Kunena To Drop Support For Joomla 2.5 End of Q4 2014
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Who is affected?
Anyone running trying to run a future released version of Kunena after the last support date specified below.What does this concern?
Kunena and Joomla support and security.Where will this take place?
Any Kunena Extensions will immediately deny upgrade and install and will eventually remove API support for specific code that pertains to Joomla 2.5.When does this happen?
Kunena will offically drop Joomla 2.5 support at the end of Q4 of 2014 offically on the date December 31, 2014. (NOTE: This date might be adjusted in accordance to the "End of Support" date Joomla specifies). At Kunena we will most likely be in a minor version release [versioning structure (major).(minor).(revision) example given: 3.1.2] during this release time. The next (major) OR (minor) OR (revision) release will refuse to install on the latest Joomla 2.5.x series.Why should I update?
Although Kunena and Joomla support and security being the more important reason. Some secondary reasonings are improved performance, improved code quality which means less errors, newer web standards in development and design practices, and thus better experience for your users.How do I prepare?
There are some good Joomla user guides available on the Internet regaruding moving from Joomla 2.5.x to the latest Joomla 3.x.x. Here is a good starter topic to take note of about the process and procedures involved: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=793171I have more questions.
Feel free to ask us questions below or on the forum. Have a good week.Discuss this article
Joomla does not support J! 2.5 (as from 1 January 2015).
Unless there is something of a major security alert, there are no intentions by the Joomla development team to support or fix any problems with J! 2.5 or release any versions after J! 2.5.28.
Basically means—just like it means if people were using J! 1.0 or J! 1.5—if you are using J! 2.5 then, if it works, good luck and, if it doesn't work, it's a case of "you're on your own". The best advice that anyone can give to people who are using old, outdated and unsupported software is to upgrade to software that is supported.
As far as Kunena is concerned, it is reasonable to say that K 3.0 (and K 3.1—if this ever sees the light of day) will continue to operate on J! 2.5 systems but, as 810 and coder4life have stated, if you have problems then the Kunena developers have no real intention to address them—for the general connunity—as far as J! 2.5 websites are concerned.
Quoting from the article,
this is a little misleading. There have been no changes to K 3.0 (or K 3.1 for that matter) that impose this restriction. It is unlikely that this restriction will be enforced in future versions of the K 3.0 series.The next (major) OR (minor) OR (revision) release will refuse to install on the latest Joomla 2.5.x series.
In summary, if you are using J! 2.5 then you may use Kunena (for as long as the J! 2.5 codebase is included in the installation) but if you have problems then whatever assistance or help will be minimal or, in all probability, non-existent.
You are correct we plan to drop J2.5 specific code, but even 3.1 will be built and work on J2.5 for some time after with the same intention of support.
The goal is to allow a transition period.
Automatic subscriptions
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Introduction
Automatic subscriptions—the ability to enforce a website owner's policy that all members of the site "automatically" receive email notifications whenever there is some new forum activity (a new topic created or replies made to existing topics)—is a subject that has often been discussed on this forum going back as far as I can remember. People have asked for the Kunena project team to deliver features that allow them to "autosubscribe" members of their forums to categories and topics without their members having to do anything except to join their websites. This is a subject that has as many different views about how to implement a solution as well as different opinions about whether such methods are "legitimate", workable, worthy or legal in terms of the protection of an individual's right to privacy or an individual's right to choose.
The different views and opinions expressed by the wider Kunena community exist within the Kunena project team, too. In short, there is no simple answer to this very complex issue.
Every website on the internet is a business in some form or another. Some websites operate in order to generate a cash profit while others operate on a not-for-profit basis—to facilitate sharing of knowledge, community or social activities. Your website provides a service as part of that business and the people who join your site are consumers of that service (or services) that you offer. A forum is part of that business and your members' participation in the forum acts both to give them the means to discuss the range of "services" that your site provides—that is, something that your members consume—as well as where your members contribute to enhance the business of the site.
It really does not matter for what purpose your site exists. As soon as we start talking about sending out emails to people we're talking about how your website operates as a business and, as part of operating that business, questions about how you manage the relationship between you and your "customers" are entirely relevant.
