Simple Machines Community Forum

Simple Machines is pleased to announce the release of SMF 2.1 RC4. Bugs reported and labeled for RC4 have been fixed along with improvements to security, stability, and performance. Some of the fixes and improvements are as follows:

Major changes:

• Raises minimum PHP version to 5.6
• Updates SCEditor to version 3 and fixes multiple editor bugs
• Improves numerous database queries
• Makes numerous improvements to theme templates and CSS
• Makes numerous corrections and improvements to language strings and documentation
• Allows CORS requests in SMF

User-facing changes:

• Uses "Forever" as the default time option when logging in
• Moves logout button to profile menu (with fallback for non-JS users)
• Sends HTTP error code 403 (Forbidden) when a banned user tries to log in
• Handles TFA enable/disable menu items consistently in profile menu
• Redirects user back to previous URL after changing language
• Prevents bogus mention notifications
• Fixes various issues with setting user notification preferences
• Adds functionality to remove old alerts after they have been read
• Avoids showing an alert counter with a value of zero
• Improves the UI for attachment uploads
• Improves the templates and UI logic for the PM system
• Fixes an issue with pagination while viewing PM drafts
• Improves handling of time zones
• Uses correct time zone when suggesting default times for a new event
• Fixes issues involving max width of images on different screens
• Fixes issues with attachment images when printing a topic
• Always uses correct rotation for attachment thumbnails
• Fixes several errors while uploading attachments
• Fixes a permissions issue that never allowed guests to upload images
• Uses lazy loading for external avatars, BBC images, iframes, etc.
• Improves BBC parsing in board descriptions
• Keeps order of poll choices consistent across time
• Neutralizes evil control characters in preparsecode()
• Renders quotes with nested url tags correctly
• Fixes an error when attempting to preview a poll
• Allows the time picker script to be translated
• Respects drafts_autosave_enabled user setting
• Removes obsolete spellcheck feature

Admin and back-end changes:

• Fixes issues with reordering custom profile fields
• Improves email notifications regarding registration approval
• Fixes an issue where notifications about reported members used "(N/A)" instead of the member's name
• Improves UI to display the error log
• Improves package manager UI
• Improves the smiley editor
• Fixes issues regarding time zones in admin member search
• Allows the email field to be disabled for guests
• Hides random news line from guests who cannot browse the forum
• Confirms logouts and redirects when necessary (improves interactions with external integrations)
• Implements new, more robust version of updateSettingsFile()
• Retires old entries in log_packages table when a package is upgraded
• Fixes issue logging changes to custom fields when nothing actually changed
• Prunes log_topics, log_boards & log_mark_boards_read during maintenance
• Fixes an issue with logging moderation actions
• Fixes errors when an external avatar URL was too long
• Fixes "Out of range value for column page_hits" error
• Fixes issues regarding $user_info in background tasks
• Shows correct file names in integration hooks list
• Adds support for more password hashing schemes for converters
• Fixes a session write fail issue
• Fixes issues when merging topics
• Ensures $modSettings['board_manager_groups'] is always defined
• Ensures trackStats() & AddMailQueue() exist before calling them in obExit()
• Improves get_proxied_url() and general proxy handling
• Supports Cloudflare in auto-detection of Reverse Proxy IP headers
• Avoids a database error on MariaDB during profile export
• Fixes an undefined index error when board has grandchild boards
• Fixes autoloading for cache classes
• Fixes an issue where membergroups were not displayed via SSI Who's Online
• Removes Afrinic.net WHOIS link, since they no longer support it
• Adds link to the Read Logs settings from the Scheduled Tasks settings
• Improves handling of 4-byte UTF-8 in script.js

Installer and upgrader changes:

• Fixes issues installing SMF on PHP 8.0
• Fixes typos affecting the installer
• Fixes upgrader freezes
• Fixes handling of legacy attachments during upgrade
• Fixes undefined PHP function error during upgrade
• Includes karma data in database backup during upgrade
• Create record for all watched topics and boards during upgrade
• Improves handling of some HTTPS URLs during upgrade
• Correctly preserves membergroup properties during upgrade
• Correctly handles invalid year-only birthdates during upgrade
• Fixes issues with deleting upgrader files after upgrade is complete
• Fixes issues with running the upgrader from CLI
• Fixes various database queries in the upgrader
• Sets default notification frequency to "Straight Away" instead of "Never"
• Fixes issues upgrading from SMF 1.x
• Fixes registration "no access" error after upgrading

This release is considered to be an RC (Release Candidate), which means that it is sufficiently functional, but that it has known and unknown bugs. These bugs do not necessarily prevent a release, rather they need to be addressed before the next dev cycle release.

SMF RC4 can be installed as a brand new installation, or an SMF 2.0.x installation can be upgraded to SMF RC4, however, please do note that there are no updates packages for any RC releases.

We highly encourage testing this version on local or development/QA environments. Testing the release will greatly help us in narrowing down, and focusing on, issues and improvements towards the Final release.  Note, however, that we do not recommend using an RC package on any live installation and/or production forum owing to the very nature of RC packages.

