Changes to the site this week:

December 20, 2024:

• NEW: Beta version of the new Robohelp-based help center, at https://groups.io/newhelpcenter
• BUGFIX: For RSVP waitlist email notifications, include the sender name. Event creator display name not shown on waitlist message
• CHANGE: Strip out "Sent from Nine" email sigs. Re: Strip out more common email sigs
• CHANGE: Move the 'Leave Group' button to the right side of the page. "Leaving group" user experience not consistent

I will be on vacation the next two weeks. The next #changelog will be published on January 10, 2025.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

December 9, 2024:

• BUGFIX: We were rotating some videos that didn't actually need to be rotated.

December 11, 2024:

• NEW: The /activity page now shows relevant pending message activities (approved, deleted, rejected, expired)

The next #changelog will be published on December 20, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

December 4, 2024:

• NEW: Download Members now includes any extra member data fields in the .csv export

The next #changelog will be published on December 13, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

November 19, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fixed an internal issue where we were holding an image cache lock too long which in some cases was causing site slowness.

November 20, 2024:

• BUGFIX: For enterprise groups, our DMARC re-writing was too aggressive, and we were re-writing the from lines from some moderator notifications, causing issues with approving pending messages via email.
• APP: Released new versions of the iOS and Android apps, with updated libraries but no other changes.

November 22, 2024:

• INTERNAL: Updated several internal dashboards and revamped Influxdb retention policies.

I am off next week for Thanksgiving. The next #changelog will be published on December 6th.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

November 11, 2024:

• SYSADMIN: Doubled the capacity of the web servers to work to address site sluggishness issues.

November 13, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The code that detected which requests were from bots was missing some bots, causing extra load on the systems from should-be-banned bots.
• CHANGE: Banned some new bots and IP addresses that were abusing the service.
• CHANGE: When blocking a bot, we now return the Forbidden HTTP status; previously we were returning Not Found.
• APP CHANGE: When entering a chat, there were instances where, even if the app has permission to send notifications, we weren't storing the notification token correctly, and therefore not sending notifications.

November 15, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Some videos sent as attachments would play upside down on the website.
• BUGFIX: When attempting to play some very large videos on the website, an error was shown instead.

The next #changelog will be published on November 22, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

October 28, 2024:

• CHANGE: On narrow screens, reduce the left and right margins.
• CHANGE: Increase the speed of drawer and modal transitions from 0.3s to 0.2s.
• BUGFIX: Fix several instances of broken breadcrumbs.

October 29, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When going to a https://groups.io/g/GROUPNAME/join link while logged in, redirect to the group home page.
• BUGFIX: Users that are banned by the system can no longer email +owner addresses. main@beta.groups.io | Banned members still able to send email to +owner

November 1, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In the app, in some instances in dark mode, you could not gain focus of the editor.
• BUGFIX: In the app, in chat, if you uploaded a photo, you were required to type something before the send button would appear.

The next #changelog will be published on November 8, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

October 21, 2024:

• CHANGE: Added Reply Only To Sender option to the group Reply To setting.

October 22, 2024:

• NEW: Added Left To Right and Right To Left text direction options in the editor advanced toolbar.

October 23, 2024:

• BUGFIX: We were not allowing messages sent to +owner that had Private: in the subject line. Confusion about Bounced message, marked "Private:" and maybe (or not) sent to a group address?
• NEW: Revamped the long press reaction menu in Chat and added the ability to DM people.

October 24, 2024:

• CHANGE: Changed the group /topics dropdown menus to behave better on mobile.

October 25, 2024:

• CHANGE: Changed the message dropdown menus to behave better on mobile.
• BUGFIX: Fixed the All Actions selector in the activity log pages to behave better on mobile.
• CHANGE: Added Back buttons to several pages on mobile for better navigation.
• BUGFIX: We were missing about 20 strings for localization due to a bug in the localization pipeline. I also fixed some mismatched case issues and standardized a couple of strings.