This article identifies the technical and non-technical complexities that people need to understand before you try to "autosubscribe" your members when they did not specifically and explicitly choose to subscribe themselves to your forum. The issues fall into the following broad categories:
- Feasibility: can it be done?
- Design: how can it be done?
- Viability: will it work?
- Risk management: costs, overheads, ethical and legal consequences.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not represent the opinion of the project team as a whole or, necessarily, the opinions of individual members of the team.
Read more: Automatic subscriptions
Discuss this article
Wake up, Kunena - it's time to adapt or forums will be completely gone soon; this is 2018!
I would like to remind people who are contemplating "autosubscriptions" - remembering that there is no built-in mechanism in Kunena to automatically subscribe all of your users to a topics/categories on your forum - of the point I made in the article:
Additionally, generating email increases the workload on your server and may, over time, impact on the performance of your site particularly if your forum is busy and emails are sent to many subscribed members every time a new topic is created or a topic is replied to.
If your forum generates a lot of email every time your users post messages on the forum we are aware that forum performance will be affected because of the background tasks involved in sending the emails.
There may also be some confusion about what "autosubscriptions" means. The term does not mean, for example, that if you set the configuration setting
Users » Subscriptions » Topic Subscriptions = Email every update
that all of your users will receive email every time a new message is posted on your forum. This setting only applies to those users who are subscribed to topics where new messages are posted. In other words, if a new message is posted on your forum, only subscribed members will receive email and, by the way, the author of the message will not receive an email notifying them of the message that they just posted.
I hope this added explanation helps.
Thanks for this - I totally understand. I have managed, with this, to persuade them against the automatic subscription.
Thanks!
Rowan
Pople Media Solutions
Just wondering if you can help me with this the following:
We have a customer who is using the Kunena forum and community builder (with CBsubs) to allow access to the forum. Upon registering they would like all users to be automatically subscribed not only to all categories but all topics as well.
Can you help me with this?
Thanks.
Rowan
Pople Media Solutions
Maybe the idea is to create a ranking of new features Kuenne that after reaching some number of votes will be considered a priority in the work of the Forum?
Perhaps this type of tool?
helpocean.com/
Or a plugin for Kunena who will vote and count the votes on a specific topic in the "New Features"?
[...] This is a subject that has as many different views about how to implement a solution as well as different opinions about whether such methods are "legitimate", workable, worthy or legal in terms of the protection of an individual's right to privacy or an individual's right to choose. [...]
— Thank you for the article and a serious approach to the subject. Give someone a hammer, one builds a house, the second kills a man. You can not affect the use of tools.
Kunena, should offer superlative and effective solutions. Without this, there will be the leader. If you do not strive to be a leader to date the work will be thrown into the trash.
Kunena 3.0.5 released
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Introduction
Kunena 3.0.5 [K 3.0.5] is available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 2.5 and J! 3.x. This version is a security release for Kunena that addresses several maintenance issues that have been reported since the last version release. and this new version replaces (and makes obsolete) all previous versions of Kunena.
This version of Kunena coincides with the simultaneous release of an updated language pack, downloaded separately, for deployment on non-English websites. The release of this version does not not coincide with the release of other Kunena Add-ons that have not been updated at this time and that may or may not be updated for this version.
In general, Kunena Add-ons designed for previous versions of K 3.x should interoperate with this version of Kunena; in general, Kunena Add-ons designed for older major versions of Kunena will not interoperate with this version of Kunena.
The summary of important changes in K 3.0.5 are:
- XSS vulnerability in BBCode output (thanks Qoppa for finding it)
- Improvements to lightbox
- Fixes some JomSocial stream issues
- Improvements to backend
Read more: Kunena 3.0.5 released
Discuss this article
I'm sorry but this topic is about the release of K 3.0.5. I am sure that, when someone takes the time to write some details about when K 3.1 will be released, this will be done in a different place.viper2k wrote: When will you release the new version of Kunena 3.1?
Yes (for those who use J! 3.x). For those who use J! 2.5, K 3.1 will look much the same as K 3.0 does now.viper2k wrote: Hopefully [K 3.1] comes with a more modern design and some new features.
