Just before the end of the year we have a small gift for you all. Elgg v4.1.0-beta.1 is now available for download in the download section!

Please keep in mind this is a beta release, it's not yet ready for production without extensive testing.

If you find any bugs please report them on GitHub.

We'd like to thank everybody who contributed to making Elgg 4.1 happen, notable contributors are:

• Jeroen Dalsem with 93 commits
• Jerôme Bakker with 36 commits

Major changes

This minor release has some major changes. Besides some internal changes and test improvements we also added the following features to your Elgg site.

• Index pages

Various pages that could potentially serve the homepage for your site have been improved to focus more on new users. Most notable change is in the Frontpage Demo plugin where you now have some more control over the information on the homepage.

• PHP 8.1

Elgg now fully supports PHP 8.1. If you have some third party plugins, be prepared for some deprecation notices in your server log.

• Notifications

With the introduction of a more fine grained control over notification preferences in Elgg v4.0 there were also configuration options for content in groups that were actually not used in those groups. The options are now only present in the group notification preferences if the feature is actually used in that specific group.

• Touch devices

Do you want to move widgets on your profile or on your dashboard on the go? It is now possible to do so with your 'touch' devices (mobile/tablet)! Also all other drag/drop features now work on those devices.

• Entity Capabilities

This one is more for developers. A new capabilities system has been introduced in the Elgg framework. This allows for an easier check if certain pieces of content (entities) support a specific feature (commentable, searchable, likable, etc) in the system. This system can be easily expanded and used in plugin development without additional dependencies.

• Favicon / Site icon

For site administrators there is now the possibility to upload a icon to be used for your site. This icon will show as the favicon of your site and in other places where the site is visualized (for example when receiving site notifications sent by the site).

• Threaded Comments

Last but not least we improved the commenting system. We now support threaded comments! This is disabled by default, but can be enabled in your site settings.