krileonIt's time for another update. This time it's all about Community Builder it self. Check out the details below as we got bug fixes, features, and more!
I've started off my workload by fixing several older bugs lingering in CB it self. Most being minor annoyances. This is followed by several quality of life features like improved SEO of userlists and more. Check out what's coming in Community Builder 2.3 below.
https://forge.joomlapolis.com/projects/cb/issues?query_id=134
Some key new features available right now in the latest build release are the option to display Checkbox, Multi Checkbox, and Radio fields as buttons. For Checkbox fields this means a Yes/No button display like you may already be familiar with in the backend of CB. You can now use this same display output on frontend by simply editing your Checkbox field then under Parameters > Display adjust the "Edit Style" parameter. The same instructions apply for Multi Checkbox and Radio fields.
Another great new feature available now is being able to change Userlist profile links to open in a new window instead of always navigating away from the userlist. Simply edit your userlist and adjust "Profile Link Target" under Parameters > Linking. This gives you more control over how your userlists are utilized.
Additionally in your Userlists when using the Grid mode you can now control the initial size of the grid blocks using the Size parameter of the first column under Columns. So for example if you set the column size to 3 it'll display 4 grid blocks per row. Responsive sizes are automatically calculated for you as well so all you need to do is adjust that single parameter. This utilizes Bootstrap 4 grid sizing, which is limited to a size of 12. How many grid blocks are displayed is based off the size selected out of 12 (e.g. if you want 4 per row you'd select a size of 3 or if you want 3 per row you'd select a size of 4). Note any size over 6 will not be able to display more than 1 block per row, but will still respect the grid size allowing for smaller single column display.
Now lets talk about somethings that are done, but not yet available. Mainly the SEO improvements to Userlists. When a search is made it does so using a POST. This means if you try to share the URL the search criteria is lost. If you try to refresh your browser warns of double form submit. If you navigate away and try to browser back again your browser warns of form submit. These will be issues of the past once these new SEO features are released. When a search is made it will properly form a userlist URL and redirect to it allowing for the URL to be shared and browser back navigation to work. This will also apply to the paging links at the bottom. In addition to this the userlist selector will now properly navigate to their respective userlist URLs instead of just submitting the form. All of this combined means GREATLY improved SEO for userlists.
Another quality of life improvement is a compact mode for the backend admin menus added by CB and its various plugins. Once released and enabled instead of having a new parent menu item for every single plugin they will all be consolidated under Community Builder and to reach a plugins menu items simply click Community Builder and hover Plugin Management, which will have the various plugins menu items under their respective names (e.g. Community Builder > Plugin Management > Activity). This should help reduce the overflow problems of wanting quick access to various backend CB pages.
Phew, now to the finale! Private Message System is undergoing a rewrite. Currently it functions as just an integration with UddeIM and that's it. It is being rewritten to also provide its own built in private messaging. It will still work with UddeIM, but new installs will default to the new internal model. Existing installs can change to the internal model with option to migrate UddeIM messages. What this means is CB it self will have included for free its own private messaging as part of the Private Message System plugin. Many of the features you're accustomed to using in UddeIM will also exist in the internal model (e.g. system messages and global site wide messages). I hope to have more details soon and once UI has progressed enough will create a new blog to give you a glimpse.
Now with that said this won't be replacing the planned Chat/Conversations feature in CB Activity, which will be a much more robust messaging system. The decision to implement the basic private messaging directly into CB it self was made in part due to UddeIMs announcement that it, likely, will not be supporting Joomla 4 and also because it makes sense for CB it self to have some private messaging functionality included in the Private Message System plugin.
