phpFox 4.3.0 Build5 Released, 4.3.1 and 4.4 Info

We are pleased to announce this maintenance release. Please note that if you have v4.3.0 build 4 installed, you do not need to run the full upgrade routine for this build. You do need to run the final upgrade steps though for Find Missing Settings, Find Missing Phrases and Rebuild Bootstrap Core posted in the upgrade tutorial linked below.

Install Info

Fixed Issues

  • Package check for localhost.
  • Module product name for non core products.
  • Site name check to be performed only during install (fixed for upgrades).
  • Issues with logging in from a Mobile device.
  • Issues with feed loops resolved.
  • Changed install routine for apps to provide a shorter URL string.
  • Resolved issue with non-alphanumeric characters with servers that have iconv() support.

Changelog

Find bugs with this version? Please report them at our Github tracker.

4.3.1 Info

We are working on a 4.3.1 release for fixing issues that could not be included in build 5 as they need more work and testing. As we didn’t want clients to have to wait until a v4.4 release, we anticipate releasing 4.3.1 within the next 2 weeks. We don’t have a solid ETA on that as we need to do testing on these issues before a release.

4.4 Info

We are also working on version 4.4.0 for upcoming release. As this release will focus on security auditing, scalability and real world stress testing, we do not have an ETA on this version as it will require thorough testing and in-depth coding.

Don’t have a website yet? Get your social network started with phpFox today!

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” ~Buddha

#website #socialnetwork #phpfox

phpFox 4.3.0 Released

Our phpFox team is pleased to announce the release of our V4.3.0. This release features some improvements and new apps. Please see our live demo to take it for a test drive.

  • User verification with SMS, Google Authenticator and QR code
  • Integrated with gateways: Twilio, Nexmo, Clickatell.
  • API support for 3rd party vendors to add more integrations.
  • Pages improvement
  • Integrate with other modules such as blog, music, events.
  • Improve database layer
  • Support for MySQL Replication: 1 master – 1 slave.
  • CDN
  • phpFox CDN
  • Improve feed loading
  • Improve layout for event, poll, quiz, marketplace, music (Listing page & detail page)
  • Photo improvements
    • Next/Previous.
    • Combine feeds when uploading multiple photos.
    • Show thumbnails when view photo detail (the photos of album or the photos of user).
  • Improve theme system for third party developers. Added more methods for template overrides.
  • Improvements per Google Pagespeed testing.

We’ve also fixed just about every bug at our Github! Lots of hard work by our team to squash those bugs!

For those upgrading, the upgrade routine does need to be run in order to get new settings, phrases and theme fixes.

 Install Info

Fixed Issues

Changelog

 

New Account Dashboard, Affiliates System, Pricing Changes

Wow, lots of news for everyone! Coming March 14, 2016!

New Account Dashboard

We’ve been working hard to bring a new, improved account dashboard with some features that had been requested by clients to make things easier. The new account dashboard includes an easier way to get your license id and key, integrated ticket system (right now for sales questions and account questions as our support system is not open yet), more details on your receipt (if you need to update your details with VAT or other info, please contact us in a ticket), way for third party developers or clients to have us merge their duplicated accounts.

To log in, just go to the new account area and if you haven’t already been there, please reset your password as passwords were not imported for safety reasons. Use the same email that you have for your current account as all emails did import fine. From now on, when you need to contact us, just use the ticket option in your account.

Affiliate System Online!

That’s right! You can start earning again with an affiliate account. Get the details. This is a new affiliate system. Please be sure to join it if you want to earn some buck$ referring people to our awesome script!

Pricing Changes

As announced previously, we have changed our pricing. All current clients will have access to the Pro package listed below, for their current licenses.

  • Lite $299
    • Feed
    • Profiles
    • Theme manager, Language manager and Apps system
    • Photo
    • Friends
    • PM (Private Messages)
    • Pages/Groups
    • Events
    • Core Likes, Pokes, Notifications
    • User Groups with Custom Fields
    • AdminCP
    • CMS
  • Basic $399
    • Everything Lite includes
    • Forum
    • Blogs
    • Polls
    • Quizzes
  • Pro $599
    • Everything Lite & Basic includes
    • Video App
    • IM App
    • Subscription Module
    • Marketplace
    • Ad Module
    • Music

“Each of us has been put on earth with the ability to do something well. We cheat ourselves and the world if we don’t use that ability as best we can.” ~George Allen, Sr.

Attention Third Party Developers

With the upcoming release of our V4.3 version, we’ve seen a lot of improvements for theme developing, app developing and language pack developing.

We’ve also worked hard to improve our developer tutorials and will continue to work on those over time.

Our store is improved to showcase products and developer profiles. We have featured developers to help promote those of you that offer customizations. Developers with high ratings will be featured as seen in our developer listing. If you want to be included in the featured listings, please be sure to get your clients to review your products and your developer account as only developers with products in our V4 apps, themes and language packs can be shown in the featured listing.

