This is a further bugfix release in the 2.5-branch with a new feature and a few enhancements. The minimal PHP version the forum is able to run is PHP 7.3, the maximal (tested) PHP version is 8.1.5. The minimal version of MLF from one can start an upgrade is version 2.4.19.1.

Features

• The upload function for images got a new file type: WebP. This was a feature request in the project forum. The image type has a far better compression and a better image quality at the same time as the image type JPEG.

Changes

• Separate the signature block from the posting in the HTML-structure. That way the posting block has a separate floating context. That leads to the situation, that possibly existing floating content in the entry does not affect the position of the signature. The signature will always be displayed under the complete content of the entry.
• Rewrite the CSS-rulesets for the usermenu, the options menu for every single entry and the button rows for classifying an entry as ham or as spam. Make the menus responsive and mobile aware.

Fixes

• Removed last occurences of the use of the outdated column mlf2_entries.email_notification. The column was removed with version 2.4.14 in the update script but left over in the installation script until version 2.4.22. This was after the split of the 2.5 development branch and so it remained here until now.
• Initialise a possibly empty search box input, because the lack of the initialisation led to a PHP warning. See this thread in the project forum for more context.
• When classifying old entries in locked threads as ham, it happened often, that the thread got unlocked. Locked entries should remain locked now in most cases. There is an edge case I was not able to hunting down until now, so that it remains for now.
• In the installation script as well as in the update script there was SQL-code, that led to doubled UNIQUE keys for mlf2_userdata.user_name and mlf2_userdata.user_email. The code, that doubles the keys was removed and the update script checks in this version for the obsolete keys and removes them.

The release 20220803.1 is equivalent to version 2.5.4 in the old version number scheme.

This is a further bugfix release in the 2.5-branch with a few new small features. The minimal PHP version the forum is able to run is PHP 7.3, the maximal (tested) PHP version is 8.1.5. The minimal version of MLF from one can start an upgrade is version 2.4.19.1.

Features

• Because of the new spam detection system B8, introduced with version 20220508.1 forum teams need to classify the entries in a forum as ham or spam, if this system is active. It is necessary, to perform both of the classifications to train the system with content of good and bad entries. To make it possible to identify unclassified entries without opening every single entry, we introduce a new icon with an eye to show the unclassfied status. The icon will be displayed behind the subject of an entry in the thread tree on the index pages (thread listings) and in the thread tree below an entry in the single-entry-view.
• The HTML-structure and CSS-rules for the main section of the forum pages got bit of a lifting. This is an ongoing task and far from done.

Fixes

• When deleting a user account, the script removes the user-ID of the user from her/his forum entries and places the name to the entries as tose were written by an unregistered user. Beside of that the references to the user-ID will be removed from the user data table itself as well as from the user data cache table, the bookmarks table and read-status table. In old installations it was possible to get notified about replies when one was the author of an entry with a flag in the dataset of the entry in the entries table. With setting the column email_notification of the entries that was authored by the user that should get deleted to 0, orphaned notification tasks for old forum entries should get prevented.

The release 20220529.1 is equivalent to version 2.5.3 in the old version number scheme.

This is a further bugfix release in the 2.5-branch. The minimal PHP version the forum is able to run is PHP 7.3, the maximal (tested) PHP version is 8.1.5. The minimal version of MLF from one can start an upgrade is version 2.4.19.1.

Fixes

• the feature inactivity notification sent an unlimited number of e-mails, what caused the project domain to get blacklisted; to prevent this for external forum operators, the number of e-mails is now limited to 5 per daily action
• because of the fixed height of the page header the user menu was inaccessible on narrow viewports since the change from XHTML 1.0 to HTML (5)
• the column mlf2_userdata.user_email was to large for using an index with charset utf8mb4 on MySQL 5.5 and 5.6, reset it to charset utf8 (3 byte chars only)

The release 20220517.1 is equivalent to version 2.5.2 in the old version number scheme.

This is a first bugfix release in the 2.5-branch. The minimal PHP version the forum is able to run is PHP 7.3, the maximal (tested) PHP version is 8.1.5. The minimal version of MLF from one can start an upgrade is version 2.4.19.1.

In the release 20220508.1, that was released yesterday, a bug remained that I fixed only locally during testing but forgot to add to the repository and the release. This bug got fixed by @prbt2016. He also came across the (in the release) unfixed bug and provided a pull request within a few hours (#597). Thank you for your attention and your help. The bug in itself affects only the update script.

