Elgg, a popular free and open source web software for social networking, which we have mentioned here, has released its new version 1.7 beta. Access control is one of the most powerful features of Elgg. Everything created in Elgg, be it a blog post, an uploaded file, an element of your profile, etc., can be restricted to as many or few people you want. It’s a prolific open source web software for social networking.

Some of the key changes in Elgg 1.7 include:

• Full UTF-8 support in the database
• Full text search, as a joint effort between Curverider and the MITRE corporation
• More manageable user data directories
• A new entity-fetching API
• Working and re-written REST API
• Many bugfixes have also been made in this release

Elgg 1.7 enhances security by requiring security tokens on all actions. Plugins that have not been updated to use security tokens will produce a “Form is missing __token or __ts fields” error.

Download Elgg 1.7 beta

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

ocPortal, one of the upcoming web content management systems has released its new version 4.3 RC 3. This version introduces some new features and a number of bug fixes have been made since the last release. If you haven’t tried ocPortal yet, you might want to check a personal demo here.

New features

• WordPress, Joomla and HTML web site importer
• iCal exporter and quiz responses CSV exporter
• New ‘importer redirects’, which lets you easily redirect to the appropriate place in ocPortal, for cases when import is done natively through modules
• Added submit-URLs to the side_news block, main_forum_news block and side_forum_news block
• Reply counts have been added to the side_forum_news block
• New Comcode ‘pulse’ tag which is configurable with parameters
• New parameter to main_leader_board block has been added to filter out staff from the points leaderboard
• CAPTCHA support has been added to the main_contact_simple block and main_contact_us block
• Auto search capability for expanded day selection
• Allowed the download A-Z index to support ocFilter notation

New features for developers:

• Generalised shared-installs support so it is more flexible for people
• Improved shared-install functionality, so that theme files and Comcode pages may be shared between sites also, if desired
• Added memory debugging functions for developers
• ocPortal can now run without a database as the inbuilt database is now a bundled feature
• New developer feature has been added for the quick addition of language strings, written (temporarily) in-line into the code
• Added support for running a server behind a proxy server

Read more at ocPortal News

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Feng Office is one of the prolific web office software available that, allows a group of people to collaborate by sharing information over the Internet in an effective way. It’s a complete solution for every organization to create, collaborate, share and publish all its internal and external documents. You can plan and manage all your projects, easily following the status of every task, set milestones, pending tasks, personal notes etc.,

We got an opportunity to interview the CEO of Feng Office to share some thoughts about this intriguing web software.

Following is the interview,

How did it all start, a brief history of Feng Office

Feng Office (under the name OpenGoo) started as a degree project at the faculty of Engineering of the University of the Republic, Uruguay. The project was presented and championed by Software Engineer Conrado Viña. Software Engineers Marcos Saiz and Ignacio de Soto developed the first prototype as their thesis. Professors Eduardo Fernández and Tomás Laurenzo served as tutors. Conrado, Ignacio and Marcos founded the OpenGoo community and remain active members and core developers. The thesis was approved with the highest score.

Why Feng Office – the key features?

Although the technology for many applications needed by Small Businesses (Document Managment, Project Management, Customer Management) was mature enough, we realized businesses still couldn’t access it, because of one main factor: total cost of ownership. Total cost of ownership was comprised by the individual cost of each software package (licenses), installation and set-up fees, and support and maintenance for each package. Not only that, but the business would en up with un-integrated solutions, which in itselfs adds integration costs (wether the integration is manual work, or custom software integration).

Integration among CRM, Project Management, and Document Management applications is a natural business need. We solved the problem by developing a standard package that integrates those applications into a single one. We also got rid of licensing costs and most of the installation costs.

How has been the feedback so far for Feng Office

The feedback has been tremendous and most inspiring. We have received, literally, thousands of positive reviews. There have been a few negative reviews, from which we strive to learn and to improve.

The climate at the community is of great enthusiasm. Almost daily people thanks and congratulates the team at the forum. That makes us very proud and cheers us up a lot.

