Xenforo - Forum Software 2.3.7 (Full & Upgrade) 2.3.7

This week (and a bit) we have been extremely busy working towards that enticing milestone of a stable release. There's still a little while to go with a healthy number of bugs, feedback and other bits in our backlog that we'd like to work through, but each release represents a significant amount of effort and progress towards the end goal.

While we have mostly focused on bug fixes and other stability improvements, this has resulted in some notable changes which you should be aware of.

We have been deferring this handling to a third party piece of code for a number of years which has done a great job, but after a recent discussion and bug report about it we have decided to modernise this code and bring it into the XF core itself. Developers will now find most of this functionality under the new XF\Util\Str class. Worried about your code that no doubt has used various utf8_ functions in the past? Fear not because we now ship a shim file which proxies those legacy function names to their analogous functions in the new Str class. Though we highly recommend updating existing code to utilise the new Str class as soon as possible as the utf8.php shim is already deprecated and will be removed in XenForo 3.0.

Some of the new Str class has been rewritten to, wherever possible, make use of methods provided by the PHP mbstring extension. This means that, much like many other modern PHP applications and frameworks, XenForo 2.3 now has a hard requirement for the mbstring extension to be available. While not shipped by default, it's highly likely you already have it available. To check if it is, all you have to do is look at the "Server environment report" on your admin control panel index.

The new Str class is making use of modern PHP syntax including enforcing return types and argument types. This may mean that you could see an increase in the number of server error logs related to these string functions. This is intentional. Those logs will likely represent a bug in an add-on's code and therefore should be reported to the add-on developer in the first instance.

Click here to read more about these changes.

Any entity which is configured to be "indexable` via the XF:Indexable entity behavior and is configured to enqueueIndexNow now requires the implementation of the new ViewableInterface. This is to ensure that your entity has an appropriate canView method so that we can determine content is viewable by a guest before submission to IndexNow. Developers will need to implement this interface and add a canView method (if needed) to ensure content can be submitted to IndexNow.

There is no longer a manual step required to configure webhook verification when using the new PayPal payment provider. Upon creating a payment profile, we use API calls to create and configure the webhook automatically, no longer requiring that as a separate manual step and copy/pasting the webhook ID. If you happen to receive payment provider logs about webhooks not being able to be verified, it will be worth toggling off and on the checkbox for enabling webhook verification to see if that resolves the issue.

That's it for this week, we're off to swat some more bugs. Please read the rest of this post for the standard upgrade boilerplate text

We strongly recommend anyone testing 2.3 during this beta period upgrade as each beta version is released.

More specific details regarding bugs fixed in this release can be found in the resolved bugs forum.

Finally, the add-ons have some love While there is the usual amount of bug fixes as we work hard to make XenForo 2.3 even more stable, this Beta in particular brings a number of new features to our official add-ons.

Note in particular, XenForo Enhanced Search has slightly higher minimum requirements than we reported previously. This now requires Elasticsearch 7.2 which was necessary to support the new search suggestions feature for auto-completing searches. You can also now use OpenSearch if you prefer.

We strongly recommend anyone testing 2.3 during this beta period upgrade as each beta version is released.

Today, we continue the, uh, trend of weekly beta releases for XenForo 2.3 with Beta 4. This release fixes a number of bugs found since the previous release, and adds support for trending content which you can read about right here.

In addition to the trending content widget we have also made the following notable changes:

• You can now log in to the admin control panel using your configured passkey.
• Changes to the job queueing system that allows a caller to create jobs with a specified priority.
• Webhook support for user upgrades.
• Separated XF.Cropbox from avatar.js into its own file, crop_box.js.

We strongly recommend anyone testing 2.3 during this beta period upgrade as each beta version is released.

More specific details regarding bugs fixed in this release can be found in the resolved bugs forum.

This is beta software. It is not officially supported.
We do not recommend running it in production.

Please remember that this is beta software. It contains known bugs and incomplete functionality. We do not recommend running beta software in a production environment, and support is limited at this time to questions here on the community forums.

Add-ons and custom styles may be broken after upgrading to 2.3. You must test your add-ons thoroughly or look for updates. Be especially careful with add-ons that cover similar features to ones that are added to 2.3; these may conflict with the core XenForo data. If data conflicts are found, they will need to be resolved in a new add-on release or by removing the add-on before upgrading to 2.3.

If you choose to run beta software, it is your responsibility to ensure that you make a backup of your data. We recommend you do this before attempting an upgrade. If in doubt, always do a test upgrade on a copy of your production data.

Today, we continue the beta stage of XenForo 2.3 with Beta 3, albeit a little later than originally planned This release fixes a number of bugs found since the previous release, and adds support for passwordless logins with passkeys which you can read about right here. There are a few known issues with passkeys at this point, particularly with hardware-based keys, so please check the bug reports forum if you run into anything.