Finally, this announcement topic is not for support. Please use the SMF 2.1 support board instead. (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=254.0)

A very special thanks goes to our community, team members, code contributors and beta testers. Without your help, this would not have been possible.

Thank you for using SMF!

Kind regards,
Simple Machines

Congrats on all the fixes and progress.

Thanks to all those who helped make this release happen.

Congrats on the release to the team!! Great work :) And thanks to everyone who helped out! :)

Great release! Good job all a lot of cool new things added.

Thanks to everyone on and off the team for the effort put in to this. :)

Really sweet job. Thank you all!

Congrats, and thanks to all involved.  Another step forward.  8)

Great to see! On to final :D

Congratulations! Great work. Thank you!

Congratulations and thanks to all involved for all your hard work.

Glad to see this!

Congrats on the release to the team!! Great work ;) :D

Congrats :)
Just successfully installed RC4 on my working forum.
But some of ZIP language files in download section was corrupted (Bulgarian and German), I have used TAR.GZ variant instead.

I can't reproduce.  The zip files are working for me.
What browser and OS are you using?

Nice to see this out. Great job all. :)

Good work all.

Awesome! Great work y'all!

Quote from: SleePy on July 10, 2021, 01:41:58 PM
I can't reproduce.  The zip files are working for me.
What browser and OS are you using?

Google Chrome (last version), and Windows 10.
After downloading, these ZIP files cannot be opened with 7-zip; when I upload them into forum directory and trying to extract, they cannot be extracted.

Congratulations 👏

Quote from: Speed King on July 10, 2021, 04:19:55 PM

Quote from: SleePy on July 10, 2021, 01:41:58 PM
I can't reproduce.  The zip files are working for me.
What browser and OS are you using?

Google Chrome (last version), and Windows 10.
After downloading, these ZIP files cannot be opened with 7-zip; when I upload them into forum directory and trying to extract, they cannot be extracted.

Probably better to open a support topic, as...

Quote from: SukiFinally, this announcement topic is not for support.

Congrats and awesome job!!

Quote from: Speed King on July 10, 2021, 04:19:55 PM
Google Chrome (last version), and Windows 10.
After downloading, these ZIP files cannot be opened with 7-zip; when I upload them into forum directory and trying to extract, they cannot be extracted.

I can't reproduce this.  Windows 10 with Chrome opens the german language zip files just fine in both windows zip and 7zip.

Are the composer files used for the GitHub tools supposed to be part of the packages as well? I'm not sure those would be of much use to the average end uesr.

Thanks to all involved.

Quote from: Oldiesmann on July 10, 2021, 11:56:17 PM
Are the composer files used for the GitHub tools supposed to be part of the packages as well? I'm not sure those would be of much use to the average end uesr.

Should probably be removed for later releases, but not worth rebuilding the packages IMO.

congratulations  ;D

Good job guys! Hopefully not long to go now!

Congratulations!

Congrats and Thank you -- Something new to play with :)

Quote from: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on July 11, 2021, 05:14:56 AM

Quote from: Oldiesmann on July 10, 2021, 11:56:17 PM
Are the composer files used for the GitHub tools supposed to be part of the packages as well? I'm not sure those would be of much use to the average end uesr.

Should probably be removed for later releases, but not worth rebuilding the packages IMO.

Correct.  Future builds will no longer include those.

Oh not bad just a few days ago I was thinking of trying the new 2.1 advances, mi lector de código lo predijo ha ha ha ... Great job guys  :D!!!

Yipee Kay Yay !

Well done all.  :D :D :D :D :D

В добрый путь RC4.
Good luck RC4.

Great job. Waiting for 2.1 Final.

Great stuff and brilliant progress. Thanks to all involved.

Congratulations and thank you.  :)
Successfully upgraded.  ;)

Cogratulations to all who are involved on this precious plataform. Step-by-step we are running to the 2.1, for all of this i´m SMF user since 2006 and i´m a great pleasure to be part of this.


Thank you people

Regards
Portugal

Well done, I am most grateful to everybody who has contributed to this great project!

Far out! Thanks and congrats!

Quote from: woolly bugger on July 13, 2021, 10:16:36 AM
Far out! Thanks and congrats!

that's an old one 🤘

Congrats! :)

Nice to see so many fixes done specially in under a year.  Lets hope the trend continues and we can see final in early 2022 :)

Excellent news!

Congratulations you are a great team 8)

congratulations good job!

Strewth. There was movement at the station. Congratulations. :)

Thanks for the good job everyone.

Congratulations Team....  8) 8) 8)

So it's good to see progress, thanks to everyone involved for all the time and effort you've contributed to this project.

Now I'm going to ask that question, the ultimate question... are we there yet? Just kidding, but can you now confirm that RC4 will be the last release candidate?

Yes, as evidenced by the open milestones page on GitHub (https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1/milestones).

Nice. :)

Not a development team member but I'd wager the answer to your question is 'no'. It all depends on what is found as RC4 is being used live in the field.

No promises, as usual, but it is my understanding that RC4 is somewhat intended to be the last RC. So, in a way the answer is - Maybe.

