This is a huge milestone for PeepSo. The new version is packed with many of the features our customers have been asking for. It’s a massive step up. I encourage you to update PeepSo today to enjoy all these great enhancements.
First though, a special thanks to our Beta testers for helping us making version 1.6.0 stable. We couldn’t have done it without you.
So… What’s New?
- Core PeepSo Improvements
- New Plugin – ProfileSo – Extended Profiles
- 6 New Widgets
- Plugin Improvements And New Upcoming Plugins
Core PeepSo Changes
Flexible Core Profile Fields
PeepSo Core comes with the following core fields:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Gender
- Birthdate
- About Me
- Website
These fields used to be hard-coded. You couldn’t change them without digging into the code and breaking things. Not any more. Now admins can enable or disable the fields, change their titles or labels, and determine whether or not they’re required. They can set validation and even add a ‘placeholder’ or prompt to encourage users to complete the fields. We also have a brand new plugin that allows you to add new profile fields. Read about ProfileSo here.
Profile Completion Progress Bar
The Profile Completion Progress Bar shows users how much of their profiles they have already completed and what they still need to add.
That’s useful to members but we’ve made it even more useful for community admins: you can ‘Force Profile Completion’ upon your users. If any required fields in their profiles are empty, they’ll have to fill them in before they can navigate anywhere in PeepSo beyond their profile view.
Changes To Edit Account Page
The ‘Edit Account’ page is now a ‘Preferences’ page. Not only did we merge general account settings and notification settings but it’s all completely Ajaxified. There’s no ‘Save’ button anywhere in this view. It’s not necessary… and we love it that way!
Members Can Now Hide From Search Results
Users now have the option to hide their profiles from user listings. They won’t show up in search results, on members pages, on friends’ lists, or on widgets, etc. They can still make their content visible if they wish, though, giving them complete control over their privacy. And admins can still see everyone. The setting is available for them in their profile Preferences.
Users Get A Sin Bin
It’s never fun having to ban a user but sometimes it is necessary… at least until they’ve calmed down, at which point the admin can let them back in. We’ve now made that process much easier with bans limited by time. The next time a user starts flaming, admins can decide in advance how long they’ll be cooling off in the sin bin.
Filters Now Above The Stream
We made a number of changes to the activity stream. The first thing that you’ll notice are the tabs above the stream. We felt that the setting in the user preferences to show either the community feed or friends feed wasn’t super user-friendly. So we put the tabs right on top of the stream. For those tabs to show, you will need to have the Friends plugin installed and activated.
Removing Link Previews
Users can now remove the link preview when they place a link in a post or a comment. Admins, of course, can remove the preview from all posts and comments.
Number Of Hidden Comments Now Visible
We added a bit more information to the hidden comments. Now we don’t just tell users that additional comments have been hidden. We tell them exactly how many comments have been hidden.
Facebook’s Open Graph Improvements
PeepSo handles Open Graph in a completely new way. This is a big change! After offering no control at all over Open Graph in the previous version, PeepSo now has settings that let admins set the default image, title and description.
That’s a big improvement but we’re working with Facebook, so it’s not as straightforward as we might like.
Open Graph handling has been designed to be fully aware of context, shared links and privacy. So if someone posts a picture, adds a description, mood and location, but sets any privacy setting on the post to not ‘Private,’ when a link to that activity is shared on Facebook, Facebook will only fetch the defaults added in the Open Graph handling settings.
If the post has a ‘Public’ setting, Facebook behaves very differently. It will share the added picture as the Open Graph image, take the title from defaults, and take the description from the post together with the mood and location name. Sharing a link to a user’s public profile will fetch their cover and avatar as the Open Graph image.
That sounds complicated but privacy was our priority and we made sure it works exactly as it should.
We made a number of other new features and improvements to PeepSo Core. For the full list of changes, see the changelog.
Widgets
PeepSo 1.6.0 is packed with improvements to current widgets and introduces a bunch of completely new ones.
‘Hide When Empty’ Setting
If a widget is empty, the admin can decide not to show it, removing empty space on a Web page.
In my next blog post, I’ll tell you about the improvements to existing widgets, and describe the new widgets, what they do and how you can use them to create a more engaging community.
Improvements To Existing PeepSo Widgets
PeepSo Profile Widget
The PeepSo Profile widget has been around for a while. It allows members easy access to different PeepSo pages. In this update, we’ve added two new features:
Notification Placement
Notifications now appear on top of the widget so that even if your members are currently on other pages of your site, reading a blog or checking the terms, they won’t miss the notification.
Profile Completion
The degree of profile completion now also appears on this widget, encouraging members to continue adding information to their profile.
Those are all the Core PeepSo improvements. Next, I’ll tell you about an exciting new PeepSo plugin: ProfileSo.
Upgrade PeepSo Now
Automatic updates let you move quickly to the latest version—and you can do it all in the backend of your site.
Remember to update plugins in this sequence: ChatSo first, then all the child plugins. Core PeepSo plugin should be updated last. Here’s documentation that explains how to upgrade. You can see the full changelog here.
No PeepSo?
The free PeepSo Core version is fantastic. But if you want to unlock the true potential of social networking for WordPress, install the other plugins today.
If you’d like to see what’s coming up next, check out our roadmap here.
Read more about PeepSo 1.6.0
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