National Association of Writers and Groups (development site – not for public use – official site: www.nawg.co.uk)

Website Release History (for version 2 only)

The table below lists the releases for this web site, along with summaries of the associated changes that were made. You can click on the arrows to jump to the specific release details.

Release History Details

Version 2.9.6 – 27 September 2019 ↑

Behaviour & Appearance

The site is now a legacy site, for reference and archiving purposes only. In particular:

• The contact form has been disabled.
• All further commenting has been disabled.
• PayPal options have been disabled.
• Notices about the legacy site have been placed:
  • On the front page.
  • In the header banner.
  • In place of the contact form.
  • In place of the comments submission form.
  • In place of PayPal buttons and related controls.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Version 2.9.5 – 07 August 2018 ↑

Behaviour

• The results for the "100" competition are now correctly displayed when a round has been completed and the award winners selected. This is a bug fix for previous versions, where the round results did not show until the next round started.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated themes.

Version 2.9.4 – 23 July 2018 ↑

Appearance

• The login screen now has text and links about the use of cookies.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• The "Mini-Tales Competition" software package no longer uses PHP sessions. This means that the PHPSESSID cookie is no longer set.

Version 2.9.3 – 20 June 2018 ↑

Behaviour

• The “100” competition now supports pen names. Competitors can now use a pseudonym, one per story.
• Improvements have been made to the social links package, so that multiple images (for articles that have them) can be selected when creating links from social media to this website.
• The "no results found" page, which can appear for search requests or empty categories, now presents a search form in addition to the suggestions text.

Appearance

• The comments submission form now has links to the comments policy and privacy policy articles.
• The Link back issues page now shows cover images in the list.
• Fewer columns are shown when multiple articles are listed in tabular mode, e.g. when viewing a whole category. The extra columns are for administrative use and now only display when logged in with editor role or above.
• Some cosmetic improvements have been made to the login page, including a link to the privacy portal.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• The comments response form now supports configurable display elements before and after the entry controls.

Version 2.9.2 – 20 March 2018 ↑

Appearance

• Header: the text in the top banner region is now configurable, including the ability to override the title and description. In this release, the registered charity number has been shown in the banner (rather than at the top of the side bar). This reduced the amount of vertical space taken up by the top section.
• Side bar: now starts lower down, below the header row. The widgets have been reordered so that the "how to" panel always remains near the top.
• Footer: the copyright notice has been shortened to save horizontal space. A longer message can be viewed by hovering over the text.
• Printing: many of the display elements are suppressed when printing. These include: Banner, breadcrumb row, footer, side bar, article info, pagination controls.

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• SEO: access to resources robots.txt and sitemap.xml has been granted. This was a bug fix, see issue 37 for details.
• Security: the testing software and procedures have been improved.

Version 2.9.1 – 16 February 2018 ↑

Appearance

• Table rows in the 100 word mini-tales competition are now highlighted according to story status.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• More security hardening was done.

Version 2.9.0 – 22 December 2017 ↑

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• Many security vulnerabilities have been fixed.
• PHP updated to version 7.1.5.

Version 2.8.0 – 18 October 2017 ↑

Appearance

• The front page was redesigned. Changes include:
  • Altering the layout from two columns to a single column (the side bar remains a separate component).
  • Combining and condensing all panels into a single multi-tabbed panel.
• The site no longer has a grey border, thereby recovering more space to display content.
• Banner: all elements are now displayed in a single "blue" row, for simplicity and less visual clutter.
• The general typeface size was increased for better readability.
• The colour schemes, such as "sky" and "gold", were reworked to be more subtle in terms of gradients.
• Added "pastel" colour schemes for blue, pink, and yellow.

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Version 2.7.10 – 05 June 2017 ↑

Behaviour

When a category is selected, the resulting listing is no longer cluttered with articles from sub-categories.

Appearance

• The top display frame now takes up less vertical space, due to:
  • Removing the "Subscribe to RSS" link.
  • Moving the search tool from the blue banner row, down into the grey title row.
  • Making chain links logo horizontal, rather than vertical.
• A "tags" widget is now available, to select articles by their tags.
• Hyperlinks are now blue for internal links and cyan for external links. The previous maroon for internal links did not provide enough contrast.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Version 2.7.9 – 13 January 2017 ↑

Behaviour

The Content Privacy package has been introduced, with a view to implementing restricted areas on the site. Please note that this feature is in an experimental phase.

