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Guest Kris
Posted

[HEADING=1]What’s Font Awesome?[/HEADING]

 

Discourse uses a free set of icons from Font Awesome throughout its interface. You see these on toolbars, badges, buttons, etc… here’s our composer toolbar:

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="image]83[/ATTACH]

 

Since 2018 we’ve been using Font Awesome 5 (original announcement), and in the meantime Font Awesome 6 has been released. Version 6 includes new icons, some general style updates, and renames.

 

As of today, Discourse will start using version 6 too! Specifically, version 6.6.0. This isn’t an enormous visual change, but you’ll notice some differences:

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="image]84[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=1]What does this upgrade involve?[/HEADING]

 

This upgrade was a little more complicated to implement because it involves a number of renames. Font Awesome did this to make their naming conventions more consistent.

 

Because of the renames, changes will be rolled out in multiple phases:

 


 

Today - Font Awesome upgraded to v6, icons will be automatically remapped

Soon - deprecation messages will be enabled to help theme/plugin authors update their icon names

Q4 2024 - admin warning banner enabled for any remaining deprecations

Q2 2025 - removal of automatic remapping

 


[HEADING=1]What do I need to do today?[/HEADING]

 

Nothing at all [ATTACH type=full" alt=":tada:]85[/ATTACH]! Once Discourse is updated, you’ll have the new version of the icons.

 

Discourse will automatically remap old icon names to new icon names, and the old icons will all be replaced. This includes icons used in the interface by default as well as badges, group/user flair, sidebar items, and additional icons added by themes and plugins.

 

[HEADING=1]What do theme and plugin authors need to know?[/HEADING]

 

The methods covered in Introducing Font Awesome 5 and SVG icons will still work for adding new and custom icons.

 

We don’t want to carry the long list of remaps forever, so the old names will eventually stop working.

 

We want to give developers ample time to replace old icon names, so we will start showing console warnings like this soon:

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="Displays a browser console warning that says Deprecation notice: the icon name pencil-alt has been updated to pencil. Please use the new name in your code. Old names will be removed in Q2 2025.]86[/ATTACH]

 

If you see one of these warnings, all you need to do is update your theme or plugin with the new icon name. Later in 2024 we’ll show admins a banner drawing their attention to these warnings.

 

Once the admin deprecation warning is shown, you’ll have a minimum of a few months to swap in the new icon names.

 

At some point in Q2 2025 we will remove the remapping of the old names, and if you haven’t updated icon names by then, you’ll see blank spaces where some of your icons used to be.

 

[HEADING=1]There are lots of new icons![/HEADING]

 

The upgrade from version 5 to 6 introduces hundreds of new free-to-use icons, almost 500 in total!

 

You can browse the full set here, this is sorted to show the newest additions first — and the search is very handy: Search Icons & Find the Perfect Design | Font Awesome

 

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Guest Hugh Lashbrooke
Posted

We’re excited to announce a significant improvement in how we handle pageviews and present this crucial data to you. Our new site traffic report offers a more comprehensive and accurate view of your community’s engagement. Let’s dive into what’s new and how it benefits you!

 

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt=":information_source:]87[/ATTACH] Please note that we are in the process of rolling the new pageview tracking out to hosted customers, so not all sites will be switched over right away.

 

[HEADING=1]What has changed[/HEADING]

 

We’ve revamped our approach to tracking and reporting pageviews to provide you with more reliable and actionable data. We now monitor the sources of individual pageviews and are able to detect if they came from a real browser or a crawler.

 

The new site traffic report combines data from various sources to give you a holistic view of your site’s traffic.

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="Site traffic report]88[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=1]What is included in the report[/HEADING]

 

The site traffic report includes the following four types of pageviews:

 

  1. Pageviews (logged in): Pageviews from users who are logged into your Discourse instance.
  2. Pageviews (anonymous): Pageviews from users who are not logged in but are using a web browser.
  3. Known crawlers: Pageviews from identified web crawlers or bots (e.g., search engine crawlers).
  4. Other traffic: Various types of requests that don’t fall into the other three categories, including other crawlers.

 

The default report view hides the known crawlers and other traffic metrics, so that it aligns with the pageview metrics displayed elsewhere in the dashboard.

 

[HEADING=1]Why this matters[/HEADING]

 

This now give you a far more accurate gauge of actual traffic on your forums. Many crawlers are not easily detectable using user agent strings, so this report helps you gain a clearer understanding of who is visiting your forum.

 

This allows for better decision-making, easier growth-tracking, and an improved ability to identify trends in users and page views.

 

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt=":information_source:]89[/ATTACH] For hosted customers, this also means the pageviews that count toward your monthly limits are more accurate and realistic.

