Affino 6.0.10 Release

This is the most polished version of Affino that we have ever released. The user experience is smoother, faster and more intuitive. This is also the first release where nearly everything works well on tablets (with a few Flashy exceptions). The single biggest project for this release has been to improve the speed and performance of Affino something that will be very clear a couple of days after you’ve updated (and the new Guest Cache is working for you).

 

There are updates in every aspect of Affino: shopping is easier with the new unified checkout; adding content is faster with the improved forms and sticky edit bars; uploading media is easier now that Affino can pull in the media simply from URLs in the Media Uploader; inviting friends and contacts can now be done from every page; chatting and connecting is greatly improved with the new Group Chat; and Affino works better with many of the key sites we integrate with.

 

There are some great new styling enhancements with Horizontal Design Menus, square form buttons, improved styling on many elements including the Newsletter Sign-ups, Engagement Panel, Who’s Online and Radar Charts. The Control Centre has also had a further makeover and is sleeker and cleaner.

 

There are over 160 updates in this release and many are focused on resolving key issues that people have been having so the experience will be much smoother once you’ve updated to this release.

 

Upgrade Guidance

 

This is a major performance update, and is recommended for everyone. It means that there is a lot of optimisation which takes place during the update, making this one of the most intensive updates ever released. It is recommended that you liaise with your account manager / support team when running this update to ensure that someone is on-hand to support you should something go awry.

 

It is essential that you run through the complete update process starting with the Affino Updater, followed by the System Update, Re-Initialise Site, Design Element Update and Skin Update; all of which are available on the Settings > Update screen.

 

Key Enhancements

 

Performance

It has been noticeable that Affino has been progressively slowing down this year with the volume of new features we’ve been putting in place over the past 10 releases. Although we did a number of optimisations during the course of the year it clearly wasn’t enough and the last Affino release saw significant slow downs for many sites.

 

This release goes a long way to addressing these slow downs and for many sites, especially for static ones. Static / infrequently updated sites will see the average page delivery time dramatically improved since Affino will store these pages rather than dynamically generating them each time. Ecommerce and secured member sites will see less tangible benefits but even here performance should increase markedly.

 

We have made dozens of other enhancements, mostly behind the scenes, which optimise the experience for logged in users. One key decision we’ve made is to reduce the amount of historical data stored significantly. We’ll be doing much more aggregation of this data, and it means that in the short terms there will be less data available but that will expand over the next couple of releases. Fortunately Google has announced real-time analytics with Google Analytics so that takes some of the strain off Affino.

 

Guest Cache v2

We’ve completely rewritten the Guest Cache in this release for a massive performance boost on static / guest content pages. The first version of the guest cache worked well for some sites but not others, this one works for all sites.

 

We now cache and deliver the raw HTML files for up to 4 days for the fastest Affino response time yet. Default all guest pages are cached for 2 days, but great new App Bar controls allow you to clear the cache for individual pages or whole sites if you’re making time-sensitive changes or rolling out a re-design.

 

In this initial release we will be caching up to 30,000 pages per Affino instance, something that could happen quite quickly on the larger sites. This takes up considerable server space and will need to be factored into the hosting plans. In future releases we will provide more granular control to both increase and decrease the size of this cache.

 

Group Chat v1

Group Chat is a great new way for groups to have online conversations about any topic. Users can easily share interests, videos, pictures, presentations, and even music using links from leading sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and SlideShare.

 

The chat works across all browsers and all devices and uses on standard browser capabilities for great real-time conversations. We’ve also updated the Who’s Online design element to show the current status for active users.

 

Mobile / Tablet Beta v2

The Affino Control Centre now works well on the key Android and iPad tablets (with some Flashy exceptions). We have made dozens of improvements to make things run smoothly, and have had to tailored Affino to each of the major devices. In practical terms you will notice a great leap between using this release on your iPad / Android tablet.

 

We’ve also refined the mobile skins in this release, so that they now work well with the exception of Row Spanning in design objects (there is a possibility that we won’t be able to support row spanning in mobile skins).

 

Unified Checkout / Shopping Basket / Login

Until now we had three distinct screens for the checkout and shopping basket and the checkout login. In this release we combine all three into a single streamlined experience. It means that the user can now immediately see the full basket information and when combined with our new automated country identification means that the full price including shipping can be instantly displayed to the shopper

There is now also improved visibility of discounts being applied on checkout, and a number of fixes applied to smooth out the whole experience.

 

New Design Elements

There are a number of new Design Elements in this release which extend the commercial, social and publishing sides of Affino:

 

Customers Also Bought DE v1 - New Design Element which showcases the other items that users have bought when viewing a product. This is classic ecommerce functionality so it’s great to finally have it in Affino.