While working on the new release I harvested a few really low hanging fruits. One in a translation that affected six language files (because of being untranslated strings). The others are a few CSS- and HTML-issues.

Features

• stick the page footer to the bottom of the viewport with the help of a CSS-flexbox

Changes

• removed CSS-fixes for Internet Explorers 6 and 7 (RIP)
• replaced main block elements (<div>) in the page structure with semantic HTML-elements (<header>, <nav>, <main> and <footer>)

Fixes

• a syntax error that prevented the update script from working (the previously mentioned PR #597)
• a wrong used English word (a IMHO typical false friend for native German speakers)

The release 20220509.1 is equivalent to version 2.5.1 in the old version number scheme.

This is a new major release that makes My Little Forum 2 (MLF) compatible with PHP up to version 8.1. The minimal PHP version the forum is able to run is PHP 7.3. The minimal version of MLF from one can start an upgrade is version 2.4.19.1.

We changed the format of the version number to a scheme that uses the current date and a consecutive number after a point. The new version 20220508.1 is a par with version 2.5 in the classic version numbering scheme.

Please take into account to upload the files config/VERSION and update/update_2.4.19.1-2.5.php in the very first step and start the update process from the admin interface afterwards. It's common that you will see two links to update scripts in the admin interface (update_2.3.5-2.4.php and the new update_2.4.19.1-2.5.php). Use the script update_2.4.19.1-2.5.php for the current upgrade. You can remove the content of the directory update if the upgrade succeeded.

Features

• image upload management page in the admin area, list all uploaded images, delete images groupwise
• information about the user who uploads a new image gets stored in a database table
• Bayes based spam filter
• introduce PHPMailer class as optional replacement for the PHPs own function mail, has to be cofigured in the file config/php_mailer.php
• optional TeX support through MathJax library (has to be linked and activated manually)
• restrict access to the user list to the forum team (administrators and moderators)
• allow topics to be pinned/sticked to the certain category or to all categories
• change the charset of most of the tables to support 4-byte-characters, i.e. for using emojis
• provide a forum wide setting to store a target name for breaking out of a frame or iframe (possible values are _self, _parent, _top or a given name of a target frame)
• add BB-codes for marking text as right-to-left or as left-to-right written
• unify the HTML-structure for a user name to make it possible to style the HTML-element of the user name in every place with the same CSS-rules
• provide a user setting to make it possible for users to open links in a forum entry in a new browser window or tab
• request a reaction of an inactive user after a given time of inactivity and delete the account after an additional waiting time when there was no reaction
• provide a back-to-top-link on every page and every single forum entry

Removals

• optional TeX support through the Google online service, service got abandoned
• flash button and flash bb-code
• forum-scripts own backup funtionality, please use an external solution like for example phpMyAdmin
• the files js/admin.js and js/admin.min.js
• the directory includes/classes with its only content Backup.class.php

Changes

• the quote-message-link is now a button
• new language file for Traditional Chinese
• upgrade of many of the external modules, where one was available
• overhaul of the swedish language file
• removed the compatibility to ancient browsers down to IE6 from the JavaScript sources

Fixes

• replaced several functions and language constructs, that was removed or got deprecated with PHP 8 and PHP 8.1
• unify mail encoding, was different depending of the checked characters
• added a CSRF-token to posting delete function calls
• absolute URLs for images in the RSS-feeds, relative pathes in the src-attribute of images in the RSS feed made them inaccessible in the feed
• show spam entries in the thread tree not for authors of spammy postings
• database table columns for user names and e-mail-addresses are set to be unique to prevent the use of similar user names (in the meaning of the MySQL-database-system) or the double use of e-mail-addresses

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Attention

Because of a silly copy'n'paste error the list of files to update mentions two wrong file names. This affects only forum operators who upgrade the software from an earlier version. New installations are not affected.