The next #changelog will be published on November 1, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

October 14, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Some user sidebar items were not highlighting.
• CHANGE: When creating a group, changed the first field from 'Group Name' to 'Group Email Address' to hopefully reduce confusion.
• BUGFIX: Try to prevent a user's name to be set to just spaces. main@beta.groups.io | Member's Display names without text
• CHANGE: Updated the Brazilian Portuguese translation.
• BUGFIX: When splitting a topic, the new topic should have the same attributes as the original topic and should not generate any extra activity log entries. Odd (wrong) Activity log entries when a Locked topic is Split
• CHANGE: Add a note to the upcoming annual billing email saying no payment is due if the group is fully sponsored. Tweak to the auto renewal emails text

October 15, 2024:

• BUGFIX: If you did not already have a Github integration defined, it was not possible to add another Github integration.

October 17, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Summaries were improperly ignoring followed hashtags.

The next #changelog will be published on October 25, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

October 7, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The Reject Notices dropdown was missing when rejecting a pending message from the edit pending message page. Show option to select a Reject Notice from within edit mode

October 8, 2024:

• UPDATE: Updates to the Brazilian Portuguese localization of the site, along with some minor fixes to all of the translations.

October 10, 2024:

• BUGFIX: We were not using the Brazilian Portuguese translation file; we were instead defaulting to the European Portuguese translation file.

October 11, 2024:

• CHANGE: Changed how the file upload widget works in the Files section to hopefully be more clear. main@beta.groups.io | Messy changes to Uploading files?

The next #changelog will be published on October 18, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

October 2, 2024:

• INTERNAL: Improved and automated the tooling around generating, maintaining and verifying the language translations of the site.
• BUGFIX: Activity log entries and filters are now localized.
• NEW: Added Dutch translation of the site.
• BUGFIX: Better handling of credit card errors in the group sponsor page. Sponsorship with a credit card not working

October 3, 2024:

• NEW: Added Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Arabic translations of the site.
• CHANGE: Send out billing receipts to all moderators with the billing privilege, instead of just the group payer.

October 4, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Chat was not working for some Enterprise groups.
• BUGFIX: Display the correct date when viewing a wiki page revision.
• BUGFIX: Authenticate Github/Trello flow for integrations was not working.

The next #changelog will be published on October 11, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

September 23, 2024:

• NEW: In new Deleted event activity log entries, include the date of the event that was deleted.
• BUGFIX: When parsing a calendar delete event notice emailed from Outlook to the group, we were not updating the repeat event object correctly.
• BUGFIX: When making minor changes to a repeating event (like name/desc/location), we were deleting and re-creating the underlying single events, which caused any existing RSVPs to be deleted. We now maintain all existing RSVPs.

September 24, 2024:

• BUGFIX: If an event or repeated event was deleted from the calendar, that deletion was not reflected in the ICS file. This would cause any subscribed calendars to become out of sync with the Groups.io calendar.
• BUGFIX: Changes to a single instance of a repeating event were sometimes not reflected correctly in ICS files.
• NEW: In new Modified Event activity log entries for single events, include the date of the event that was modified.

September 27, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fix Outlook formatting issues for Upcoming Events email. Re: Site updates

The next #changelog will be published on October 4, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

September 16, 2024:

• CHANGE: For Enterprise groups, use their custom logo graphic for oembed images.

September 18, 2024:

• CHANGE: Rolled back change that enforced a group's attachment settings on emails to the +owner address. Once again, all attachments are sent through the +owner address.
• BUGFIX: When viewing +owner messages on the website, attachments were not displayed properly.

September 20, 2024:

• CHANGE: Improved the formatting of the Upcoming Events email.
• CHANGE: Improved our sanitizing of CSS styles when displaying emails to allow more styles to be included and hopefully better display of complicated HTML email.

The next #changelog will be published on September 27, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

August 27, 2024:

• INTERNAL: We now handle large file uploads in the Files section better, and the previous 100MB file size limit has been increased to 2GB.
• CHANGE: I have changed the file picker widget in the Files section. It now includes a progress bar during uploads.

August 28, 2024:

• CHANGE: Now we lazy load images when viewing the archives. #bug - Images in (long) thread not all loading
• INTERNAL: Increased our rate limiting settings, which were getting tripped by loading lots of images. #bug - Images in (long) thread not all loading
• BUGFIX: Fixed several small HTML issues in various message archive pages.
• BUGFIX: When navigating between pages on the website, we were inadvertently re-fetching all images from the previous page.