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Version 2.7.8 – 11 October 2016 ↑

Behaviour

• Article & response sets display:

  The behaviour for article sets is now:

  • 1 item: full display,
  • 2+ items: excerpts,
  • 6+ items: table.

  This aims to clarify things for the user. In previous versions, multiple articles were displayed in full (for sets of up to 4 items). Users may not have scrolled down and realised there were more than one, especially with long articles. With excerpts, it's easier to see that there are more to follow.

  The behaviour for responses is now:

  • 1 item: full display,
  • 2+ items: table display.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• Some scripts and styles are now only loaded when they are needed, rather than on every page.
• Filter configuration adjusted to remove unwanted links in the HEAD element.

Version 2.7.7 – 13 July 2016 ↑

Facilities

• Introduced the resources area, starting with the S/Cally Story Generator.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.
• Updated PHP version from 5.3.28 to 5.6.22.

Version 2.7.6 – 10 May 2016 ↑

Appearance

• The "table" display mode for article sets now includes a hint in the title, prompting users to click on a title to show an individual article.
• Added colour schemes "purple" and "steel" for panels and widgets.
• Writing groups directory: removed the "not displayed - Let us know if you want to change this" prompts.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• Added shortcodes: [advert] and [temporal].

Version 2.7.5 – 18 April 2016 ↑

Appearance

• Links now have two colour schemes:

  • This is an internal link (maroon at the time of writing) – for navigation within the website.
  • This is an external link (blue at the time of writing) – for links to other sites.

  Most external links now open in a new tab/window.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• Added features to display past and future magazine publication dates.
• Made some improvements to the handling of shortcodes, such as [file]. These include better security measures.
• NAWG Classic theme: Dropped the "writing groups" widget area.

Version 2.7.4 – 22 December 2015 ↑

Appearance

• There are now "share" and "tweet" buttons at the bottom of each article, for use with social media.
• Changed the "pencil" logo to a "chain" logo in the header banner. The favicon also has the "chain" image, now at multiple resolutions.
• Deprecated the use of the "writing groups" conditional side bar widget area.
• The login page has been customised, including the "chain" logo.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• Moved from XHTML 1.0 markup to HTML 5.
• Theme "NAWG Classic": The site logo image (for the header banner) is now configurable.

• Meta-data for social media are now provided in the HEAD element of each page. These include:

  • Open Graph tags, for Facebook.
  • Summary Card information, for Twitter.

  These assist with things like titles, summaries and image scraping, when posting links to our site on social media.

Version 2.7.3 – 07 August 2015 ↑

Appearance

• Mini-tales Competition:
  • Word counts are no longer displayed on the status page.
  • Added "state" column to story lists (admin feature).
  • Competitors list now shows their joining dates/times.
  • Added event lists for competitors and administrators.
• Writing Groups Directory:
  • Redesigned search form with multiple push-buttons replacing radio buttons.
  • Group listings table now has hyperlinks for area codes and region names, allowing users to quickly list the groups in those geographical locations.
  • Canadian postcodes and geography are now handled.
• Footer: Added peak memory usage counter.

Behaviour

• Comments: the way the entry/reply form works has been changed, as follows:
  • The form is not initially displayed.
  • If the article's "add comment" button, or one of the comment's "reply" buttons is clicked, then the form will appear, either next to the comment being replied to, or at the end of the list for new comments.
  • If the "cancel" button is clicked, the form will disappear again.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Version 2.7.2 – 03 June 2015 ↑

Appearance

• Mini-tales competition: word counts are now shown in story lists.
• Writing groups directory: For groups that are "opted in", prompt messages for missing/suppressed information are no longer displayed.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Version 2.7.1 – 14 May 2015 ↑

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Version 2.7.0 – 10 April 2015 ↑

New Features

• The 100 Word Mini-Tales Competition. Check the information page for details and updates.
• New Writing Groups Directory.