Hardest challenge the Feng Office team had to face so far

Marketing and finance management. The founders’ original background is strongly on Engineering. We have been very lucky to have professionals with these backgrounds join the team, but we still have to learn a lot of this stuff on a daily basis.

If you could start over again from scratch, what would you do differently

Hum. Very good question. Right now I am thinking we should have done an effort to position OpenGoo -not Feng Office- differently. But those thoughts change frequently. In terms of the technology used and the vision for the solution, we are very confident on the choices we have made.

Would you mind sharing some pictures of your work place?

Not at all. Above is the team picture is taken at the meeting/board room.

We would like to thank the Feng Office team for the valuable time and sharing thoughts about Feng Office.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Recently we reviewed the book, Joomla with Flash, build stunning, content-rich, and interactive websites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

As indicated in the review, the book, Joomla! with Flash, is aimed at explaining how to use Flash objects with Joomla! content with minimal efforts and maximum output.

We are pleased to inform you that we are giving away an exclusive copy of this book to a lucky winner.

Contest Rules

Three simple rules to be eligible,

• Subscribe to our Email newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and reviews related to web software’s.
• Re Tweet this post using the Re-Tweet button (optional).
• Leave a comment on this post with your Name and email id used for subscription.

The contest is open for anyone in the United States and one lucky winner will be rewarded with an exclusive copy of Joomla! with Flash book sponsored by PACKT Publishing Ltd.

Entries will be accepted till February 1st, 2010.

Book Details

Language English
Paperback 260 pages [191mm x 235mm]
Release date October 2009
ISBN 1847198244
ISBN 13 978-1-847198-24-2
Author(s) Suhreed Sarkar
Topics and Technologies Content Management, PHP/MySQL, Open Source, Joomla!

Highlights

This book enables you to build interactive and content-rich web sites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

• You can build stunning web site(s) and integrate Flash objects into Joomla!
• Joomla! with Flash gives you step-by-step guidelines on how to create stunning photo galleries with Flash transition and animation effects
• The books also includes explanation on, how to use interactive Flash-based maps, animations, videos, charts, MP3 players, logos, headers, and banners in Joomla!-based web sites
• Contains easy to follow guides with enriched screenshots for better understanding.
• After going through the book, you can renovate your Joomla! based web site into an interactive, feature-rich multimedia site

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Automattic, the team behind WordPress has just announced that WordPress for iPhone 2.1 is available now for download on the App Store.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

ocPortal, one of the upcoming web content management systems has released its new version 4.3 RC 1. This release has huge number of new features and bug fixes. If you haven’t tried ocPortal yet, you might want to check a personal demo here.

This version is a feature release that introduces a number of bug fixes since the last release and some performance improvements and features.

Performance improvements:

• CSS and Javascript files are now automatically minimised (compressed)
• You can now set an option from config_editor.php to make bots receive cached versions of pages, so that bot activity is less likely to slow down your site
• A new “self-learning” technology has been developed to reduce the number of language strings that need to be loaded for individual pages. ocPortal will automatically learn which pages use which strings, so it only needs to load those ones “next time around” (the technology is adaptive, so if the pool of strings is insufficient, it loads more, but learns)
• Extra compression of some of the PNG files (most were already well compressed though)
• Advanced users can configure ocPortal to spread theme images across a CDN(requires use of OcCLE and the Code Book, and a properly configured network of CDN servers)
• Re-ordering of how CSS and Javascript files are loaded to optimise client-side performance; ocPortal will also merge some Javascript files that are served to staff for a common case where they tend to appear together anyway
• A well configured ocPortal server can now get a “Green tick” on Google PageSpeed and an “A grade” on YSlow.
• Memory usage has been improved a bit
• The number of queries used has been improved a bit in certain areas
• The number of queries in general is reduced, by automatic pre-fetching of translate-table content
• Various small optimisations to improve server-side PHP performance have been made
• Removed some unused CSS
• The database connection/initialisation code is now “lazy” meaning that AJAX scripts that do not end up needing to use the database will not establish an unnecessary connection
• New installs will now use the ‘HEAP’ MySQL table type for the sessions table, minimising the need for queries that cause disk writes
• Support for persistent caching on APC.

Usability improvements:

• The ‘validated’ check box will now only show if the user has access to bypass validation in at least one selectable category
• “Interest levels” are not shown within the administrative side of the newsletter system unless there is some variation of interest levels within the set of subscribers
• Some improvements made to the bookmarks interface– better URL detection, auto-closing of popup
• Fatal errors now have a much higher chance of resulting in a clean ocPortal error message, including with failed upgrades (e.g. if you left old cod overrides in place)
• The upgrader’s “Alien file” finder will no longer show addon files as alien
• Improved the tree-list form fields so that they show proper labels for the default item selection
• Linked to Launchpad from the installer, so people can review translation progress whilst installing
• If background AJAX requests need to happen, and the network goes down, ocPortal will inform the user succinctly (rather than repeating the same complex error message over and over)
• Added form validation for forms on blocks and some miscellaneous screens
• Stopped double clicking on buttons for forms on blocks and some miscellaneous screens
• Improvements for developers, better AJAX API, cleaned up Javascript a bit, better integration API, better debug mode (the Code Book has been improved a lot recently also)
• Made the field validation error messages more user friendly
• Tailored message if you add a support ticket, rather than the stock ’success’ one
• Clarified use of the ‘master password’ and ‘FTP domain’ fields during installation

New features:

• The “What’s new” newsletter feature now allows you to easily re-order categories, change what categories are used, is better presented, and allows you to choose the reference date
• Added a link to ocPortal’s bookmarks feature on the screen-actions block (commented out by default though)
• Added Guest forum searching to OCF

Dropped features:

• Removed the zone menu from the guest OCF bar (legacy navigation from ocPortal 3)

Bug fixes:

• After the first template edit, the “Edit this” icon is broken
• Fix to Comcode-tag-less ’semihtml’ Comcode that contains symbols turning to ‘html’ Comcode and not working, after any edit
• Fixed filedump uploading
• Fix to Javascript sound API
• Fixes to OCF “posts since last visit” feature’s tracking, and changed the order used for the posts
• Fixes to table column widths
• Fix to HTTP authentication bug for those with HTTP authentication off in ocPortal, but active on the server
• Fix to “open in new window” on dropdown and zone menus
• Some improvements to the Tempcode compiler and engine, to allow it to better handle complex Tempcode customisation cases (when pre-processable symbols interact with template parameters)
• Fix to the “keep_markers” feature
• Fix to missing language strings in the Comcode editor
• Various fixes to search result ordering
• Rewrite of the Comcode ‘url’ tag processing to fix various issues
• Stopped the download of unnecessary data when adding remote downloads (downloading first 2MB of files that are not search indexable anyway)
• When iframes are disabled (hidden option), the shoutbox will no longer malfunction
• Fix to links in video search results
• Fix to error message shown when entering chat rooms
• Fix to bug when you double change a permission in the Permission Tree Editor, and it doesn’t change back
• Fix to links in gallery search results
• Fixed unnecessary inclusion of virtual root URL parameters in some links
• Fixes to how Comcode pages are given Comcode administrative permissions
• Fix when doing blank advanced catalogue searches
• Fixed XHTML validation error on query display screen
• Fix to tag feature on topicview screens
• Fix to URL generation on IPN-generated error e-mails
• Fix to the content tree feature when short-URLs are on
• Fix to IE6 issue when using the date chooser component
• Fix to OCF post-history button if the save page-request took more than a second
• Improved database compatibility
• Fixed display of times on the query view screen
• Fix MySQL strict-mode error on adding new support ticket types
• Fix to issue with setting member profile language on MSN’s where not all sites had all languages
• Fix to .po (Launchpad file) support
• Fix to Admin Zone front page if RSS is uninstalled
• Stopped RSS uninstallation breaking the weather block
• Fixed error in Facebook API support
• Fixed error in theme image setting screen if GD not installed
• Fixed assumption about English when installing the panel_top redirect
• Fixed some bugs choosing languages in the language admin module
• Fixed bug editing catalogues
• Fixed some bugs when running on OCF MSN’s with different table prefixes
• Fixed XML Sitemap error if polls have been added
• Fix to how addon directory on ocportal.com is probed
• Fixed problem on Atom feeds with no ‘rel’ attribute set for <link> tags
• Fixed error in utf-8 support with the mbstring PHP extension
• Re-enabled multi-lang installation (installing default content against all installed languages)
• Fixed problem with user language detection (read browser language even when this was disabled in ocPortal)
• Fixed some type-strictness errors, and some PHP-doc comment errors
• Fix to error messages from ‘html_entity_decode’ if webmasters set weird character sets
• Other very minor fixes

