Community Builder 2.8 can be freely downloaded by all registered members
We just released a new features-release of Community Builder 2.8, with 12 new features and 14 bug fixes.
CB 2.8 is compatible with Joomla 4 (latest is 4.2.6) and Joomla 3.10 (latest is 3.10.11), as well as with all our CB add-ons.
The main highlights of this release (since previous CB 2.7.4 release) are:
- New "Joomla custom user field" CB-field-type allows to use core Joomla custom user fields from the Joomla native user component within Community Builder! This feature is only available on Joomla 4 and is not available on Joomla 3.10. This allows to use Joomla's core user-fields functionality, as well as that of many Joomla core field-types extensions (JED link) in Community Builder. Please test third party extensions first on your test site, we do not test against third party field types!
- Implemented support for custom layouts in registration, user profile and user edit views, allowing to fully personalize all these Community Builder views. 3 standard layout types are provided for Canvas (home, own profile), Canvas (other, other user profile), Intranet (a sober layout), as well as a custom layout type, allowing to input your own HTML layout.
IMPORTANT: All existing layout parameters are migrated from CB Configuration into their own parameters that you will find again under a new Layout tab in the default template under Plugins management, together with many new layout possibilities. If you use third-party CB templates, migration should happen there too, but please check as we can't test against third party and custom CB templates. - See Kyle's blog about profile layouts, Joomla fields and more for details and examples!
Other CB 2.8 highlights include:
- Support for new browser-native fields in the corresponding CB fields such as native date, native date-time, time and range-based integer. This setting is optional within CB date and integer field types, so that existing sites are not changed. See Kyle's blog about date/time fields and about browser native range sliders for CB integer fields.
- A new CB substitution has been added for substituting translation strings, allowing to use CB translations anywhere where substitutions are supported.
- Now CB substitutions also implement IF conditions based on the page URL, including menu Id, parameters and location. See Kyle's blog about location based substitutions as well as the URL IF conditions feature request for details.
- Improved consistence with Joomla behaviors by using Joomla's mail and anti-spoofing functions instead of CB's own ones
- Thanks to upgrading the required minimum PHP version to 7.4 in CB 2.7, a major code overhaul has been done for CB core fields and tabs
- Minimum system requirements are now still: Joomla 3.10+ or 4.0+, PHP 7.4+, and MYSQL 5.6+ (or MariaDB 10.x), like implemented already in CB 2.7 release 11 months ago and as announced since CB 2.6.0 release, 20 months ago.
- 14 minor bug fixes.
Details can be found in the full CB 2.8 changelog.
Community Builder 2.8 is a highly recommended upgrade for all CB sites on Joomla 3.10 and 4.x. CB 2.8's new features have been gradually released to our community in our nightly releases, so they are considered to be stable and proven in the field, and your upgrade should run smoothly. Nevertheless, we can't repeat it enough, as usual with any software upgrade, backup first.
Our demo website has already been updated to Community Builder 2.8, so you can see it in action along will all our Joomlapolis add-ons.