Once again it has been a while since we've last done an announcement. As you may have noticed, updates have slowed down both in quantity and amount of features, mostly doing bugfixes only. So I figured it'd be a good time to let you know what we've been up to.
1.0 Is around the corner!
As explained in the 2025 roadmap , we've decided to co-ordinate our release with the long-term-support version of Symfony 7.4. While we've been waiting, we created a separate fork of forumify, the "1.0 branch", that has been receiving new features, fixes and has been following the latest Symfony version as it came out.
Let's look at some of the major highlights for 1.0:
Messenger
The messenger has gotten a facelift, our previous design philosophy assumed that the messenger would function more like an e-mail client. While the new design is closer to a real time chat app. The messages themselves aren't real-time yet, but this new design opens the door to facilitate this in the near-future.
Calendar
For the calendar, we've extracted it from the core, and will be releasing it as a free plug-in. We want our core to remain lean and mean, and the calendar was a completely disconnected feature from the rest. So it only made sense to move it into a standalone plug-in.
No worries though, your old events will still be there waiting for you once you install this free plug-in.
With this change, we've also added a week view, event end times, and event banners to the calendar. All of these changes will hopefully make the calendar more attractive and give your users a faster overview of your community's events.
Alternative ways to log in
@JonErickson brought us the Social Login plug-in very early in forumify's lifetime. Now we will be offering a 1st party solution to alternative log-in methods. We salute him for bridging this gap, and his plug-in will remain available on the marketplace for <1.0 versions of forumify.
Out of the box we have added support for Google and Discord, but our system is very extendable and plug-ins can provide their own new log-in methods, or "Identity Providers" as we've named them. The difficulty of setting up an Identity Provider can vary a lot, but we've provided new in-app help and tooltip systems that will guide you through the process step-by-step.
Discord Plugin
Yes, it's coming. A Discord integration plugin will be launching together with 1.0. This plugin will require a small monthly fee (<$5/mo), since we have to host a Discord bot to accomplish some of the features we liked to be present. But it should be well worth it if your community uses Discord as a primary communication tool.
The confirmed features are:
Force users to also join your discord
Force discord server usernames to be the same as forum usernames (forum is leading)
Sync forum roles to discord
Sync calendar events to discord
But more might be added in the future!
MicroPlugins
With 1.0, we also decided to release a number of tiny plugins. So far, most of our plugins have been large behemoths that completely overhaul or add large amounts of functionality. The idea behind micro plugins is that they just add some small visual changes, some extra eye-candy, slightly modify existing functionality,...
We have 2 plugins ready in this category:
Remove Branding Plugin: Remove any forumify branding in the footer or on the admin panel and grants an exclusive license to do so for the lifetime of your website. Cost: $250/one-time
User Local Time Plugin: Shows the user's local time on their profile, depending on their timezone. Great for multicultural communities! Cost: Free!
Closing Words
The features and plugins highlighted in this post are just the tip of the iceberg. We've changed a lot of the underlying systems to bring them more in-line with each other and provide more consistency in the codebase. This should make it easier for plugin developers and core maintainers.
This update will include changes to local files too, all cloud instances will be upgraded to 1.0 by us free-of-charge. A separate communication will be sent out to owners of cloud instances when the exact release date is known. This downtime is expected to be 10-15 minutes per website.
The 1.0 update was never about features, improvements,... but about stability. Once 1.0 is out, we will have to provide backwards compatibility for all plugins created on the 1.0 version. Meaning in 2 years, if we're still on 1.x then, a plug-in created on 1.0.0 will still have to work, and if we break a 3rd party plug-in due to a change in our core, the burden will be on us.
Thank you all for your continued support and I'm excited for calmer waters ahead, where we can focus on building out the plugins and themes portfolio.
Hi all!
Once again it has been a while since we've last done an announcement. As you may have noticed, updates have slowed down both in quantity and amount of features, mostly doing bugfixes only. So I figured it'd be a good time to let you know what we've been up to.
1.0 Is around the corner!
As explained in the 2025 roadmap , we've decided to co-ordinate our release with the long-term-support version of Symfony 7.4. While we've been waiting, we created a separate fork of forumify, the "1.0 branch", that has been receiving new features, fixes and has been following the latest Symfony version as it came out.
Let's look at some of the major highlights for 1.0:
Messenger
The messenger has gotten a facelift, our previous design philosophy assumed that the messenger would function more like an e-mail client. While the new design is closer to a real time chat app. The messages themselves aren't real-time yet, but this new design opens the door to facilitate this in the near-future.
Calendar
For the calendar, we've extracted it from the core, and will be releasing it as a free plug-in. We want our core to remain lean and mean, and the calendar was a completely disconnected feature from the rest. So it only made sense to move it into a standalone plug-in.
No worries though, your old events will still be there waiting for you once you install this free plug-in.
With this change, we've also added a week view, event end times, and event banners to the calendar. All of these changes will hopefully make the calendar more attractive and give your users a faster overview of your community's events.
Alternative ways to log in
@JonErickson brought us the Social Login plug-in very early in forumify's lifetime. Now we will be offering a 1st party solution to alternative log-in methods. We salute him for bridging this gap, and his plug-in will remain available on the marketplace for <1.0 versions of forumify.
Out of the box we have added support for Google and Discord, but our system is very extendable and plug-ins can provide their own new log-in methods, or "Identity Providers" as we've named them. The difficulty of setting up an Identity Provider can vary a lot, but we've provided new in-app help and tooltip systems that will guide you through the process step-by-step.
Discord Plugin
Yes, it's coming. A Discord integration plugin will be launching together with 1.0. This plugin will require a small monthly fee (<$5/mo), since we have to host a Discord bot to accomplish some of the features we liked to be present. But it should be well worth it if your community uses Discord as a primary communication tool.
The confirmed features are:
But more might be added in the future!
MicroPlugins
With 1.0, we also decided to release a number of tiny plugins. So far, most of our plugins have been large behemoths that completely overhaul or add large amounts of functionality. The idea behind micro plugins is that they just add some small visual changes, some extra eye-candy, slightly modify existing functionality,...
We have 2 plugins ready in this category:
Closing Words
The features and plugins highlighted in this post are just the tip of the iceberg. We've changed a lot of the underlying systems to bring them more in-line with each other and provide more consistency in the codebase. This should make it easier for plugin developers and core maintainers.
This update will include changes to local files too, all cloud instances will be upgraded to 1.0 by us free-of-charge. A separate communication will be sent out to owners of cloud instances when the exact release date is known. This downtime is expected to be 10-15 minutes per website.
The 1.0 update was never about features, improvements,... but about stability. Once 1.0 is out, we will have to provide backwards compatibility for all plugins created on the 1.0 version. Meaning in 2 years, if we're still on 1.x then, a plug-in created on 1.0.0 will still have to work, and if we break a 3rd party plug-in due to a change in our core, the burden will be on us.
Thank you all for your continued support and I'm excited for calmer waters ahead, where we can focus on building out the plugins and themes portfolio.