VaultWiki News

As of this past Sunday, August 1, as was announced last month, new prices on all our products and services have taken effect.

---

Last week, a security issue was identified in the 2.5.x branch of VaultWiki. At the same time, two (2) security issues were also identified in the 3.0.x branch.

Last Wednesday, VaultWiki 2.5.7 Patch Level 2 and VaultWiki 3.0.2 were released to address each set of vulnerabilities, respectfully. Our customers were notified by email and advised to apply the update.

Not only does 3.0.2 solve 2 vulnerabilities and fix numerous Internet Explorer 6 and 7 style issues, but it also includes some useful new moderation features. Keep in mind that due to the security issues, this release was rushed out before the features could be fully tested, so consider them beta:

History Moderation

Users can now report previous versions of articles to moderators as offensive, questionable, or spam. In the past, moderators could change the current version back to acceptable ones, but the problematic version would remain visible through the article's history. It is now possible to completely remove a bad version from a page's history using the "purge" function.

Today the VaultWiki 3.0.1 maintenance release is available to the public. This contains a rollup of fixes since 3.0.0 and some changes to the database structure that should improve speed on many wiki pages and save actions.

A complete list of changes is here: http://www.vaultwiki.org/projectsear...ssuereportid=6

On August 1, 2010, prices on VaultWiki products and services will be changing as follows:

• VaultWiki Premium: $75
• VaultWiki Standard: $55
• Branding Removal: $60
• License Renewal (active license): $30
• License Renewal (inactive license): $40
• Upgrade Standard to Premium: $30

Today, what we believe to be a stable VaultWiki 3 release has become available. We recommend that users upgrade as soon as they can, because it fixes an XSS issue in previous VaultWiki 3.x versions.

Partial Rewrite

The product has been reworked to load less data and consume less memory than ever before. This is especially noticeable on non-wiki pages, when few wiki integration features are enabled.

However, this also means that many add-ons that were written for previous versions will not function correctly when used with VaultWiki 3. We recommend disabling any VaultWiki addons prior to upgrading, and updating them at your earliest convenience.

Book Improvements

In addition to a large number of bug fixes, VaultWiki 3 features quite a few improvements to the Book system. It is now easier than ever to create books and add chapters. After creating the Book's start page, simply click the "Add New Chapter" button in its Table of Contents. When the window refreshes, the next few pages will guide you through the process.

You can easily see what chapters are new or have been modified right from the Table of Contents. The color-coded icons that make these distinctions can be customized using the updated GDK.

When a user is subscribed to a Book via Daily or Weekly emails, the user will receive notices when any chapter or sub-chapter within that Book has been added or modified by another user.

More Friendly Comments

Using new settings, it's now possible to move wiki comments from a separate tab to below the article, where they can be read and replied to in a more public position using a minimal number of clicks.

Release Notes

If you already had VaultWiki 3.0.0 RC 3 installed, then the 3.0.0 upgrade process will attempt to move some data from the post table to a new location. If you have a very large number of posts in your forum, we recommend upgrading only after turning your forum off for maintenance.

The data will not be copied in forums with millions of posts, but removing the old data may still take a long time. In this case, any non-wiki posts that used the Parsing Options "Wiki Codes" will have to make their selections again once the upgrade is complete.

Earlier in the week, we discovered a possible XSS vulnerability in all previous versions of VaultWiki. The new releases 2.5.7 Patch Level 1 and 3.0.0 RC 3 contain the changes that fix this hole. Even though this particular vulnerability requires some special circumstances, we recommend updating immediately to ensure you are protected.

Because of this discovery, RC 3 does not contain many of the features that were planned for its release, but it does contain roughly 60 bug fixes. Notably, we improved performance on Special pages, and fixed the subscriptions to daily and weekly wiki edit notifications.

