October-28 - Avatars for users, grooming for webmasters
YACS already supported avatars in user profiles. But users had to upload their own images. Now you can share your own library of icons, and let users pick one in seconds. By far more simple and efficient for not-so-high-profile Internet surfers.
YACS is also able to extract some XML from your database. If your boss has asked you to create a smart report out of your database, do not write a specific script for that! Create a regular YACS page to introduce the report, add a table element to encode the MySQL SELECT statement, and ask your boss to use the 'Excel' or 'XML' links to download data to his computer.
About two-third of YACS scripts have been modified because of grooming. Does this mean that you will have to reinstall the whole thing? Of course not. Trigger the update script and let YACS stage new or modified files, activate scripts, and update the database if necessary. If you have not yet play with this powerful feature, this release is the perfect opportunity to do so.
YACS is also able to extract some XML from your database. If your boss has asked you to create a smart report out of your database, do not write a specific script for that! Create a regular YACS page to introduce the report, add a table element to encode the MySQL SELECT statement, and ask your boss to use the 'Excel' or 'XML' links to download data to his computer.
About two-third of YACS scripts have been modified because of grooming. Does this mean that you will have to reinstall the whole thing? Of course not. Trigger the update script and let YACS stage new or modified files, activate scripts, and update the database if necessary. If you have not yet play with this powerful feature, this release is the perfect opportunity to do so.
About 229 files have been updated or added to the system.
You can now offer avatars to your community members. Upload as many images you want at
YACS was already able to store any MySQL statement as a table element. Now web have added the ability to output an XML component out of it (tables/fetch_as_xml.php).
Every RSS feed generated by YACS now supports a channel image, if one has been defined in the configuration panel for feeds. See feeds/configure.php, categories/feed.php, comments/feed.php, sections/feed.php, users/feed.php.
The index page for feeds now features express links to add our main RSS 2.0 feed either to Yahoo! or to Newsgator. See feeds/index.php. Also, related icons will be automatically downloaded during your server update.
The form used to create or change a user profile has been enhanced. Messaging information has been put in a folded division. Fields have been reshuffled as well. See users/edit.php.
The form used to post files has been streamlined. On single file submission, the description text is moved to the containing article. Also, advanced file options have been put in a folded division. See files/edit.php.
If you are using Netscape or Mozilla, you can test a preview of our side panel editor (panel.php). Installable from the control panel, at control/index.php.
In services/ping.php,
Similarly, services/search.php do not accept requests from banned server anymore. To ban a server, create a server profile for its network address, and uncheck allowed options.
One of the script used for server updates, scripts/run_once.php now features a database ping, just to ensure it won't hit some time out...
YACS has now a new option to stop the poor-man cron. If you have included the periodic launch of cron.php, you can change the value of
The script used for background processing (cron.php) has been enhanced. Firstly, it may use the environment variable
Initially YACS were supposed to be fully XHTML. Therefore, every break has to be
As a follow-up to the previous release, the variable 
p
Cached pages, and references from our own domain, are not considered as valid referrals anymore. See agents/referrals.php.
Bug fixed for scrollers, in skins/skin_skeleton.php. Generated Javascript code is put aside the scroller division, and not put in a separate page section anymore, because of buggy interactions with the cache engine. Now it's less pretty, but it works...
We have added
The script that processes received messages already has a debugging facility. We have extend this facility to better report on POP3 exchanges with the mail server. Also, a very bare implementation of APOP (for user authentication) has been added. See agents/messages.php.
You can now offer avatars to your community members. Upload as many images you want at users/avatars through FTP and that's it. The new users/select_avatar.php script will do the rest. YACS is provided with a reduced set of images. Give it a try: update your server and enhance your user profile right now! See users/view.php as well YACS was already able to store any MySQL statement as a table element. Now web have added the ability to output an XML component out of it (tables/fetch_as_xml.php). Every RSS feed generated by YACS now supports a channel image, if one has been defined in the configuration panel for feeds. See feeds/configure.php, categories/feed.php, comments/feed.php, sections/feed.php, users/feed.php. The index page for feeds now features express links to add our main RSS 2.0 feed either to Yahoo! or to Newsgator. See feeds/index.php. Also, related icons will be automatically downloaded during your server update. The form used to create or change a user profile has been enhanced. Messaging information has been put in a folded division. Fields have been reshuffled as well. See users/edit.php. The form used to post files has been streamlined. On single file submission, the description text is moved to the containing article. Also, advanced file options have been put in a folded division. See files/edit.php. If you are using Netscape or Mozilla, you can test a preview of our side panel editor (panel.php). Installable from the control panel, at control/index.php. In services/ping.php, weblogUpdates.ping and pingback.ping requests from banned servers are not taking into account anymore. To ban a server, create a server profile for its network address, and uncheck allowed options. Similarly, services/search.php do not accept requests from banned server anymore. To ban a server, create a server profile for its network address, and uncheck allowed options. One of the script used for server updates, scripts/run_once.php now features a database ping, just to ensure it won't hit some time out... YACS has now a new option to stop the poor-man cron. If you have included the periodic launch of cron.php, you can change the value of $context['with_cron'] into the main configuration panel, at control/configure.php, and save some CPU on regular rendering operations. The script used for background processing (cron.php) has been enhanced. Firstly, it may use the environment variable YACS_HOME instead of guessing where files are. Secondly, it ensures at least 5 minutes between successive ticks. And the documentation has been updated as well. Initially YACS were supposed to be fully XHTML. Therefore, every break has to be <br />, and we put this into the source code. But, you know, legacy is legacy, and at some point it appeared more simple, for very bad reasons, to stick with HTML for some time. But YACS did not validate anymore, because HTML requires <br> for breaks. With this release we have better prepared the move to XHTML by introducing the constant BR, which can be set to what you like depending of your skin capability. Who will be the first to produce a XHTML skin for YACS? As a follow-up to the previous release, the variable $context['url_to_root'] has been split into two parts. The path information (e.g;, /yacs/...) is still in $context['utl_to_root']. The method and server name have been put in the new variable $context['url_to_home']. As a result, the size of most pages has been greatly reduced. The drawback is that almost all scripts have been checked to add, or not, the new variable. For example, all RSS feeds do need absolute references, which is not the case of regular pages. I'm glad this has been finished p Cached pages, and references from our own domain, are not considered as valid referrals anymore. See agents/referrals.php. Bug fixed for scrollers, in skins/skin_skeleton.php. Generated Javascript code is put aside the scroller division, and not put in a separate page section anymore, because of buggy interactions with the cache engine. Now it's less pretty, but it works... We have added $context['suffix'] to all template of reference skins. Surprinsingly, $context['suffix'] was already there... The script that processes received messages already has a debugging facility. We have extend this facility to better report on POP3 exchanges with the mail server. Also, a very bare implementation of APOP (for user authentication) has been added. See agents/messages.php.Rate this page
Posted by Bernard on Oct. 28 2004, (popular)