 

[HEADING=1]How to access the new report[/HEADING]

 

You can find the new consolidated pageviews report in your admin dashboard For a detailed guide on how to interpret and make the most of this new report, please refer to our comprehensive documentation: Understanding pageviews and the site traffic report

 

[HEADING=1]We value your feedback[/HEADING]

 

As always, we’re committed to improving your experience with Discourse. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new report and how it’s helping you understand your community better. Please share your feedback and any questions you may have in the comments below.

 

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Guest Discourse
Posted

We’re excited to announce the new Starter plan, the easiest and fastest way to launch a community with Discourse. Starter offers public or private sites with unlimited members at $20 a month!

 


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at Introducing the new Starter Plan! - https://blog.discourse.org/2024/09/introducing-the-new-starter-plan

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Guest Dave McClure
Posted

Welcome to our first edition of Current Projects, a new monthly newsletter where we’ll be sharing what we’re currently working on at Discourse.

 

Our goal is to give you and the wider community some insight into what might be coming next in Discourse so you can stay informed, ask questions, share feedback, and contribute to what’s currently in progress.

 

Without further ado, here’s what we’re currently up to!

 

[HEADING=1][ATTACH type=full" alt=":athletic_shoe:]90[/ATTACH] Kicking off[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]Composer redesign[/HEADING]

 

We are kicking off a new project to redesign the composer for writing topics and posts. We are still in the early research, design, and prototyping phases of this project, but will be sharing more soon with the community as we make further progress. Stay tuned!

 

[HEADING=2]New theme chooser in the setup wizard[/HEADING]

 

We are working on a new theme chooser that will give admins on new sites an easier and more visual way to choose from a small set of selected themes. The set isn’t yet finalized, but some of the top contenders for this initial pass include Mint, Isabelle, Air, Graceful, and Fully.

 

[HEADING=2]Simplifying invites[/HEADING]

 

We’re picking up some small improvements to the invite system, with a focus on making invites more discoverable and simplifying some of the more common flows for inviting users.

 

[HEADING=2]AI summaries for hot topics[/HEADING]

 

We’re starting to work on an experimental feature to allow sites to include short summaries of topics on the hot topic list itself. As the topic feed designed most for discoverability of content within a given community, we are interested in seeing whether this will lead to more engagement from casual members and new visitors to a community.

 

[HEADING=1][ATTACH type=full" alt=":golfing_man:]91[/ATTACH] In full swing[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]Admin interface design consistency[/HEADING]

 

We’ve arrived at some new patterns for the design of config areas within the admin interface, that group related sites settings and other configuration together in one place. These design guidelines are documented here. We are continuing to apply these changes throughout the admin interface. At the same time, we’re applying the new text formatting guidelines throughout the interface.

 

[HEADING=2]New user card design[/HEADING]

 

We are working on updating the default design for the user card based on the experimental theme component which we had running on meta for some time. Learn more…

 

[HEADING=2]Reimplementing topic-list and post buttons[/HEADING]

 

As part of our long-term project to remove ‘raw-hbs’ and ‘widget’ rendering systems from Discourse, we’re working to reimplement the topic-list and the buttons on posts. We’re also taking the opportunity to improve the extensibility of these things for theme & plugin developers. For now, everything is behind feature flags. We’ll be sharing more once we have a clear path forward for the rollout.

 

[HEADING=2]Better tools for migrations[/HEADING]

 

We are working on new tools to make it easier and faster to migrate your existing community to Discourse. We’ve recently merged a new converter framework along with an example implementation, and have started to work on adding support for importing into chat as well.

 

[HEADING=1][ATTACH type=full" alt=":gift:]92[/ATTACH] Wrapping up[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]New Starter plan on our hosting[/HEADING]

 

We’ve been working on a new plan on our hosting which we’ve just announced that’ll give folks the easiest and fastest way to launch a community with Discourse on our official hosting. Learn more…

 

[HEADING=2]New about page design[/HEADING]

 

We recently shipped a new design for the about page. We’re working on wrapping up this round of improvements to the about page, limiting our efforts to small final tweaks in response to the feedback we’ve been getting. It’s still currently opt-in, but we’re planning to change it over to be the new default shortly. Learn more…

 

[HEADING=2]New site traffic report[/HEADING]

 

We recently shipped a new report for Site traffic that highlights visits from people instead of traffic from crawlers and bots. This replaces the previous Page views report. Learn more….

 

[HEADING=2]Chat notifications improvements[/HEADING]

 

We’ve made a number of improvements to how chat notifications work on Discourse, in particular to how push notifications work on desktop and mobile devices. These improvements include simplifications to the user preferences as well as improvements to the logic for delivering notifications.

 

[HEADING=2]Configurable moderation flags[/HEADING]

 

We’ve completed a round of improvements to enable communities to configure their own flags for moderation. Learn more…

 

[HEADING=2]Signup and login improvements[/HEADING]

 

We’ve added a progress bar to the signup and login flow, so users can see where they are in the process when there are multiple steps involved like verifying their email address or waiting for an admin to approve their account.