Also, be sure to update your developer profile with info you want to include. Check the other top profiles to see how other developers are adding their info. Make sure your email is correct as it is going to be linked for your contact. You can link an email to your support desk if you prefer.

Reviews are allowed only for purchases done in the store and by clients with a paid license. Reviews on a developer’s profile, such as this one , can be made by any client with a license. All reviews must be in English though. Please encourage your clients to post in English in order to avoid deletion of the review.

We have updated our developer policy. Please be sure to read it and check it from time to time as we are working to update it as we add more features and improvements to the store. As we will no allow any callbacks to developer’s sites in the future, we’ll update the policy at that time and add tutorials for how you can use the store verification system to prevent piracy and validate client purchases.

If you’ve not updated your v3 products to v4, now is the time to do it as things are rolling along. If you’ve been thinking of developing apps, themes, languages for our phpFox script, join here and get started as our clients are eagerly awaiting more goodies for their sites!

#developer #php #laravel #twig

phpFox 3.9.0 Released

We are pleased to announce this final release of our V3 product line with V3.9.0. This marks the end of life for our V3 product line. No further development or releases will be done in that line as we focus now on our V4 product line.

As mentioned in our previous post, this will also close out the Github for that version. Our V4 Github issue tracker will remain open for V4 issues only. Should you find issues in your V3.9 version, you are encouraged to upgrade to V4.

Install Info

Fixed Issues

  • Comments and posts repeat themselves when scrolling.
  • Feeds disappear in various ways.
  • Pages/Group privacy issues.
  • Facebook Connect publish_stream error.
  • Screen goes blank when uploading youtube videos.
  • TinyMCE loading everywhere regardless of settings.

Changelog

 

Ticket System Issue Being Investigated

Hello everyone,

We have a technical malfunction with our new client portal that we were preparing to go live next week and it sent some clients notices of suspension and invoices due. Our team is looking into this issue and will resolve it as soon as possible.

For those of you that get these notices, we apologize for the inconvenience and alarm that this could cause you. Please know that if you purchased licenses, you are not being suspended or charged again. This is an issue in the system.

Again, we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience of this technical malfunction.

**Update – The problem came from incorrect billing cycle setting for imported licenses in the new system, and it has been resolved.

Fox Insider News: Interview with Raymond Benc

Phil FoxHey everyone! Remember my last blog when I brought Ray some bacon and coffee and he spilled the beans on V4.3? Well, since I had him talking, I figured I’d just get the inside info on the force behind the phpFox script.

philsmall“So, Ray, my buddy, how did you choose the phpFox name? (great choice of animal btw 😉 )”

raymond-benc“Growing up with a Super Nintendo one of my favorite games was StarFox and felt it was a very cool animal to have as our product’s mascot.”

philsmall“How long have you been coding and who or what was your inspiration to get into coding?”

raymond-benc“I started coding when I was still living with my mom and this was back in 2004. I was introduced into the world of web pages when my Counter Strike clan needed a homepage. Started with a static HTML page and when we needed a little more interaction I started looking into Perl and thereafter PHP. Once I started looking into PHP it caught my interest and haven’t stopped since then.”

“What inspired you to create phpFox?”philsmall

raymond-benc“After half a year of working with PHP I started working on my own social network for me and my friends. Its main focus was photo albums and branched out into other modules on a weekly basis. In early 2005 I started getting interest in emails for interest in purchasing my community. With the interest coming in, I switched my focus from developing my community to building a product others could start up their own communities. The first version was completed in the summer of 2005 and our site went live.”

philsmall“A little bird told me you like cars (right before I ate him). What car would you want if you could have any car, with money being no issue? Got a pic link of it? What color would it be?”

raymond-benc“This was a rather tough question. So many cars in mind. However, if I had to choose one and money was no issue it would be a red Lamborghini Veneno.

“What do you like to do in your time off?”philsmall

raymond-benc“I enjoy staying fit and hitting the gym during my work week. When I have some free time during the weekend I like early morning cruises and any sort of custom modding to a car.”

“Favorite video game and why?”philsmall

raymond-benc“I currently only play 1 game and that happens every November, which is the usual release date for this game and it is Call of Duty for the XBOX.”

“What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you?”philsmall

raymond-benc“Tough question. I had to go back in time to find an answer to this one. I spent most of my twenties in front of the computer so human interaction was minimal. I can think of one moment when I was 13 and this was more embarrassing and well funny for the others around me. I was with a group of friends at a restaurant and one of my friends said something really funny (no idea what he said), I had just chugged a lot of Cola and knew I wasn’t going to be able to bring it down so I turned around as I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Sadly the nice waitress came to take our order and was right behind me. Little did she know that she would start her day drenched in Cola. The group burst into further laughter and that I would say is the funniest thing that has happened to me.”

