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JReviews 2.4 Beta 1 has been released!


Alejandro

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We are very proud to announce the first beta release of JReviews 2.4. Many of you are aware that've been working on this version for a very long time. We finally made it to the first beta and we thank you very much for your patience and support. It is very important that you carefully read the points below before you pull the trigger and update your site!

 

[iurl=#one]1) This is a beta version and it is NOT suitable for productions sites. Report the bugs you find![/iurl]

 

[iurl=#two]2) Upgrade instructions.[/iurl]

 

[iurl=#three]3) What are the changes in this version?[/iurl]

 

[iurl=#four]4) What are the most imporant new features?[/iurl]

 

[iurl=#five]5) Where's the documentation for JReviews 2.4? [/iurl]

 

[iurl=#six]6) Will JReviews 2.4 work with Joomla 3.0?[/iurl]

 

[iurl=#seven]7) Where is the trial version for JReviews 2.4?[/iurl]

 

[iurl=#eight]8 ) Where's the beta of JReviews Express 2.4?[/iurl]

 

[iurl=#nine]9) Where's PaidListings for JReviews 2.4?[/iurl]

 

 

[anchor=one]1) This is a beta version and it is NOT suitable for productions sites.[/anchor]

 

We are not joking! If you install this on your production site and everything stops working you brought it on yourself. We are not going to be able to stop everything to help you.

 

This version probably still has lots of bugs, which is why we are calling it a BETA. You can help us by reporting the bugs and we'll fix them for the following beta. As the number of bug reports decreases, then we'll know we are closer to a stable version. How long that will take depends on how many people install the beta and help us with the bug reports.

 

There's a new Bugs 2.4 forum board where you can submit your bug reports. If we need access to troubleshoot we'll request a ticket from you.

 

[anchor=two]2) Upgrade instructions.[/anchor]

 

Now that you've read and agreed to point 1) above, continue reading for upgrade instructions. If this is a brand new install you can install normally and skip to point 3).  Since this is a major version upgrade it won't be possible to upgrade remotely from JReviews 2.3. Once we release an update for 2.4 you'll be able to continue using the remote updater.

 

* Uninstall GeoMaps and PaidListings if you have them installed. PaidListings is not yet available for JReviews 2.4. We are already working on an update, but it won't be available right away.

 

* Remove any overrides. You can do this quickly by renaming the whole 'jreviews_overrides' folder to something else. Never rename this folder back to 'jreviews_overrides' because you will break JReviews. You can't use any old files with the new version.

 

* Uninstall the s2Framework and JReviews components.

 

* Download the package from the client area, your upgrades need to be valid or you need to order a new upgrades package.

 

* Install the new S2Framework and JReviews and CLEAR the browser cache.

 

* If you have a GeoMaps license, install it from the remote installer in JReviews and CLEAR the browser cache.

 

* Install the new modules on top of the ones you've already installed. No need to uninstall them first.

 

* Go to the JReviews remote installer and install the 'Image Migrator' add-on and then follow the instructions. You need to setup the storage settings for photos before you run the migrator. But since you are working on a dev site, because this is a beta, you can always change it when you do the upgrade on the production site later on.

 

[anchor=three]3) What are the changes in this version?[/anchor]

 

We are not going to release a detailed changelong. We rewrote the themes, css and javascript nearly 100%. A lot of the php code changed to accomodate the way data is requested via ajax.

 

[anchor=four]4) What are the most imporant new features?[/anchor]

 

4.a). Media uploads (photo, videos, attachments and audio) in both listings and reviews. Anyone can contribute media to a listing, not just a reviewer. There's a ton of configuration settings and many can be overriden per listing type so make sure you take the time to study the settings and play with them.

 

In order to allow video and audio media uploads it is necessary to sign up to Amazon S3 and one of the three different video encoding services we support: Zencoder, Encoding and Transloadit. They are all pay per usage, they all have a testing mode you can enable in the account and some of them offer a free monthly quota. You can still embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion without having to go through Amazon S3 or an encoding service.

 

4.b) Automatically create a registered account on new guest submissions. This is optional and can be enabled in the configuration.

 

4.c) Responsive design. We only just began to make the themes responsive, so we still need some work here, but videos, audio, photo galleries, module and widget sliders and the general layout are now responsive and adjust to the device screen size.

 

4.d) Replaced microformat markup with Schema.org for structured data and there's a Schema.org 'Object Type' setting now available per listing type.

 

4.e) Many many more other improvements from the previous version.

 

[anchor=five]5) Where's the documentation for JReviews 2.4?[/anchor]

 

There isn't one. First we need to finish refactoring the add-ons and make it stable. Everything is the same as before with the exception of the new features and some of the tips & tricks in the current documentation may not work on this version.

 

[anchor=six]6) Will JReviews 2.4 work with Joomla 3.0?[/anchor]

 

No. We are not planning on looking at 3.0 for now, maybe we'll even wait for Joomla 3.5 to be closer to being released before we go ahead and spend the time to make it compatible.

 

[anchor=seven]7) Where is the trial version for JReviews 2.4?[/anchor]

 

There won't be a trial version until the stable version is released.

 

[anchor=eight]8 ) Where's the beta of JReviews Express 2.4?[/anchor]

 

There won't be a JReviews Express 2.4 version until the JReviews 2.4 stable version is released.

 

[anchor=nine]9) Where's PaidListings for JReviews 2.4?[/anchor]

 

We are still working on this and have made some good progress, but we can't offer a specific date. We'll do our best to release it soon.

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