Check out other features about the ocPortal version 4.3 RC1 here.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Flynax Classifieds, a web software maker specialized in classifieds web software, is presenting a new and long-awaited script – Flynax Real Estate Classifieds.
Flynax Real Estate Classifieds is a powerful software makes it possible to run your own free or commercial Real Estate classified ads online agency.

They have tried to include all customers’ wishes and request in new Flynax script.

SEO friendly optimizing system of Flynax Real Estate Classifieds Script allows you  to make your site more adapted for search engine systems.
The multi-functional Administrator Panel and additional Plugins will give you unlimited possibilities of script customizing. Friendly templates will amaze your client by useful functionality and modern style.

Flynax Real Estate Classifieds Script adapted for USA region by default. There are map, states list, zip codes database, address view related to United States only.

In order if you wish to use this software for your country, you should contact them and request Real Estate script adapted especial for your region.

Try the online demo before buy!

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Movable Type, an open source blog software, which we have reviewed here has recently released its new version 5 RC 1. Included in this release is a new theme ‘Pico’ and many other bug fixes. The launch of Movable Type version 5 is targeted for late November.

Major Changes in this release,

• Added a new theme “Pico”.
• Bundle style repository with a theme.

Styles can also be bundled with a theme to easily offer different flavors of a theme. Styles are nothing but a combination of a stylesheet and images to bundle with a theme.

• Config directive SQLSetNames should be specified as SQLSetNames 0 in mt-config.cgi when upgrading from older versions with MySQL 5.x and UTF-8
• Tip: When including templates inside a loop which is using multi-blog to aggregate content, blog_id should be specified with include tag to ensure proper template is included unless the template to include exists in each blog/site being aggregated.

Backup and Restore Issues Solved,

• When Backup/Restore all or website, manifest file cannot start restore.
• JavaScript error when uploading a manifest file from the Restore screen
• Backup/Restore drop the Following/Follower data
• CF: Backup/Restore customfields of Image object
• Backup/Restore: Association of assets CF of Category is wrong
• CF: Backup/Restore customfields of Blog/Website object
• Assets named in Japanese have garbage file name when backup
• [Restore] Website custom field is not restorable
• Restoring set wrong userpic
• manifest file : cannot upload
• [restore] folder/category custom field is not restored
• Website: Restored Facebook Commentes setting
• Restored data can get wrong Multiblog settings

Upgrade Issues Solved,

• Index templates are not published after upgrade from MT 3.21
• Upgrade remove all system templates of the blog whose template set is not Classic Blog
• Problems after upgrading a blog whose site/archive URL is ‘foo.com’
• Error when publishing templates after upgrading from 3.21

Theme and Template Issues Solved,

• Professional Website template doesn’t display Comment and Trackbacks
• Unable to display Professional Website template with Dynamic Publishing
• Warning messages are always shown when applying a theme that contains a custom fields
• No warning messages show up when theme cannot add a custom fields
• Item customfield tag is escaped in community template
• mt:WebsiteIfCommentsOpen doesn’t work in dynamic publishing
• mt:Websites with exclude_websites doesn’t work (static/dynamic)
• Template refresh doesn’t respect blog language.
• View Published Template link doesn’t work when Output file include directory
• IE: Comment Pagination doesn’t work
• Comment Pagination doesn’t work on Community Blog template
• Pagination of Main Index
• Dynamic: Publish mt.js by dynamic generate error
• Fixing issue on Ajax pagination.
• mt:Include doesn’t work in some situations
• mt:Blogs doesn’t work in dynamic publishing
• Professional blog doesn’t work on dynamic
• Professional Website: Comment form is blank on Comment Preview

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

The Joomla project has recently announced the immediate availability of its new release,  Joomla 1.5.15 codenamed “Wojmamni ama mamni”.

The key features and changes made in this release include,

Security
Two security issues were fixed in this release:

• Moderate Priority – Core – Front-End Editing.
• Low Priority – Core – XML File View.

Components

• Allowed search to use the Itemid of the current Menu Item
• Removed unnecessary quotes in search results
• Fixed problem when using relative URL’s in editor with SEF enabled.
• Fixed formatting problem in Category List layout with Internet Explorer
• Fixed problem with entering HTML in user confirmation messages
• Fixed Media Manager issues in Windows
• Fixed problem with Archived Article filters when cache is enabled
• Fixed RSS feed problem with ampersand in page title

Modules

• Allowed underscore character in menu names
• Fixed problem with mod_newsflash and altenative read-more text
• Fixed problem with Alias Menu Item Type not opening in new window
• Fixed problem with UTF-8 characters in breadcrumbs

Plugins

• Fixed problem with email cloaking and non-ASCII characters
• Fixed TinyMCE configuration error
• Fixed problem with multiple editor instances on one page
• Fixed problem whereby TinyMCE stripped some image HTML
• Fixed TinyMCE Extended Valid Elements problem
• Fixed problem with TinyMCE blockquote
• Allowed Firefox inline spell check to work in TinyMCE
• Fixed problem saving changes in TinyMCE
• Fixed TinyMCE problem with caption.js and filtering
• Fixed TinyMCE bullet issue with Internet Explorer
• Made image title names consistent in front and back end
• Fixed issue with email cloaking and images
• Fixed problem in email cloaking syntax
• Fixed caption alignment when image alignment is not set
• Fixed JavaScript error in TinyMCE
• Added option to create templates in TinyMCE editor
• Fixed problem with TinyMCE Sql
• Fixed problem when using email cloaking and JavaScript
• Fixed problem with email cloaking when using images

Templates

• Fixed problem with missing template CSS files
• Fixed problem with linked images in Beez template
• Added default text color for backend error messages
• Added missing spinner.gif
• Fixed problem when copying Beez template to new name
• Fixed error in JA_Purity template with Internet Explorer 8

Language

• Added TinyMCE Language file for Toggle Editor button
• Added Ulaanbaatar in timezones
• Fixed problem with localisation of pagination strings
• Added missing Display # language string
• Added missing com_media language strings
• Improved tooltip text for mod_search
• Fixed problem with version information for core languages

Administrator

• Fixed problem with FTP fields auto-completing

System

• Don’t show password in configuration.php file
• Fixed problem when Itemid does not exist
• Fixed PHP 5.3 compatibility issues
• Fixed problem with caching for com_weblinks and com_contact
• Fixed additional PHP 5.3 compatibility issues
• Fixed problem with warnings in system_config.php file
• Added missing JEXEC checks in code
• Fixed problem converting UTF-8 characters to ASCII
• Added option to disallow users to view extension XML files
• Fixed problem with onAfterDisplayTitle event and PHP 5.3
• Fixed problem with displaying error messages with right-to-left languages

Downloads Joomla 1.5.15 here.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

phpBB one of the popular open source forum software’s, which we have mentioned here,  has recently announced the availability of the fourth release candidate for the next release – phpBB 3.0.6. This fourth release candidate contains mostly regression fixes.

The following things have been changed since 3rd Release Candidate:

• Fixed cache issues in feed generation.
• Include default language in data to send for statistical purposes.
• Revert “Parse multiline url title for [url] BBCode tag” because it introduced different bugs.
• Fix sql_create_table (table creation) in db tools for mssql and sqlite.
• Adjusted email template admin_welcome_activated to be more descriptive (and in-line with the changes to the other email template files).
• Implemented better way to generate SID-free links in feed.php
• Fixed Jabber SASL PLAIN authentication failures.
• Fixed severe bugs with Oracle and UPDATE statements.
• Fixed issues with database updater and Oracle/SQLite/Firebird.

You might want to read more about this release here.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.