Appearance

• "Sticky posts" now correctly appear at the top of article listings, per category. This is most apparent on the front page. This previously only worked for the "recent articles" widget.

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Version 2.6.4 – 31 March 2015 ↑

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Version 2.6.3 – 02 March 2015 ↑

Appearance

• Front page: Replaced the "special membership offer" panel with two new panels: A "benefits of joining" panel and a "who are we?" panel. They both use "tabbed" content for a compact display.
• The dotted separator line between the article content and the "info" table, is now attached to the table, rather than the content section. This looks better when used with floating content such as images.
• The page load time in seconds is now displayed in the footer.

Software

• Updated packages.

Technical

• Theme: Added script to handle "tabbed" content, using jQuery UI.

Version 2.6.2 – 04 February 2015 ↑

Appearance

• Link magazine:
  • Back issues are now shown in a single table, which is automatically generated from the directory contents.
• Footer:
  • Removed the "powered by WordPress" credit, since it is of no particular benefit to readers, nor to NAWG.
  • The site's version number now incorporates a link to this release history page.

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• Web hosting:
  • The site is moving to a new hosting company. Work was done to facilitate this.
• Configuration:
  • Added "site-live" setting for overriding live site domain name.
  • Altered filter settings to avoid re-entrancy issues when expanding shortcodes.
  • Added filters for "wp_list_pages" hook.

Version 2.6.1 – 12 November 2014 ↑

New Features

• Article editing:
  • The visual (rich text) editor has been disabled, due to the fact that it produces invalid or otherwise mangled markup code. This means that markup is now always shown when editing articles.
  • The limit for the number of previous revisions for articles has been set to ten. It was previously "no limit", which was leading to excessive database storage for very little benefit.

Software

• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.
• Updated themes.

Technical

• General:
  • Some of the site's code "modules" have been factored out into external packages, so that they can be separately maintained. These include: filter, shortcode, jumpmark, catalogue, and widget.
• Configuration:
  • Set WP_POST_REVISIONS limit to 10.
  • Added search-zero setting for adding to the list of options when search results are empty.
• Filter:
  • Disabled visual editor using "user_can_richedit" filter hook.
  • General improvements made to the package, including: configuration, RSS feeds, text handling, and markup handling.
• Catalogue:
  • Added KTaxo::prune and KTaxoSet::prune for removing empty terms from taxonomy trees.
• Theme: K-Lattice
  • Added a strip_tags call to the "<title>" generating code (see issue 0005).

Release 2.6.0 – 12 August 2014 ↑

New Features

• The "NAWG Classic" display theme (currently in use) now makes use of WordPress dynamic sidebar and widget features. This paves the way for a more flexible arrangement of the on-screen elements. Administrators can choose widgets and adjust their positions and properties, without the need for software development work.
• Front page & side bar:
  • Items are now implemented as widgets, rather than hard-coded panels. This allows them to be altered without requiring code changes.

Appearance

• Article counts for categories are now direct counts and do not include those from sub-categories.
• Disabled buttons are now styled differently to enabled ones, as are active buttons.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Technical

• Catalogue:
  • Display mode thresholds can now be configured.
• Shortcodes:
  • Added [widget] and [widget_test] codes.
• Filters:
  • Removed some unwanted built-in WordPress filters, e.g. wpautop and wptexturize.
  • Added some basic text and mark-up filters. Mainly for correcting things that would otherwise fail validation tests.
• Must-use plug-in:
  • Added action callback to disable self-pingbacks.
• Theme: "NAWG-Classic":
  • The "site map" section on the bottom of the page is now suppressed if it has no content nor widgets configured.
• Configuration:
  • Introduced TEST_REGRESSION constant.

Release 2.5.0 – 27 May 2014 ↑

New Features

• The following new display modes were implemented:
  • Table: Articles/responses are listed in tabular form.
  • Excerpt: Short excerpts for articles/responses are displayed.
  • Full: The full articles/responses are displayed.
• Two types of responses to articles are now distinguished:
  • Comments: responses from humans.
  • Pingbacks: automated responses for linking to other web sites.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Technical

• Made the "catalogue" module available to all themes.
• Added "K-Lattice" and "K-Grey" themes.
• Categories that trigger accordion behaviour (in the "NAWG Classic" theme) are now stored in the configuration file, rather than hard-coded.