In response to your comments about professional ticketing systems and "more templates" (which do not really have a lot to do with the announcement about the release of K 3.0.5), we are considering a range of options in relation to "paid support" but we are not in a position to provide you with those kinds of details.
There are a range of services available to you today for support, for additional Kunena templates and for a wide range of things involving Kunena. Perhaps a good place to start your search for services and templates is to look at the advertisements that appear on this website. I am sure that you will be rewarded for your efforts.
As you know, there is no company behind Kunena. Everyone who contributes to Kunena is a hobbyist, enthusiast or professional web developer who gives their time freely to this project - volunteers every one of us. The forum is provided mainly as a self-help community-driven resource for users but there is no "formal" obligation of support, necessarily. We do our best. Our job, in moderating the forum is not necessarily to answer every question but, rather, to point people in the right direction where they can find the answers. It is unfortunate (perhaps) that in this case I do not have a specific answer to the question "when will K 3.1 be released".
If you are interested in being part of the project team that is building K 3.1, and you have software coding skills that will assist the project, you might like join the GitHub community.
Will go for option (a) that you suggest as soon as I have 20 minutes or so to spare Thanks!
So you are right. The "abridged change log" for K 3.0.5 does not specifically state exactly which GitHub bug. Sorry about that. As I said, I haven't had the time lately to review what's in the Wiki. :blush:
This is really not the best topic to ask these kinds of questions. It may be better for you to go to GitHub where you can search for the information that you're looking for. If you can't find the information in GitHub, you have the following choices:
(a) upgrade to K 3.0.5 (in the normal, recommended manner) and reapply any customised changes that you specifically want (or need); or
(b) create a topic in the Custom work - not offering to pay or Miscellaneous, off-topic and general Joomla and wait for another member of this community, who has a common interest in your problem, to reply with the specific information you are looking for.
Please remember, as a courtesy to other users of this forum, to not hijack this topic further by continuing to ask about how to make out-of-the-ordinary changes to your customised installation, questions that do not apply to the majority of other members of the community. Thank you.
I'd already looked through release notes (no specific mention of where the XSS vulnerability was, other than BBCode), and through GitHub (where the latest commit has over 1400 changed files, mostly with version numbers, etc, so it was almost impossible for a GitHub newbie such as myself to find which bit was responsible for the security flaw).
I'd agree with you generally though, that if I make core hacks, on my own head be it, though in the case of urgent security alerts, which are now public due to the update, it would be really helpful for someone on the team to be able to confirm which two or three files absolutely need to be patched (and I assume it's a tiny independent change in this case, such as all the files in library/kunena/bbcode or somesuch maybe?).
If Qoppa or someone who was responsible for finding / fixing the flaw is reading this, would be great if they could just ping a quick line across letting me know if any other files are at risk or if that would do.
I don't think that in the case of small security updates, which by their nature are more urgent and important than feature releases, those who choose to embrace Kunena's flexibility and open source nature by hacking it a little bit, can not be supported, at least a little bit?
Anyway, didn't mean to start a long thread or debate over this, it was literally just a quick request for help in case a kind soul happened to have an answer to hand.
Keep up the great work Team K!
As you probably know, these kinds of announcement topics are not the best places to ask "quick questions" like those. Details about what is fixed (and how) are usually contained in the release notes and the full source codes is availabled (for those who want to get it) on GitHub.naimless wrote: Quick question - could you please confirm which files I need to patch for the BBCode XSS vulnerability?
This is an example of why we do not recommend to people that they should modify the original source code. People modify source code and then they kind of "paint themselves into a corner" and they're unable to upgrade to new versions because their highly-customised software contains so many changes that it takes a significant time to reapply them when new versions are released. However, as we have always said here, Kunena is open-source and people are free to change it as much as they like but, if they change it, they cannot expect that we will be able to help them when they do. My advice is to read the release notes (in the Wiki) to see what changes have been applied to the new version and then to go to GitHub to find the actual source code that relates to those things.naimless wrote: Have some core modifications done to Kunena (I know, it's not a good idea to hack core files) ...
Great work on the new release and security fix.
Quick question - could you please confirm which files I need to patch for the BBCode XSS vulnerability?