• wrong: themes/default/style.tpl => correct: themes/default/style.css
• wrong: themes/default/style.min.tpl => correct: themes/default/style.min.css

Fixes

• fixed wrong formatting of the link for a threads own RSS-feed again, got broken by a change in the previous release
• fixed the formatting of the back-to-top-links in the options menu of an entry, lowercase is not correct for every language

Featurette

• added classes mentioning the user type in the thread tree below an entry in the single-entry-view

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed wrong formatting of the link for a threads own RSS-feed, got broken by a change in the previous release
• fixed the non-English and non-German strings for the to-top-of-page-links, they had a broken comment part

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed the broken backup restoring function for the entries table, rework of the backup function for better code readability
• fixed the insufficient file size computation for the list of backup files; very small file sizes (up to a few hundred bytes) was shown as "0.00 MB" instead i.e. "0.0006 MB"
• fixed deprecation warnings that occurs since PHP 7.2, removed function each() in while loops, replaced the construct with foreach()
• fixed a wrong key name for the error message in admin area about a provided but incorrect e-mail-address

Features and featurettes

• added links to top of the page in the page footer and in the options menu of every entry
• added a backup function for subscriptions and tags
• added the natural sorting of the tag list, makes sorting of tags case insensitive

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed the regular expression for checking the syntax of an e-mail-address to be compatible with PRCE2 and so also with PHP 7.3 and newer, the old PRCE1-compatible syntax prevented new user registrations when the forum software runs under PHP 7.3.x or newer
• fixed the image source paths from within forum entries, when provided as a RSS-feed, output of images was broken because of invalid paths to the image sources

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.4.19.1 upwards!

This is a testing version. Please do not use it in production.

Fixes

• when an entry was classified as spam, the author was able to see other as spam classified entries, this is a feature for admins and mods only
• the new tables was not included into the drop-table-functionality in the uninstallation function

Removals

• the old update script update_2.3.5-2.4.php got removed because it led to confusion when starting the update process

Included changes of version 2.4.99.2

Features

• The listing of spam entries for forum team members is part of the main view and not a possible view in the search results page from now on. So you'll have the manipulation functions of the main view also for the listed spam entries.
• A registered user can decide for whom se/he is contactable about the forums e-mail-based contact function.
• The forum is now able to send e-mails via a SMTP-function. That's currently a proof of concept and the configuration is located in config/php_mailer.php but not accessible in the admin area.
• The forum operator can decide if registered and unregistered users should be able to add tags to postings.

Changes

• All database tables are of type InnoDB from now on.
• After storing an entry after it's creation that was classified as possible spam we generally redirect to the single posting view to show a message about the situation.
• several database columns got a smaller size. This is because they should store UTF-8 with four bytes and have an index at the same time. The indexes for text fields istself are limited in their size what limits the possible size of the text fields. We limited the sizes of the columns mlf2_userdata.user_name, mlf2_tags.tag, mlf2_b8_wordlist.token to 128 characters.
• Send the notification e-mails only, if the entry was classified as ham (not as possible spam).

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.4.19.1 upwards!

This is a testing version. Please do not use it in production.

Features

• upload management page in the admin area, list all uploaded images, delete images groupwise
• information about the user who uploads a new image gets stored in a database table
• Bayes based spam filter
• optional TeX support through MathJax library (has to be linked manually)
• restrict access to the user list to the forum team (administrators and moderators)
• allow topics to be pinned/sticked to the certain category or to all categories
• change the charset of most of the tables to support 4-byte-characters, i.e. emojis

Changes

• the quote-message-link is now a button

Fixes

• replace while loops with deprecated PHP-function "each" with foreach loops
• unify mail encoding, was different depending of the checked characters, is now the encoding given by the language file
• added a CSRF-token to posting delete function calls
• relative pathes in the src-attribute of images in the RSS feed made the images inaccessible in the feed

Removals

• optional TeX support through the Google online service, service got abandoned
• flash button and its bb-code

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed a call for a removed function in the JS-code for the admin area
• fixed inconsistent detection of mail encoding, depended on an input string and could therefore result in wrong encoding, now it is fixed to the encoding, that is provided in the language file (normally UTF-8)
• fixed a security issue because of a missing CSRF-token in some cases of deleting postings

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed: because of a check for an invalid array structure the forum responded every when and then with white pages (browser dependent), HTTP-status 500 or a PHP-warning about an undefined array offset
• fixed: We used the function mysqli_fetch_all in two cases and even the underlying PHP-library "mysqlnd" is the default MySQL-driver for PHP since PHP 5.3, the function does not exist in every PHP installation of a newer version (evidence for a PHP 5.6-installation without the function in the project forum, this entry and the follow up), we now use mysqli_fetch_assoc in a while-loop instead

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed: when editing a posting, an activated subscription can not be saved in the database because of a syntax error on the database query
• fixed: images, included in a posting, got elongated in the Ajax-preview of a posting

Changes

• changed: a few settings moved to the table mlf2_temp_infos because they are no settings at all

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

Attention: The solved bug affects only the installation process. Users, who updated their existing installations from an older version was not affected.

