We're excited to unveil the latest updates to Elgg, packed with powerful new features, performance improvements, and essential bug fixes. Elgg v6.1 is now available for download in the download section! Here's everything you need to know about this release.

New Features
 

Notifications

• Localized Notifications: The notification handler now sets the language based on the recipient's preferences.

Likes

• Streamlined Event Handling: Likes notifications now leverage the event notification handler, enhancing consistency.

Forms

• Multi-Button Support: Our forms now support double-submit prevention across multiple submit buttons.
• Improved Switch Fields: A new helper input view simplifies working with switch field types.

Cache

• Optimized Redis Settings: Default Redis options are now merged for improved cache handling.

Relationships

• Enhanced Event Handling: Trigger :before and :after events for relationship actions, ensuring better extensibility.

Admin Tools

• Improved Validation Settings: The admin validation notification setting has been relocated for better accessibility.

User Settings

• Streamlined Forms: The user settings form has been updated for improved usability.

File, Discussions, Bookmarks, and Blogs

• Unified Field Handling: Form fields for file, discussions, bookmarks, and blogs are now processed through the fields service, ensuring a more unified experience.

Groups

• Membership Control: Users can now revoke their group membership requests.
• Invitation Notices: Receive a notice on group profiles when you're invited to join.
• Enhanced Group Listings: Popular groups have been replaced with a sortable menu option.
• Invitation Filters: Invitations now display badges with counts for easy navigation.
• Invite Without Friends Plugin: Users can invite others without requiring the Friends plugin.

Database Enhancements

• Helper Function: The new elgg_count_relationships function simplifies relationship counting.

Developer Tools

• Entity Explorer Update: Added "restore actions" to the entity explorer menu for better debugging.

Performance Improvements

• Comments: River comments now use lightweight views for improved performance.

Bug Fixes

• Metadata Records: Resolved an issue to prevent duplicate metadata records.
• Plugin Settings: elgg_get_plugin_setting now correctly returns defaults if the plugin is missing.
• Group Invitations: The "direct join" menu item now appears if there's an active invitation.
• Core Notices: Fixed notices when non-arrays are passed to sort_by.

Deprecations

• Plugins: The elgg_plugin_exists function is now deprecated.
• Cache Functions: Several cache-related functions have been deprecated to pave the way for newer implementations.
• Log Levels: Non-PSR log levels are deprecated for improved compliance with standards.

Removed Features

• CSS Styles: The alternative elgg-form-alt styling has been removed.
• Categories Field: Form categories field support has been deprecated.

This release is designed to streamline your experience, enhance platform capabilities, and address key issues. Dive into the latest updates and let us know what you think!

You can read the full release notes on Github. Developers should also have a look at the upgrade notes to see which changes might impact their plugins.