Code Ranch Release Notes   

The forums at coderanch run on a heavily customized version of JForum. The code is developed and maintained by the coderanch staff (who are volunteers just like everyone else in the forums). From time to time the coderanch staff fixes bugs or introduces new features in the forum software. These changes are then deployed to the production servers.

The page here lists the release notes of each release that has been pushed to production. We would like to thank everyone who's been involved in maintaining the forum software.

Released on 2/9/2013:

Note: various changes in this release were hot-patched into production before the release date.

• Jeanne - various CSRF protection changes
• Jaikiran - fixed holiday moose admin page to make it functional with the CSRF changes
• Jaikiran - fixed thumbs up/down on posts of Fix liking/unliking posts broken by the CSRF changes
• Jaikiran - "Steam powered printing press'' broken by the CSRF changes fixed
• Jaikiran - stopped adding CSRF token to external site links
• Jaikiran - fixed adding CSRF Token to URLs containing fragment id (#)
• Jaikiran - correctly generate CSRF token for new sessions
• Jaikiran - fixed post split functionality broken by the CSRF changes.
• Christophe - allow JForum developers to override the default Locale (fixing formatting problems in non-English environments)
• Christophe - fixed date sorting in cows listing
• Jaikiran - stopped adding CSRF tokens to safe actions

Released on 1/27/2013:

• Jeanne - changed the PM subject to avoid the messages being classified as spam
• Jeanne - initial version of the protection agains CSRF attacks
• Jaikiran - allow only moderators to see the beta view switch message
• Jeanne - CSRF tokens not applied to nonlogged users
• Jeanne - all actions protected from CSRF attacks

Released on 1/21/2013:

• Jeanne - removed Knowledge Black Belt integration in the anticipation of the site being closed down
• Jeanne - fixed the display of profiles of users that do not have any cow
• Jeanne - changed 'thumbs' to 'thumbs up' in the Leaderboard
• Jeanne - allow ranchers to see where their cows came from
• Jaikiran - add ability to view and manage attachments in mobile view
• Jeanne - deactivated critical code that might be vulnerable to CSRF attacks

Released on 1/5/2013:

• Jeanne - fix apples vs cows verbiage for the permies forum
• Jeanne - fix display of number of cows in Firefox 17
• Jeanne - keep user on same page after granting cows
• Jeanne - changes to the cows leaderboard, including renaming 'likes' to 'thumbs up'
• Jeanne - pick winners minor bug fix
• Jaikiran - numerous changes in the new site design (the beta view):
• use 'Home' and 'Forums' on buttons instead of 'JavaRanch' and 'JavaRanch Forums'.
• make the button clickable and not just the text inside them.
• add support for displaying auto-linked content using its specific css
• show a visible informational message on the topic view page, if the topic is locked
• fix a bug in header template where certain element values including meta tags were not properly escaping html content
• reduce the font display size of the post author information
• minor change to bumper sticker message (removed bold font)
• fix blackbeltfactory rendering on topic pages
• fix an NPE reported in coderanch logs for requests triggered for RSS action

Released on 1/1/2013:

• Jaikiran - word-wrapping long lines in code tags (prevents long lines in code tags to widen the page layout)
• Jeanne - fixed an XSS issue in BlackBelt user names
• Jeanne - a Jumpin JForum Day 2013 feature - Cows!
• Jeanne - add leaderboard for cows
• Jeanne - bandwidth saving (removed pointer to an empty stylesheet in header)
• Jeanne - renamed "private messages" to "private moosages"
• Jeanne - fix: locked threads didn't display view count
• Jaikiran - new look and feel for topic view, including ability for users to opt-in for this beta view
• Field agent - removed a broken option in Lucene index rebuild

Released on 12/22/2012:

• Jeanne - preparation for the Jumpin JForum Day feature
• Jeanne - moved "likes" and other logic to external file to save bandwidth
• Jeanne - preparation for a new look and feel implementation
• Jeanne - fixed performance issues in forum list rendering that were causing technical difficulties
• Jaikiran - disabled multi-forum support in RSS feeds for a forum
• Jaikiran - fixed performance issues in Lucene reindexing process (those contributed to search facility being uavailable for a few days)

Released on 12/14/2012:

• Andrew - resolved a conflict in fixes for incorrect counting of posts per forum
• Jaikiran - fixed other leaking database resources
• Jaikiran - fixed a NPE which was being reported in the logs of coderanch server

Released on 12/9/2012:

• Andrew - fixed incorrect counting of posts per forum
• Andrew - fixed leaking database resources
• Andrew - code cleanup in a DAO class

Released on 12/7/2012:

• Jeanne - fixed a bug in Holiday Moose administration

Released on 12/1/2012:

• Jeanne - "threads others viewed" renamed to "similar threads"
• Jeanne - fixed bug in holiday moose management code
• Jeanne - fixed post count displayed on forums page
• Jeanne - pick winners adjusted to accomodate new multiple forums per thread functionality
• Jeanne - Ranch Dairy Council
• Ranga - enforced a limit on the length of lines inside code tags to prevent broken layouts

Released on 11/18/2012:

• Andrew - fixed bug related to entity manager
• Andrew - fixed yet another bug related to entity manager
• Andrew - improvements to multiple forum per threads management
• Andrew - fixed bug in thread duplication code related to multiple forum per threads extension

Released on 11/17/2012:

• Andrew - added functionality to include one thread in multiple forums (only moderators can assign threads to multiple forums as of now)
• Jaikiran - fixed the topic icon display where already read topics were being shown as unread upon session timeout
• Jaikiran - fixed "Quick Reply" broken in last release (hot-patched in production earlier)
• Jaikiran - fixed code to accomodate old-style URLs so that it no longer creates /forums/forums in URLs
• Jaikiran - added a link to the naming policy page on the name change request form
• Jaikiran - stopped forum software from shortening the display of lenghty URLs
• EFH - banner statistics upgrade
• Jeanne - removed insecure contents (the moose) on login page to avoid "this page has insecure content" warnings
• Jeanne - fixed bug related to announcement management and display
• Jeanne - fixed null pointer exception occuring after sponsored link was deleted
• Ranga - expanded list of words that are not used in thread URLs
• Ranga - SEO improvement on main forum page
• Ranga - SEO improvement on individual forum pages
• Jeanne - fixed a bug related to non-mobile view on certain types of Blackberry
• Jeanne - removed extra line breaks that were added when using HTML code to incorporate tables in posts

Released on 9/23/2012:

• Jeanne - don't include request for mailing address in messages to promo winners when the prize is not to be sent by mail
• Jeanne - pick winners list shows more information from the profile of selected users
• Jeanne - pick winners list shows how many times the user has won recently
• Jeanne - fix job that deletes old user sessions to not throw stale data exceptions
• Jeanne - subject not checked for disallowed words when replying to an existing thread
• EFH - more detailed targetting of banners based on regions
• Bear, EFH, Jeanne - update OP icon to be smaller, clearer and have a title
• Andrew - tracking sending reactivation emails in logs
• Ranga - too vague subjects disallowed when creating a topic
• Ranga - prevent creation of empty posts (server-side validation)
• Andrew - some refactoring in DAO layer
• Andrew - more information in exception messages in log files

Released on 9/16/2012:

• Jeanne - removed references to (unused) original "blocked forum" JForum icon
• Jeanne - fixed bug that prevented deleting private messages in mobile view
• Jeanne - the "OP" (original poster) icon next to the rancher name marks the person whih started the thread being viewed
• Jeanne - more JDBC to JPA migration
• EFH - banner editing using JQueryUI dialog
• EFH - Tricorder spatial module lookup caching
• Ranga - prevent creation of empty posts
• Jaikiran - fixed a potential NPE while preparing a post for display
• Jaikiran - fixed a potential NPE while viewing/downloading attachments
• Andrew - allow per-site configuration of the email address we ask users to send error reports to
• Jeanne - allow pls and other censored words in URLs
• Jeanne - ignore trailing dot at the end of YouTube url (which otherwise stops the url from working)
• Jeanne - removed bug in administration of nofollow links
• Jeanne - fixed a memory leak

Released on 8/12/2012:

• Jaikiran - Subspace Radio Noise Filter
• Jaikiran - fixed and unified sponsored links administration
• Jaikiran - added an explicit message to the account registration and lost password page asking the user to check their spam folder for the emails
• Jaikiran - minor changes to attachment handling and displaying:
• attachment name and description displayed in the post (if available)
• attachments are displayed in the order in which they were uploaded
• Field agent - Tricorder Focus Lens
• Jaikiran - notification emails not sent to inactive addresses
• Jaikiran - Proximity Detector
• Jaikiran - further adjustment of the email sending process
• Field agent - update to Lucene 3.6.1 and related changes
• Jeanne - Forklift Truck
• Jeanne - added YouTube button in edit form

Released on 7/16/2012:

• Field agent - Navicomp Subspace Radio
• Jeanne - changes to the forum creation procedure
• Andrew - prevented certain type of (harmless) JForum exceptions
• Andrew - Phaser Maintenance Logbook
• Jaikiran - Proximity Generator
• Andrew - added ability to re-send account activation emails
• Andrew - Proximity Detector

Released on 7/7/2012:

• Jeanne - pick winners bug fix (include Monday in search for welcome thread)
• Jaikiran - bandwidth optimization: support caching of attachment images in posts.
• Jaikiran - improved thread integration with Facebook
• Jaikiran - Fog Of War
• Jeanne - Phaser Recharge
• Jeanne - Project Orion Shock Absorber
• Jaikiran - Most Wanted - Delist
• Andrew - Untagging
• Jaikiran - Project Orion Logbook
• Jeanne - support embedded youtube videos in url tags
• Jeanne - load emoticons only if panel expanded
• Andrew - minor changes that don't affect application
• Jaikiran - removed bug in handling nofollow links
• Field agent - category home pages can be viewed even if that category is generally turned off as a user preference

Released on 6/16/2012:

• Jeanne - caching all site images for faster response and bandwidth savings
• Jaikiran - fixed a bug in handling atttachments without descriptions
• Jaikiran - improved Facebook integration of threads with attachments
• Jaikiran - fixed a bug which might inflate view counts of some threads
• Jaikiran - Project Orion Ignition Key
• Jeanne - merge pick winners code with main jforum code

Released on 6/10/2012:

• Field agent - made font of email image smaller for really long addresses
• Jeanne - Set phasers to stunning
• Jeanne - don't show Watch Topic link in mobile view
• Jeanne - HTML not properly encoded on forum subjects
• Jeanne - redirect to normal URL if non-logged in user watches a thread
• Jeanne - fix URLs when user left off http://
• Jeanne - show Information updated page after successfully editing user profile or name change form
• Jaikiran - Robotic goats
• Jaikiran - Various changes to the way attachments are handled and displayed
• Jeanne - a first stab at the convert youtube links to embedded videos feature.
• Jeanne - Tricorder spatial module refactoring
• Jeanne - caching template images for faster response and bandwidth savings

Released on 5/20/2012:

• Jeanne - JDBC to JPA migration
• Field agent - add email address image in user profiles
• Andrew - Spatial module for tricorders
• Field agent - Tricorder spatial module upgrade
• Field agent - Improbability drive fixation
• Andrew - Shields phase repolarization

Released on 3/26/2012:

• Jeanne - made pages a tiny bit smaller to save bandwidth
• Andrew - Navicomp programming
• Field agent - Tricorder index expansion
• Ankit - Fix weird line in bumper stickers
• Field agent - Support for Promo coordinator
• Field agent - creating watches for topics created when splitting posts
• Jeanne - generate more like this for existing threads

Released on 2/25/2012:

• Jeanne - made pages a tiny bit smaller to save bandwidth
• Jaikiran - Enabled "Report post to moderator" for all logged-in users
• Field agent - fixed a couple of search problems
• Jeanne - allow login by e-mail
• Jeanne - Superfluid chronometer
• Field agent - Cloaking crystals
• Field agent - Fixed look of polls (we haven't run any yet, though)
• Field agent - Communicator circuit etchings
• Field agent - Improvements in CodeRanch server monitoring tools
• Jeanne - Photon torpedo sights setting
• Andrew - Change size of embedded YouTube videos from 425x350 to 640x480

Released on 1/14/2012:

• Jaikiran - Implement the report to moderator feature
• Jaikiran - Torpedo bay abutment
• Andrew - Helm panel upgrade
• Jeanne - fix error starting new thread in mobile view