“What’s your best memory from the phpFox forum when you used to interact?”philsmall

raymond-benc“The best memory from our community forum was not a single moment but an overall joy every time I would visit it. We had created something that brought a group of entrepreneurs together to discuss ways to improve the product or simply get help understanding how it worked.”

“A lot want to know why you chose Natio as your screen name at the forum and when Natio will make another appearance.”philsmall

raymond-benc“Natio was a name I choose for my Counter Strike clan back in 2003. It was kinda like nation and simply stood for a nation of Counter Strike players. Now that our team is growing I will soon start to assign time to help out the community via our forum.”

philsmall“Favorite quote of all time:”

raymond-benc“‘Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.’ – Douglas Adams”

philsmall“Any last words for the community from the Yoda (why does Donna call you that anyway?) behind the script?”

raymond-benc“2016 is a very exciting year for phpFox. In the last 3 months our company has accomplished so much and not just with the product but many other aspects of how we operate, develop and sell our product. Things are still falling into place but its getting much smoother and we are all very excited for all the new things we have planned on offering this year.”

 

phpFox Name and V3 Info

Hello!

We’ve got some news to share. First, in regards to our legacy V3 product. As we had mentioned in previous posts, our V3 product line has reached “end of life” status. We’ll be releasing one final version with some bugs fixed and retiring the V3 Github as we shift to our V4 product. V3 has served us well over the years and will continue to function for those currently using it and the licenses will still work to install it for those that decide to use a legacy, unsupported version. No further improvements or fixes will be made after the final release. You’ll still be able to post questions in our community legacy section if you need assistance.

We needed to make this decision in order to focus on the future of our product. We do encourage clients to upgrade to V4 as improvements, security fixes (should there be any needed) and support will focus on that version going forward. We encourage third party developers to focus on making apps with the newer coding (though we do have a way to port V3 old style modules to V4) as the newer coding is lighter and more efficient than older methods. We are shifting focus to provide documents for third party developers once V4.3 releases next week.

Things fixed for our final V3 release are:

Release date is to be determined as we are working on checking the last few issues posted and testing with a few large client sites that offered to help. Once this version releases, our coding for the V3 product will cease.

PHPfox name changed back to phpFox! Yes, we are changing our name back to phpFox. In the tradition of Feng Shui , to have a positive energy with our product line, we are changing from the downward motion of PHPfox to the upward motion of phpFox. We feel that with this change, we can bring more positive energy and harmony to our company and project this towards our clients in an effort to promote a more positive and success oriented atmosphere. Our new logo and staff avatars will also move us forward with positive energy and harmony.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~C.S. Lewis

Developers Tip: Working with blocks in phpFox 4.3

Creating blocks in v4 has changed a rather lot with how we create blocks in phpFox in comparison to v3. Creating blocks are done on the fly in an apps start.php file and can be placed on any controller. The current issue we faced is allowing Admins to change the location of a block and allow them to order blocks.

In our upcoming release, 4.3 we have included a new method for developers to work with blocks that will also give Admins the power to manage them.

With our current version you can create a block in your start.php using the following method.


block(1, 'core.index-member', function() {

echo "Hello World!";

});

In 4.3+ you can use the current method or open up your app.json and assign blocks with unique identifiers. Here is an example

{
    "id": "App_ID",
    "name": "App Name",
    "blocks": [
       {
          "callback": "unique_name",
          "route": "core.index-member",
          "location": 1
       }
    ]
}

Now that you have assigned a block you can create the callback connection in your start.php.

block('unique_name', function() {
   echo "Hello World!";
});

By using this new method, it registers your block automatically to the block database, which then allows Admins to assign your block to specific routes and/or locations.

Fox Insider News: phpFox 4.3 Sneak Peek

Phil FoxPsst! Your buddy Phil Fox has some news to share. I’ve got the scoop on v4.3!

I had to get crafty to get this info. While all of the developers were madly clicking their keyboards, I got into the boss’s office and was able to get some info directly from the Chief, the Yoda, the Grand Wizard of phpFox himself – Ray! All I had to do was bring a plate of bacon and pitcher of coffee and he sang like a canary. (mmmm canary…)

What’s on board for V4.3? I didn’t get photos this time around so there are no images to go with these.

  • Improve user verification to make it more secure such as with SMS (Twilio, Nexmo, etc.), Google Authenticator for example.
  • Clear up configuration(s)
  • Pages improvement to Integrate with other core modules (blog, music, video)
  • Improve Database Layer
  • Separate file system, support popular file storage such as AWS S3
  • CDN services ex: phpFox CDN, MaxCDN, KeyCDN
  • Improve the way the feed loads in order to improve page loading performance
  • Improve layouts for event, poll, quiz, marketplace, music (Listing page & detail page)
  • Improve Photo module
  • Improve Theme
  • Fix issues in github and _p: missing phrases, fix duplicated phrases bug.

That all sounds great! They anticipate releasing this during the first few weeks of March. Excited to get this? No problem! Current clients will have access. No license? Get one here!

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”~Robin Williams