 

Auto-Related Content DE v1 - New Design Element which automatically pulls in articles, media and blogs on the same topics as the main article. Is to be used below / in place of the manual related content depending on the circumstances. This is a great new enhancement where writers / editors are unable or unwilling to manually relate content.

 

Forum Highlights DE v1 - new forum highlights design element displays the latest posts from the forums

 

Invite Friends DE v1 - new design element which allows users to invite others from any page, previously it was only possible to invite friends from within My Information

 

 

Other Enhancements

 

Amazon Load Balancer / SSL Support - we’ve added support in Affino for Amazon’s load balancing SSL services.

 

Article Attributes - dynamic presentation of attribute selectors means that they now work with very large numbers of options as well as small

 

Article Listing - it is now possible to set the number of columns on some article listings

 

Blog Highlights - minor formatting improvements

 

Button DE - new Topics pass through means that buttons can be used on topic channels to pass users through to pre-filtered content listings.

 

Design Menus - it is now possible to align the Design Menu title left or right; select DEs can also apply an icon before the title.

 

Dynamic Forms - messages are now default listed out without having to do a search

 

Dynamic Menus - can now be horizontal, notice these are only appropriate where there is a small number of sub-channels and is not intended for deep navigation

 

 

Engagement Panel v2 - the engagement panel can now be used to showcase content and media when the user has logged in

 

FAQs - minor styling improvements, but looking much better now

 

Feature Scroller v2 - new options for displaying the thumbnails below the image, having a dynamic slider highlighting the active image, and a great new fade effect

 

Forms - two great enhancements for forms: the edit bar is now sticky so that you will always have access to the key form tools whenever a form is on the screen, e.g. save / add / related; we have also made viewing entries more intuitive; it is now also possibly to apply a square button style to forms; lookups have also been refined; all broken images are now automatically cleared when editing content; new bigger edit buttons make the actions much clearer and more usable

 

Forums - improved new-content highlights now update during the session, i.e. no longer highlight content which has just been read; quote references are now improved so that you can see whom the quote is from.

 

Google Base / Merchant Centre - Google are on a roll here and continue to change their API on a monthly basis, numerous fixes to in place to resolve integration issues

 

Groups - great Wall enhancements so that wall posts can now contain videos, images, SoundCloud and SlideShare content; blog highlights also have improved formatting and now display thumbnails and author info

 

Incoming Feeds - incoming feeds have been optimised again so as not to flood sites and so as not to build up big backlogs of un-processed stories; a new option to pull in the latest articles is also in place

 

Key Words - significantly simplified and improved indexing and key word removal

 

Media Library - new regular checks on the media library remove old directories and redundant media to improve overall media library performance; improved look and feel on the display side

 

Media Uploader - it is now possible to upload media simply by posting the URL in the embed field, works for YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Slideshare and image URLs

 

Member Listing - you can now control how many characters are displayed for Roles in the listing.

 

Meta Information - further refinements in now Meta information is displayed on content with more nuanced control over displaying it on articles

 

Micro Blogs - Entry filed now sticks on the page so you can scroll down to read the latest posts and instantly reply; also smarter updates mean that they pause when you go off the page and refresh as soon as you focus on it again.

 

Newsletters - manual newsletters are now sent to all newsletter subscribers, only automated newsletters are filtered by active users; newsletters can now have a sort order which is in effect when included on the user registration

 

Newsletter Sign-up DE v2 - new layout with a more compact styling, more control over look-and-feel

 

Online Directory - new Priority attribute on online directory entries means that these can now be sorted by priority; this allows for Gold / Silver / Bronze style entries where these appear above the lesser priorities in the listing

 

Orders - can now be filtered on the delivery; it is now possible to edit the terms for each media item sold (on the order detail screen), e.g. extending the number of viewings / downloads; it is also possible update the licence key applied to each media item where the licence engine is being used

 

Prime Related Content - new option to show minimal newsletter sign up when newsletter related to content. We’ve also added Related Upgrades for products so that you can recommend upgrades when users are viewing specific products.

 

Product Search v2 - considerable refinements have been made to the product search in this release; the selectors are now pre-filtered when drilling down so that only available options are visible at any stage; it is now also possible to clear the product selection with a click

 

 

Public Profiles - it is now possible to lock down the profile display further, e.g. by hiding the user tool box, access to the member listing and URL box; vital statistics tab updated so that users can more easily update their stats (i.e. fewer restrictions)

 

Query Cache - it is now possible to enable / disable the cache since it was causing issues on some hosting setups

 

Radar Charts - now have default chart value options; updates can be suspended

 

Registration - improved affiliate targeting on the initial registration screen; Topic (Interest) fields can now be set to be default on so that you present the maximum number of recommendations; it is possible to set the order on the newsletter subscriptions

 