We strongly recommend anyone testing 2.3 during this beta period upgrade as each beta version is released.

More specific details regarding bugs fixed in this release can be found in the resolved bugs forum.

This is beta software. It is not officially supported.
We do not recommend running it in production.

Please remember that this is beta software. It contains known bugs and incomplete functionality. We do not recommend running beta software in a production environment, and support is limited at this time to questions here on the community forums.

Add-ons and custom styles may be broken after upgrading to 2.3. You must test your add-ons thoroughly or look for updates. Be especially careful with add-ons that cover similar features to ones that are added to 2.3; these may conflict with the core XenForo data. If data conflicts are found, they will need to be resolved in a new add-on release or by removing the add-on before upgrading to 2.3.

If you choose to run beta software, it is your responsibility to ensure that you make a backup of your data. We recommend you do this before attempting an upgrade. If in doubt, always do a test upgrade on a copy of your production data.

Brand new in XenForo 2.3.0 Beta 2 is support for a few long overdue enhancements related to our payment and purchasable system. Let's look at each of these below!

Stripe Checkout​

Stripe Checkout is Stripe's native and hosted checkout page which not only brings with it some powerful customisability, it also makes accepting new payment methods completely trivial and available in an instant. Allow user upgrades and other purchasables to be purchased with options for "Buy Now Pay Later" (e.g. Klarna, ClearPay), popular region-specific bank redirects (such as iDEAL and Sofort), and popular online wallets (such as Alipay and Revolut). You can even accept payments through PayPal! Through Stripe!

You can enable and configure as many payment methods as you like, and you do this directly through your Stripe Dashboard with zero additional code or configuration required in XenForo. Stripe intelligently and dynamically displays the enabled payment methods they feel will most likely lead to a conversion based on the customer's previous purchases, their geographic location and currency.

This new purchase experience is a drop in replacement for the existing implementation and requires no additional setup or configuration and is available automatically.

PayPal (REST API)​

Our existing PayPal implementation - while absolutely functional - is at least 2-3 generations behind so today is the day we make available a new implementation based on PayPal's current REST API. While functionally this will still be the same as the existing implementation, it is the right time to support PayPal's latest development experience which will continue to receive new functionality and enhancements long in to the future, as well as being more secure and actively maintained by PayPal.

We have implemented this as a brand new payment provider and marked the existing one as deprecated. We are not aware of any immediate plans for PayPal to sunset the legacy Checkout/IPN system we have been using for a long time, so you are free to continue using it. There is no known migration path to move existing customers (particularly recurring payments) to the new APIs but you can enable the new one for new purchases at any time.

The PayPal REST API being available in XenForo should allow developers to implement new, advanced functionality that previously wasn't available.

Ability to update payment details for subscriptions​

Starting with Stripe only, initially, we've added the ability for purchasables and payment providers to be able to "Change payment" for existing recurring payments. In the case of Stripe, clicking "Change payment" takes you to a Stripe Checkout session which allows you to update your payment method.

This is a potentially frequently needed piece of functionality which will allow users to, for example, change their payment card after changing banks or having received new card details due to expiry of the previous card. Previously it was not possible for users to update their card details, and usually required the subscription to be cancelled before signing up with new card details.

This is an asynchronous process so once the user provides updated payment details, they will later receive an email confirmation once the new payment details have been applied.

Improved experience for cancelling subscriptions​

It has always been possible for a user to be able to cancel their recurring payment but we didn't do the best job of reflecting that change in the UI. The cancel button would still be displayed after cancellation, and would simply error if you tried to use it again. We now track the cancellation state within the purchasable record and adjust the UI accordingly:

This should hopefully be a much less confusing experience.


That's it for new features in Beta 2. We've got more to come very soon! Thank you to everyone who has helped identify issues and provide feedback for XenForo 2.3 so far.

We are delighted to announce that XenForo 2.3.0 Beta 1 is now available to all customers with active self-hosted licenses. XenForo 2.3 includes a large number of new features and improvements, including:

• Dark mode and style variants
• Extensive performance improvements
• Featured content
• Image optimization (WebP), client side image resizing and more
• Automation via webhooks
• Sign in with Apple, IndexNow, Full InnoDB and improved MySQL search
• Embed your content anywhere
• Single sign on
• Direct message searching
• ...plus a myriad of developer improvements

You can read more about the above in the Have you seen...? forum.

This is beta software. It is not officially supported.
We do not recommend running it in production.

Please remember that this is beta software. It contains known bugs and incomplete functionality. We do not recommend running beta software in a production environment, and support is limited at this time to questions here on the community forums.

If you would like to leave us feedback about your experience with XenForo 2.3 we recommend you do that here. From today, should you find any bugs, they should be reported in the Bug reports forum.

