2016 New Year vacation

Hi all!

We’ll be out of facilities until Monday January 4 to take a well-deserved yet short vacation.

On January 5 we’ll have a new beta for you to keep you busy for the following week. So anticipate the new things to come!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everybody!

Oxwall team

IMPORTANT: Security notice for oxwall.org users

We have reasons to believe that some user data on oxwall.org might have been compromised by a malicious third party through WordPress software. Right now the problem has been eliminated and security measured taken, however everyone on oxwall.org also needs to co-operate to stay safe.

  1. We strongly advise all Oxwall.org users to change their password;
  2. Developers and designers who have items in the Oxwall Store are also STRONGLY ADVISED to check their items’ data to be correct, including financial settings.

We will be monitoring website activity closely to prevent this from happening again and we appreciate your understanding.

Thanks,
Oxwall team

P.S. Yes, you NEED to go change your password, like, right now.

Dev Diary: Admin Panel Changes

Greetings and welcome back to the Dev Diary!

Last time around Emil was kind enough to walk the community through Oxwall’s general plans for the year (check it out if you need a refresher), and of course everyone is now clamoring the details. Well, that’s what Dev Diary is for, so let’s get right down to business. Today we’ll take a look at the Admin Panel and what we’ve been doing to it lately.

Navigation

One of the things that bothered us for a while in regards to the current Admin Panel is rather obvious – a lot of space is used irrationally, including –

  • notifications cluttering up the top of every page;
  • a multi-level horizontal menu absorbing quite an area;
  • gradual accumulation of system settings (sometimes found in unexpected or not obvious places).

Apart from the visual aesthetics problem, the aforementioned issues can potentially disorient you or negatively impact your performance.

Oxwall Navigation

To fix that and optimize your work we decided to create a more user-friendly environment right in the heart of your site. To do so we’ll introduce a new vertical menu, and also restructure the settings. This allowed us to move all notification to the console and bunch them up under a single icon. Now you can access all available updates or necessary system settings at any moment on any page.

Oxwall NavigationDashboard

It’s been our goal for a while now to give all admins some sort of work areas. Think individual space to shape it up to your liking, where you can manage all the necessary site information in the most accessible form.

That idea was implemented as Admin Dashboard – a widget page with purpose-built stat tools like User Statistics (Registrations, Online), Content Statistics, Moderation Tools, etc. Most of the data is supplemented with accompanying graphs for your convenience. Meanwhile, third-party developers will be welcome to introduce their own Admin Dashboard widgets.

Oxwall DashboardResponsive

Finally, the next ambitious step we took was the adptation of the current Admin Panel for the work on tablets. Without giving too much away, we can reveal that this segment is indeed important for us, and we are already hard at work on a brand new responsive theme. That, however, is a topic for an entirely new Dev Diary post.

Subscribe to our social media feeds and never miss an announcement. See you next time!

 

Oxwall 2015

Hey everybody,

The year is off to a fast start, and January is already past without you realizing it. So it’s high time we shared our plans for 2015.

Before, let’s talk about our priorities. We have to choose wisely where to apply our effort, and here’s how we look at it. There are things that can grow to take care of themselves in the community (like any particular plugins, themes, translations and utilities) and those that require our full attention (like general direction, standards and critical platform functionality). Thus, for the next big iteration of the product (and the project) we identified key directions and objectives for this year.

CMS, interface changes

Content management has always been an underdeveloped part of Oxwall. We’ve been busy with making Oxwall better in social aspects (it’s a social network product after all), but because of that some basic tools that any website requires (like CMS) went overlooked. Having received fair criticism for that, we’ve developed our vision for content management in Oxwall’s next iteration. Together with that we refine existing interfaces and rethink some basic assumptions in the product, and how they match real life usage patterns.

This is going to be a series of releases spreading the new paradigm across the product and leaving plenty of time for user and developer adoption. Details will be gradually introduced in our Dev Diary column and beta release announcements.

