for the accessibility checker, visit the Jooa11y accessibility checker micro-site with more details about this exciting new feature and many examples.

Details

Category: News

Published: 11 February 2022

Last Updated: 11 February 2022

Hits: 5143

Community Builder 2.7 can be freely downloaded by all registered members

We just released Community Builder 2.7, with 9 improvements and 9 bug fixes.

CB 2.7 is compatible with Joomla 4.0.6 and Joomla 3.10.5.

The main highlights of this release are:

• PHP 8.1 support
• User imports are significantly improved to give a front-end-registration-like process, with a new option to not send emails during import.
• Removal of Joomla 2.5 support
• Minimum system requirements are now: Joomla 3.10+, PHP 7.4+, and MYSQL 5.6+ (or MariaDB 10.x), as announced since CB 2.6.0 release, 9 months ago.
• CB 2.7.1 fixes the pre-install check of CB 2.7.0 for sites with MariaDB 10.x database server.

Details can be found in the full CB 2.7 changelog and CB 2.7.1 changelog.

Community Builder 2.7/2.7.1 is a highly recommended upgrade for all CB sites on Joomla 3.x and 4.0.x.

Some comments directly from Beat:

• It's voluntarily a minor upgrade in terms of features, so it's an easy and safe upgrade for users.
• It's safely checking for PHP and MySQL requirements before upgrade.
• The new PHP 7.4 and Joomla 3.10 prerequisites are a huge step forward from PHP 5.6 and Joomla 2.5.
• CB 2.7 removes a lot of legacy compatibility code and lays modern grounds for substantial improvements in the core and add-ons, next 2.7.x releases will be using new PHP 7.0-7.4 features.
• Finally CB 2.7 brings full PHP 8.1 compatibility (with the just around the corner Joomla 4.1 or 3.10.6).
• Note: Joomla 3.10.5 and 4.0.6 are not yet fully PHP 8.1 compatible, but next week's Joomla 3.10.6 and 4.1 will be (btw I contributed a series of PRs to Joomla to make that happen, and all got accepted and merged!)

Our demo website has already been updated to Community Builder 2.7, so you can see it in action along will all our Joomlapolis add-ons.