Add-ons and custom styles may be broken after upgrading to 2.3. You must test your add-ons thoroughly or look for updates. Be especially careful with add-ons that cover similar features to ones that are added to 2.3; these may conflict with the core XenForo data. If data conflicts are found, they will need to be resolved in a new add-on release or by removing the add-on before upgrading to 2.3.

If you choose to run beta software, it is your responsibility to ensure that you make a backup of your data. We recommend you do this before attempting an upgrade. If in doubt, always do a test upgrade on a copy of your production data.

All customers with active self-hosted licenses may now download the new version from the customer area.

Download XenForo 2.3.0 Beta 1​

From the licensed customer area​

Alongside the release of XenForo 2.3.0 Beta 1, we are also releasing updated versions of each of our official add-ons:

• XenForo Media Gallery 2.3.0 Beta 1
• XenForo Resource Manager 2.3.0 Beta 1
• XenForo Enhanced Search 2.3.0 Beta 1

As we talk about in today's Have you seen...? thread, the changes in the official add-ons is currently minimal. There is additional functionality in development which will be added in a future Beta release.

Customers with active self-hosted licenses for these add-ons may download the new versions from their customer area.

Download official add-ons​

From the Licensed Customer Area​

Requirements​

The following are minimum requirements:

• PHP 7.2.0 or newer (PHP 8.3 recommended)
• MySQL 5.7 or newer
• Enhanced Search requires at least Elasticsearch 7.0
• All of the add-ons listed here require XenForo 2.3

Note: Please pay particular attention to the points above in bold as they represent changes to the minimum or planned increases!

Installation and upgrade instructions​

Full details for how to install and upgrade XenForo can be found in the XenForo manual. One-click upgrades from XF 2.2 are possible, but you must uncheck the "Only check for stable upgrades" option in Options > Basic options. Once the XF 2.3 upgrade has been complete, the official add-ons should be upgraded as well.

Please remember that this is beta/preview software. It contains known bugs and incomplete functionality. We do not recommend or support running beta software in a production environment. Support for beta releases is limited to questions here on the community forums.

• Avoid setting duplicate List-Unsubscribe headers.
• Include first post QA schema items unconditionally.
• Make outdated PHP version notice in admin control panel clearer.
• Retain the original unsubscribeEmailAddress option for backwards compatibility.
• New unsubscribeEmailHandling option to replace the new unsubscribeEmail option and conclusively fix issues arising from yesterday's XF 2.2.14 release.
• Fix URL unfurls no longer unfurling.

• Some of the changes in XF 2.2.14 include:
  • Fix type hinting for extendClass
  • Do not attempt to generate tag URLs without a valid tag
  • Properly disable outbound IPv6 requests when PHP is not compiled with IPv6 support
  • Improve audio mime-type detection
  • Use sodium_bin2base64 over base64_encode when generating random strings.
  • Update Twitter BB code media site to support x.com URLs and update some branding to X, rather than Twitter.
  • Increase the size of the old_value and new_value columns in the xf_change_log table
  • Properly throw an exception when failing to decode JSON for oEmbed
  • Ensure tag pages have a canonical URL set
  • Support custom URL portions for link forums
  • Mark old_value and new_value fields as required in the change log entity
  • Adjust regex for dialog loading to ensure consistency with BB code tag naming.
  • Fix a number of emoji phrases
  • Update braintree_api_keys_explain.txt phrase
  • Update webmanifest orientation to use natural as this should derive from the system's settings.
  • Highlight current style and language selections on chooser pages
  • Always set thread RSS publication dates to the creation date of the thread
  • Fix profile post/comment author alert reason API documentation
  • Properly phrase the BB Code help page example
    Improve error handling when loading notifier services
  • Extend notifier service class before calling createForJob static method
  • Reduce lock contention when writing thread read records
  • Provide a getter for class extensions, and check for class extensions before attempting to remove them
  • Skip relative (dot) files when cleaning up temporary files
  • Ensure prefix search constraints are lists of values
  • Use a no-permission response when a user cannot be banned, and gracefully handle error responses without a proper error message
  • Clarify that new SFS submissions will transmit an unhashed email address
  • Properly capture array_unique results
  • Add an index to the user ID column of the error log table
  • Fix value of custom user titles in API responses
  • Surely .u-spaceBefore is intended to apply the margin to the left
  • Guard against null metadata in MySQL full-text searchs
  • Do not display menus for selected tabs with no links
  • Use a more efficient query when updating reaction caches for content
  • Support filtering threads with forum type filters when using the API
  • When rebuilding user group relations, skip falsey values
  • Include support for embedding YouTube Live URLs
  • Improve PHP 8.2 compatibility in vendor libraries
  • Pass posterParams in the post reaction push template
  • Attempt to support fb.watch URLs
  • Only set descriptor suffix for Stripe card payments