SMF 2.1 RC4 Released

[Suki]

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.

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

[Looking]

Congrats on all the fixes and progress.

[SleePy]

Thanks to all those who helped make this release happen.

[LiroyvH]

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

[vbgamer45]

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

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

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

[d3vcho]

Really sweet job. Thank you all!

[lurkalot]

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

[Oldiesmann]

Great to see! On to final

[Ramón Cutanda]

Congratulations! Great work. Thank you!

[Doug Heffernan]

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

[Sesquipedalian]

Glad to see this!

[Apllicmz]

Congrats on the release to the team!! Great work

[Speed King]

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.

[SleePy]

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

[Bigguy]

Nice to see this out. Great job all.

[Shambles]

Good work all.

[Steve]

Awesome! Great work y'all!

[Speed King]

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.

[SychO]

Congratulations 👏