MyConversations: releases and other announcements

[Laird]

MyConversations version 1.1.0 has just been released, and along with this release, its website (at that link) has been majorly revamped too, for a more modern web look.

This is a between-major-versions release. It fixes bugs, implements features requested as a priority by users, and fills in necessary functionality that wasn't quite present in the first major release.

New features and fixes:

• Major new user-facing features:
  
  • A tool to export conversation messages. Attachments can optionally be exported along with conversation messages. Otherwise mimics the core export-of-private-messages feature.
    
• Major new administrative features:
  
  • A new per-usergroup setting for maximum permissible number of participants in any conversation started by members of the usergroup.
    
    
  • A flood interval setting to prevent any given member from sending conversation messages too rapidly.
    
    
  • The default PM settings have been replaced with the corresponding MyConversations settings in the "Messaging and Notification" box of the "Account Settings" tab of the ACP's "Edit User" page, i.e., at admin/index.php?module=user-users&action=edit&uid=[uid]#tab_settings
    
• Major new features applicable to both end-users and administrators:
  
  • MyConversations now intercepts and replaces the core PM sending functionality, in particular the core PMDataHandler class and (simply because it relies on that class) the core send_pm() function. Core code and other plugins that rely on that core functionality now don't need to be changed for compatibility with MyConversations: rather than core PMs being sent by those core tools, MyConversations messages are now sent instead. Some points to note are:
    
    • This relies on a small, two-line change to the core file `inc/datahandlers.pm.php`; a change which MyConversations automates and automatically reverts when appropriate.
      
      
    • System-generated PMs are supported, and their sender shows up as "MyBB Engine", as for the core PM system.
      
      
    • System-generated PMs notifying members of new replies in forum threads to which they are subscribed are supported. New notifications for the same thread are sent as replies to any existing notification conversation for that thread rather than generating a new conversation.
      
      
    • The previous MyConversations override of the buddy-request-notification-by-PM feature with an email notification has been reverted, since that default core notification-by-PM feature is now intercepted and translated into a notification-by-MyConversations-message.
      
• Minor new user-facing improvements:
  
  • When a conversation/group edit form is viewed by a participant without the "add" right, the "Add Participant:" prompt is now shown as usual, except that a message next to it indicates that the member lacks the right to add participants.
    
    
  • The unread-conversation-messages header is now shown on every page: prior to this, it wasn't shown for the converse.php script.
    
    
  • The "Start conversation" button at the bottom of a post is now only shown if the viewing member can actually start a conversation with the poster. This is the case when all of the following hold:
    
    • The viewing member is logged in, i.e., is not a guest, i.e., has a positive user ID.
      
      
    • The viewing member has the `cnv_canstart` per-usergroup right (i.e., "Can start conversations and conversation groups?" is checked).
      
      
    • The poster has not disabled receipt of conversation messages.
      
• Minor new administrative features:
  
  • usercp.css is now associated with converse.php on plugin activation rather than on installation.
    
• Bug fixes:
  
  • The pop-up display of IP addresses for conversation messages, which treated message IDs as post IDs, has been fixed.
    
    
  • The mistakenly hard-coded database table prefix in `inc/plugins/converse/converse-functions.php` has been replaced by the `TABLE_PREFIX` define.
    
    
  • The define for the administrative root directory is used where appropriate, rather than a hard-coded string, as this location can be customised.
    
    
  • The `PREG_BACKTRACK_LIMIT_ERROR` that sometimes occurred when detecting a `[quote]` tag with an `mid` parameter has been fixed.