Alexey

Yesterday Alex T⚜️briefly announced the final release of the UNA 9. Indeed, after more than 3 years since of active development and testing; over 3 MILLION code additions in over 4000 commits; 1300 closed issues and 17 😮 pre-release versions, we finally have the stable UNA 9. 

Compared to UNA 8, this version brings hundreds of enhancements, including new modules, system improvements, new integrations, new templates, new objects, new features, etc. etc. Since we decided to make all RCs upgradable the UNA 9 has been tested quite actively by the UNA.IO community and used in production mode for all our clients working with UNA & Boonex team under X-level service plans. It is now considered a stable release, recommended for all sites powered by UNA. 

UNA Community

The v8 was released on 24th of November 2015. At the time, we haven't even launched UNA.IO site and were offering selected Boonex clients to try UNA. Later we launched UNA.IO provide community support and also use UNA ourselves, first hand, making sure that we eat our own cooking. Here's how the community grown during that period:

More importantly, we now have a core group of really dedicated community members, who committed to the platform and help us daily - asking and answering questions; trying new releases and sharing feedback; creating and uploading new apps to UNA Market; giving us hard time and praising us - all of that keeps the team rolling. 

Now, look at the numbers of discussions posted over the same time:

As you may see, we're actually entering the stage of active growth, which should further accelerate after this release. It's a very exciting, but also very challenging time. Increased popularity comes with added support overhead and information inputs. We will have to find ways to automate processes, improve documentation, streamline on-boarding and above all - make UNA even better.  

Start Guide & Demo Video

Over the last few months we committed to improvement of the UNA Documentation and development of the UNA Start Guide and the demo video, describing general aspects of UNA framework:

We highly recommend watching the video and reviewing the Start Guide even if you are familiar with the system. So many times we hear the phrase - "I didn't know I could do that" 😏.

What's Next

Why, UNA 10 of course! Yes, now that we have the 9 released, we are out of the feature-development lockout and can get back to making new awesome toys. Note, that the plan for v10 is to make it a (much) smaller update, adding some features and focusing primarily on streamlining UX (User-eXperience) of all pages. While UNA 9 gives a massive array of features, we should now make everything look and work sleek and clear. We estimate from 3 to 6 months for the 10. 

Along with the new features and modules planned for v10, we plan to finally introduce first working version of JOT as well as native mobile apps (iOS and Android) based on ReactNative for UNA. 

Naturally, service updates like 9.1, 9.2 may be released as required in the meantime, addressing any urgent fixes or security issues. 

Another consideration for us is the commitment to the old Dolphin 7.x updates for Boonex. An update is long overdue and the Boonex community has been suffering without an update for quite a while now. Even though Dolphin will eventually be fully transitioned to UNA-based solution, we still plan to maintain and update the 7.x until we can provide a seamless migration path. So, this will take some time, but we have ideas on how to make both platforms benefit from each other's development. 

Let's give them names!

Look, UNA 8 was pretty much just a "first look" version, while UNA 9 is what you could refer to as the "base". Now, UNA 10 will be about making everything "neat". Then, UNA 11 will be "fast". Then, perhaps "safe", "cool", you name it...

Actually, I mean it - you name it. What do you think would be a good set of names for UNA updates to distinguish between releases? Names of animals from same genus, some fictional characters from books or movies, or perhaps mythical heroes? What do you think would fit?

After 

- 3 years of development

- 17 versions

- 1300 fixed issues 

- 4000 commits

- 22000 changes files

- 3000000 source code additions 

UNA 9.0.0 is ready 

Hello everybody.

We start this thread to notify you about all new Apps and Apps' updates.
Feel free to check it from time to time and may be you'll find something interesting and useful for you. :)

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Best Regards
AQB Soft Team

Finally, we have the v9 package with all the planned improvements in place. From this point and up to the final release we will not be adding any new features, concentrating on making everything 100% production-ready, fixing any problematic issues and improving performance. In other words, the final v9 release is coming very soon!

UNA 9.0.0 RC-1

If you're running a Beta5 and have automatic updates turned on, the RC-1 will be applied to your site automagically. 

Geeks among you may jump right to the UNA release page at Github for the downloadable packages and referenced list of changes.

The v9rc adds a long list of improvements, including some very exciting and substantial new features, apps, core updates, and fixes. I've made a short video to highlight just a few that are easy to show, but please make sure to examine the whole list of changes below to get the whole picture. 

New apps

 "Jot Messenger" module

"Decorous" template 

"ElasticSearch" module 

"Dolphin Connect" module 

"Shopify" integration module 

"Snipcart" integration module 

System enhancements

Extended search feature to allow to make custom search forms integrated into Forms Builder 

Statistics charts 

Member menu redesign and reorganization 

Notifications cards in real-time 

Automatic real-time updates for notification counters 

Allow multiple login sessions for one profile 

Page load optimization 

"Subscribe" was renamed to "Follow" 

Iframely integration 

Content Info engine 

When users became friends, they are following each other now 

PHP 7.1 compatibility 

"Powered by" link in footer menu 

Different Dashboard page layout 

Compact view for social login buttons 

"Add to mobile homepage" widget 

Localized modules names 

"Receive Newsletters" field was added on join form by default 

Unique HTML IDs for pages 

Twitter cards support 

Links detection in regular text fields 

Allow passing UNA key&secret during install from command line 

Option to specify default profile module to redirect to after join 

Operator can not delete their own profile anymore 

Auto-generated documentation restructurisation 

Forms: allow to specify up to 63 values in multiple select fields 

Forms: functionality to mark field as unique in Forms Builder 

Forms: flag for predefined lists to disable adding new items 

Forms: make date fields to work properly with dates before 1970 

Forms: make editable 'visibility' and 'location' fields in different modules 

Grids: search optimization and fixes 

Studio: apps market improvements 

Studio: search in Storefront 

Modules enhancements

Persons/Orgs/Events/Groups: comments block (disabled by default) 

Persons/Organizations: "location" field 

Persons/Organizations: action to delete account with content from profile 

Persons/Organizations: different redirect options after profile creation 

Persons/Organizations: show who follows you and who you are following 

Events/Groups: option to specify searchable fields 

Events/Groups: separate block with admins 

Events/Groups: TinyMCE area for "description" fields 

Timeline: improvements to make work similar to other social networks 

Notifications: module restructurization 

Contact: option  to send messages from sender's email on "Contact Us" form 

Discussions: show main post time 

Discussions: search in comments 

Discussions: new design for attachments 

Market: associated products 

Payments: Subscriptions management for site admin 

Antispam: checking for disposable email domains 

Connect modules: option to set default privacy for created profiles 

OAuth2: "password" grant type for  API requests 

OAuth2: don't suggest to select profile when there is one profile only 

Developer: allow to edit/delete menu items 

Paid Levels: allow to add zero price level, so members can switch for free to some particular level 

Most important fixes

Fixes in Payments routine 

Fixing privacy checking in comments 

Timeline outline block in groups/event wasn't displayed 

Popup wasn't positioned properly sometimes 

Problem with dollar($) sign escaping was fixed 

When script was installed from command line system files weren't hashed 

Free products weren't downloadable 

Unconfirmed member level wasn't always correctly detected 

Files module couldn't be downloaded via Studio Storefront 

What's Next

Getting to this RC stage is a critical point for the entire UNA project. We had to hold off with documentation updates, tutorials and some of the provisioning changes until we have the feature final package. Now we can let things happen a lot faster, a lot more often and you'll be reading, watching, listening to something from us very frequently now. 

Stay tuned!