August 30, 2024:

• CHANGE: Rotated the DKIM signature and set a timeout. Investigated implementing an automatic rotation system to thwart a recent spamming issue.
• CHANGE: Changed the wording of the new Files upload widget to "Drag and drop files here, or click to choose files". Re: Updated Files uploading

I am on vacation next week. Responses to email and support will be delayed during that time. The next #changelog will be published on September 13, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

August 5, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In some instances when a member was viewing a database table, the 'View Row' button would not appear.

August 20, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fix styling of Open/Closed chat dropdown. Mouse cursor in main Chats screen drodown
• BUGFIX: Be smarter about displaying the sender in "Non-member attempted to send message" activity log entries. Provide the email address of non-member messages

August 22, 2024:

• INTERNAL: I was not limiting the resource usage of ImageMagick when resizing/converting images. An SVG file in a message with massive dimensions was causing ImageMagick to exhaust memory and disk space on various machines.

August 23, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Fix modal footer button vertical alignment when buttons wrap on narrow screens. Small layout tweak for mobile message approvals
• CHANGE: When banning a domain that's already been banned, display a notice saying as such. Add info if adding a domain to the Banned Domains list that is already there
• BUGFIX: When viewing a Past Member, the breadcrumbs led to broken URLs. Problems in Admin/Members webpages
• BUGFIX: Deleted account activity log messages now longer link to the user (which was broken). Members leaving, how it is listed in the Activity log
• NEW: When unsubscribing from a group via the new, now pop up a dialog box where the member can enter a reason why they're leaving. Members leaving, how it is listed in the Activity log
• CHANGE: A group's handle attachments setting now applies to +owner messages as well. Attachments to Owner

The next #changelog will be published on August 30, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

July 29, 2024:

• CHANGE: Changed Responder to Respondent in several parts of the website for clarity.

July 31, 2024:

• INTERNAL: Added a cache for attachment images to speed up delivery.
• CHANGE: Images shown in the /topics page are now delivered properly reduced in size to speed up delivery.

August 2, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Muted/Followed Hashtags entries weren't included the mobile More menu.
• BUGFIX: Various group rename user interface issues. Group renaming display problem
• BUGFIX: Don't modify wiki page link targets. Links in wiki open in new tab every time
• BUGFIX: Don't send a #cal-invite notice when editing a repeating event unless specifically asked. Updating a repeating event sends a cal-invite message

I am on vacation the next two weeks. Responses to email and support will be delayed during that time. The next #changelog will be published on August 23, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

July 21, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In some instances, the RSVP link in #cal-invite notifications would lead back to the group calendar instead of the event.

July 23, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In message search, the Collapse Threads setting would not be used with infinite scroll. main@beta.groups.io | Search “Tool > Collapse Topics” snafu
• BUGFIX: Removed the unnecessary timezone display next to the group member Joined date. Possible incorrect time zone
• CHANGE: Changed the text for the hamburger icon in the narrow window nav bar from More to Menu.
• BUGFIX: When viewing hashtags in the grid format, if a hashtag was muted but also had notifications enabled, we'd unnecessarily display the bell icon.
• BUGFIX: Do not create a past member record when a pending member expires or is rejected. Re: Moderator option to resume past memberships

The next #changelog will be published on August 2, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

July 15, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When the system disables an account, if that account had already been banned in a group, the disabling was not being logged in that group.
• BUGFIX: Infinite scroll of the /topics and /messages pages would show repeating header lines. app@beta.groups.io | Heading repeats in topic list.

July 16, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The font 'Courier New' was misspelled in the editor, leading to possible font mismatch problems.

July 17, 2024:

• NEW: There is a new Email database column type. New field type for email address in database tables
• CHANGE: Database change notification emails now link to the relevant database.

July 18, 2024:

• CHANGE: Changed Date link colors to be more consistent. Change "Date" in message display from a button to a hyperlink

July 19, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In the narrow user Groups page, strip formatting from group descriptions. app@beta.groups.io | Exceeding slotted box

The next #changelog will be published on July 24, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

July 8, 2024:

• ADMIN: Added https://beta.groups.io/g/ai group to discuss possible AI/LLM assisted new features for Groups.io

July 9, 2024:

• NEW: Return an already subscribed error message when trying to subscribe via email to a group you're already a part of. Email subscription attempts if already subscribed shouldn't be ignored

July 10, 2024:

• NEW: Added email/subject search to the pending messages pages.

July 12, 2024:

• BUGFIX: When entering italicized, bolded, or underlined text in the editor before either a person's signature or a quoted reply, spaces would be ignored. Lose character spacing after using italics
• CHANGE: Some broken email systems generate emails with Message-ID headers that are improperly formatted. I've updated our code to be able to parse these header lines. This will fix some cases where topics are split when they should not have been.
• BUGFIX: Search was unavailable on the /subgroupmembers page when viewing on narrow screens.
• BUGFIX: When clicking a repeating event activity log entry, the Organizer fields may have been pre-populated incorrectly. Repeating event display error using Activity Log link
• CHANGE: Our email parsing library would correctly error out on emails that incorrectly had quoted-printable sections with very long lines (quoted-printable lines should only be a max of 76 characters). Now we are more liberal in parsing those.

The next #changelog will be published on July 19, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

June 25, 2024:

• INTERNAL: Change how we update our DNS servers to fix a race condition when renewing our Let's Encrypt certs.

June 26, 2024:

• BUGFIX: Infinite scrolling on narrow screens caused the page to either blank out and/or jump to the top of the page. app@beta.groups.io | #iOS It was suggested I report this problem here - see below
• BUGFIX: Fixed the erroneous with a calendar event, but they do not have permission to add events to the calendar activity log messages. main@beta.groups.io | Many experienced members now (allegedly) trying to add calendar events
• INTERNAL: Updated HTMX library to version 1.9.12.
• CHANGE: Remove the RI banner from the Members page. main@beta.groups.io | Remove or change the "RI" banner at top of members list

June 28, 2024:

• CHANGE: Logging in via Login Link now unbounces, reverifies, and/or confirms accounts. Logging in via "send me a link" should reset several account status flags
• INTERNAL: Downgraded HTMX library back to 1.9.9 because the new version broke back button behavior.

I will be on vacation next week. Responses to email and support will be delayed during that time. The next #changelog will be published on July 12, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Changes to the site this week:

June 10, 2024:

• CHANGE: The Google map view has been re-enabled when viewing events.

June 11, 2024:

• BUGFIX: The chat Plus and Camera buttons had the wrong color in dark mode.
• BUGFIX: Going to a specific chat from the top level Chats menu was broken.
• CHANGE: In the app, on a narrow screen, when the keyboard is up, hide the bottom nav bar.
• CHANGE: When in chat, once the text area has focus, have it keep focus even after a submit.

June 12, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In the App, when clicking a non-external link (ie that goes to https://groups.io), open the link in the app instead of going to the browser.
• BUGFIX: The direct add message displayed on the web site was not exactly the message that was emailed to members.

June 13, 2024:

• BUGFIX: In the App, you could not download the memberlist.csv file. Download member list not working

June 14, 2024:

• CHANGE: Export Events is now Export Calendar. Change Export "Events" to Export "Calendar"
• CHANGE: Formatting tweaks on the group Attachments page. #suggestion Listing the Attachments of Messages
• CHANGE: Change the announcement group bounce message to "This is an announcement group and only moderators can post to it.". Tweak the bounce message when member tries to post to announcement group
• CHANGE: When viewing a banned member, don't display most of the member info page, as it's irrelevant. Misleading "Membership" pages for Banned members
• CHANGE: Only parse calendar invites in messages that are not replies. Many experienced members now (allegedly) trying to add calendar events
• BUGFIX: Fixed markdown previews when adding and viewing events.
• BUGFIX: In some narrow screen sizes, the editor wouldn't show the attachments button.

I will be on vacation next week. Responses to email and support will be delayed during that time. The next #changelog will be published on June 28, 2024.

Take care everyone.

Mark