Community Builder 2.0 beta 5 is now available for download by all Professional and Developer members.
As we are approaching RC (release candidate) status we are again opening up our testing user-base in an effort to get as much testing feedback as possible so we can quickly reach a stable release.
The last progress report was communicated a little over one week ago and we already have much more great news and awesome features to share.
As we are in parallel testing and improving usability and tooltip documentation we are literally astonished by the scope of the new features that have been included.
In our last reports we have been highlighting the new profile look with the canvas background and the new menu positions.
Since then we have added four new styles to our user profile avatar image field:
- Rounded
- Rounded Bordered
- Circle
- Circle Bordered
So a simple drop-down parameter lets you specify that your user profile avatars should be circle framed or rounded corner framed !
Also, as we are now taking advantage of our new image processing library, exact dimension image resizing while maintaing aspect ratio (with cropping if needed) is a built-in new feature.
And since we believe in doing things right, these cool features are available for all image fields you create in your user profiles.
So to be clear all your CB image fields can now be configured to:
- have their own gallery selection library
- allow or disallow user uploads
- impose upload size limits and dimensions
- require moderation (through CB Workflows)
- have their own styling (Rounded, Rounded Bordered, Circle, Circle Bordered)
- be rendered differently on different CB pages (different layout for user lists, edit modes, etc)
And these features are just the tip of the iceberg!
At this point we believe that this is the last beta in our CB 2.0 roadmap and the next release will be CB 2.0 RC.
But we need your support and testing and feedback to make this happen!
So if your are not a Professional member please consider becoming one and download CB 2.0 beta 5 and test it on your non production sites and give us your feedback so we can make it better.
Let's make it happen!
Joomla 3.3.1 and Joomla 2.5.22 have been released.
Joomla 3.3.1 is a maintenance release for the feature rich Joomla 3.3 release. If you are currently running a Joomla! release on a server with PHP 5.3.10 or later, we encourage you to update immediately to Joomla! 3.3.1 by either the one-click update or by one of the available update packages.
According to the Joomla roadmap, the next series release will be Joomla 3.4 scheduled to happen on July 15th. This is great news for the Joomla community as Joomla 3.4 will mark a beginning of smooth upgrades with extra attention to maintain backwards compatibility for at least 3 years! Read our Executive Summary report on the new Joomla release strategy to understand this important and exciting concept.
Joomla 2.5.22 is a maintenance release for the 2.5 series. Upgrade packages to Joomla 2.5.22 are available for Joomla 2.5 series installations.
As usual backup before upgrading your Joomla websites and verify that all third party extensions (including your template) are compatible.
The CB Team is proud to continue assisting the Joomla project by continuously testing and reporting back any compatibility issues between new Joomla releases and Community Builder. Beat is also active in the Joomla! Security Strike Team and helps keep Joomla secure.
And yes, CB 1.9.1 works great on both new Joomla releases !
Community Builder 2.0 beta 4 is now available for Professional and Developer members to install on their testing environments.
Major refactoring has taken place and the usage of our new XML MVC AhaWow engine technology has drastically reduced the codebase of CB while adding many cool features at the same time.
CB 2.0 development is now shifting back to another round of frontend User Interface (UI) improvements. This will significantly enhance the look and feel of CB 2.0 user profile layouts and result in a smooth user-experience. By using bootstrap extensively, the site designer's task is simplified too. This is our last big task before the RC release.
For starters our very powerful CB Delimiter field has been renamed to a much deserved 'Custom HTML" CB field type. This way its new name does it justice.
Another powerful UI concept that has been introduced in CB 2.0 beta 4 is the new field layouts parameters. Every CB field now has four (4) layout parameters: 'Profile Value Layout', 'Profile Edit Value Layout', 'Userlist Value Layout' and 'Registration Value Layout'. Each one of these paramaters can be used to provide HTML code with supported CB field substitutions to render the field on a specific view.
These new field layout parameters open the door to many use case possibilities. Here are some examples:
- A CB integer field titled: 'Number of cats', can be configured to override the default display 'Number of cats: 5' and instead display 'I have 5 lovely cats' or even 'Hi, I am Susan and I have 5 cats'.
- A 'Gender' CB radio field that accepts 'Male' and 'Female' values can now be set to display a gender symbol (
or 
) instead of its value when included in a CB users list layout. - You can even combine multiple field values using CB substitutions to render any field layout. A really nice example is to render a users list with the profile image field displaying a gender symbol in the corner of the profile image (like in the screenshot above).
We are working on some even more exciting new profile layout concepts that we will be roling out in the next release of CB 2.0 which is currently anticipated to be CB 2.0 RC.
Joomla 3.3 is scheduled to be released next week on April 22nd, 2014. It is being refered to as the "Do more" release.
We have been testing Community Builder 1.9.1 against the latest available Joomla 3.3 Beta 2 release and our initial feedback is that there are no compatibility issues.
In addition to new features, Joomla 3.3 has an important security enhancement and a related technical requirement change: PHP 5.3.10 or newer is now required.
The main features/changes of Joomla 3.3 are:
- PHP 5.3.10 and above is now required
- stronger password hashing storage
- microdata implementation for Joomla content opens the door to better search engine experience
- Replaces MooTools based JavaScript with jQuery equivalents
- new cloud storage API
The Joomla community has created a cool 52 second video to promote Joomla 3.3.
Check it out here.
Community Builder 2.0 BETA 3 is now available for Professional and Developer members and it is awesomely responsive !
The CB 2.0 b3 administration is now powered by the XML MVC AhaWow engine technology and provides awesome responsive behavior and many built-in features (e.g., great new Search Tools).
CB 2.0 b3 is not for production sites. It can be installed on new or as an upgrade to cloned CB 1.9.1 sites for development, testing and feedback purposes only.
In addition to Developer members (that had access to previous CB 2.0 beta releases), Professional members are now also invited to download and test CB 2.0 beta 3.
This way as a Pro member you can help shape CB 2.0 and contribute to it with your feedback.
The following is a short-list of the many improvements and changes since CB 2.0 b2:
- All administration areas have been recoded using the XML MVC AhaWow engine technology
- Improved responsiveness in backend and frontend areas
- Bootstrap styling used in backend and frontend
- Support for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 and Mambo dropped
- Legacy plugins removed (Yanc, Mamboblog)
- Forum integration plugin replaced in favor of CB Forums
- Author Content plugin replaced in favor of CB Articles
- Improved responsiveness for CB Blogs frontend views
- Terms and Conditions is now a core CB field and thus
- Smooth install over CB 1.9.1 will migrate configuration settings, remove/unpublish existing legacy plugins
With your help, feedback and contributions we are now full speed ahead for CB 2.0 RC and stable.
- Joomla 3.2.2 and 2.5.18 released - CB 1.9.1 needed
- Community Builder 2.0 - CB 2.0 beta 2 released!
- Community Builder 2.0 b1 released!
- Joomla 3.2, 2.5.16 and CB 1.9.1 released!
- CB Auto 5.1.3 released with CRON job URLs and more actions!
- CB Query 3.0 released with 4 new field types
- CB Auto Actions 4.0 released!
- CB Antispam released with great protection tools
- CB Privacy 2.0 with new account removal feature released!
- CB Facebook and Twitter Connect 3.0 released!