iForum

Roadmap on github

As a temporary link, the roadmap for the next few releases can be found here : Milestones - ImpressCMS/impresscms (github.com)

This is a temporary measure, as I try to get a better integration with Github into the site, and we will need to apply the versions more rigorously to the tickets that we have. But it's a start (and every begin is difficult).

Topic | Forum


Moving translations from Transifex to Crowdin

The nice people on Crowdin have provided us with our very own server to manage our translations, and the feedback up until now is that the crowdin translation instance is easier to use, certainly for casual translators that come by once in a while for a few lines.

I have started the migration from Transifex to crowdin for all the translations in the different languages that we have, because it is a waste of time to do those translations from scratch every time. 

If you are curious, the ImpressCMS Crowdin project is available here : Impresscms · Crowdin 

Topic | Forum


Anyone on Discord?

Many open source communities are available on Discord, with IRC losing more and more users. So I figured I give it a shot. If anyone is on discord and wants to contact me, let me know via PM and I'll share my ID.



Re: iForum functionalities - how does your dream forum module looks like?

Similar to your description - I've been trying to emulate what others are already accustomed to having with Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Google Chat/Hangouts/Rooms, and Microsoft Teams. A general feed or stream for everyone and other rooms or groups or chats that have varying levels of privacy.

Steve Twitter: @skenow Facebook: Steve Kenow



Re: iForum functionalities - how does your dream forum module looks like?

I have been looking around a bit toward the main community forum products such as Invision (formerly IPB). I think we can offer more or less the same functionality they do with a combination of ImpressCMS core, the profile module (with some tweaks, it's a bit old-fashioned and is stil mentioning ICQ and AOL accounts, go figure ), and iForum. 

The major functionality that we are still missing is the login options : Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft. I believe Oauth2 login could cover the majority of those. But that's a touchy area, as it is very security-sensitive.

iForum will need to be refactored in a major way to get rid of all the duplication with the core and potentially other modules. There is no escaping that sadly

In this stage, I will try for an easy integration and a nice and clean way to get a turnkey solution available for a forum on ImpressCMS. That includes a theme as well.

Suggestions and help are of course always welcome.  



Re: Hosting providers

That's interesting to know. Versio (a Dutch/Belgian provider) switched almost 2 years ago from Installatron to the softaculous integration inside DirectAdmin, which is the admin panel they use. The reason they gave was that installatron was too behind with updates. 

Both Installatron and Softaculous mention on their site that they have integration with Plesk. But perhaps there are other such scripts for plex that I don't know about. Probably even



Re: Hosting providers

The different providers I have worked with recently are using Plesk for their site administration and they have a different platform for installs. They do provide upgrade packages for applications you have installed.

MediaTemple (Plesk)

Ionos (Plesk)

Steve Twitter: @skenow Facebook: Steve Kenow



iForum functionalities - how does your dream forum module looks like?

Hi, 

iForum is long overdue for some technical overhaul, and while doing so, I would like to remove functionality that is not widely used, or not considered really necessary. If it appears that that functionality is useful after all, it can be added later. I'm thinking about the digest functionality, which I've never used until now for example.

What does your perfect forum look like? Please be as specific as possible, 'it works smoothly' is very dependent from your point of  view, and almost certainly will differ from what I consider smooth or easy to use



Hosting providers

There are many hosting providers, so what hosting are you using and what is your experience running ImpressCMS on that host? Does the hosting option provide easy install options (like Softaculous)? I will update this list with the information that comes in.

Date Hosting Company Country

ImpressCMS Specific Setup?

 Easy Install Type
28/07/2021 Versio.nl Belgium/Netherlands No Softaculous Shared Hosting
28/07/2021 Siteground.com Worldwide No Not anymore Shared Hosting

 



Hosting options

Currently our site is hosted on Siteground hosting, but unfortunately they did  major upgrade recently which removed their support for Softaculous. As you may know, ImpressCMS is available on softaculous for (even yèt) easier installation and upgrades, and so we needed to upload all files ourselves and short-circuit our Softaculous installation.

My other hosting provider also has Softaculous, but due to a misconfiguration on their part, I need to intervene manually in order to get a first install working. Bummer.

