First release of April that mostly focuses on improvements and bug fixes. Comes also with important notice regarding GDPR and Video Uploads so make sure to read it all.
Upgrades
For a quick and hassle-free upgrade:
- Go to the backend of your site > Dashboard > Updates (go here, instead of > Dashboard > Plugins, trust me)
- Select all PeepSo plugins that need to be updated
- Click ‘Update Plugins’ (note: this will deactivate all of the add-on plugins), don’t worry, they’ll come right back on during Step 6 promise!
- Update PeepSo Core
- Go to the backend > Plugins
- Reactivate all PeepSo plugins
The whole operation doesn’t take more than 3 minutes. Should you have any issues or questions, please do contact us. ALSO IMPORTANT. We release all plugins at the same time. Sometimes, it can take some time for all available updates to show in the backend of your site. If some plugins’ updates don’t show, wait. Just Wait. Don’t upgrade just some of them. Drink some coffee and wait. Your site needs to catch up to show them all. If you feel like it’s taking too long, contact us. We’re here to help!
Alternatively, if you feel you can’t take the wait, you can go to your account, download the latest versions and do the following: Backup everything. Deactivate all PeepSo plugins from your site. Install the new versions from the zip files, just like on the first installation.
Repeat “load more” Every X Posts
There’s a new feature added to loading content in PeepSo. You can find its settings in the backend of your site: PeepSo > Configuration > Advanced > Performance section. It’s called: Repeat “load more” button? and is dependent on the setting above. What it does is it shows the load more button for content every X number of items. It affects the activity stream posts, photos, videos, members and so on in their respective views.
Previously, when the load more button was enabled it showed once and then it turned into infinity scroll. Now you get to show it every X amount of items. It’s more of a usability / cosmetic feature but something we did get asked about a lot so here it is 😉 Enjoy!
Other fixes and improvements
Our development has been focused more on other things, about which I’ll tell you below. First things first, though. The things that are definitely worth mentioning are improved onsite notifications on iOS devices. We also fixed user tagging highlighting, made sure that hashtags get rendered on activity posts as well as improved the BlogPosts comment box to original WordPress comment box position. You can see the full changelog here.
Development Efforts
GDPR
We do try to stick to a 2 – 3 week release schedule to make sure that you always get the latest fixes, improvements and if possible new features too. Unfortunately, sometimes some things are out of our control like the GDPR. What is GDPR? You can read more about it here.
After four years of preparation and debate the GDPR was finally approved by the EU Parliament on 14 April 2016. Enforcement date: 25 May 2018 – at which time those organizations in non-compliance may face heavy fines.
Even though GDPR is a EU law it will affect websites and businesses from all over the world. Because of that, we have made it our top priority and it’ll be introduced in PeepSo by the end of April 2018. This means you’ll still have a few weeks to upgrade Your Community and make sure everything complies with the new law. We don’t want to make it last minute, but rather stay ahead and make sure you have time to upgrade, test and inform your users.
Video Uploads
Video uploads are another topic that’s being actively developed in the background. We’ve been working on this for months now and are close to finishing this awesome feature. However, it’ll be finished up only after GDPR is done, tested and released. It’s our second biggest thing that’s coming to PeepSo in the next couple of weeks.
Why am I mentioning it here and now? To give you time to process this information and make necessary changes if necessary. Just so that we’re on the same page. Video uploads feature will NOT be advised and I’m very tempted to even say that it will NOT be supported by us on shared hosting setups. But that decision will come with the announcement of the feature’s availability.
Videos are huge (compared to photos) files that not only have to be uploaded, but also processed and later streamed to users. That means your server must have the necessary resources to handle that kind of load. We’re also designing the video uploads feature to make sure all videos go through WP Media library, which means you’ll be able to use an Amazon S3 plugin to store the videos in the Amazon Cloud (or any other service that works with WP Media Library).
If you’re seriously considering offering Your Community video uploads feature, be ready for it all. Upgrade your server to at least a VPS, talk to hosting to make sure it’s ok with them and so on. More information on this feature will be provided with its announcement, most likely mid-May.