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• because of the errorneous surrounding of a table name, the installation script was not able to replace the table name prefix with the given one

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

Attention: Users, who wants to install a completely new forum, will run into a bug in the installation script in this version. Please use the version 2.4.18.1 instead. Users, who wants to upgrade their existing installation are not affected.

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Features

• featurette: the default protocol, used in the JS-prompts for links and images when creating or editing a posting got changed from "http://" to "https://"

Fixes

• fixed: unregistered users was not able to subscribe to their own postings because of field user_id of the subscriptions table being defined as NOT NULL
• fixed: because of failing subscriptions of unregistered users for thread opening postings the thread in itself was broken and not deletable
• fixed: sending e-mails over the contact form failed because of forgotten function call for form minimum and maximum time handling
• fixed: deleting a posting with subscriptions left orphaned subscriptions because they got not removed from the database
• fixed: the check for password strength failed when more than one char in a category was required and these chars did not follow one after the other
• fixed: if one used the thumbnail funtion to include an image to a posting, the image got the right width but was elongated to the complete possible height of the posting, see example in the project forum

Changes

• change: changed the language strings (key: show_spam_link) for english and german language, the old value led to danger of confusion ("show spam (no. of entries)" vs. "list spam") (enhancement for admins and mods), dear translators: if you update your translaton of further languages, let us know about your adaptions
• change: the update script disables the forum during the database operations of the update and reenables it afterwards (admin only feature), at the moment it got enabled before one updates the files and folders;
  dear admins: please check the status after an update in the settings page to ensure the forum to be enabled again

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Features

• feature: minimal and maximal time between requesting a form and sending the filled form back to the forum-server as separate settings for posting, e-mail and registration forms
• feature: a user is from now on able to close her/his own forum account, until now this was only possible for the admin/forum operator
• feature: a by the registered users granted acceptance to the terms of use and/or the data privacy statement can be recalled and a newly acceptance of one or both of these agreements can be enforced for the case of changes in the terms of use and/or the data privacy statement
• feature: further possible requirements for password quality (enforce a number of lowercase and/or capital letters, ciphers and/or "special" chars), disabled by default

Fixes

• fixed: set the decimal point . as fix char because different decimal separators (i.e. comma in german language) causes errors in floating number operations in PHP
• fixed: the checkbox for the Flash-bb-code-setting got reintroduced (will definitely get removed with version 2.5, change was removed by accident in the 2.4.x-branch)
• fixed: remove the confirm-password-field from the form for change ones own password, function was removed for the other forms in versions 2.4.16

Changes

• change: removed the JS-function to create the bb-code [msg] for forum entries, it needed a blacklist of not covered exceptions that was incomplete; entries will from now on handled as [link] or [url] like all other links; existing msg-bb-codes will still get interpreted in the output
• change: not selected checkboxes and radio buttons in the settings forms of the admin panel will not grayed out from now on, was a misleading UI-feature because the form fields looked like disabled but was still accessible

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed: it still was impossible to edit an entry because of two occurences of hardcoded table names in database queries from the testing phase
• fixed: the entries in the users bookmark list got an empty tag-array-element for bookmarks without a tag, that led to a broken link to a nonexisting tag in the HTML source

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed: it was impossible to edit an entry
• fixed: subscribung to or unsubscribing from an entry was not possible when saving the edit of an entry (after solving the issue above)

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Features

• feature: add a checkbox to make the password visible for input verification during registration, remove therefore the second password field
• feature: add an unsubscribe link to the e-mails with a notification about a new reply
• feature: add a new table to store the subscriptions independent from the entry in itself
• feature: allow SVG-graphics as smilies, graphics have to be uploaded per FTP

Fixes

• fixed: several forms in the admin area lacked the CSRF-token, security improvement to prevent CSRF-attacks
• fixed: remove underscores from "data privacy statement" in the language files
• fixed: removed the workaround of setting the language to en-us in the turkish language file, underlying problem was solved with PHP5.2 long time ago

Updates

• update: danish language file updated by project-forum-user Tommy Nillson
• update: norwegian language file updated by Github-user @flatnick

