Welcome to our 23.2 release notes! Curious and want to learn more? Discover Open Social.
What has been improved?
Quick join for groups
Users can join groups much more easily now! Site managers can enable the ‘Group Quick Join’ per group type, to make sure users join a group with 1 click (confirmation step is removed). Site managers can then also create CTA links (call-to-action) on landing pages that allow users to join (non-closed) groups in a single click.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-group-quick-join
20% increase in performance improvements
In an ongoing effort to make Open Social sites load at the speed of light (not literally, although we wish) we've re-trained some of our functions and have measured a collective performance improvement of roughly 20%. A full 20%, guys!
And, to make things even better, we reduced the number of items displayed in the community activity stream from 30 (default) to 20. This has resulted in a performance gain of up to 30%. We decided to update this for existing platforms as well.
Track page views
You can now track and display the number of page views per content type (events, topics, etc.). The number of views is visible to both the author and the visitors on the page. This functionality provides the author with further recognition for the article they wrote than just the number of comments they received. Also, if other members see that articles are often read, then it might motivate them to write something themselves.
The page views are shown on the full view display of the content item. And if your platform has enabled health analytics, then you will also get a new KPI block!
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-page-views
Tagging groups
It's now possible to tag groups through content tagging, just like it’s already possible with Events, Books and Topics). This also needs to be enabled by the Site Manager on the tagging settings page, which is also similar to other content types. Users can use these tags within the search page to search for groups.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-group-tagging
New and improved failed login message
The message displayed after failed login attempts, user registration attempts and password reset attempts is very technical. Too technical. We updated this message with a less technical description and it provides a contact person!
We also created a setting that allows the Site Manager to decide whether to show a contact person and their email address or not.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-basic-settings
Landing pages: create a community stream with posts
We've made the landing page functionality even more flexible. You didn’t think that was possible, did you? When creating a landing page, you can now add personalized stream blocks without posts and a community stream block with posts.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-landing-page
Organization Tags
There’s a new module called the “Social Profile Organization Tag“. This feature allows the community to recognize members from specific organizations and their roles. Organization tags can be added manually by the Site Manager to a member's profile and will be visible next to the username throughout the entire platform.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-organization-tags
New LU notifications
As a logged-in user, you can now receive notifications when someone comments on a topic you have already commented on.
Improved sharing content
We used to have the ‘add to any’ module that allowed users to share content with others. This module has now been replaced with Shariff to support better data privacy.
“Facebook, Google+ and Twitter supply official sharing code snippets which quietly siphon personal data from all page visitors. Shariff enables visitors to see how popular your page is on Facebook and share your content with others without needless data leaks."
Changing group types
It’s now possible to change the group type of a group after you’ve created the group and even when there’s content in it. For example, you’ve created a public group but later on, decide that it needs to be a closed group. When you make this switch, all the content will go from public to closed as well. Only Content and Site Managers are able to change the group type.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-group
Post visibility labels
We have added labels to all posts to show what kind of visibility they have. With the recent ability to edit group types and the various visibility options, it's more and more necessary for users to see which visibility the posts have that they are seeing and acting on. This is also useful since comments on posts inherit the visibility of the main post.
Mentioning people has become easier
When you mention a person in a comment or post, the chance that this person is suggested earlier in the list is now much higher. This is because we altered the possible number of name suggestions to reach 100. If the list becomes too long, a scroll bar is automatically added.
Moreover, on platforms with a lot of users, it was sometimes hard to mention a user or add a user to a group. This sort has now been improved, which means searching for a first name will also show users with that name first. It’s also possible to narrow down your search by providing a combination of the first and last name of the user you are searching for.
More info
https://lets.getopensocial.com/manual-mentions
Bug Fixes
Search results improvement: Whenever a user enters a new search term in the search form, the user is now always directed to the first page of the search results.
Pager implemented in landing pages: The community activities block on a landing page now has a pager when there are more than the set amount of activities available in the stream
Private message text changed: We changed the text that is displayed in an empty private message inbox from "... start a new chat" to "... start a new message" for consistency reasons.
Group Hero block removed in some cases: The Group Hero block will no longer be displayed on all group pages. It has been removed from the ‘join group’ and ‘leave group’ page.
All ‘Edit group’ titles are translatable: Some link titles like “Edit group” in the Group Hero were not translatable. This has now been fixed.
Nickname field populated: When the Nickname field is available and people sign up via Social Login, we now populate that field with the first and last name received from the social networks.
Data Policy consent only appears once: Previously, when the Data Policy consent is checked on the signup form, users had to agree with the consent again after the signup with one of the social networks. This should be fixed now.
Topic types translatable: Topic types weren’t translatable. This should now be fixed.
Private message indicator more efficient: When you open the notification center, the indicator displaying the number of new messages you have will disappear. This saves you from having to open up every individual chat to remove the indication