Mobile

Pocket version of Oxwall has been around for some time but it still lacks important features. We will be working on that front since a lot of people now use phones instead of desktops/tablets, even if Oxwall is not especially accommodating for that. We laid solid foundation for the small screen version of Oxwall but haven’t been active on feature development side yet. This will change.

To reiterate, we think that the “pocket” version of Oxwall (the one adapted for phones) differs from the desktop/tablet primarily by usage patterns, let alone obvious input/output characteristics. That’s why we made a decision to essentially build two products instead of one, so now we have to catch up in the mobile part.

Documentation, test coverage

More news coming to the Oxwall developers camp. This year we finally start covering code with tests and we’ll be working on better documentation. Right now third party developers mostly rely on the existing plugins to build their own ones. To create systematic approach to developing plugins we have to step up our game in the essential technical aspects. These works are to be launched together with the new development cycle.

All in all, we are looking into a very busy year of creating value for users and grow Oxwall as the product and the project. Although we are a small team and our capabilities are limited, we expect 2015 to be the year of making the biggest difference for users in a long time. Thanks for creating with us!

Oxwall team

Happy New Year from Oxwall Team and Holidays Schedule

Dear friends,

The New Year is right upon us, and it gives us enormous pleasure and a sense of pride when we look back at 2014. A lot was achieved, and what you see is only the tip of the iceberg. Major internal shifts laid the foundation for much needed improved operation.

Still, the year was quite productive, and set us on the right path towards even bigger, better, and more organized future ahead. Here’s just a glimpse of what to expect in 2015.

Right now we want to take a short but much needed break from work – our support will be limited from December 31 to January 5. Hope you do the same, and get some energy needed for a robust 2015.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Dev Diary, October 2, 2014

Wanna know what’s cooking here at Oxwall? You are in luck, since we’ve got a fresh serving of latest news from the dev kitchen!

Oxwall 1.7.2

With the upcoming update we are taking an aim at Content Moderation. For quite sometime we’ve been looking for an opportunity to fix/improve the current flagging system (that was begging for an overhaul), and we finally found enough time to do just that.

The new user-friendly interface will be more intuitive, and allow to flag Users, Comments, Events, as well as Newsfeed status updates.screenshot1

The option for the Admin to appoint Moderators for each type of content will remain in place.

Welcome to the Family

In unrelated news – let’s welcome a new major addition to the grand family of third-party plugins available in the Oxwall Store. That’s right, our cooperation with TopCMM bore fruit in the form of 123 Flash Chat plugin. So, if you ever wanted to add a live chat room to your site or play around with PPM/PPV, you’ve got it now. Proceed to the Oxwall Store to learn more and download the plugin now. Take this announcement as our seal of approval.

screenshot2

Looking Ahead

Now that monumental work (that takes ages to release) is out of the way, things should fall back into a more regular and familiar pace. Nevertheless, even more great stuff is coming your way, as we have some ambitious plans for the short and long term futures. Watch this space for announcements and dev reports, since the next year and a half are shaping up to be quite exciting. Here’s why:

– Admin Panel Improvement;
– Content Management System Introduction;
– Default Theme Reimagining;
– Mobile Version Enhancement;
– User Interface Facelift;

There’s likely more stuff, and that’s quite a full plate, isn’t it? Still, our team is always excited and passionate about continuously improving the product, but only if the changes are consistent, healthy and gradually introduced.

Well, ‘till next time, when we’ll take a more detailed look at some of the things in our plan. In the meantime, subscribe to our updates on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to never miss an announcement.

Cheers,
Oxwall Foundation Team

Oxwall 1.7.1 is out

Oxwall 1.7.1 is available for download immediately. All details about this release can be found here.

Important: If you are running Oxwall of any previous version, you are encouraged to wait until the auto-update prompt appears in your admin area. Before you attempt it, make sure to:

  • Back up your website. Seriously, folks, better safe than sorry;
  • Install all available plugin updates right after the platform update completes;
  • Install a theme update right after the platform update completes.

If you don’t want to perform the update yourself, our friends from Skalfa can do it for you. Also, check other companies specializing in Oxwall support.