Quote from: zappaDPJ on July 21, 2021, 06:25:04 PM
Just kidding, but can you now confirm that RC4 will be the last release candidate?

/me points at signature.

Thanks to everyone involved. See you soon in stable version

Thanks for all the honest and realistic replies to my question above. Here's to hoping it's finally getting there :)

Congrats to all, SMF rocks!

Nice work ^^

CONGRATS :)

Cool I'll be using this when I start My Librarian Sections of my site.

Can someone please tell me when we can expect the release of.... The Rolling Stones' next album  :)

When it's ready. :P

After downloading, these ZIP files cannot be opened with 7-zip it can't be extracted and now it working fine thanks
extract that file after click in the file???

Quote from: SukiFinally, this announcement topic is not for support. Please use the SMF 2.1 support board instead.

I almost fell off my chair ;D Well done to everyone involved.

i  have some  questions for everyone is there any professional themes anywhere also i notice some forums have sponsors  where the sponsor has there own banner on the side and thrre own little space on the  page is this possible with smf thanhk u 

Quote from: Shambles on August 17, 2021, 06:56:25 AM

Quote from: SukiFinally, this announcement topic is not for support. Please use the SMF 2.1 support board instead.

Wow, and you just quoted that a couple of posts ago. I guess people don't read anything but what they type ... and sometimes not even that ... 

No idea when this was but congrats on the site upgrade! Keep going! Cheers :)

Congrats on the release to the team. it good for my job

Well done, team. Congrats! I can't wait to dig back into SMF when a final release comes along.

Thanks for the numerous fixes team, going to upgrade my forum from 2.1 beta 4 to 2.1 RC 4

Quote from: mowertech on August 17, 2021, 04:12:51 PMi  have some  questions for everyone is there any professional themes anywhere also i notice some forums have sponsors  where the sponsor has there own banner on the side and thrre own little space on the  page is this possible with smf thanhk u 

Do you have a link to an example?

Nice job SMF team! Usually after RC5 the team and coders decide to stop the beta.

Looks like the final version is now complete. At least, that is what it is said on Github.

Lol, that's what you think.  :P

Quote from: Kindred on January 23, 2022, 11:41:01 AMLol, that's what you think.  :P

Well in absence of any communication from the team about how they're doing, people will fill in the blanks from what information *is* available.

The fact that all the remaining 2.1 bugs appear to be shunted to 2.1.1 is an interesting new policy change for those of us old-timers who remember the policy of 'patches are for security and maintenance only', but again... communication and management of expectations is key.

Cheers to all the progress!

Please point me to a howto upgrade vom 2.0.19 to 2.1.rc4.
i want to testupgrade my current 2.0.19.

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Upgrading 8)

doesnt work for me :/
i ended up with that 'cookie-error' - i'll wait for the final version.

Quote from: AllMassive on January 23, 2022, 11:57:31 PMPlease point me to a howto upgrade vom 2.0.19 to 2.1.rc4.
i want to testupgrade my current 2.0.19.

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Upgrading

Isn't that the same link Shades gave him?

Thanks to all teams who release this, it was very helpful  :)  :)  :)

Quote from: Steve on January 24, 2022, 08:57:17 AMIsn't that the same link Shades gave him?

Yes, it is, but I had missed it.

Ah, no worries.  :)

Congrats on the team working on this version, keep on working for the best!

Eagerly awaiting whether this one will be RC5 or final :)
Been running RC2 since it came out, stable. Looking forward to going to final release and then that'll be us sorted for a good while

Thanks for all the hard work!  A lot of issues resolved between RC2 and final(RC5?)

Congrats on the team working on this version, keep on working for the best!

Quote from: shnazzle on January 28, 2022, 06:56:38 AMEagerly awaiting whether this one will be RC5 or final :)
Been running RC2 since it came out, stable. Looking forward to going to final release and then that'll be us sorted for a good while

Thanks for all the hard work!  A lot of issues resolved between RC2 and final(RC5?)

My gut feeling is that we'll see RC5, I don't know how much stuff PHP 8 breaks

Quote from: SpacePhoenix on January 28, 2022, 02:54:43 PM

Quote from: shnazzle on January 28, 2022, 06:56:38 AMEagerly awaiting whether this one will be RC5 or final :)
Been running RC2 since it came out, stable. Looking forward to going to final release and then that'll be us sorted for a good while

Thanks for all the hard work!  A lot of issues resolved between RC2 and final(RC5?)

My gut feeling is that we'll see RC5, I don't know how much stuff PHP 8 breaks

There are some minor issues with 8.1, but that's about it. See GitHub for more.

Quote from: Oldiesmann on January 28, 2022, 11:35:47 PMThere are some minor issues with 8.1, but that's about it. See GitHub for more.

I did - and my heart skipped a beat.
2.1.0 No due date  Last updated 5 days ago. 100% complete, 0 open 289 closed issues.

Here's begging for no serious new bugs to be reported, so that we can have a proper upgrade real soon...

Looking forward to it!!! 

"Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind."