Updated: New release - 24 October 2007
By Joe on Wednesday, October 24 2007, 12:40 - Release notes - Permalink
Updated: We've released a fix for the forum bug with membership permissions and a few other minor things. Enjoy.
It's finally here, the new forum, multiple select and a host of other goodies. Enjoy the changes and let us know if you find anything peculiar!
New features
Forum
The new forum widget is out and is now live! It includes the following features:
Customisation/design features
- resize to any width/height
- use of new 'themes' technology
- change text size colour and background colours independently
Functionality
- subjects/topics/posts views for many different threads of discussion
- set permissions, e.g. guests, or members only
- set edit rights for moderators (e.g. members or a group of members)
- lock subjects
- set posts as 'sticky'
- search all subjects/posts
- all topics have their own RSS feed
- all posts can contain rich text formatting, e.g. bold, etc., plus links
- all posts have emoticons
Plus more. Have a play with it and discover them for yourselves.
NB. We can migrate data from the old 'message board' feature on request via customer support.
Theme technology (version 1 release)
We have introduced a new 'theme' technology to allow the easier customisation of the appearance of different widgets on your site. All of the new generation of widgets have had this theme technology added to them. The themes editor is available on the 'style' tab of the widget. The widgets currently using themes are:
- Forum
- Comment
- Mail to a friend
- Chat
The theme technology allows you to pick a look and feel from a defined list. This will change the colours (background and text), plus the button styles and border styles of the widget. Once a theme has been chosen, you can customise individual elements on the 'style' tab.
Version 1 of the technology is now live, but we hope to release extended versions of it soon. This will allow you to set up and save your own themes and set default themes for your whole site, so the appearance of all widgets could be changed at once
Multiple Select
You can now select multiple objects at the same time on your page! This can be done either by:
- dragging the selection box, e.g. click (outside of an object) and drag to create your selection box (any object inside the box will be selected). Or,
- holding the 'control' or 'shift' keys and clicking on the object that you wish to add/remove from your selection. (You can also click on the list of objects within the drop down menu on the 'edit' panel to add them to your selection). Or,
- use ‘Select All’ from the ‘Edit’ menu on either the advanced or basic toolbar
Once you have a set of objects selected you can:
- drag them as a group
- nudge them as a group using the arrow keys (shift + arrow is a big nudge)
- delete them as a group
- copy and paste them (even between pages!)
New Media
40 new fonts
15 new crop tools for images
15 new stock images
18 new image cut outs
40 new graphic elements, symbols and logos
We've created a demo site of the widgets at sitemakerwidgets.moonfruit.com
Upgrades/changes
Comment
- Addition of themes technology
- Addition of rich text formatting (including links) in comments
Mail to a friend
- Addition of themes technology
Chat
- Addition of themes technology
And that's all there is for now. It's been a long one, but hopefully we'll have a bit more before Xmas.
Comments
WhoooHooooo!
Well done guys! I'm gonna have a play now...
XD
All working fine at the moment, guys. "Anfora Blue" is sitting brilliantly on my page.
The multiple delete is very handy, too.
Its not even Christmas!!
Yipeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Hi Joe,
Thanks a lot for this new features and again Moonfruit can't stop impressing me.
I have a question can you help me migrate all data from my IPS (external) forum to my new forum?
Thanks,
Atlas
How do I select to include the new forum to operate on my site?
I can't see it in the add page drop down menu.
Atlas - sorry, we haven't implemented any import of external forum data at this time.
Hale Village - we will be adding it as a page type soon. Until then, you can add it via the File Manager, it's under the New! folder.
Hope that helps!
Eirik
Hi Eirik,
Thanks for your reply, Is it possible to scroll the subjects down instead of having to turn the next page? It would be better If we have all subjects in one single page. And is it possible to have bad language filter and IP ban? thanks. Atlas.
Wow I am very impressed. I actually thought the release was just the Multiple Select... I did'nt think the forum would have been ready this year!!! The new forum is wicked together with the new added graphic Images. Everything is so slick and ultra modern. Well done to Moonfruit again!!! I am in the process to upgrade my forum!!!
Phil
BUG ??? HELP
Hello I am quizzing the Forum but I found a BUG do not I be sure. I configured the Forum for the guest and the Members for VIEM and EDIT. The Subjects appear for the visitors, but do not appear for the members, THE Forum stayed in blank
Best regards
Hi Moonfruit,
There's a bug in the comments widget, the same one that was before, it jams the page and you cannot add any new comment and if you refresh the page you get logged out.
Check it here ====> www.theatlaslions.com/fanscomments
Please fix this bug.
Thanks
Atlas
Hi Atlas: Scrolling v paging - good point but we will discuss this as our development team took a lot of time analysing other forums and pagination is a very common way of managing subjects. But thanks for your input. As for bad language filter and IP ban - again further good points and we will check it out.
Monnerat: We've tested several sites and set up members (and visitors) with view, add and edit permissions (if you enable edit - add is automatic) and then viewed as a member. We had no problem seeing the subjects or their associated posts. If this problem persists for you please use the Query form and give us more details e.g. what site, what page and any other information about the problem and we'll investigate. But for the moment we can't reproduce the bug you are reporting.
Walt
Hi to all the hardworkers,
Thanks a lot for all the new stuff that you have given us. I just added my new forum to the site.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Made 1 subject just for testing and 1 topic...as I opened the topic...and clicked on read more and than close you get a reply/message under neath my new topic...really strange.
Could you please comment on that...
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With the commentwidget you get the possibility to add your e-mail...but I never see the e-mails in the comments where are they stored??? Cause I would like to send a message to one of the commenters
Please comment on this.
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Thanks again...!
Suzette
ooohhh forgot...the last question is for the site www.matthew-rhys.net
Suzette
Hi again Atlas, we weren't aware of the bug you mentioned with the comments widget as we've never seen it in any of our testing or heard of this from other users. But having looked at your site I see what you mean - it produces a Script Running slowly error and generally, clicking 'No' should fix the initial problem. I suspect it may be to do with the number of posts you have on your very popular site, which shouldn't matter by the way. I have logged this as a bug and will get the technical team to check it out as soon as they can.
Suzette, hello. Thanks for your comments. The first bug is a known issue and has been logged so we will try to sort this out as quickly as possible. As for your second query the email was included for future use although we still need to add a not for publication option on the widget (like on the Forum). The easiest way to contact the person posting the comment is just reply in the comment widget itself and take it from there. That said, using the RSS link in the corner will publish all comments to an RSS reader and some readers will pick up the email address. So there are two options for you!
Walt
Great new forum, brilliant. The old one was on SM3 when I joined so good to see it finally updated, really great job guys!
Possible bug: The only thing is that when you add your 'email' it doesn't seem to appear in the messages and then if you try to edit an old message the email you put in isn't there anymore, wiped basically. Any info on this area would be great. (I've tried it on matthewday.moonfruit.com/forum)
Brill job though guys! Drinks on me!!!!
Kekefan.
Ok i've realised you need to press the 'show my details' to show an email. But if you put your email in and don't press show my details it isn't saved into the message so that the administrator can see it even if nobody else can.
The problem is that if someone needs to add an email address, its a bit pointless making them put one in if the email address can't be accessible by anyone.
Hope this makes sense!
Hey Kekefan,
If you want the email to display you must check the 'Display my email' option on the post. This will ensure your email is displayed to the right of your post. I've added two posts where I've done this so if you browse your forum under General Subjects you'll find two posts where the email address is visible.
Once a post is created editing allows you to edit just your post title and message not the owner or email.
Walt
Oops sorry Kekefan...I started your reply and got side-tracked and in that time you snuck in a reply of your own.
Email addresses: Well, we've included this field as we want to enhance membership options on the site and on some of the widgets, like the forum. So we felt it would be simpler to add the field now and then add the functionality at a later date. Hope that makes sense.
Walt
Yeah that makes perfect sense!
Cheers, Kekefan.
The Multiple Select is superb and a very big help. Thankyou. ................ Off to do some nudging!
İt is great but Moon fruit still dont let users to modify titles of functional tools. For example new forum should let me to modify text of "New Topics" buttons, because I am building turkish web site and all other titles. I dont think it is difficult for moon fruit. Since moonfruit became a international company they shoul let users to modify all titles for their language. Actually this features are now available on the forms, you can add and remove titles of forms and you can write what ever you want. All other fuctional tool should be like that
Erhan
Hello,
We are seeing the same problems as mentioned by some one earlier, I think!
We have set up the forum and tested it in member login mode, and the forum panel is just blank apart from the 'subjects topics replies' headers at the top. It seems to display fine in guest mode although the page does sometimes freeze up displaying a 'Script Running slowly' error message. Refreshing just reloads the page and logs out the member.
Hope you can help with this, otherwise a great new addition to site tools!
Tippa
FORUM : The forum works on a page by page basis and not scroll. Is there a scrolling option?
Hi Erfan: SiteMaker is an English language piece of software which has hundreds of thousands of lines of code including "New Topics" buttons, toolbar menus and panel tabs. We have only just released a French version of the software after many many months of planning and development. This was quite a complicated process and involved long hours of proof reading and editing of files (with the help of native French speakers) to produce a version that would be acceptable to the French public. So producing a new language version is not a simple task and takes a lot of man-hours. It may be some time before we look at the next language version of SiteMaker.
