Digital Peak is located in Switzerland where we have four national languages, multilanguage is basically in our blood. This is the reason why our extensions speak many different languages. So it is obvious that want to provide the best service to our translators and reconsider regularly our setup. In the last month we moved from Transifex to self hosted Weblate instance with more possibilities, like quality checks and better git integration.
As it is holiday in many parts of the world, we ship one week earlier as planed. We deliver a new version for DPCalendar, DPMedia, DPAttachments and DPCases. The following new feature releases are published today for you:
- DPCalendar 8.16.0 [Download]
- DPMedia 1.10.0 [Download]
- DPAttachments 5.4.0 [DPAttachments]
- DPCases 3.4.0 [Download]
The next chapters are highlighting some of the most important changes in this release window.
New translation service
Since day one are our extensions available in many different languages. Translators from around the globe help to translate them as part of the community effort and some are going a step further and actively maintaining the languages over time. For these, we have the contributor program, where they will get free premium access as long as they maintain the translation in their language. Interested become a translator as well? Get in touch with us.
At the beginning was Transifex our tool of choice, as their initial spirit was open source based. Many projects hosted the translations on their site in the past, including Joomla. In recent years shifted their attitude to a more profit oriented mindset and open source projects are leaving the platform. We have been carefully evaluating other options like crowdin, but at the end of the day we wanted something more open source and not rely on a closed SaaS system. Unlike others, we made good experience with Weblate, a Saas or hosted translation platform. It also does fit well our idea of open source with a paid support model and a powerful integration API.
We are proud to present you now translate.digital-peak.com. Our own hosted translation service with quality checks and automatic suggestions, based on AWS translate. Want to help translating one of our extension into your language? Register here and after email validation you are free to translate it.
At a first glance, the interface might be a bit overwhelming, but you get used to it very fast and over time it will be fun, translating extensions like DPCalendar into your language.
New demo sites
As we run all our services as docker containers, we decided to run our own Weblate instance at translate.digital-peak.com on that stack too. Our docker initiative allows us to isolate the services and protect them behind a reverse proxy. So it was no surprise that we moved our demo sites to that new architecture as well. More about it in a separate blog post then later.
For every extension we have it's own demo site which get reset every 4 hours. Like that you will have enough time to play around with our premium features, before you buy them. All the demo sites can be found on demo.digital-peak.com.
DPMedia: SFTP support
The FTP core media manager integration plugin of DPMedia supports now the SFTP protocol, which encrypts the communication between a SSH server and your Joomla site. Another big benefit is the passwordless authentication. It is possible to define a key in the adapter configuration without a password, the plugin can communicate then without having a user password for your SSH server in the Joomla database. The only requirement is an exchanged public key between the Joomla server and the SSH server.
The images are stored locally on the web server of the Joomla site, like that can the visitor not inspect the connection between the Joomla server and the SSH server. More information can be found in the documentation plugin article.
Bugfixes
We are eager to improve our extensions on a regular basis. That's why every major/feature release does contain also bug fixes and small enhancements as well to improve the stability and performance.
A full changelog is added in the respective download release description on our download site.
Security
This release window contains a security fix in DPCalendar. Where an event publisher can save the color field with some Javascript code by modifying the POST request which will then be executed in the back end event list. This security issue is only possible when the user has enough privileges to save events within DPCalendar.
Upgrade considerations
- The prefix in the language files got removed. During the upgrade are the old files deleted, so it is absolutely a must that up upgrade all the extensions of each package too, otherwise you end up in untranslated strings.
- The booking button is rendered in the list views in it's own layout. If you have an override of a file in /{template}/html/com_dpcalendar/list, then you will see a new override notification. The old code still works, so you don't have to do anything in your override.
- The link to the location details page from the event details page contains now the start date as hash, so the visitor doesn't have to scroll the calendar. If you have an override of a file in /{template}/html/com_dpcalendar/event/default_locations.php, then you will see a new override notification. The old code still works, so you don't have to do anything in your override.
- The qr code is now an SVG image and it is not necccessary to add the inline base64 string. If you have an override of a file in /{template}/html/com_dpcalendar/ticket/default_qrcode.php, then you will see a new override notification. This needs to be changed in the override, otherwise the QR code will not render.
- We removed the language code from the translation files, so there are some filesystem operations which can slow down the update.
If you have soon Christmas holiday, the Digital Peak team wishes you a good time and see you soon next year in full shape. We have great plans for 2024! Kind regards
Allon Moritz aka laoneo
Founder of Digital Peak