Have some core modifications done to Kunena (I know, it's not a good idea to hack core files) and would be great if I could just copy those files across without having to patch the other core files again with my modifiations.
Thanks!
"For this reason it is advisable that you first test K 3.0.4 on a test site before you upgrade your live production site(s)."
Should be 3.0.5, I assume.
Good work to all the volunteers who keep the prject moving on the back end and to the mod team who keeps all of us "dumb users" functioning!
Kunena 3.0.4 released
- Details
Introduction
Kunena 3.0.4 [K 3.0.4] is available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 2.5 and J! 3.x. K 3.0.4 is a maintenance release for Kunena that addresses several issues that have been reported since the last version release. The Kunena team advises that this version supersedes, and should be used in place of, all previous versions of K 3.0.
This version of Kunena coincides with the simultaneous release of an updated language pack, downloaded separately, for deployment on non-English websites. The release of this version does not not coincide with the release of other Kunena Add-ons that have not been updated at this time and that may or may not be updated for this version.
In general, Kunena Add-ons designed for previous versions of K 3.x should interoperate with this version of Kunena; in general, Kunena Add-ons designed for older major versions of Kunena will not interoperate with this version of Kunena.
The summary of important changes in K 3.0.4 are:
- Improvements to online user counts
- Fixes to pagination issues
- Improvements to avoid timeouts when recounting forum statistics
- Minor improvements for SEO
- Allow moderators to post the duplicate the exact same message in other topics
Read more: Kunena 3.0.4 released
Discuss this article
In terms of what currently exists for the immediate future: there are no plans at this time to include [what most people commonly refer to as] WYSIWYG (i.e. TinyMCE or some other plugin) editing features as part of the core component of Kunena.
There will be no new features added to K 3.0; any future releases of K 3.0 will be confined to bugfixes.
The feature set for K 3.1 has also been defined; WYSIWYG editing features are not part of the design specification for K 3.1.
andI do think it is unfair and incorrect to say most forums have a WYSIWYG editor.
leads me to add my comments.We really like hearing all your suggestions
We are in the process of migrating from an old forums software package that my community has been using for nearly 10 years. It is running on ASP 3.0 (a late-90s tecnology). When I told them we were migrating to something "new and fresh" and promised features only avaialble in "updated technology", they were excited. The lack of a wysiwyg editor has caused an uproar, and is outshadowing every "new" feature that this Joomla!/Kunena/CB solution provides. It's like trading in your 1975 Ford Pinto for a 2014 New Soemthingorother, but not getting a radio or power windows. For them, it's unfathomable to think that "current standards" and "no wysiwyg" can be used in the same sentence.
coder4life says, "incorrect to say most forums have a WYSIWYG editor".
This chart indicates that it's about a 2:1 ratio of popular forums using some sort of wysiwyg as compared to forums who do NOT use some sort of wysiwyg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Inte...um_software#Features
Anyway... please add my vote to the list of those requesting a wysiwyg editor for posting in the Kunena forums. Even if it's just a simple tinyMCE plugin, which (from my long ago dev days) seems to be the easiest way to go about it.
please add new IFRAME code in next version of Kunena! Because FLASH code, people not can see flash videos on mobile phones!!!
NEW CODE (no flash):
OLD CODE (flash video), now no one use it:
Thank you again for your time what you spent to wite your post, and answer my question. I think we need more posts like your to understand what's behind this project.
Happy new year!
I think you are misinterpreting Sozzled post as being aggressive. I think he is trying to understand your reasoning and point of view by providing us with some examples.
As for WYSIWYG editors and the reason why we do not have one in Kunena is a much debated topic among our team. However there are facts about why we have yet to put resources into coming up with a complete solution that I will detail below.
In designing a WYSIWYG editor we have long investigated the principles of security (access, injection), format storage (bbcode vs html vs wiki vs markdown), performance (up to millions of posts), feature specific content (spoilers, hidden text, configuration report). Taking these parts into consideration we have a wide range of challenges not normally investigated in less complex forum solutions, especially those that are not directly integrating with an Open Source CMS.