Thanks,

Emil & the Oxwall team.

Nominate Oxwall for People’s Choice CMS Awards

Hi guys!

We hope you are enjoying the summer (as well as our latest release), and have some free time on your hands. Feel like giving us a small pat on the back for all the work we put into the project? Here’s your chance.

The nominations for the annual People’s Choice CMS Awards are open until August 15, and we need a little help from you to get to the finals. We already claimed the accolades for Best Social Network Solution in the past, and it’d be nice to repeat that.

So here’s where you come in –

  • Go to People’s Choice CMS Awards nomination form;
  • Enter your name and email;
  • Enter “Oxwall” as the product name;
  • Tick off the “Best Social Networking Solution” “Best Free PHP CMS” and “Best Open Source PHP CMS” categories;
  • Give an example of when you’ve used Oxwall or list URLs of sites you’ve created with it.

And that’s it. The process is free and takes only a couple of minutes, but it gives us an enormous confidence boost, confirming that we are moving in the right direction.

Thanks,
Emil
Oxwall Foundation

Dev Diary, February 21, 2014

Ah, the last breathes of winter… It’s getting warmer, so the life’s good, and that’s exactly the attitude that boosts our strive to get a few more ideas through to the next release. One such idea is the improvement of the Photos plugin – a real essential toy in the arsenal of any serious social site. Our goal here is to fix all the obvious bugs and add some exciting options to make users happier.

As you know, at present the plugin operates by means of either basic uploader, or through flash upload. And frankly, both are dated. The flash one cannot be customized in css/html, and requires an additional plugin in the browser. Sometimes this leads to unnecessary confusion, and that’s what we want to eliminate.

The solution – a photo uploader that uses native browser capabilities and doesn’t require additional browser extensions. Also, it’s easily customizable in css/html, maintains drag’n’drop interface, and allows quick editing at the very first step (rotate, hashtags, album name, etc.)

Photo1

 VIEW PHOTOS

One of the things we learned with the old system is that most users find comments under pictures inconvenient. When the page is scrolled down for more comments, the picture itself gets out of sight, and is basically “lost.”

An easy solution to prevent this is to move comments and description to the right side of the picture. That’s the trend across the industry anyway, and seems to be the right approach for us. Still, we are leaving the old system as an available option as well, so you can choose what’s working better for you.

Untitled-1

 PHOTO LIST

We’ve also decided to play with the visual presentation of the photo list, which was kind of boring (being strictly square and all). The addition of a Pinterest-like mode should spice things up a bit, don’t you think?

Untitled-2

SEARCH PHOTOS

There are no search options for photos in Oxwall right now, which isn’t handy, since users resort to tags when they are looking for something. We’ll change that by making it possible to search by descriptions, usernames and hash tags.

Capture4

So that’s the gist of things to come. But there’s even more interface stuff that we are tinkering with right now. Liking and varying privacy settings for different photo albums are on the plate too, and will be ready to be served with Oxwall 1.6.1, or soon thereafter.

Keep reading our Dev Diary guys, and learn what else keeps us busy.

Vote for Oxwall at 2013 Critic’s Choice CMS Awards

We are busy with Oxwall 1.6, we just gave developers enough material to be busy with, and now we have an idea what the rest of the community could do.

Oxwall has been nominated for the Critic’s Choice CMS Awards again this year. I’ll remind you that in 2012 Oxwall won People Choice award in the Best Social Network Solution category, thanks to you.

So, if you want to vote for Oxwall this year again, here’s how to do it:

  1. Go to Critic’s Choice CMS Awards homepage;
  2. Enter your name and email;
  3. In the Best Social Network Solution category (last on the form) choose Oxwall and submit.

It’s the fastest and easiest way to show your appreciation for our hard work, while we fight for your convenience. With Oxwall 1.6 we are aiming to repeat and exceed the impact of Oxwall 1.5 last year, so now you can do it, too.

Thank you,
Emil Sarnogoev & the Oxwall Foundation team