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Change Notes


Change Notes

1.0.1

Much-improved text clean up.

Fixed minor UI bug with "New Upload Folder" command.


1.0

This is Content Server 1.0.

Last changes:

MOVING FILES BUG:

Sometimes processed files were being put in the wrong place on some systems. This has been fixed.

CGI HOOKS:

Two new hooks tables, for the Content Server CGI.

See the Hooks page for information about these new hooks, which allow you to customize the appearance and behavior of the submit page.

CGI ROOT ACCESS:

You can now specify that a user has root access when publishing via CGI.

In the user's folder outline, type "[root]" (without the quotes). This will give them access to the root level of the Content folder when publishing via CGI.


1.0fc1

In the absence of deal-stoppers, this is Content Server 1.0.

Changes:

FLUSHING WEBSTAR'S CACHE:

The flush-cache is now in a try statement. Users of earlier WebStar versions won't get an error anymore.

FILE NAMES IN OPEN FOLDERS:

Fixed problem generating file names.

VERBOSE EMAIL:

Error messages now provide more information.

Emails to the syop(s) now contain more information, including email address of author and so on.

CHANGE IN HOOKS:

Hooks are now tables. If you already have hooks installed, you will need to move them into the corresponding table.

This way we can have multiple scripts for each hook, allowing people to more easily build on Content Server, and allowing for people to distribute their own hook scripts to other people.

CLEAN UP TITLE:

Titles are now cleaned up -- carriage returns and so on are removed. This was causing problems.

MENU COMMANDS IN UTILITIES TABLE

Some menu commands or parts of menu commands have been placed in the publisher.utilities table, to make it easy for people developing remote admin programs (such as Dynauthor) or scheduled scripts to access some of these functions.

ENHANCED MACRO SECURITY:

Macros now may only contain literal parameters. This was a security risk, now fixed. Many thanks to Jim Roepcke for pointing this out.

RECENT MESSAGE:

The most recent message sent to the sysop(s) is now saved at user.publisher.lastmessage.

MAIL HOST PREFERENCE:

If you need to specify a mail host for Content Server's outgoing email (that differs from the right-hand portion of Content Server's outgoing email address) you can place the host (as in "mail.myisp.net") at user.publisher.mailhost. If this preference is blank, it will be ignored -- the default behavior means no change.


1.0b13

Never publicly released.


1.0b12

BUG FIXES:

Fixed getting list of email sysops

Fixed adding directives to CGI-submitted pages

Removed some un-needed text clean-up code

Cleaned up confusion between pagename and title

NEW PREFERENCE:

convertImportedEntities -- turns on and off the automatic conversion of various common entities (ampersands and quotes) into their plain text representations.

The default is to do to the conversion, which is no change to previous behavior.

USER-DEFINED TEXT FILE READERS

You may put your own text file readers at user.publisher.textfilereaders.

These are called before the built-in readers at html.data.textfilereaders. You can over-ride the built-in readers.

Look at the built-in readers and the calling script at publisher.utilities.callFileReaders to find out how to implement this. (It will be documented, it just isn't documented yet.)


1.0b11

Extremely minor fix to the Auditing feature.


1.0b10

One new feature, at the bottom of the Publisher menu: "Audit Preferences." This menu command asks Content Server to inspect your preferences and tell you about your set-up. This is a good place to start with any trouble-shooting.

Also one bug fix, for security problem with emailed content.


1.0b9

OK -- hopefully last beta version. Fixes one bug in the installer.


1.0b8

Many bug fixes.

This should be the last version before version 1.0.

There are many features that the 1.0 version will lack, most importantly work-flow and root synchronization features. My priority right now is to get the basics down and bug-free, to create a suite that will accept content via ftp, email, and CGI and render web pages.

Docs will finally be updated Thursday, March 20.


1.0b7

MIME character decoding: Content Server is smarter about email, now decoding characters of the form "=EA" into Macintosh text.

No "Open Folder" emails: if an email is submitted to an "open" folder, there is no email confirmation sent back. This is to deal with email folders that are automated archives of mailing lists -- we don't want to set up a mail loop!


1.0b6

This new version of Content Server contains a multitude of bug fixes, a few behavior changes, and a new post-by-CGI feature.

The documentation is lagging behind: I hope to get it caught up Monday. I also want to fix all bugs asap -- so if you have time to keep testing and reporting, please do so.

THE NEW POST-BY-CGI FEATURE:

Check out http://www.yourserver.com/contentserver.submit.fcgi

Access is controlled via the user.publisher.users table. Each user or group has a username (the name of the table) and a password. An outline in the specific table lists folders the person may post to. These folders are relative to the contents folder, as in:

subfolder:
a:b:c:

etc...

NEW TEMPLATES BEHAVIOR:

You can now load templates directly into the website table, instead of at user.html.templates.

You may make folders in the Templates folder that correspond to tables in the website table.

Any template named "template" is loaded into the website table. Any template with another name is loaded into user.html.templates.

NEW GRAPHICS BEHAVIOR:

Graphics can now be loaded into sub-tables of the website table. Just create folders in the Images folder.

NON-TEXT-PAGE CONTENT:

Graphics, binhexed files, pdf files, etc. that are placed in the Content folder are copied to the corresponding location in the web site. Graphics are loaded into user.html.images before being copied, but other 'assets' are simply copied. (I think this system can be made to do more work here, but this will work for the moment.)

TONS OF BUG FIXES:

Check it out. If you had reported a bug previously, I bet it's been squashed now.


1.0b5

Didn't get released.


1.0b4

Major new feature: email reporting. Still more features to come.

Content Server now uses "Net Events" and the "TCP commands" to send notifications, confirmations, and error messages via email. You must have Net Events 1.0b6 or higher, "Net Events glue", and the latest version of the TCP commands.

Choose "Set From Address..." to set the address Content Server sends email from. "Edit Email Recipients..." provides an outline listing the email addresses of the sysops, who receive email notifications of all new content and all error messages.

Important: Frontier may not know where Net Events is, and it needs to. Choose "Launch Net Events" to launch Net Events and let Frontier know where it is. If you don't do this, there will be problems on your server.

Choose "Enable Email Messages" to permit Content Server to send email. You can turn this off later if you wish.

Another new menu item: "Disable Processing..." This allows you to stop the Content Server agent without having to disable all agents. It can be re-enabled later.


1.0b3

Minor changes only: you may wish to wait for 1.0b4 which will contain some major new features.

You can now administer multiple sites with the Content Server. You can set the main website table as your root table. When you choose "New Site" from the Publisher menu, enter "user.websites" in the dialog box. (Without the quotes.) This will not over-write your current user.websites table.

This way, top-level folders in your Content folder map to different web sites. For instance, "Content:siteA:" maps to user.websites.siteA. Etc.

Another change: email parsing is now a little smarter. Email address enclosed in carets have the carets removed so the html suite can make the email addresses hot.


1.0b2

Saves root after images, templates, or content is imported.

Backing up is automatic. Choose "Hourly Backup" to back up the web site table and your preferences every hour. Backups are stored in the Publisher Backups folder in your Frontier folder. Backups can also be performed manually, with the "Backup Now" command.

Page log now contains author name and email address if #author and #authorEmail directives are present, as they generally are with emailed pages.

Next: Content Server


This page was built on a Macintosh running Frontier. Last modified 4/15/97; 1:05:06 PM. Copyright 1997 Userland Software.