We had a little downtime today as I upgraded the site to the beta release of ExpressionEngine 1.2. This brings with it quite a few changes and the introduction of the much anticipated official Image Gallery module, which I am looking forward to putting through its paces. This is a beta so it’s possible you may stumble across something that’s not quite working. If so, drop me a line and let me know. Already the Acronym module has become a casualty of the upgrade as it appears to be incompatible with version 1.2. Ignore that last statement as it turns out it was a mistake on my part that caused the problem and everything seems to be working as it should.
Those of you who are running EE and are interested in helping beta test should drop by the pMachine website and use the link there to drop them an email. A full change log can be found in the extended entry for those who are curious.
Full change log for 1.2 Beta:
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Build: 20041101
Version: 1.2
Release Date: November 1, 2004
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VERSION 1.2 NEW FEATURES
- Added Image Gallery Module.
- Added Blogger API so that desktop posting tools can be used.
- Added search improvements to the search module. You can search for exact words,
any words, or all words.
- Added the ability to use the name of your categories, rather than the ID number,
in any URLs that are related to categories. In other words, the URLs like this:
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/C1/
can now be shown like this:
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/category/news/
Please see the user guide for details.
- Added “white-list” feature to the Blacklist module.
- Added “show_expired” parameter in the weblog and related tags, permitting expired
entries to be shown.
- Added “live URL Title” feature, which creates the URL title in real-time when you
type the tile of a new entry.
- Added comment pagination in the control panel.
- Added {next_date format="%m %Y"} and {previous_date format="%m %Y"} to the calendar tag.
- Added {comment_moderate} as a variable in the {exp:weblog:entries} tag so it can
be used conditionally.
- Added the ability to manually assign global variables in the path.php file.
If you use sub-directories for your weblogs you can now assign globals that
will be used locally for each instance. See user guide for details.
- Added option to use MD5 password encryption instead of SHA1. Note: This option
can only be chosen during installation and it can not be changed after the fact.
- Added a new notification option in the weblog preferences page that permits the
author of any given entry to be notified if comments or trackbacks have been submitted.
- Added an email debugging preference in the email configuration page.
- Added pagination to monthly archives, and other date-based display types that rely on
the {exp:weblog:entries} tag.
- Added “no_result_page” parameter to the simple and advanced search form.
These allow you to specify a template which can be shown when the search has no results.
- Added a new preference in the Global Weblog Preferences page: Auto-Assign Category Parents
This preference lets you choose whether to assign parent categories automatically when
child categories are selected during new entry posting.
- Performance Improvements. Several improvements were made to EE 1.2 resulting
in faster page load times.
1. Added internal caching of path and other repeatedly used variables to
avoid re-processing.
2. Added a “dynamic caching mode” that permits some of the weblog queries
that are normally dynamic to be cached. This is enabled in the Weblog
Management page in the Admin section.
3. Redesigned the date handling functions (which have traditionally
been among the slowest in EE) resulting in marked speed gain.
4. Changed how date variables are processed in weblog entries and comments
resulting in better resource utilization.
5. Added “query disabling” feature in the {exp:weblog:entries} tag, allowing
the tag to be streamlined when limited data is needed.
- Improved the