Jomsocial 4.1 Development Status

As soon as JomSocial 4.0 was released, and we’d finished partying, we began work on the next major version while still keeping an eye on the current stable release. We are now finalizing improvements and adding new features to the core before we focus on completely redesigning modules and applications to fit the wonderful new JomSocial 4 design.

Read on for a sneak peek of the major improvements and new features that you can expect to enjoy in the next release.

The Photo Albums Your Memories Deserve

Posting photos is one of the most common actions that people take on any social network.

While JomSocial has always allowed photo uploads, we wanted more flexibility.

Create a photo album and post images to events

Avatar, cover and stream photo albums become system albums.

System albums will now automatically be available for every user, group and event. You won’t be able to upload directly to these albums. Instead, photos will be added when you change avatar, redesign your cover or post directly into the stream.

Complete control over uploaded images.

Users who create an album or post a picture in one of the albums in events or groups will also be able to delete that photo or album.

Your photos organized just the way you want!

Want to move a photo to a different album? In JomSocial 4.1 you can. You’ll be able to transfer photos from within member, group and event albums, but you won’t able to move the photo outside the member, group, event or from system albums.

Keep your photo albums ordered.

User, group and event albums are now clearly separated. With no crossover between albums, you should find it easier to keep your albums in order. You won’t be able to set a cover image for awesome new event of yours, using the album created in a different group.

There is so many places where you'll find that albums are clearly separated, but most obvious place is on the “All albums” list where you'll see four different filters for “My,” “Members,” “Group” and “Event” albums.

Posting images to your friends’ profiles.

This was one of the most common requests we received and now that the system albums are in place, we’re good to go. You can start posting images to your friends’ profiles or to whichever profiles you have permission to post.

Photo watermarks keep your pictures safe.

Did you notice the JomSocial logo on the image above?

It’s a watermark feature. You will be able to select minimum dimensions for images to receive watermarks. Pictures under the minimum dimensions won’t be watermarked but images big enough to steal are now protected.


 

Videos To Capture Your Life

Videos also received major improvements in version 4.1. The two upgrades you’ll notice most are the ability to post videos on other users’ profiles and in events.

A Richer User Experience

JomSocial 4.1 has a number of little extra touches that together make for a hugely improved experience.

Online indicator

Tell your friends when you’re online—or not. Enable the indicator and a small green dot will appear on your user avatar. Turn it off and you can browse the network unnoticed.

Tagging by first name or last name

JomSocial 4.0 enabled user tagging by only one name but only in comments. JomSocial rolls out one-name tagging for posts.

Search and filter by profiletype

Enabled the profiletype feature? Cool. In the members list, you’ll find a new profiletype filter. Advanced search will also include the new criteria so you’ll have a new way to search the profiles.


 

Other Improvements And Features

Search stream by keywords

You can already search streams by hashtag, but in 4.1 you get to search by keyword too.

Featured posts

Stream items can now become featured posts. Admins can set the maximum number of featured items in a stream and everyone can highlight their most important content. Standard users can feature content on their own profiles. Group and event admins can feature posts in their groups and events, and admins can do it everywhere!

Select a default filter for your stream

The stream’s default filter used to be set by the admin and applied to every user in the community. In 4.1, users will be able to select their own default filters.

File attachments in private messages

Posting files has been possible in group discussions and announcements but it’s always been a bit clunky. We’re trying something different in private messages, which we’ll then roll out in other areas. So far it’s working great: much simpler and much more intuitive.

Two Factor Authentication

We’ve brought in two factor authentication to keep your community secure and safe.
Even if someone throws a glance at the password you type, the authentication code will always be different and unique.

Joomla Smart Search Isn’t Smart Enough Yet

We did want to implement Joomla Smart Search but it’s just not ready yet. The current implementation doesn’t allow for any privacy control so anyone can find content you’ve marked as private.

We know how important privacy is so we decided to hold off Smart Search until this Joomla! core feature is improved.
 

What’s Happening Now?

We’re now finalizing the improvements in the core and we’re working hard to redesign modules and applications. After that our usual process of beta testing will take place.
 

So When Do I Get My Hands On All Those Goodies?

We can’t predict exactly when development of all these new features will be complete, but you can expect to see the first 4.1 Beta available for testing within a couple of weeks. Development then goes into “feature freeze” and the time before stable release depends on the number of bugs discovered during beta testing.
 

Disclaimer

We’ve packed hundreds of little improvements in both frontend and backend so this is not a complete list of all features. It’s just the highlights—and they may change. The design is also close to final but what you see in these sneak peek pictures may differ from the final product.
 

Questions, comments, criticisms?

Please post them below.