New Theme

v3 will come with a new theme that will have support for multiple columns. By default we are working with 3 columns for the new version. We also plan to include several styles with our new default theme.

Activity Feed

From our activity feed you can now not only share a status update you can share content such as links, photos, blogs, videos etc... There is no restrictions on what can be added since it uses our internal callback system so 3rd party developers can also easily include their forms.






When adding content via the activity feed the forms are a lot shorter and straight to the point in comparison to the form you would find when adding content within their respective sections (eg. Blogs, Photos etc...). We include the most important parts of the form and this includes the ability to control the privacy of the item.






We added support to share links and we try to find out if the link the user is sharing contains a video, photo, blog.






When you share a video we now include a photo for that video and allow users to click on the photo and have it play the video right on the spot.






To help with activity feed spamming we now group similar feeds from the user that has added multiple items within a short span of time.






Users can now vote on a poll directly from the activity feed.

Site Wide AJAX Browsing

We have had a lot of requests to use AJAX tabs on a users profile, however we took this feature a few steps further. v3 will introduce site wide AJAX browsing. Before we go further into this we need to mention that this will not be a problem for search bots as this only works for users that have browsers that support this sort of a browsing method. The benefits with this new method of browsing is a user will load your entire site once and when visiting a new page we don't reload the entire browser we simply load the content we need. Users will be able to browse your sites much faster as they will save on having to load CSS and JavaScript files as well as the ability for us to easily cache a lot of information since the users are not refreshing the page. Not only will they be able to browse faster they will be able to have a chat and still be able browse the site without loosing that chat session.


Here is a short of how you could be composing a message and click away on the site and still not lose what you were writing.




h3>Likes & Comments Fully Integrated

All Comments and Likes are fully integrated so if you add a comment on an item it will also show on the activity feed that it is associated with.


This is a view of comments added to a poll:





This is the same comments on the activity feed:

Privacy

One of the major improvements in the core engine is related to privacy. This has required updating all the modules and activity feeds that connect with those modules. phpFox at the moment has very straight forward and basic privacy settings. Items that are marked as private never get added to the activity feed. With version 3 we still continue to support the current privacy structure, however for those with servers that can withstand the SQL queries required to have similar privacy settings that Facebook provides can now do so.


We now provide the following privacy structure on items:

• Everyone - Anyone can view the item.


• Friends - Only friends can view the item.


• Friends of Friends - Friends and Friends of Friends can view the item.


• Only Me - Only the owner of the item and view it.


• Custom - User can define who can view the item.

You can control the privacy of an item as well as who can comment on the item.






Privacy settings are now fully integrated to the activity feed. So if you create a blog and you only want a few users to view it; only those users will be able to view the blog when viewing it, browsing it in the blog section, browsing it on your profile or viewing it in the activity feed.


Users can control who can specifically view items based on Friends Lists that they create.


Here is a screenshot of how a user can select a Friends List:





Creating a new Friends List on the spot:





Easily add friends to a list with our new Instant Friends Search tool:

Composing Messages on the Spot

Anywhere you plan to PM a user we don't send you to a new page, we instead use a friendly popup that lets you send a message wherever you are on the site.

Profile

New profile layout to work with the 3 column theme we are providing by default.






You can now share items and not just post comments on a users profile.






We have separated by default the users personal information from their "Wall".





Users menu now found to your left, which will allow for 3rd party developers to easily plug-in more menus and comes with support to count how many items the user has in that specific section.

Improved Attachments

We have re-developed how attachments work with blogs, threads, messages etc... Currently you can only attach files, however with v3 we include the ability to easily attach photos, videos, links and files.


Screenshot of attachment links when writing a blog:





Screenshot when managing attachments for an item:





Screenshot when adding a link attachment:

Notifications Rebuilt

We have rebuilt how notifications are handled and we are working on adding notifications to anything we can find. Users can access their notifications anywhere on the site and will instantly get notification without even having to refresh the page.

API Support Added

With v3 developers will be able to register for a developers account on your community in order to attain public/private API keys, which will allow access to your sites API. This will allow developers to easily build applications that do not require uploading source files to your server. We currently support output of information in JSON and XML. As an example of what this feature can do is if a developer wanted to get information about a specific user they could do the following request to your server:

http://www.yoursite.com/api/method/user.getUser/&a...


We would then return something like this:

jQuery Updated

jQuery now running latest version (at the time of this writing) v1.5.1 and UI 1.8.11. Added support to easily upgrade jQuery in the future.

Global User Tooltip

Hovering over a users name on the site will provide a tooltip that will allow you to find out more about the user as well as interact with them (eg. Befriend, Message etc...)

Datepicker

For all the areas that we provide the ability to select dates we now include a datepicker.

Sharing from Video Sites

We will be using the embed.ly API to grab videos. They have support for over 200 media sites include YouTube, Justin.tv, UStream, Qik, Revision3, Daily Motion, College Humor, TwitVid.

Open Graph Protocol

All sections and items will have support for the Open Graph Protocol.

Play Songs in Feeds

You can now play songs directly from the activity feed.

Activity Feed includes New Share Options

Our activity feed now comes with the option to share a status update, photo, video, link, poll, blog or song.

Photo Theater Mode

Optional feature to view all photos on the site in what is being called "theater mode". Photos will be loaded on the spot plus it comes with next/previous links as well as when clicking on the image it jumps to the next image. All this is also done via AJAX saving a lot of time and resources to load images making it a lot more fun and user friendly.

Mass Edit Photo Album

You can now edit all the photos part of a photo album from one location.

Relationship Status

v3 introduces Relationship Statuses.

Ads in Photo Theater Mode

With v3 we are introducing the ability to place ads in specific locations like when viewing a photo in "Photo Theater Mode". With our current version we can only place ads within specific blocks.

Photo Tagging Notifications

When a user is tagged on a photo they are notified via an email and an internal site notification. It also gets added to our Activity Feed and still respects the owners privacy settings.




When viewing a photo album that has several photos and if these photos have tagged users we will display a block that shows all the users tagged in the photo album.

TinyMCE as our Default WYSIWYG Editor

We are bringing back TinyMCE as our default WYSIWYG text editor and it will not be a plug-in any longer. If you would prefer another editor please vote here.

Mass Edit Photos

We introduced mass editing of photos when photos are part of an album last week and this week we introduce the ability to mass edit all your photos direct from the photo section.

Import Photos in Attachments

Major changes have been made to our Attachment module making it much easier to attach photos, link, videos & files. This week we introduce another and that is the ability to import one of your uploaded photos as your attachment.

Janrain Integration

v3 will introduce a full integration of Janrains' Social Login service. Their service provides the ability to sign into your site from 20+ popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc... Setting everything up will be a breeze as it will just require signing up for their service here. They provide a free plan, which has all the needed features to sign users into your site.

Friend Notifications include Mutual Friends

Friend notifications includes the users mutual friends.

Tooltip includes Mutual Friends

Tooltip now include the users mutual friends.

Invite Only

New featured added with v3 where you can transform your community into an "Invite Only" social network.