We receive common questions about why WYSIWYG is not included. We had to ask ourselves several questions weighing different methods of reasoning to many of our members suggestions, recommendations, and perspective of reasoning.
Why not use Joomla editor system?
- We are not sure if the content, without some custom work and very close inspection of the Joomla codebase, if the submitted format and its contents are safe to submit, execute and store.
- The editors are usually only used by a specific set of people in your Joomla installation, and as such pose less of a security risk if something malicious were to occur. (Taking an example from Joomla fresh installations visitors do not have access to editor tools, only those [Authors, Editors, ect.] designated by ACL)
- Security issues that occur in features used by Kunena in Joomla (for example an undesired outcome of safety checks about what is being submitted) will make your Kunena installation vulnerable.
- Editors can be installed and uninstalled at the site administrator discretion, editors may not remain consistent during the lifespan of a website, as such can create inconsistency in the storage content.
- Multiple editors can be used that use different types of storage format as well as custom parsing and output display.
- Editors with different parsing methods requires us to take in consideration the possibility that multiple formats could be used per post, parsing occurs for those different formats creating performance issues with pages with hundreds of posts. (One editor can use BBCode, another could use HTML, and a third might use Wiki Syntax)
- Some features may remain absent in different editors.
- We need to handle a situation when an upgrade occurs and the format has to be modified, or changed to a new format.
Why not use a BBCode only solution?
- Does not address the ability to use Joomla functionality of multiple editors.
- Still requires us to implement all of Kunena's custom BBCode.
- Requires us to support a proper parsing scheme.
- Requires us to support across multiple browsers (this is a reason why most WYSIWYG editors still have not provided a 100% successful implementation, suffer from weird oddities, and require many hours of maintenance overhead).
I do think it is unfair and incorrect to say most forums have a WYSIWYG editor. Doing a quick search myself I see most free solutions have the same BBCode insert structure we have now. Sure there are exceptions, but to my knowledge few support a large complex WYSIWYG implementation to deal with many of the problems detailed above. I also see some provide their own solutions, but as a result disregard general reasoning about portability and customizations in regards to the wider context of how Joomla can be used. Most WYSIWYG implementations I find are part of commercial based forums that have to consider a specific set of security considerations, one storage format, and one area of performance considerations due to the one storage format.
This is not to say we do not want a WYSIWYG editor working with Kunena. On the contrary we see it as a valuable asset to making discussions move in a way people feel they should be expressed. It specifically improves having to imagine what the destination visual format is going to look like. As a designer at Kunena this is a high priority of mine that I have been investigating over the last several months. Specifically I have been looking into how we can improve the interactions using Kunena software.
Our team has discussed the various angles to the problems detailed above. We have some pretty good ideas in how to solve them, but like everything we do here we have to take careful consideration into the wider perspectives of Kunena software and priorities. We at Kunena are focused on having a solid communication platform using a forum based discussion structure.
We really like hearing all your suggestions, and we are working towards making Kunena the best it can be. We want to make sure we approach the issues behind WYSIWYG in a smart way, with the needed resources to maintain it.
...
And, when we talking about the forums, (in this case I talking about the forum solutions J! based or not, it doesn't matter) I think 99% of them using WYSIWYG editors. So I think it is not a really "extra".
You think about Kunena as J! extension (and it is true) but for most of the "fans" it is THE FORUM SOLUTION!
Sorry if I too complicated in this post, Im too tired.
PS.: Why you are so aggressive / ironic? I just asked a question. Lot of your posts are negatives. :dry:
Thank you for the feedback. We are working on a WYSIWYG editor for future version of Kunena. I do not know when this WYSIWYG editor feature will be available but, as a guess, possibly as early as middle-to-late 2014.positivnrg wrote: Every forum, component etc works with WYSIWYG.
As a matter of interest, can you provide us with the names of two forum extensions developed for J! 3.2 that use a WYSIWYG editor? Are these forum extensions commercial or non-commericial? I searched but I was not able to find any.
Now only Iframe embed-codes used in web!
NEW YOUTUBE CODE(no flash, only iframe):
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/asdasdasd123?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
OLD YOUTUBE CODE (with flash):
<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/abcdef123?version=3&hl=ru_RU&rel=0">