4wardever1: we've tested this again and can't fail the member views of subjects. Could you please send us/Submit a query ( if you haven't already done so) and tell us what site you are finding this on, what forum page and what member is not seeing all the subjects. We'll check it out for you.
Phil: Yep, no scrolling (except in the post body) just pagination of subjects, posts and replies.
Walt
Hi Walt,
We have submitted a query on this - had confirmation but no response yet. I will also do it again for this query!
We have a very new site (just 2 months old) and have only one test member at the moment (tippanaphtali) until we can suss this out properly. The URL access point for our forum is http://www.4wardever.org/forum
When we log in on our admin account (4wardever1) the problem doesn't occur.
Hope that helps?
Tippa
Oh, I should also mention that once the forum was set up it seemed to change the look and position of the 'Mail to a Friend' widget slightly. This meant that we had to spend a couple of hours going through over 100 pages (as this widget is not in our page master) adjusting/copy&pasting them all.
Can MF users be warned of this?
Hi Tippa, thanks for the details of your site. And yes I see what you mean. We're investigating at present so hopefully we'll have an answer (and better yet a solution) very soon.
As for the Mail to a Friend widget, I'm not sure about the position change but the look may have changed with the introduction of our new styling technology although our testing didn't indicate any problems and no changes occurred until the Site Leader edited the styling themselves. Just adding a forum to your page should not impact any other objects or widgets on your page. But we will certainly check this out also.
Thanks
Walt
I love the new forum only 1 problem it is slighty to big for my page have tried to resize it but does not seem to work evne by using the corners etc any help on it or is it just a standard size set ?
Hi Tippa, right member viewing problems appear to be associated with giving a group permissions on any subject. This seems to kill viewing rights for your members. Setting edit rights for members overcomes this state but understandably you may not want to give members or your group these permissions. We are looking at this issue right now and hope to have this fixed very soon!!
Andy, the minimum size is set to provide visitors with optimum viewing of the widget and all it's features but we'll review the dimensions to see if it can be improved.
Walt
Hi thanks for getting back to me Walt no problem I can live with the size just getting use to all the new features its fabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
cud i make a suggestion for christmas coming up some new crimbo goodies x
Hi Walt,
Thanks for your response - look forward to further updates.
You're right, we really wouldn't want to give editing rights as a blanket setting unless of course this would only allow members to edit their own posts! Is that the case?
If not, we'll just wait until a fix is successful. In the meantime we will post a notice link on the page to warn users of the current fault.
Many thanks for your prompt responses. Keep up the great work!
Tippa
I have experienced the same issue with my members not being able to view any of the subjects I have created, no matter what I've set the rights to.
If I set it to public, the public can see it, and members logged in cannot. The forum is for members only, so naturally these leaves me in quite a predicament.
Also, seem to also be getting the so-called "Slow script" phantom-post error.
Is there anything I can do right now? Communications on my site have ceased until we can get those forums fixed. :(
-Zeromus
Hi Zeromus,
We hope to have the Forum permissions bug fixed (members not viewing subjects) within the next 24 hours. We may have it fixed this afternoon but I'd rather say 24 hours to ensure this bug is sorted.
As for the "A script...caused FP9 to run slowly." we are investigating and will try to find a solution as quickly as possible.
Walt
I'm officially 100% happy with you guys right now. Some of these new features gave me the tools I needed to totally fine tune my page to look EXACTLY as I wanted. I love my page now!
The only thing I suggest is maybe adding a re-size option with the crop tools. You give the ability to move the picture around, but not to shrink it down or enlarge it inside the crop shape. And add lots more photo cut-outs! I love those.
Patrick (in trying to tidy up some spam replies to our lounge entries we deleted your post by mistake and one of mine so here goes again - sorry ), this is a problem we are aware of (members not able to view subjects) and we are very close to repairing this bug. We are just fine tuning the fix, as well as improving the submissions layout and we hope to have this out tomorrow.
Josh thanks for the feedback.
Walt
Hi Guys, new changes are fantastic, it makes it so much easier to quickly and efficiently update and manage sites now. Plus the new forum looks great, I am going to see if i can find a way of incorporating it into my site somehow!
A question though - will there be the facility added to change the colour of one particular word within the main body of text, as at the moment trying to do this would result in changing the whole body of text to that new colour.
Many thanks
Hugh
Hi guys,
Good job with the new tools. Im having an issue with the FORUM. When I create a description for a new topic, it gives me the option to put in a fairly long description. Then when you save it, the first few lines show up in the forum Subjects box. However, when you then click on the subject, the rest of the description cannot be read. Feel free to have a look at my site and check out what I mean. Can you advise please?
Thanks
Matt
Hi Matt,
I see what you mean. I'll log this as a bug and get the technical team to look at it. Thanks for the details.
Walt