Release 2.4.5 – 06 May 2014 ↑

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Release 2.4.4 – 16 April 2014 ↑

New Features

• Catalogue navigation pages now have bullet list links implemented.
• Tidied up contact form layout.

Software

• Updated packages.

Technical

• Refactored "nawg-classic" theme to use KDoc object.
• Added [exec] shortcode for running routines to generate text.
• Added KCatalogue class for handling catalogue features.

Release 2.4.3 – 04 April 2014 ↑

New Features

• Made more use of horizontal screen space by moving from fixed-width (980 pixels) to a percentage model.
• Added a "favicon" image to replace the old one that looked like an "M". The new one is a pencil stub.

Software

• Updated WordPress core.
• Updated packages.
• Updated plug-ins.

Technical

• Renamed theme from "default" to "nawg-classic".
• Added a [file] shortcode to pull in text from external files.
• Implemented error handling code, as supported by K-Framework package.
• Enabled the use of salts for added security.

Release 2.4.2 – 31 March 2014 ↑

Behaviour

• The "accordion" display feature is now working (see jqueryui.com/accordion). This mainly affects the Writing Groups Directory and "Who is NAWG?" category pages.

Appearance

• General:
  • The WordPress theme has been refactored, resulting in the same general overall appearance, but with some cosmetic changes and general improvements.
  • Larger typefaces have generally been used, in order to improve readability.
  • The colour scheme and layout has been somewhat simplified and de-cluttered.
• Main display area:
  • A larger typeface is now used, plus increased line spacing, in order to improve readability.
  • Added "jump" links to navigate to the comments area and back to the top of the article being viewed.
• Comments display area:
  • Now larger and more readable.
  • The display now indicates the hierarchy (nesting) of comments and replies.
  • Action links are provided for submitting replies.
• Header bar:
  • The "Home" link has been removed to save vertical space. There are plenty of existing links to get back to the home page, including:
    • Clicking on the pencil logo or the title banner.
    • The "home page" link in the side bar.
    • The "home" link under "pages" in the footer's site map.
  • A "Dashboard" link has been added (when logged in). Useful for users who do not enable the WordPress tool bar.
• Footer bar:
  • Latter year in copyright notice now shows the current year.
  • Site map layout rearranged to make better use of horizontal space.
  • Categories in the site map now show article counts.
  • "Home" link added to pages list.
• Side bar:
  • The page and category menus are now visible on every page, not just selected ones.
  • Category menu shows article counts.
  • Most pages show the following panels:
    • Thinking of joining
    • Competition pages
    • Writing groups directory
    • NAWG publications
    The exceptions are when articles in the "writing groups" category are being viewed, in which case the following alternative panels are shown:
    • List updates
    • Not on the list
  • The advertising panel(s) are now visible on every page.

Software

• Updated plug-ins.

Technical

• Removed many unnecessary and unused source files.
• Many of the visual effects are now implemented with client-side CSS, rather than "repeating" images. This should reduce the required transmission bandwidth to improve page loading times. It has also reduced the theme's complexity.
• Improved output mark-up. Now closer to error free validation.
• Refactored most of the template files, in order to:
  • Avoid huge amounts of code duplication – a maintenance nightmare.
  • Pull out common functionality – now only have to change things in one place.
  • Increase code coherency.

Release 2.4.1 – 20 March 2014 ↑

Behaviour

• The WordPress core software and plug-ins can no longer be updated from the dashboard. This has been implemented for safety and security reasons. Software updates must now be done via FTP.

Appearance

• The site's release version number is now displayed in the footer.
• The "down for maintenance" page (when in use) no longer displays a specific date on which to return to the site.

Technical

• Implemented "website setup", for managing software packages.
• The WordPress core is now factored out as a package.
• The SQL database has moved domains from artificialindustries.co.uk to nawg.co.uk.

Author: Kevin Machin ♦ Created: 04-Apr-2014 ♦ Access: public ♦ Article: site-release-history ♦ Topics: old WordPress site, website