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed: icon for Ajax-preview of an entry was not displayed, if the entry is locked
• fixed: reordering registration-form fields because firefox users could be unable to register dependent from the browser settings (prefilled form fields)
• fixed: status of the checkbox for accepting the data privacy statement got lost when previewing the entry
• fixed: display data privacy statement in a popup like the terms of use in case of an entry from an unregistered user
• fixed: missing fields for the dates of the acceptance of the terms of use and the data privacy statement in the backup script for the user data
• fixed: set a birthday date in single quotes in the backup script for the user data
• fixed: remove field mlf2_entries.tags from the backup script for the forum entries because it does no longer exist
• fixed: masked an occurence of single quotes in the german language file
• fixed: set the forums own e-mail-address as sender of an e-mail in every case, set a possibly given divergent address as Reply-To-header; prevents not sending e-mails because of not matching domain names (forum domain versus domain part of an e-mail-address)

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

Attention: This update is only necessary, if …

• … the initial point of the update is a version from 2.3.5 to 2.3.7 and …
• … the forum admin tried before to update the forum to the version 2.4.10 or 2.4.11

Noone else is affected.

Fix

• Fixed array of update targets in the update script. Versions from 2.3.5 to 2.3.7 as initial point of the update got no table structure update of the step to version 2.4.10. Because of that registered users in the affected forums was not able to send a posting.

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: Because of an error in the update script this version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.99.1 upwards!

If you are affected, see version 2.4.12.

Fixes

• fixed: used the wrong setting for the terms-of-use-URL in the new template user_agreement.inc.tpl because of a copy'n'paste error; one as a user was unable to read the terms of use before accepting it
• fixed: a lost underscore in the admin template

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: Because of an error in the update script this version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.99.1 upwards!

If you are affected, see version 2.4.12.

Fixes

• fixed: the russian language had a few syntax errors, introduced with the reformatting of the language files (2.4.7)
• fixed: the version check in the admin panel was broken, when the update was executed before the forum itself found the new version on Github
• fixed: the meta element for the charset definition moved to top of the title to apply also for the title

Feature

• feature: make it possible to force an agreement to a data privacy statement in the same manner as with the terms of rules
• feature: store the date of the agreement (data privacy statement and/or terms of use) with the users data
• feature: enforce a new agreement to adata privacy statement and/or terms of use with the deletion of the timestamp of the old agreement (there is no user interface yet!)

Changes

• change: actualised Bad Behavior from 2.2.19 to version 2.2.20
• change: actualised GesHi from 1.0.8.11 to version 1.0.9
• change: actualised Smarty from 3.1.30 to version 3.1.32
• change: because of the minimal system requirement for Bad Behavior the minimal MySQL version raises to 5.0

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed: use the function get_avatar also in the admin panel, used before only the code for the old file name scheme which leads to only displaying avatars with names in this old name scheme
• fixed: avatar field in the user data form of the admin panel had no label because of missing string in the language files
• fixed: adapt changed URL-parameter behaviour for folding threads to the JS-sources, didn't work with the switch instead the toggle
• fixed: changed long date format for german language to month as number with leading zero, out written month name "März" can cause encoding problem on some servers
• fixed: the deletion of entries about read postings was broken in the case of deletion after X days, used the old and removed setting name read_state_expiration_date instead read_state_expiration_value

Feature

• added: put pixel dimensions of uploaded images into the HTML source, when included in entries, prevents page jumping during load process for only this case(!)

Changes

• added: sentences about automatic generation of e-mails to inform about new entries, user, etc., a few users answered to these automatic messages
• added: make the mouse cursor a hand (pointer) when hovering over a (visible) label element

The original project page mylittleforum.net works again. So the interim page www.projekt-mlf.de got a different function as home of development of a new theme and accessories by Auge.

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed double closing tag of a select in the admin.inc.tpl
• fixed the use of a table alias in a database query that caused a MySQL error
• removed a few empty lines in the code in search.inc.php because some of them caused headers-sent-erros
• fixed the use of a wrong variable name in bookmark.inc.php
• fixed forgotten masking of single quotes, used as apostrophe in the german language file
• fixed wrong cases range for partial backups, the three cases that was introduced in the 2.4-branch wasn't recognised as valid
• fixed the invalid use of column name tags in the entries table because the column no longer exists
• fixed wrong path names of files that have to be updated in the update to version 2.4.7, yet relevant because of updates from earlier versions
• fixed superfluous column name "tags" in create statement of table mlf2_entries
• added CSRF-tokens to user_edit.inc.tpl, user_edit_email.inc.tpl, user_edit_pw.inc.tpl and the corresponding code in user.inc.php

Feature

• added danish language file, translation by Tommy Nielsson ([email protected])

Changes

• added the version number of the minimal required PHP-version to the readme file
• added the links to the original project site and forum again, was changed to the interim site and forum because of the temporary inaccessibility of the original site
• added a partial rework of the swedish language file, mainly based on the work of Tommy Nielsson ([email protected])
• replace "Bookmarks" with "Lesezeichen" in the german language file
• removed a few line breaks and spaces at a line end in bookmarks.inc.tpl
• removed a size attribute in an input submit button

After preliminary move to the new project page we are back with a further maintenance release of the 2.4-branch. Please read this announcement carefully, especially the last point about changes in the language files.