 

[HEADING=2]Updated FontAwesome icons[/HEADING]

 

We updated our default icons to use Font Awesome 6. The brings updated styles to existing icons and a number of new icons to choose from for customizations. Learn more…

 

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Guest Dave McClure
Posted

[HEADING=1]New features in 3.4.0.beta2[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]Better pageview metrics with the new site traffic report[/HEADING]

 

We’ve added a new “site traffic” report on the admin dashboard that highlights pageviews from users and hides traffic from crawlers and other sources like bots by default. This now give you a far more accurate gauge of traffic to your site from logged in members anonymous visitors. Learn more…

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image is a screenshot of a webpage displaying a line graph showing the Community Health of a particular location over a six-month period, with a legend indicating the colors used for different categories. (Captioned by AI)]93[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=2]Ability to watch chat threads[/HEADING]

 

You can now choose to get notified of all replies to a chat thread by watching the thread. People who are watching a thread will see a green indicator on the chat icon when there are new unread messages, an item in their list of notifications, along with other helpful indicators in the channel list and on the thread itself in the channel where it resides.

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image shows a computer screen with a dropdown menu for a thread titled Thread with three options: Watching, Tracking, and Normal. (Captioned by AI)]94[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image is a screenshot of a text conversation in a messaging app, where one person is asking another for the latest General Channel news. (Captioned by AI)]95[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image shows a screenshot of a messaging platform with a General Channel message that reads This is dummy thread title, let's see what happens when we make it longer. (Captioned by AI)]96[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=2]Ability to add multiple groups as moderators for a category[/HEADING]

 

We’ve added the ability to configure multiple groups as moderators for a given category. Learn more…

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image shows a computer screen displaying settings for a WordPress plugin called Creator's Corner. (Captioned by AI)]97[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=2]New setting to exclude groups from /about page[/HEADING]

 

Sites can now hide particular users from the admins and moderators section on the /about page by adding them to a group included in the “about page hidden groups” site setting. This allows sites to better highlight which admins are active in the community by hiding admins who are primarily assisting in a more technical role. Learn more…

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="image]98[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=2]New location for AI helper in the composer[/HEADING]

 

The AI helper has been moved to the composer toolbar, for greater consistency with other composer options and to avoid interrupting a user’s writing and editing experience.

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image shows a computer screen with a chat or text editing application window open, displaying a blue text box with the placeholder text This is how to invoke the AI helper. (Captioned by AI)]99[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=2]Option to use full names in chat direct message titles[/HEADING]

 

In chat direct message channel titles, full names are now used instead of usernames for sites that have configured the existing preferences to do so elsewhere. Where a full name is unavailable, titles will still fall back to using the username Learn more…

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="The image displays a list of DM names in a chat interface, with each name accompanied by a profile picture and the date of their last activity. (Captioned by AI)]100[/ATTACH]

 

[HEADING=2]Ability to dismiss admin notices[/HEADING]

 

Admins can now dismiss notices shown on the admin dashboard.

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="This is a screenshot of a webpage with settings related to a software update or configuration. (Captioned by AI)]101[/ATTACH]

 

As we’ve begun to surface more minor problems here that deserve some attention, we’ve also discovered a need to allow admins to dismiss things that they may not be able to address right away.

 

[HEADING=1]Security Updates[/HEADING]

 

This release includes fixes for these security issues reported by our community and HackerOne.

 

  • DoS by the absence of restrictions on replies to posts (CVE-2024-43789)
  • Bypass of email address validation via encoded email addresses (CVE-2024-45051)
  • Prevent topic list filtering by hidden tags for unauthorized users (CVE-2024-45297)
  • XSS via chat excerpts when CSP disabled (CVE-2024-47772)
  • Anonymous cache poisoning via XHR requests (CVE-2024-47773)

 

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Guest Dave McClure
Posted

[HEADING=1]Discourse 3.3.2 Stable Release[/HEADING]

 

Discourse strongly recommends that all sites follow the default tests-passed branch of Discourse. The “stable” branch is more focused on lack of change than lack of bugs - all releases, including those on tests-passed and beta are production ready.

 

[HEADING=1]Security Updates[/HEADING]

 

This release includes fixes for these security issues reported by our community and HackerOne.

 

  • DoS by the absence of restrictions on replies to posts (CVE-2024-43789)
  • Bypass of email address validation via encoded email addresses (CVE-2024-45051)
  • Prevent topic list filtering by hidden tags for unauthorized users (CVE-2024-45297)
  • XSS via chat excerpts when CSP disabled (CVE-2024-47772)
  • Anonymous cache poisoning via XHR requests (CVE-2024-47773)

 

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