I would love to have DigitalOcean, AWS or Azure (or other services) easy to install available but I'm not using any of those at the moment so I don't now what would be the best to focus on to get working. Vanilla Docker Compose perhaps?



Re: Should we offer a way to disable FLoC

Looks like Google was taken aback by the many and strong negative comments they received. Introduction is now delayed until 2023 (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-delays-floc-rollout-until-2023/). And in internet time, 2 years is an eternity.

It is a fact that the internet has become a privacy nightmare (and the ever-present cookie-banners in Europe aren't really helping, just annoying the users), but a proposal by the largest ad vendor will always be regarded with a dose of suspicion. I'm curious to see what will come next.



Re: Should we offer a way to disable FLoC

A privacy concern, for sure. With GDPR and other privacy laws, I am curious how Google intends to maintain compliance.

Steve Twitter: @skenow Facebook: Steve Kenow



Should we offer a way to disable FLoC

Google will phase out third-party cookies in their Chrome browser, which is used by the majority of web users. Google is and remains a advertisement company, so they offered to put in place an alternative that they consider better for privacy, but would still give advertisers information about the current users, they call it FLoC. I won't go too much into detail here, but instead of having your profile stored on the servers of Ad providers, you create your own profile locally, and that profile can be queries with a specific API. So potentially (depending on the implementation) the browsers harvests user data from the sites you visit, independently from the services that might be used on those websites.

Backlash has started now on the internet, with several browsers saying they will not support FLoC, but also Wordpress has entered in the mix, stating that they consider FLoC a security risk, and that Wordpress will contain code that will tell the browser the do not want FLoC data : Proposal: Treat FLoC like a security concern – Make WordPress Core

ImpressCMS aims to be as secure as possible, do you think this would be an option we should have somewhere in the ACP?



Re: New installation page for ImpressCMS v2

A new version of the page is live, with the fast installation rewritten. We now do everything using composer.



Ideas for Swag requested

We have a program running on HackerOne, and one of the recurring questions is if the hackers there can be compensated for their efforts. As an open source project without a company financially backing us, I don't think offering payment is an option. I was thinking more about t-shirts or other funny/nice gadgets with ImpressCMS branding.

The hackers at hackerone have done a great job, and certainly in the beginning stage, I would like to thank them all with a little something.

The problem I have encountered is that the costs could become astronomically high if we would handle the sending around the world by ourselves. I made a quick check : sending a t-shirt (worth 8-10€) to India for example, would cost me 56€.

Talking with @Mekdrop we discussed drop-shipping services, because those services would take the sending of the items on their account (which would be less of a headache to handle for us as well). However, not all of those services allow for your own things to be printed or created.

I would like to hear experience with drop-shipping services, and also other options we migh not have thought about.



Re: ImpressCMS 1.4.2 is released!

And the Softaculous build has been updated to 1.4.2 as well here. No easier way to give ImpressCMS 1.4.2 a spin if your hosting provider offers Softaculous support!



Re: ImpressCMS 1.4.2 Release Candidate is released

The RC has become a final release - see the news and download!

Steve Twitter: @skenow Facebook: Steve Kenow



ImpressCMS 1.4.2 Release Candidate is released

Hi,

I just released ImpressCMS 1.4.2 RC. Lots of small bugfixes, most of them security-related. Please have a look and see if it works on your system in your situation. Any bugs? post them on Github, or you can add them here in this forum post as well

Release 1.4.2 Release Candidate · ImpressCMS/impresscms (github.com)



Re: Reporting issues

Just to make it abundantly clear : from now on, all security-related reports should be logged on Hackerone. The other form will be deactivated.



Happy Thanksgiving, 2020!

This year has been challenging, to say the least. People all around the world are having their predictable lives become very unpredictable. Things change every day. Health care systems and workers are being stretched thin to provide care to a growing number of people. Families are being isolated and separated.

In the past year, we've released 1.4.0 and 1.4.1, along with 1.3.12 and 3 more test releases of 2.0.

Thank you all! Stay safe!

Steve Twitter: @skenow Facebook: Steve Kenow




 Top