With this release the system requirements changes. The minimal PHP version is from now on PHP 5.4.

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed database issue because of the obsolete field *_userdata.entries_read that can cause errors in some database configurations, an admin can not create new user accounts in that case
• fixed the use of a wrong string for too long user name in the create-new-user-function of the admin panel
• fixed a check for existence of categories in the main script, can cause error in PHP 7.2 when no categories are present
• fixed handling of not given birthday date, set it to NULL in that case instead the pseudo date 0000-00-00, can cause error in some MySQL-configurations

Features

• added redirect of a user after login back to the last page, one has visited
• added the availability of tags to the bookmark function, the postings tags will be suggested when present
• added new tables for tag handling, existing tags for postings will be handed over to one of the new tables
• added a few fields as honeypots for spammers to the registration and the posting form

Changes

• changed handling of the URL-parameters 'fold_threads', 'toggle_view' and 'toggle_thread_view', are not toggles anymore, fix reproducible behaviour for every value instead, one can create links to special views of a forum and get's reproduceable outputs
  • 'fold_threads': 0 = unfolded threads, 1 = folded threads
  • 'toggle_view': 0 = thread view of thread list, 1 = table view of thread list
  • 'toggle_thread_display': 0 = nested view (threaded view of a threads entries), 1 = linear view (table view/board view of a threads entries)

Attention: Massive changes in the language files

All strings in all language files (with a few exceptions, see last paragraph) got enclosed in single quotes. This leads to a few changes for translators, especially for languages, where the apostrophe is in use, for example as marker for contracted forms of words (i.e. in "hasn't"). These occurences have to be masked with a backslash hasn\'t in the language files. This rule is mandatory from now on (with a few exceptions, see last paragraph)! Otherwise a string gets terminated with the first occurence of an apostrophe.

Even if I think, that I scrutinised the files for occurences of apostrophes within the strings, it is possible, that I missed a few apostrophes. In that case you'll find cropped strings. Please check the file of the language with the search function of a text editor for the affected string and check it for an apostrophe at the place, the string got cropped. Mask the apostrophe with a backslash (\), load the file to your server and check the string on your website again.

Please report the problem as an Github issue or in the project forum, so that other users can benefit from the fixes.

As last a word about the exception from the described rule. The e-mail-templates, which goes over more than one line of code, are enclosed with a row of three double quotes ("""). Within these strings an apostrophe has to stay unmasked.

Thank you.

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fix for displaying the new version number after update in the update script itself
• fix for missing rules for visited links in the list of latest entries
• fix for wrong syntax in the meta element "referrer", that was introduced in version 2.4.5 (author: Romchik)
• removed doubled title attributes (author: Romchik)
• rework of the HTML-structure in the side- and bottombar, removal of a few obsolete CSS-rules
• refactoring of the *.inc.php-files, better readability for future development, no functional changes at that point
• fix for broken toggling of check for banned IPs or user agents, should toggle automatically when listing bans but didn't
• fix broken query for reading user data for notification in case of account creation through the admin
• fix for doubled key in the german language file
• fix for ordering of user data lists when sorted by the user names, collation led to sorting in the order names beginning with numbers, capital letters and in the end low letters, now names with capitals and low letters are sorted mixed in their natural order

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Fixes

• fixed wrong variable name in the function getMessageStatus
• removed an orphaned code fragment, that never was in use

Feature

• add a meta element named "referrer", that causes not sending a referrer when open an external link or (for older browsers) sending a referrer with only the domain part. it's a small contribution for forum users privacy

Attention: This version only works with PHP versions up to 7.2.x!

In case of an update: This version can only be an update target for existing installations from version 2.3.5 upwards!

Change

• make the error message of the update script for wrong or non existing file config/VERSION more descriptive

Fixes

• fix for by mistake overwritten user type
• fix for not accepted email addresses with a TLD longer than four chars
• fix for not marking the opening message of a thread as new if a new answer was posted and the thread is folded