Users - great new User Merge function allows the combining of multiple user accounts when users have registered multiple times, note that the user account you merge into will be the primary account and the originally selected instance will be removed; user import / export is now updated to include Newsletter subscriptions

 

Who’s Online DE - new automated refresh option allows the current online users to be displayed dynamically; numerous styling improvements

 

Wishlist DE - new styling options and the ability to always display the wishlist

 

Fixes

 

Application Bar - fixed issue which was causing the app bar to error out under specific circumstances; security tightened so that secured items are no longer displayed on the App Bar

 

Article Listing DE - now filters reliably on Channel Topics

 

Blogs - can now be seen without the users having access to the members Channel; especially useful for closed networks

 

Briefs / Jobs - notifications have been improved with better handling of addresses, logos and improved format; referring jobs no longer errors out and now sends ecards;

 

Browse Menu - fixed issues with legacy data; it is now possible to add a heading

 

Catalogue Items - extended the catalogue item price import so that it now imports all the pricing variations; also added Fixed Commission, valid to and valid from; Catalogue Attribute Profile imports now work with the Group ID as well; updating Catalogue Attribute Profiles no longer randomly removes all inventory variations

 

Channels - can now be deleted reliably

 

Checkout - refined the handling of empty shopping baskets; fixed IE9 issue with shipping not showing; fixed Ajax error on multi-page checkout

 

Completion Profile - new task automatically updates the completion profiles of all members when the settings are changed; note that it will take some time to run through the task

 

Content Subscriptions - optimised sending of Content Subscriptions, now take longer but have much less impact on site performance

 

Control Navigation - active state icons now display reliably and the Control tree expands reliably; cntrl / cmd - click now works to open links in a new tab on the Control Navigator again; adding Control favourites now works as expected, i.e. the tab opens and shows the latest favourite; fixed major issue with the page jumping from detail screens to listing screens

 

Coupons- fixed issue with applying coupons on coupon import; both coupon import and export updated; fixed issue with copying some coupons

 

Dashboard - now displays the widget selector again reliably

 

eBay Integration - another major update to the eBay integration, resolves a number of issues; further refinements scheduled in for the next release

 

Groups - fixed issue with adding groups; now list reliably alphabetically; fixed issue with posting to the group message board from the group details; improved listing format for narrow pages

 

Emoticons - improved emoticons (smilies) so that they work more consistently now

 

Engagement Panel DE - terms and conditions now link through

 

Events - fixed issue with workflows on events, can now easily be added by contributors

 

Feature Scroller - no longer speeds up when left for a while

 

Forums - fixed issue with forum thread paging, now shows correct number of pages; links now no longer break at special characters or percentage symbols

 

Help - inline help now displays reliably in the Control Centre

 

Invoices - invoices (and despatch notes) can now be easily sent for individual orders; seller details including name, address and VAT / Tax number now included in invoices.

 

LinkedIn Integration - we now pull the mobile phone number into the mobile field

 

Login - now display the ‘secured content’ notice appropriately

 

Media Library - now showing the View button again reliably for images; optimised media upload process so that some aspects of it are up to 10 x faster; fixed issue which was causing it to error out

 

Media Uploader - fixed issue with uploading

 

Member Profiles - users can now switch their profiles from being private

 

Meta Data - resolved numerous Meta Data issues arising from the removal of the legacy Meta Data system in the last release

 

MP3 Player - now works reliably when MP3 selected within articles; adding tracks to the playlist now works reliably again

 

Newsletters - optimised newsletter sending, now takes longer but has much less impact on site performance

 

Orders - fixed issues which were causing order notifications not to be sent

 

Product Search - no longer shows content from non-live sections

 

Queries - numerous ‘tds’ fixes where the number of security rights exceeded the ability for the system to handle them; numerous queries extensively optimised

 

Recruitment - the briefs / jobs now show the correct number of applicants (as opposed to targeted users)

 

Redirects - numerous issues fixed, now work reliably

 

Registration - new options make password entry more usable

 

SagePay Integration - updated Affino to support the SagePay v2.23 Gateway release; now passes through the full address information

 

Sections - now displaying the SEO panel so that screen names can be updated

 

Site Analysis - this was simply not working on some sites since there was too much data and it was taking too long to process; in this release we simply discard data over three months old; in the next release we will be aggregating the data more effectively so that aggregate historical data will be available

 

Skins - fixed issues with generating Newsletter Skins; optimised the Skin editing for larger sites

 

Sort Order - expanded size of drag boxes so that titles are always legible

 

Users - it is now possible to change the member types in the Security Centre

 

Video Player - fixed issue which was causing it to error out or not to display in certain situations

 

Zones - can now be copied and saved without issue; fixed issue with applying a Store Profile to the Zone

 

Component Changes

 

JQuery - updated to 1.6.4

 

jQuery UI - updated to 1.8.16

 

TinyMCE - updated to 3.4.4