New Directory Structure

The directory structure and file names used by VaultWiki have been changed. To have the smoothest upgrade process and avoid making your forums inaccessible, we recommend:

1. Have a copy of the /vault folder from RC 2 ready in case you need to rollback. If you follow these instructions in order, you should not have a problem.
2. Disable VaultWiki via the Product Manager in the AdminCP.
3. Delete the /vault directory on your server. MAKE SURE VaultWiki is disabled before you do this, or you'll have to replace the RC 2 folder and start over.
4. Upload the new RC 3 files.
5. Proceed to upgrade normally.

VaultWiki 3.0.0 RC 2 has finally been completed and is now available to licensed customers. This newest iteration fixes a number of bugs and includes a number of important interface and extensibility changes.

Parser Portability

Beginning with Release Candidate 2, we have begun making the wiki parser functions more usable throughout the forum, rather than just on tabbed wiki pages. The parser has become more portable, so that simply activating certain post options will allow you to use Redirects, Templates, and automatically generated tables of contents in normal forum posts.

We plan to support wiki functions in blogs by RC 3, but due to oversights in the current vBulletin CMS, the parser functions may not be available in CMS articles for another several vBulletin updates.

Forum and Thread Icons

For the first time since becoming vBulletin 4 compatible, VaultWiki 3 RC 2 features new forum and thread icons that distinguish wiki areas from regular forums. To help customers customize these further for their own forum styles, the Graphics Developer Kits have been released in our Addons forums:

• for vBulletin 3 - http://www.vaultwiki.org/threads/4439/
• for vBulletin 4 - http://www.vaultwiki.org/threads/4440/

Updated Style

In RC 2, the CSS has been largely rewritten - addressing usability and compatibility issues with wiki tabs and article content. For the first time, VaultWiki's AJAX functionality will work properly under vBulletin 4 when using Internet Explorer 6. In vBulletin 3, all of the wiki CSS is now stored in the database, so you don't have to make file edits for positioning changes.

Keep in mind, however, that many of the style improvements will require you to rework any CSS-related customizations you have already done.

Since yesterday, VaultWiki 3.0.0 RC 1 has been available. With RC 1, we have achieved a certain level confidence in the product's functionality and stability, even though we still have a few more features in store before calling it a "Gold" release.

New Tabs

In Release Candidate 1, which included mainly style and usability changes, we added two new tabs to wiki pages: the Source tab and the Apply tab.

The Source tab appears to users who cannot edit a page because they either don't have permission, or the page is not accepting new changes for another reason. The tab will show the user the source code that was used to generate the tab, without allowing the user to make any changes to it.

The Apply tab allows users to make certain page configuration changes, like adding a page to a Social Group, choosing the forum a header appears in, or making pages into translations of other pages.
With the addition of the Apply tab, the Translate tab has been completely removed from the Premium package.

Easier Upgrades

In the past, forum administrators upgrading VaultWiki were relatively in the dark about any new features unless they read the announcement or paid close attention in other parts of the forum.

From now on, new features and other important changes will be outlined in a notice posted to the AdminCP Home Page after performing the upgrade, along with brief instructions on any action that should be taken. This notice will remain visible until the admin actively dismisses it.

Now, instead of adding a new unique permission every time a Special Page is added, there is a small set of permissions that controls certain "types" of Special pages. This makes the admin's job much easier, because when editing a Usergroup, you no longer have 25 toggles for each Special page (if you had the Premium package). Now, you have about 7 or 8.

However, this change also means that you probably have to edit your Usergroups after this upgrade to make sure everything is how you want it.

VaultWiki Lite

After 18 months, a new version of VaultWiki Lite has been posted for free on vbulletin.org. This version can be downloaded by anyone who wishes to use a very basic form of VaultWiki, or who want to try it out before purchasing.

The Lite version has a very limited feature set, but unlike our last free release, 3.0.0 Lite is fully supported on our site. We hope that having based this iteration on a more stable, mature product will contribute to making both it and VaultWiki itself a success this time around.