Mega Update Thursday

It’s hard to believe 2017 is already here!  Hopefully everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable New Year.  On this end the team has been busy working on module updates that have just been rolled out into the Marketplace.  With over 30 module updates alone, it’s been a busy morning!

Jamroom Core 6.0.5

The latest release of the Jamroom Core is out now - version 6.0.5.  This new release brings some big performance improvements for the core Queue system.  One of the best things about Jamroom Hosting is that we get an “inside” look at the performance of some of the largest Jamroom systems, and get to see in real time how things hold up (or don’t hold up) under heavy load.

The updates to the Queue system are based on issues that have been observed in very large systems, while under a fairly heavy load (dozens of requests per second) with very deep queues (50,000+ entries).  The new changes should allow these systems to handle the load much easier and keep chugging along.  Even smaller sites that get very busy should see an improvement in system performance under load.

New Elastic 2 Skin

The “legacy” Elastic skin was the very first skin for Jamroom 5, and while it had been updated and tweaked over the last few years, it was really the same design it was in 2012.  We’ve now rolled out an all new Elastic 2 skin that brings a more modern and sleek design.  It is now included by default in the Jamroom Open Source core, and is a great skin to start any custom design from.  It’s clean, responsive and easy to customize (since it uses very few override templates).  We like new stuff just like everyone else and felt like it was time for something new in the Open Source core.

The new Elastic 2 skin can be installed on any site for free from the Marketplace.

Big Meta Tag module updates

There were several things we wanted to change about the way meta tags (and most importantly Open Graph tags) functioned in Jamroom, and Michael has been working hard on this one for the last couple weeks.  Previously, all Open Graph tag support was part of the ShareThis module.  This meant that in order to have Open Graph tags on pages, you had to have the ShareThis module installed.

What we’ve done is move support for Open Graph meta tags into the Meta Tag Manager module (which makes sense right?) which means you can have full OG tag support without needing ShareThis.  This also gives us a much better framework for adding OG tags to pages that are NOT item detail pages, which means better support all around.

This also means there were a couple dozen other module updates that went out this morning as they each contain a NEW “item_detail_meta.tpl” file.  This is the NEW template that is used by the Meta Tag module and is used to add Open Graph tags to the item detail pages.  Feel free to customize the new templates to suit your needs.  We’ve also begun adding Twitter “card” support to these templates, and will continue to update them going forward to support more social tags.

New URL Redirection Module

We’ve also rolled out a NEW module called “URL Redirection”:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/networkmarket/414/url-redirection

That takes over URL shortening duties from the ShareThis module.  The URL Redirection module also features “link masking” for rewriting one URL to another URL, and keeps track of click statistics.  You can download and install the URL Redirection module from the Marketplace right now.

Simple Chat - have fun with Smileys

We’ve also rolled out a new version of Simple Chat that now integrates a “smiley” selector for desktop browsers right in the chat pane - you will see a new smiley button that will open configured Smileys - simply click on one and it is added in to your chat message.  Note that this functionality requires the Smiley module be installed and configured.

Search Module speed ups

The Search module has been updated and should be MUCH faster when performing searches on large systems.  It also includes a new “Log No Results” option that will log search strings to the Activity Log that resulted in no matches.  We’re using this here on Jamroom.net as a way to find out the type of questions users are searching for where we do NOT have documentation to help. Seeing the search query log let’s us know what we need to add.

Newsletter Module - now with Module and Custom Filters

Not to be left behind, the Newsletter module has also received some big updates.  There is new Module and Custom Filter support that let’s you further refine and target specific segments of your Jamroom user base.  It includes a small info section showing you HOW MANY users match the selected quotas and filters BEFORE you send - this way you can easily see if your filters are doing what you want and adjust your settings as needed.

I know many of you probably saw the number of updates in your Marketplace and figured “something was up”, so we wanted to cover some of the cool new features and updates that have just rolled out.

We hope you like the new updates - join us in the Support Forum and let us know - we always appreciate feedback from everyone.

Thanks!

- The Jamroom Team